Gut health plan vs my food log

colleenblaisdell · August 2

I’m confused. I started the gut health series which says 25 grams of fiber is a goal for women. Yesterday I ate 24.9g of fiber and my log indicate I was over my recommended 21g. Also I was way over on carbs. I eat Bobs red mill oatmeal for breakfast which logs as 33 carbs and an apple which logs as 19 carbs. Just that meal puts me way over. Looking for advice to make sense of this

lynn_glenmont · August 2

Maybe don't worry about going over targets that are (or should be) minimums (fiber) or that don't matter for most people (carbs) -- are you diabetic?

MFP for some bizarre reason treats all goals as maximums.

AnnPT77 · August 2

What Lynn said.

If you're too low on protein or fats, that can be a problem. But being over the carb goal, within calories, won't in itself torpedo weight loss or impair health. None of the macro goals need to be hit exactly.

In fact, if the major, major goal is weight loss, they don't need to be hit at all. Calories are the direct determinant of fat gain/loss.

Macros are important for health, energy level, appetite, and that sort of thing, of course. (In that sense, they can indirectly affect weight loss through fatigue (resting more) or appetite (eating more), but the direct effect is still calories.)

Even for health, it'll be fine to average close to the macro goals over a few days to a week. I'm personally a little more attentive than that to my protein and fats minimums, but that need is a consequence of some other parts of my personal context. I'm not diabetic, so I absolutely don't care where carbs fall (ever), as long as I'm within my calorie goal. I lost weight fine, have maintained a healthy weight for 8 years since, so far; and am in reasonably good health.

By the way, do you mean that 52g (33+19g) of carbs put you over your carb goal for the day, or for one meal? Meal by meal truly doesn't matter for weight loss or health IMO, unless you find it affects your energy level or appetite (so makes it harder to stick with calorie goal or activity level for the day).

Have you reset (lowered) your carb goal from the MFP default percent?

I'm asking because I'm confused. 52g of carbs would be 208 calories from carbs, even ignoring that the 24.9g of fiber don't bring calories (so it might be as low as 108 calories from carbs). MFP's default carb goal is 50% of calories. I'm sure your full-day calorie goal would be more than 416 calories (i.e., 52g of carbs can't be your full day carb goal at default percent)?

Getting relatively more carbs at breakfast is fine, if it keeps you full, energetic and happy. Like I said, averaging over a few days is fine, and for sure within one day getting reasonably close to protein, fat and carb goals overall isn't any kind of problem, unless it affects compliance with calorie goal.

I'd expect a mainstream gut health plan to include quite a bit of carbs (much of them various fiber types, probably), so shooting for lower than default carbs while adding the gut health plan could make things . . . challenging, especially if looking at gross rather than net carbs.

As an aside, I note that picking an aggressive weight loss rate can make it harder to hit reasonable nutrition targets. For some reason, a lot of people get here and pick 2 pounds/1kg per week, even though that can be too aggressive unless severely overweight, and can limit ability to get reasonable nutrition (among other possible negative consequences).

Best wishes!

springlering62 · August 2

I’m assuming you are a new user.

Unless you’ve got medical reasons to monitor carbs or fiber, let it go and focus on calories.

It’s hard enough to learn the basics of calorie counting. Get that down first and then worry about fine tuning.

You may even ultimately decide it’s not that important to you.

I eat sooooo much better than I did before, I figure my nutrition is eons ahead of where it used to be and I’m happy with that. If I’m feeling froggy, I might go in and see if I’m running low on a macro, but my experience has been that simply sorting out the bad nutrition caused the other to pretty much sort itself out tolerably well.

The only macro I pay strict attention to these days is protein, but that’s because I’m highly active. YMMV. But again, my much better food choices keep that in line with only minimal tweaking.

If I do go in and check, I always look at the 7-day average. You can make yourself absolutely nuts trying to reach macro or micro goals on a daily basis.

colleenblaisdell · August 5

Thanks so much for the thoughts and insights - no I’m not diabetic. I get caught up in trying to check too many things at once I guess. I appreciate the advice & refocus

springlering62 · August 5

If you’re interested in “gut health”, the guest on this podcast episode was fantastic. She has a PhD with a specialty in gut health. Her take was very very interesting.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3a8Wb7TEvPIj81cAsdtTwf?si=vjEkfnFTSc27-Yw39mZOvA

She ties gut health to mood, depression, heart, energy level, overall health and more, but from a scientific rather than a “woo” background.

The thing I found particularly interesting was her very simple, straightforward suggestion that including 40 servings per week of veg, seeds, herbs, fruits and legumes would sort yourself out without resorting to supplements, etc. she also suggests fiber to keep things moving. That’s something a lot of us here forget.

The podcast is A Piece of Cake hosted by Gregg Wallace, a host from a well known British cooking show, who lost a lot of weight and is now coaching others. The next episode will be discussing what the guest talked about with a woman who’s lost a lot of weight and a young man who’d like to get in better shape. He also mentions MFP as having helped him, so includes subjects and tips that are very MFP oriented.

All of his guests have been outstanding. I’ve listened to six or seven so far, and then the follow-ups episodes for each with the same lady and gentleman. Interesting to get the “amateur” take on what they’ve heard.

lesdarts180 · August 5

You can manually reset your fibre goal to whatever you want. I have mine set at 35 gram (the recommendation here in the UK is to get at least 30g per day) and I frequently reach 40+ gram.

As others have said, don't worry too much about carbs if you don't have a medical reason to restrict them.

Good luck in your journey to better gut health!

springlering62 · August 5

To clarify, 40 different veg nuts seeds herbs fruits legumes.

Gut health plan vs my food log

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