[JessicaBT]

I entered all of my food into the Fitday.com thing today.... So it told me what the calories and carbs and protien and all were... but it doesn't tell me what they're supposed to be. At least anywhere I could see. I assumed I was entering in my weight, height, and how much activity I do, so that it could tell me if I was eating the right amount of calories and carbs and fat and all. Maybe not? I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. I ate less today. I moved a little more. I ate a salad with grilled chicken for dinner, which, according to this site, was the worst thing I did. Aaaargh! How do I find out what my little pie chart SHOULD look like? I'm going to post what it says for today below. Can anyone give me any advice? I'm also not sure I'm using the program right.
Calories Eaten Today
grams cals %total
Total: 1694
Fat: 98 881 53%
Sat: 28 248 15%
Poly: 17 154 9%
Mono: 45 408 24%
Carbs: 124 476 28%
Fiber: 5 0 0%
Protein: 79 317 19%
Alcohol: 0 0 0%

[erinket]

I ususally shoot for

20-25% fat (9% or less saturated)
50% carbs
25-35% protien
over 25g fiber

[ennay]

Its very personal what your targets are. Some people do better with a diet with more protein, some with less.

For almost any program your fat and sat fat is way way high.

In general fat should be under 30% although I tend to run in the 30-33% range...but I am nursing a baby

Your saturated fats should be 10% max (<7% recommended especially if you have heart disease risk factors)

Fiber minimum 25 grams....if you normally only eat 5 g you need to work up to 25 gradually or you will be in intestinal distress.

Protein/carb---there is a wide range...most people will do 15-40% protein.

I personally shoot for
25-33% fat
45-50% carb
20-25% protein
>35 g fiber

If you are doing the online fitday, you can make your fitday visible to the rest of us and people will give all kinds of feedback.

[Angihas2]

I aim for

Fat 20-30%
Protien 30%
Carbs 40-50% depending on fat.

I've had many days where carbs were to high, or fat was to high. You can add healthy fats by lightly sauteeing veggies in a Tbsp of olive oil, but make sure you count the oil too. If you go to edit profile, under quick links, there's a line there to add your fit day for us to see. We can look at it and maybe give you healthier alternitives to things you may be using. Also, carefully watch the portion fitday defaults too, sometimes its insanely high. Who uses a liter of olive oil?!?!?!?!

[JessicaBT]

Okay, I made it public.



http://www.fitday.com/WebFit/PublicJ...wner=JessicaBT

Thanks for the replies and the advice. It looked to me like a great deal of the fat came from the eggs, and see if I ever eat Wheat Thins again! I think that word "Thins" is misleading. No wonder I'm gaining weight. I have no idea what is healthy, and what isn't!

[Angihas2]

I don't know if this is true or not, but one of the ladies in my moms forum stated that a serving of wheat thins is equal to a donut, when you look at whats in them. I'd rather have the freaking donut!

OK, looking at your fitday now. My advice, double check the amounts listed, as in the eggs, did you truly eat a cup of scrambled eggs?

was the chicken in your salad breaded? If not, you can change that, also, if it was, next time pull the breading off

Cheese, try low fat or reduced fat cheese.

I would also advise you enter in the amounts listed on the products you use. I tried to find the nutritional info for wheat thins on the nabisco site, no luck with that but found it at spark people and this is what it states
Nutrition Facts

Nabisco Wheat Thins Crackers, baked

Serving Size: 1 serving
Amount Per Serving
Calories 136.3
Total Fat 5.8 g
Saturated Fat 0.9 g
Polyunsaturated Fat 0.4 g
Monounsaturated Fat 2.0 g
Cholesterol 0.0 mg
Sodium 167.6 mg
Potassium 56.3 mg
Total Carbohydrate 20.0 g
Dietary Fiber 0.9 g
Sugars 2.6 g
Protein 2.4 g

Did you crush them up until; you had a cups worth? thats what fitday states you had. If so, that was probably more than the considered serving, which is probably 7-14 crackers. Pay close attention to servings size, both what you actually eat and what you input for fitday. Again, I cannot reiterate how much putting in brands and your own custom foods will help. It's a HUGE pita initially, but as you can see, if you had 1 serving of wheat thins, the difference in calories between what you think you ate and what you actually ate, calorie wise, is huge.

Reading the journal, we too have a strict food budget. Alot of people think the family sizes of meat packages save money, truly pay close attention to the difference in price per pound on smaller packages and the family packages. Wal-Mart is notorius for marking the family packages 20 cents off per pound, but as I reconfirmed again yesterday, the family package of chicken legs was 2.67 per pound, - 20 cents, the smaller packs were 2.24 per pound, clearly more than a 20 cent saving per poud. I buy large 6 dollar bags of birds eye brand veggies, I think its 5 pounds, the Normandy and Asian mixes are great. Fresh produce, I just bought a pound of carrots for 66 cents for the bag. I normally get the baby carrots, prewashed and peeled. BAH! They were 2.06 for a bag, better to do the work myself. Bananas, apples, oranges, their costs stay pretty consistantly cheap. Grapes vary, right now, here, they're ridiculously priced. When avacodes are looking good and priced good, buy them, alot of them, buy some ready to eat, some close to ripe and alot of lighter green ones, those can ripen over a period of 2 weeks, when avacod prices will possibly be higher. I use Wal_mart's OOPS we baked to much bakery reduction for bread, I buy the whole wheat, harvest grain etc, then come home, cut it in 4 sections and freeze them. I bought a loaf of their sourdough bread for 90 cents yesterday, 90 calories per slice and 1 slice cut in half is more than enough bread for a sandwich. Sourdough doesnt have sugar and tends to be lower calorie. A box of tilapia<sp> fish at Wal-Mart is roughly 4 lbs and comes in presized 4 ounce servings, individually wrapped and is great steamed, baked, grilled atc, its usually 9 dollars or less for the box. Thats a great buy. Brown rice, WONDERFUL, is 2 dollars a bag, long grain is better, it means it has more of the outer shell on it, which is why its better for you, heartland makes a 100% whole wheat pasta, 97 cents a box, add some reduced/no salt added diced tomatos to their rotini pasta, and a few ounces of shredded chicken you have a great lunch. Top pasta with no sugar added pasta sauce. Pay close attn to serving sizes. A serving of pasta is in general 2 ounces. Not 2 cups. Most of us find our idea of a portion and the manufacteres idea of a serving has a huge difference. This is doable, even on a tightly restrained budget!

Also, if you dont have a kitchen scale, I would suggest get one at your earliest opportunity. OUr wal mart had some clearenced out at 7 bucks, I use that thing every meal. I know clearence varies store to store, but keep an eye on them, but until then, keep in mind, a serving of beef/pork/chicken tends to be 3-4 ounces, roughly the size of your palm or the size of a deck of playing cards. Thats 1 serving! seems small, doesnt it?! A serving of fruits/veggies is generally for veggies, 1/2 cooked, 1 cup uncooked. fruits is generally the fruit, some are large, apples, oranges bananas, come in different sizes, so pay attn to that. You can do this!

[sugarlove]

Fitday is a great tool for learning about nutrition - I really got into the whole nutrients section once I started using the program. I like to see which vitamins, etc. I'm low on and work on getting the numbers up! I'm kind of a geek that way

I too like to aim for about 30% fat, about 25% protein, and about 45% carbs.

Start making a habit of reading the nutrition facts labels on products before you buy them - pretty soon it becomes second nature, and you'll learn more than you ever wanted to about what's healthy and what isn't. You'll want to take note of the amount of calories per serving (as in, are 8 tiny crackers worth 260 calories? only you can decide!), the percentage of fat per serving (45% of a days' worth of fat in 2 cookies isn't really a great deal), ideally the ABSENCE of trans fat, and a minimum of saturated fat. Processed snack type foods will typically be the worst offenders - little food of little nutritional value for big calorie and fat gram expenditures.

Over time and with your research, it will get easier!!

[ennay]

Yeah, a cup of scrambled REAL eggs is not 437 calories what you have in there is a cup of reconstituted powdered egg stuff.

[JessicaBT]

Thanks! I think I got my foods fixed... I have trouble with the food descriptions on there. Like, why can't I find the words "Grilled Chicken" or, even better, "Grilled Chicken Salad" anywhere on there? I clicked on Broiled Chicken Breast, and then Wendys salad, when what I actually had was a McDonalds Grilled Chicken salad.
Why are there no omelets? I had to enter all of the ingredients of my omelet seperately. Oh well. I think it's as correct as it's going to get now. I appreciate you all taking the time to look at it and correct me. I hope I can figure out how to navigate that site and understand it, because I can see how it will be very useful if I am entering the correct things.

[Nikaia]

What you're going to have to learn to do is input the component parts. If you want to make it a little easier on yourself, clear your day's foods. Only enter the items which are part of whatever food you want to log. Then, open a separate screen of fitday and go to "add new custom food". Use the first screen to total up the calories, fat, etc of all the ingredients, and input the totals into the custom food page. Name it, give it the right serving amount for that level of cals that you're putting in, and voila. I've got my "English muffin breakfast" including the muffin, butter, jam, and a glass of milk...my "Ginger Shoyu Chicken" including the chicken and all the ingredients in the marinade..."Breakfast smoothie" including the different fruits and yogurt..."Soycutash" which is a prefrozen mix of corn, chopped red bell pepper, and soybeans that I use a lot of...you see what I mean? Fitday can't have stuff like "omelette" in there, because EVERYONE makes their omelettes a little bit different.

Advice: when you want to find something, be as general as possible in the search function. You wanted the caloric value for a chicken salad, right? Search for "chicken" (then find grilled breast or whatever it was), then "lettuce" and choose the kind of lettuce, "dressing" and find the right one, etc. Piece by piece, and be general rather than specific.

You'll get the hang of it soon enough.

[ennay]

It is really hard at first until you get your custom foods in

For something like McDonalds (many restaurant foods) - go to their website, or dietfacts.com or calorieking.com They will have values specifically for their chicken salad. Then you can create a custom food in fitday to match. If you use dietfacts.com you can even add the custom food to fitday automatically. Just be logged in to fitday in one browser tab and go to dietfacts.com in another tab, do the search for your food and at the bottom of the info will be a button to add it to fitday.

For stuff you make at home often, create your own custom food as Nik says. Otherwise add it in piece by piece.

[baffled111]

Hey Jessica,

It looks like you're doing great! A couple of suggestions:

If you can, buy a food scale (maybe you can find one at Goodwill or equivalent?). It's helpful to weigh out your portions of fats and proteins instead of just guessing at them. 3 oz of grilled chicken breast is only 140 calories, and with a big salad, 3oz of meat is really enough.

Switch to DIET SODA! Your tastebuds will adjust, and you'll save yourself 150 calories a day. Diet soda tastes worse at first, if you're used to the sugary stuff, but you can and will get used to it (and develop a preference for it).

Being on a budget: processed foods and fast foods are more expensive than fresh, whole foods. Buy veggies and fish and chicken instead of McDonald's and Wheat Thins. You can make a great, healthy meal at home for less than $5 per person if you eat some veggies and a lean, inexpensive protein.

But you are making a great start!

[JessicaBT]

Thanks. I think I'm getting it all figured out. Today will be my second day sticking to a diet of sorts. Yesterday my excercize was digging up 50 daffodill plants, and today, I will be replanting them. I'm thinking maybe I'll find some heavy gardening to do every day, to trick myself into thinking I'm not excercizing. I won't drink diet drinks because artificial sweeteners cause memory problems, and all sorts of other ugliness. It may not make sense that I'm drinking unhealthy colas still, when I think diet colas are too unhealthy, but what I've been doing is gradually replacing the colas with water, and drinking more water every day. I want to go strait from unhealthy drinks to healthy drinks, no artificial sweetener in between. Today, all I've had is water, so I'm doing better. I put my fitday link on the side over there.
<~~~~~~~

[JessicaBT]

I am LIKING this fitday thing! Hubby was cooking some cod fillets, and I brought the bag in here and entered in all the info, and the numbers on those looked pretty good to me. I went back in there to tell him that, and saw him putting butter in the pan. I came back in here and entered in butter, and ended up yelling "TAKE THE BUTTER OUT OF THE PAN!!!!" because the butter alone totally ruined the whole day, according to the chart. He dumped the butter out, and squeezed lemon on the fillets instead. Now he's watching them closely so they won't burn or stick to the pan. Sadly, we have nothing but butter in the house for non stick purposes at the moment. What is the best thing to use for that?

By the way, I noticed that when I click on the Fitday link up there under my name and location, it goes to a page that says "Error. This person does not have a Fitday journal" or something. I do too!!! I tried putting the address into my profile again, and that didn't fix it. I'm not sure what to do about that. Here's the link, though. ~>
http://www.fitday.com/WebFit/PublicJ...wner=JessicaBT

[JayEll]

Hi again,

Use PAM--it is a natural product and it has no calories. Spray it in the pan as directed, it will prevent sticking.

Also, a trick I use when I want a non-diet soda is to get some plain seltzer water or sparkling water, and dilute the soda maybe half and half. At first it tastes a little thin, but as you get used to it, you'll find you can use even less of the cola and still enjoy it. I dilute the diet soda, too. I can hardly drink a straight soda of any flavor these days.

Jay