Tracking foods and progress

Yay… I fixed my BlogPress application so I can post from my iPhone again! That *should* mean that I post more regularly.

So, now that you know that i recently found out that I suffer from high blood pressure, let's talk about the steps I started to take to understand the problem better.

For starters, I needed to find out what we were dealing with in terms of me eating foods that were bad for me. The Doc said I needed to cut back on salty foods, lose some weight, and being more physically active would be good for me. On the salty foods, I figured I was over my limit, which he said to try and keep at or under 2,000mg (2g), but what I didn't realize was just how MUCH I was going over that. So I tried to use the "Lose It" app that I had for my iPhone for a long time. It allows you to track food and excercise for calories burned, the whole idea being to help you track your caloric intake and what you are burning off so you can lose weight. However, that app, while decent, didn't seem to track any of the nutritional values of the food I was eating, my main concern right now being to monitor my sodium intake.

Then I found "MyNetDiary" which has a pretty large database of foods with the main nutritional values on them (including sodium of course), and includes so much more (like also allowing you to track water intake, etc). There is a lite and a pro version, and after trying out the lite version and checking out the companion web site, I decided to buy the pro version for it's extra features.

My first day of tracking my foods, I decided to not watch too closely, but make sure I tracked everything. I also thought I was "being good" with the foods I was choosing throughout this first day. What I found out at the end of the day was that I was grossly wrong. Where I thought I would be around 2g of sodium, I had actually taken in 4,732mg!! Holy crap! And this was me being "good"?!? After doing some looking around and some math, I realized I was more than likely consuming 7-9g's of sodium a day previously. No WONDER my blood pressure was high!

The next day I started to watch the sodium I was intaking, and started to realize just how easy it is to go over 2g per day. SO many foods have a 3rd to half the daily allowance of sodium. Looking at portion sizes is part of the key. Take for instance sports drinks. There is generally 2.5 servings per bottle. Each serving may have upwards of 350mg of sodium (the idea being you need to replenish it because you are sweating it out). So a bottle of sports drink could be 875mg of sodium, or almost half your daily allowance. If you are drinking this when you are not sweating a lot, that sodium is WAY overkill! Another example is a HotPocket, not that it's good food, but some people may eat them because they are quick and easy. There is over 900mg of sodium in just ONE HotPocket! One is not usually enough to fill you up, so you have two. There went your daily allowance of sodium in one shot. See what I mean? What I started to find was that I would only be finished lunch and I was at my limit for sodium for the day, and should still have consumed close to 1,000 more calories just to hit a 1,900 calorie intake for the day. I guess my point is, the amount of sodium compared to the amount of calories in so much food is WAY out of line for a 2g limit per day.

More to come…

-- Post From My iPhone via Blogpress