Part of my therapy the past two years has been to focus on food and learning about what entails healthy eating so my body will be ready when my mind finally catches up. As part of that journey I have kept a spreadsheet that has gradually grown into a personal tracker for my macro nutrients (protein, fat, carbs) as well as fiber and sodium in an attempt to restrict the bad things and increase the good ones. I have used several online utilities to collect a listing of common foods so that I can just cut and paste from the main list to my daily tabs. This past year I added a summary tab that feeds from the daily sheets so I could track by week, thinking that a weekly average would be a better assessment of my eating habits. After reading The China Study and Dr. Fuhrman's Eat to Live I also added formulas to calculate the percentages of proteins, fats & carbs so that I could start to lean away from the SAD (standard American diet) and towards a more nutritious way of eating. I don't track my food like this everyday, but wanting to make sure I am making progress I do track a week's worth of food every once in a while to check on my percentages. Why am I writing all of this? Because I came across an anomaly. My weekly percentages were off from my daily ones. And when I looked closer to figure out why, it became apparent that the calories were wrong on most of the foods I had listed. Almost every statistic I had gleaned from either book or online resource listed calories different than what their components indicated. As far as I know only macro nutrients have calories, so when you add up their caloric value it should equal the calories on the nutrition label, no? So, while I hate to use Kashi as an example because they are a healthier choice for what they are, it was convenient to use. Note: The 'errors' were not limited to processed foods; fruits & veggies were just as likely to be off in calories listed. My little sample chart illustrates the apparent discrepancies, and I say apparent because I am not a nutritionist and maybe I am just missing something very basic. As I finish ranting I realize that most of the time I am not counting calories anymore, and I shouldn't let this upset me, but when I do count I want it to be accurate. And how many others out there trying to lose weight by counting calories are adding perhaps hundreds of hidden calories to their diet and wondering why they are not losing weight? After all, the reason so many online resources (food lists, calculators etc) have popped up is because people want to know about what they are eating, more of us are journaling our food and trying to be responsible for what we eat, so shouldn't it be accurate? So while I am usually eating plants and trying not to worry about calories, I want the ones I do worry about to be an honest reflection of what I am eating.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Calories
Part of my therapy the past two years has been to focus on food and learning about what entails healthy eating so my body will be ready when my mind finally catches up. As part of that journey I have kept a spreadsheet that has gradually grown into a personal tracker for my macro nutrients (protein, fat, carbs) as well as fiber and sodium in an attempt to restrict the bad things and increase the good ones. I have used several online utilities to collect a listing of common foods so that I can just cut and paste from the main list to my daily tabs. This past year I added a summary tab that feeds from the daily sheets so I could track by week, thinking that a weekly average would be a better assessment of my eating habits. After reading The China Study and Dr. Fuhrman's Eat to Live I also added formulas to calculate the percentages of proteins, fats & carbs so that I could start to lean away from the SAD (standard American diet) and towards a more nutritious way of eating. I don't track my food like this everyday, but wanting to make sure I am making progress I do track a week's worth of food every once in a while to check on my percentages. Why am I writing all of this? Because I came across an anomaly. My weekly percentages were off from my daily ones. And when I looked closer to figure out why, it became apparent that the calories were wrong on most of the foods I had listed. Almost every statistic I had gleaned from either book or online resource listed calories different than what their components indicated. As far as I know only macro nutrients have calories, so when you add up their caloric value it should equal the calories on the nutrition label, no? So, while I hate to use Kashi as an example because they are a healthier choice for what they are, it was convenient to use. Note: The 'errors' were not limited to processed foods; fruits & veggies were just as likely to be off in calories listed. My little sample chart illustrates the apparent discrepancies, and I say apparent because I am not a nutritionist and maybe I am just missing something very basic. As I finish ranting I realize that most of the time I am not counting calories anymore, and I shouldn't let this upset me, but when I do count I want it to be accurate. And how many others out there trying to lose weight by counting calories are adding perhaps hundreds of hidden calories to their diet and wondering why they are not losing weight? After all, the reason so many online resources (food lists, calculators etc) have popped up is because people want to know about what they are eating, more of us are journaling our food and trying to be responsible for what we eat, so shouldn't it be accurate? So while I am usually eating plants and trying not to worry about calories, I want the ones I do worry about to be an honest reflection of what I am eating.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment