euheide's Journal, 19 January 2014

Wow! Great! I really didn't expect another weight loss so soon :)

RL still gone, gonna stop taking multivitamins today and prepare for blood tests. Today I'm going to restart exercising.

edit: I'm not a vegetarian but my diet, nowadays, looks more like a vegetarian diet (well, sort of) due to health-conscious choices. I apparently ended up developing this malnutrition (at least it looks like it). In the following of that problem, I've found this website that is directed at vegetarians and that tells you more less what you're supposed to eat to have a balanced diet being a vegetarian, including non-total vegetarians such as I'm turning out to be (for the most times at least. I still devour lots of meat occasionally once every 2 weeks or so heheh)

http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09324.html

It's curious that I'm already eating lots of the things that are in that table. Perhaps I'm not eating in the right amount, but this is also an average...

I've been checking, using Google's nutrition tool (type food name in the search field and choose quantity in the table at the right), and I got some surprises lol. The amount of nuts I'm eating (1 or 2 of each type per day), nutritionally speaking, is way, way less than it has to be to deliver any kind of useful quantity of either vitamin B12, iron or magnesium (at least that's how it looks like at first glance. I was under the wrong impression that this very low amount of nuts was guaranteeing enough iron and magnesium etc. Boy, was I wrong lol... Even eating like 50 walnut halves doesn't get you that far in terms of iron and magnesium. the nuts with most magnesium appear to be almonds but, to ingest your magnesium DRI (almost), in almonds you'd have to eat like 1 cup/ 143 g of whole almonds (827 calories!!!). That is a lot of almonds lol! I really had the impression that I was eating good enough amounts. The nuts with the most iron appear to be hazelnuts. I usually eat 2 every morning lol. But it appears I would have to eat like 384 g/ 13.5 oz each day of hazelnuts (2412 calories!!!) to get to the recommended daily intake of iron! Besides costing too many calories, nuts are also more expensive than other foods with similar magnesium/ iron quantities. I think I'm going to have to search foods with higher iron and magnesium concentrations. I was looking for iron and magnesium in the wrong place :) I will keep eating the minute amounts just for taste and because it fills you up. Also, it's possible that they have other nutrients that are not mentioned there...

Beans have almost the same proportion of magnesium and iron per unit of weight than hazelnuts except that 100 g of hazelnuts have 61 g of fat (and 4.5 g of saturated fat) while beans have 1.4 g (and 0.4 g) respectively. So beans have much less fat, are way less caloric and also way cheaper than nuts while apparently having the same amounts of iron and magnesium than nuts (on average). This is a huge surprise for me!

Just 100 g/ 3.5 oz of beans will provide you with almost half of the daily recommended dose for magnesium, and a quarter of the daily recommended dose for iron! Wow! Beans are looking like a super-food to me! Not to mention that they have lots of fiber and, when joined with rice, they provide high quality proteins. And to think I've been eating them just because they make me feel full with few calories...

I also found out that I'm probably already getting enough B12 due to all the milk and sardines and other things that I eat. Just one can of sardines will provide you with enough B12 to exceed your daily requirements. 3 cups of milk will also provide you with 60% (1 cup is 20%) of the daily recommended intake for B12. One large egg will provide you with 10% of B12's daily recommended intake.

These are Google's numbers though, both for daily recommended dosage and for the amounts of these nutrients found in these foods. I don't know how reliable they are...

Shellfish appears to contain crazy amounts of B12 and high amounts of iron too. But the problem with it is that they eat by filtering the water and so accumulate huge amounts of toxins and heavy metals... to the point they are sometimes forbidden for consumption here in Portugal depending on periodic lab analysis results...

edit: both my lunch and dinner (especially the dinner) were very sating. I can't believe that that dinner is only 400 and something calories and I feel incredibly full. Proteins are definitely very good at making you feel full!

edit: This is from a website:

"Iron deficiency is a serious problem in today's world. In fact, the World Health Organization has labeled iron deficiency as the number one nutritional disorder in the world, with as many as 80 percent of the world's population being potentially iron deficient. When iron deficiency first occurs, the body begins to use stored iron to replace what is missing. However, once that reserve is depleted, symptoms like fatigue, shortness of breath, headaches, dizziness, irritability and weight loss typically develop."

I don't think I should be iron deficient though, since I eat lots of beans etc...

To sum it all up. I'm completely clueless lol.

130.1 lb Lost so far: 14.1 lb.    Still to go: 6.6 lb.    Diet followed reasonably well.

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1546 kcal

Fat: 66.09g | Prot: 63.90g | Carb: 200.82g.   Breakfast: cherry tomato, goji berries, Water, Hazelnuts or Filberts Nuts, Almonds, Dried Pumpkin and Squash Seed Kernels, Blueberries, Raisins, Dried Prune, Dried Fig, Date, Dried Apricot, Walnuts. Lunch: Anona, Bean and Rice Soup. Dinner: Olive Oil, Grapes, Clementines, Onions, Ramirez Sardinhas em Tomate, Lemon Juice, Fried Egg. Snacks/Other: Whole Milk, Bananas, Grapes, Whole Foods Market Goji Berries, Almonds. more...

1802 kcal

Activities & Exercise: indoor cycling intensity level 6 (light) 10 to 12.9 km/h, 5.9 km (more difficult due to a considerable number of days without cycling) - 30 minutes, Resting - 15 hours and 30 minutes, Sleeping - 8 hours. more...