How I Changed My Nutrition Habits

I have always been passionate about eating healthy, although my eating habits are not always the best. I grew up on a dairy farm and would snack like crazy throughout the day and would only get a full nutritious meal for Sunday dinner. For most of my life I really did not understand the quality of the foods that I was eating, how they affected my body, and why I would often go on these eating binges because my body felt like it was starving.

It wasn’t until my wife took a nutrition class as part of her undergraduate degree and was asked to keep a food journal that I was introduced to the importance of the quality and quantity of foods that we take into our bodies. This was an eye-opening experience to me. Now I was able to do it myself for this class, and I have learned a few important things:

1. Learning how to control calorie intake.
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   Every time I go to a restaurant, I find myself asking for the nutrition facts on each of the items. One time I had a salad and asked for a very low-calorie salad dressing. I got a very bland olive oil mixture, but that alone had 110 calories in every tablespoon. After that meal I had eaten over 1500 calories of food and I didn’t feel that full.

2. Understanding the vitamins and minerals in foods is important to understand if you need to supplement. I didn’t realize how low my vitamin D intake is.
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   We learned in class that vitamin D is inactive in our body but is activated by sunlight. I grew up spending a lot of time in the sun working on the farm. To this day, I exercise a lot (running, biking, swimming) and spend a lot of time in the sun.

3. We can learn what foods we are intolerant too. In addition to knowing what we eat, and what nutrients we are lacking in, there are some foods that are problematic to some people. Like milk with lactose intolerance, or wheat and gluten intolerance. People with chronic diseases, such as diabetes or hypertension can learn what foods are problematic and help them stick to special eating plans, such as low sodium diets for example.

What I can do to improve my nutrition?

One thing that we did not do in this analysis is to show the amount of exercise that we get to offset the calorie intake and the increased need for proteins, carbohydrates, lipids, and both water and fat-soluble vitamins and minerals. I have supplemented with a multivitamin ever since my wife took her nutrition class, and I learned from this food diary/planner that I already get many of the vitamins and minerals that I need in my daily food intake. It would be interesting to do a blood sample and really get an accurate detail of how much vitamin D I get. From this analysis, I only get 8% of vitamin D with my diet. Perhaps if I just supplement with vitamin D instead of a multivitamin, that might work better; although with most vitamins and minerals there is no reported cause of toxicity according to our lecture material. I am still low on my water intake. I find it very difficult to intake more than 8 glasses of water in a day. It shows that I am only getting 81% of daily value of water intake with my diet. I carry around a water bottle throughout the day and felt like I was doing a very good job at drinking water; however, my output ratios and this analysis show that I am still lacking in this area. I am going to try hard to get that up to 10 glasses of water a day, considering that I run, bike, and swim throughout the week and do a lot walking.