Not Healthy Eating as a Way of Life

Nutrition is the study of biology and how it affects the human body. It can help people choose what foods to eat to reduce their risk of disease, how much food is too little or too much, and how allergies work. Nutrients provide sustenance for the body, some examples being proteins, carbohydrates and fats. The human body is complicated and it can be hard to know what exactly works for each person, but following the USDA guidelines and keeping track of what a person eats each day can help them make better food decisions.

For three days, from April 1st to April 3rd, I kept track of what I ate and drank. Fitbit, the app I used to keep track, shows how many calories I’ve eaten that day and the macronutrients breakdown. I used this data to learn about my daily eating habits and how I can improve those habits.

Tracking what I ate everyday was harder than I thought.

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There were times I forgot to enter what I ate and I struggled with remembering what I ate. When it came to counting calories, I used Fitbit to log my food. Fitbit had the brands I used and an accurate serving size counter. It was an easy to understand how many calories I was eating with the Calories in vs. Calories out chart. Fitbit also kept track of my macronutrients for each day which made it easy to compare it to the USDA guidelines. Using these numbers, I learned that my calorie intake was too low and my fat intake was too high while my carbohydrates and fats percentage was in the recommended daily intake.

I had to consider the different types of food that are considered healthy and unhealthy macronutrients. Protein is not just meat and fish, carbohydrates are not necessarily bad because it includes sugar and that there are healthy types of fats. The body needs protein to build and repair tissues and important to bones, skin and blood, but it is not recommended to be more than one-fourth of an average adult’s diet. I always believed that more protein meant more muscle, considering how much protein shake recipes I see on social media, but I learned that too much could hurt the body instead. Carbohydrates should make up around 45 to 65 percent to the total daily intake of calories. Carbohydrates are also not all bad and they are important to give the body the energy it needs. However, there are bad carbohydrates that have had been processed with sugar added. Fats should be no more than 25 to 30 percent of the daily calories and saturated fats are recommended to be less than 10 percent of calories per day. Only a small part of fat is necessary for a healthy diet. I learned that too much fat can raise your cholesterol which in turn raises your risk for heart disease and stroke. There are healthy and unhealthy types of fat but too many of either is not ideal.

I already knew that I did not eat healthy but I was still surprised. My breakfast for three days was a piece of toast with Nutella which surprised me by being 444 calories. Each day I was eating too many calories for breakfast even if I only ate one piece of toast. For all three days, I skipped eating lunch. I only ate chips for an afternoon snack but because I skipped a meal, I did not eat enough calories for each day and my fats percentage was much higher than recommended. For dinner, all three days I had a home cooked meal. I did not add a lot of meat to my dinners which why my protein intake was lower than it should be. Though I already knew I was eating unhealthy, I did not realize by how much.

The USDA recommends that carbohydrates should be between 45 to 65 percent of every age groups daily intake of calories. On April 1st I only had 36 percent carbs, more than 10 percent less than suggested. On April 2nd and April 3rd I had the recommended amount of carbs. The USDA recommends that fat should be 10 percent of every age groups daily intake of calories. On all three days, my fat intake was at least 20% over the suggested amount. The USDA recommends that for protein, women in the 19 to 30 age groups, 24 to 31 percent should be part of their daily intake of calories. For April 1st I had 27 percent while April 2nd had 24 percent which barely made it into the recommended amount. For April 3rd, I had lower the suggested amount for my protein intake at only 16 percent.

I have many things for improvement, including starting to exercise more regularly and eating more consistently. I was consistently under or over a recommended amount on all three macronutrients for all three days. I should continue to use Fitbit to monitor my macronutrients and make sure that I am getting the recommended amounts.