4 ms·

It's the weekend so you'll have to forgive me for asking this: what's the purpose of tracking and planning your nutrition? Illness, sports, obesity? Why would a

by oblak 4y ago

It's the weekend so you'll have to forgive me for asking this: what's the purpose of tracking and planning your nutrition? Illness, sports, obesity? Why would a person decide they want to track (not analyze, just track) every little piece of food or liquid they consume. Help me expand my perspective.

feet 4y ago
Most Americans have some sort of deficiencies or surplus in their diet such as too much sodium and too little potassium. Tracking intake can help smooth out deficiencies and surpluses for better health, longevity, and childhood development
umangsh 4y ago
Illness, sports, obesity are all valid reasons. I feel healthy eating can be trained like a muscle - tracking for a few weeks/months helps understand food choices better. Too much sodium / low potassium are common in most diets. Low magnesium (sleep issues), low zinc, low fiber etc are a few others - a common remedy being nutrition supplements. Better tracking allowed me to eliminate additional supplements from my diet (except Vit D, which is hard to find in natural sources). Famnom suggests FDA RDI defaults, but users are free to choose what they would like to track.
- idlehand 4y ago
  I second this. I went through a phase of extremely clean eating and it helped me lose the weight I put on in the first half of the pandemic. Now I just have an intuition as to what to eat and in which quantities, and it has helped me keep the weight off for the past year.
lemming 4y ago
I actually think everyone should track what they eat, at least for a while. It's a really interesting experience. I started because I wanted to lose weight but was exercising a lot, so I was restricting my calories while trying to keep protein high. It didn't take long to realise that I had previously had little to no idea of what I was putting in my mouth, and tracking for a while (probably ~3 months minimum) gives you a much better intuition. After doing this for a while I started developing stomach problems (unrelated to my change in diet), and I needed to ensure that I was meeting my minimum requirements for fibre too. All of a sudden you end up with quite a tricky multi-dimensional optimisation problem, and it was actually quite a fun intellectual exercise trying to meet all the constraints, obviously without hating what I ate. There are all sorts of reasons that you might want to minimise or maximise some micro- or macro-nutrient. Any athlete will want some sort of control of what they eat. Perhaps you want more magnesium for better sleep, and you'd like to get it from actual food rather than supplements. Calorie restriction while keeping protein high is a common one for losing weight. Almost no-one eating a western diet gets anywhere near enough fibre, and any one of various health scares might make you aware of that. Tracking what you eat permanently is a serious commitment that is probably unnecessary for most people, but I think it's a good thing to try, at least for a while. I tend to go back to tracking periodically when I want to get some aspect of my diet under control, but I don't do it all the time.

by oblak 4y ago

feet 4y ago

Most Americans have some sort of deficiencies or surplus in their diet such as too much sodium and too little potassium. Tracking intake can help smooth out deficiencies and surpluses for better health, longevity, and childhood development

umangsh 4y ago

Illness, sports, obesity are all valid reasons. I feel healthy eating can be trained like a muscle - tracking for a few weeks/months helps understand food choices better. Too much sodium / low potassium are common in most diets. Low magnesium (sleep issues), low zinc, low fiber etc are a few others - a common remedy being nutrition supplements. Better tracking allowed me to eliminate additional supplements from my diet (except Vit D, which is hard to find in natural sources). Famnom suggests FDA RDI defaults, but users are free to choose what they would like to track.

idlehand 4y ago
I second this. I went through a phase of extremely clean eating and it helped me lose the weight I put on in the first half of the pandemic. Now I just have an intuition as to what to eat and in which quantities, and it has helped me keep the weight off for the past year.

lemming 4y ago

I actually think everyone should track what they eat, at least for a while. It's a really interesting experience. I started because I wanted to lose weight but was exercising a lot, so I was restricting my calories while trying to keep protein high. It didn't take long to realise that I had previously had little to no idea of what I was putting in my mouth, and tracking for a while (probably ~3 months minimum) gives you a much better intuition. After doing this for a while I started developing stomach problems (unrelated to my change in diet), and I needed to ensure that I was meeting my minimum requirements for fibre too. All of a sudden you end up with quite a tricky multi-dimensional optimisation problem, and it was actually quite a fun intellectual exercise trying to meet all the constraints, obviously without hating what I ate. There are all sorts of reasons that you might want to minimise or maximise some micro- or macro-nutrient. Any athlete will want some sort of control of what they eat. Perhaps you want more magnesium for better sleep, and you'd like to get it from actual food rather than supplements. Calorie restriction while keeping protein high is a common one for losing weight. Almost no-one eating a western diet gets anywhere near enough fibre, and any one of various health scares might make you aware of that. Tracking what you eat permanently is a serious commitment that is probably unnecessary for most people, but I think it's a good thing to try, at least for a while. I tend to go back to tracking periodically when I want to get some aspect of my diet under control, but I don't do it all the time.