Fitday (Calories and Vitamins)
#187420 - 06/20/05 08:52 AM
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I've been charting *everything* on fitday lately. (If you haven't tried the site, I highly recommend it...it's been great at keeping me accountable. I just wish it had a little encouragement thrown in. Some sort of "Yay! You just met your fiber intake goal for the day!" or something. Although, if it did, it would probably drive me crazy as I got more consistent about meeting my goals, lol.
I do have a couple questions though. Do you guys also log all your activities? I had been including any exercise (the going to the gym type exercise) for a while, but the last couple days, I logged everything, because I could get to the gym, but I cared for children who act like monkeys and have you carry them around constantly, and helped a family pack/ move boxes and furnature, and did allot of heavy scrubbing. It seemed like a better workout than anything I do at the gym! So, I put in all my activities (including showering, dressing, sleeping, eating, all that). But, it seems like then wouldn't you be getting double credit for the some of that under both "lifestyle" and "activities"? I have my lifestyle in as "seated with some movement" so the lifting and scrubbing was out of the ordinary, but I definitely shower, get dressed, cook, read, write, do laundry, and all that all the time. Do you all put all your activities or just the purposeful exercise in?
Also, I've been working on meeting my vitamin and mineral goals, and I'm consistenly short on several (Vit K, Calcium, Magnesium, Iron, Zinc, Selenium, and Phosphorus). I read the post about the lack of Vit K just in the fitday database, and I think I probably eat enough of foods that are sources of that. So, as a whole, I think I'm doing well on Vitamins (thanks to fortified oatmeal/ bread/ cereal and a stash of the old Lunas). But, I'm chronically way low on the minerals. I've had trouble with taking a multi-vitamin in the past, have any of you found it eaiser to take a pill of just calcium, or just iron, or whatever, compared to an actual multivitamin?
Or does anyone have suggestions as to how to get more minerals in my diet, even though I have a very hard time with fruits and vegetables?
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~~~Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.~~~
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Just log the stuff that you think will be out of the remit of your lifestyle...so scrubbing the floor etc for you! Or if you're having a whole day or days like that, change your lifestyle temporarily.
Not sure on the minerals...I take a multi-thingy. Do make sure that all the foods you're logging have the vitamins/minerals in there as well - I know my stats are off as I eat alot of custom foods that I don't know the vitamin content of.
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I have FitDay PC, which is a better version of the free online one. I used to use the online version, though.
You're not "double logging" things when you log activities. If you notice, whenever you log something, it takes away that same amount of time from the "seated with movement." Maybe the online version doesn't have that. But here's an example:
Today I logged:
circuit training - 40 min - 314 cal
stair treadmil, ergometer - 45 min - 397 cal
And thus my "background activities" that was automatically logged as 24hrs, automatically changed to now be logged as 22h 35min, which is 24 hrs less the 1h 25min that I logged.
I don't really pay attention to the vitamins on fit day. Sure, I fill out the fields when I enter a custom food, but there are a lot of vitamins/minerals that it doesn't have fields to enter them in. If you eat a luna bar every few days and try to eat a varied diet, I'm sure you're fine.
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Elizabeth
all those years it wasn't IBS - it was celiac!
send me an email: liz@dopple.net
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Hi Alyssa
Elizabeth is right about the activities and the time deductions - same on the web as it is on fitday PC.
If you have the time, try logging in all your activities for a full, typical day, so you get a total of 24 hours; you'll notice that the lifestyle calories have dropped to zero. Doing this will also give you a good idea of whether or not your choice of 'lifestyle' is accurate or not (i.e. if you find you're burning a lot more calories in an average day, without exercise, than your 'lifestyle' value says you are, you should probably bump yourself up to the next level.)
Like Linz said, if you have a particularly active day, you can also temporarily change your lifestyle setting.
Re: minerals; I have a hard time with calcium especially. Luna bars are very helpful here (they have as much vitamins and minerals as multivitamin but are, for most, easier to digest!), as is soy milk. I also take a liquid calcium/magnesium/zinc/vitmain D supplement when needed... but usually I just take my daily multivitamin.
I know that some people who have had lots of problems with vitmains in the past have had some success with prenatal vitamins, which I think are easier on the tum. Ask your doc about that maybe? Children's vitamins are easier too, but most of the time they're chewable which means they usually have artificial sweeteners in them 
Hope that helps!
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