My Three Day Food Tracking Journey

Hello everyone! I have not updated this blog since my sophomore year of high school and I'm back to this site because I was given an assignment in my college Intro to Nutrition Class that entailed creating a blog. The prompt was to write a sample blog post about your eating habits that you measured over a three day period. I was inspired to actually create a blog about this and remembered this old site from way back when. So here's my return, maybe this will be a catalyst into actually starting to blog regularly, maybe not. Without further ado I would like to show you my findings on what my day to day eating habits are like. I'm not totally surprised, but there are definitely observations that I was not aware of that may lead to me revising my diet a bit. I measured my eating for a week but chose the three days that I had the most data for to show how I usually eat. My three main observations after tracking my diet are:

1. I need to eat more, I never make it up to the 2,000 Calorie benchmark that is the USDA average. Some days I do not even make it to the 1,500 mark which is the minimum in the average range. I also do not eat a lot of fruits and I definitely need to find some ways to add fruit to my diet. 
2. I need to slow down when consuming food. I think that whenever I eat I usually for the most part enjoy, but I eat way too fast and that is not cute for my digestive processes. 
3. I don't consume too much sodium (yay!). My sodium levels throughout each day almost always fall below 3,200 mg. which is the level it needs to stay below. The only day I have measured where it is not is the 19th of September when I had soy sauce over my rice (and even then I was 8 mg over 3200!).

MyPlate App 

This app was really good and I would definitely recommend it for keeping track of the food you're eating, but it did have a few things that I didn't like. The MyPlate app had a large variety of food information to search from when you were logging food items and there was even a barcode scanner that you could take a picture of a label and then gain the nutrition facts from that. The app broke down whatever you consumed into the three macronutrients Carbohydrates, Fats, and Proteins. This app was able to be synced with my Health app and then further broke down sodium levels, saturated fats, and dietary sugars. The one thing I did not like about this app was the way to plug in exercise. I walked a lot each day and even worked out once a week but could not record how much exercise I had done since I did not remember how many calories I had burned with the exercise I had been doing and that was the only way to track exercise on the app. Another thing I did not like about this kind of app is that it was focused a lot on weight loss and all the apps I looked at were the same, which I think pushes the societal notion that in order to be healthy and happy you have to lose weight which is simply not true for some people. 

9/15/19 

I started the day with my favorite cereal, Honey Bunches of Oats in a bowl with almond milk. When it comes to milk I usually drink almond milk or whole milk. It's a good source of calcium, but I also use milk as a means to get protein in my diet as well since I'm a vegetarian. My breakfast on the three recorded days was the same except for one day which I had a different kind of cereal. Cereal is usually my go to breakfast and I don't think I'd be willing to change that part of my diet since I'm so used to eating cereal for breakfast.  

I did not eat lunch this day and honestly, during the days I do not have my internship (everyday other than Monday and Thursday) I usually do not have lunch. Instead I substitute a meal with snacks. On the 15th, I just skipped lunch altogether. 

Making dinner has been really enjoyable. Before this year, I was pretty afraid of the kitchen and saw cooking as more of a chore than something to like doing. But with my own kitchen and no AU meal plan to act as a safety net, I was pushed from the nest and into the frying pan. As weeks go by I've gotten to really like to cook, but I think I definitely need to explore more recipes because I tend to stay within a certain comfort zone. I also want to make more desserts because I like to indulge every once in a while. 

Dinner this night was Rigatoni with Asparagus and vegetarian sausage with an onion omelet on the side. I was trying to make a cream sauce with the eggs for the pasta, but I didn't have the right ingredients to bind it together so I just made an omelet. This meal surprised me for two reasons because 1.) I don't like eggs but I enjoyed eating my omelet that I made and 2.) This meal contained a large amount of protein. As a vegetarian, that's one of the most vital macronutrients that you have to look for in other ingredients because meat is not an option. I consumed 81 grams of protein from this meal which is over the recommended amount for my body type. The recommended amount of protein by the USDA is 0.8 grams per one kilogram of the body. My calculated daily recommended intake of protein is around 59 grams.  In order to improve this number I want to try and make sure that all my daily intakes of protein are consistent and hover around or over the 60 gram benchmark. 

9/16/19

Breakfast on this day was the same as the past day. To improve nutrient diversity in my breakfast meal, I could add fruits to the cereal (ex: bananas, strawberries) or make some eggs with spinach and mushrooms. 

This day was an internship day so lunch was my leftover dinner from last night which I just microwaved. I know that microwaving is bad for food, but at least I'm not bringing frozen microwave lunches to work. I didn't grow up with a microwave in my house, so it's honestly been so convenient to have. I still try not to use it a lot because it's better to prepare food instead of heating it up. The reason for this is that the digestive process begins when smelling and preparing food long before it enters your mouth. The body prepares for the food as you prepare the food. Another note about my internship is that they have tons of snacks that you're free to take when you're feeling hungry at your desk. Luckily on this day I had self control and only took a packet of Oreo's for my snack. 

The dinner on this night that I made was my favorite of this week. I roasted beets, kale, mushrooms, asparagus, and onions on a tray and then had them with my Tofurky Italian sausage (I'm obsessed with this stuff if you can't already tell). This meal gave me nostalgia of when my mom would make roasted potatoes, beets, and carrots with olive oil and rosemary for dinner and I was happy I could re-create something with familial value. This meal was satisfying and kept me up for orchestra later that night. I think this day was the most nutrient dense as I had protein, vegetables, dairy, and grains. Definitely need to incorporate fruit into what I eat.

9/19/19

Another internship day; we started with the regular cereal and almond milk combo. Lunch was my leftover rice with beans, mushrooms, and onions, flavored with some Trader Joe's Soyaki Sauce (so good)  heated up in the microwave. Today at my internship, I was very hungry so I had many snacks. I ate Sun Chips, Premium White Cheddar Popcorn at the office, and a Nature Valley Granola Bar when I got back. After logging them into the app, I realized that the snacks took up 500 calories of my total count of 1653. Snacks are provide empty calories, because they don't put a lot of nutrients to the body. 

Dinner this night was heated up quickly and did not take long because the ravioli was pre-packaged. I cut up some asparagus to add to it and grated cheese over the porcini mushroom filled pasta. Side note: I usually do not eat asparagus this regularly, I just bought a lot at the super market the week prior.  This meal was a little less satisfactory because I didn't like the taste of the mushrooms. They were very pungent and strongly flavored. Along with my dinner I had a glass of orange juice.   

Below pictured is the excel spreadsheet that tracked the three days: