Ha! Foodling icon acquired!

[bubosquared]

Today's lunchbox: contains four of my five a day, plus starch, and dairy!

Molly pointed me to this website, which has a useful food tracker, and the results for today (with an estimated amount for tonight, and no yet including the Quorn sausages, since I'd have to enter those manually) are, er, a bit worrying. First of all, this thing is saying I'm not getting enough calories, and that's going by their estimate of what I should be getting, which strikes me as being on the low side. Um. o_O And it's not like I'm suddenly getting that much less fatty/starchy food, I'm just adding more veggies and airy to the mix. This is worrying. I think mayb my portion estimates are off, because this should have me losing a pound every two weeks, and no.

The second worrying thing is that while most of my vitamin intakes are low, they're not so low that I can't up them just with diet adjustments, except the vitamin D level, which is ... disastrous. Since vitamin D is linked to winter depression, I'm thinking between this and the low calorie intake, I've found the source of my depression/apathy/lack of energy, especially in winter. And this, I will be correcting with pills, because as a vegetarian, I can't eat most o the common sources of vitamin D in food. So, pills.

(Vitam D deficiency is also linked to osteoporosis, which is really worrying, as it runs in the maternal side of my family pretty heavily -- my mum has it badly, and while my gran doesn't, both of her sisters do, and several of my mum's cousins do as well. This is not good.)

I'm a bit surprised that non of this has ever shown up on my yearly blood check, though. I always have them check specifically for iron, calcium, and anything else I'm at risk for by not eating meat, and it's always come back fine. Hrm.

It's barely eleven and I'm already bored. This does not bode well. Maybe the pure undiluted boredom will drive me to write, though.

Comments

[rsadelle]

I suggest a calcium supplement with vitamin D. I take one that's 600 mg calcium with 200 i.u. (I have no idea what that stands for) vitamin D. I should take it twice a day, and I moved it out to the kitchen counter to remind me of that. I still forget to take it in the evening. My doctor told me that we get most of our calcium before we're 30, and that the vitamin D helps calcium absorption (maybe that's why vitamin D deficiency is linked to osteoporosis). She also said your body can't absorb more than about 500 mg of calcium at a time and that I should get about 1000 mg a day, which is why it would be good for me to take it twice a day.

[rsadelle]

A relevant point I forgot: the whole reason I moved it to the counter now is that I switched from milk to rice milk for my cereal (I don't like milk so much, and I really didn't like soy milk). I'm using the enriched kind which has calcium and some vitamins, but still. It's a good catalyst for me to take calcium twice a day.