Health and Fitness April, 2012

Share healthy living habits.
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OKay
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Re: Health and Fitness April, 2012

Postby OKay » Sun Apr 29, 2012 6:54 am

WOW! So many health facts gathered together and explained. Thank you for sharing.

Tracking food intake continues. No surprises found so far. The scales are headed in the right direction now so I will continue to monitor closely.

Weight loss = 2.6 lbs

Category (goal) actual
Calories (1500) 1490.0
Fat (55g) 80.7
Sodium (2000mg) 2985.0
Carbs (125g) 87.3
Fiber (25) 13.4
Sugars (60) 43.3
Protein (55) 86.0
Free Foods (3) 0.2
Meat (6) 9.3
Fat (4) 5.8
Veg (4) 1.3
Milk (3) 0.0
Fruit (3) 1.2
Starches (6) 3.9

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Kathryn-in-Canada
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Re: Health and Fitness April, 2012

Postby Kathryn-in-Canada » Sun Apr 29, 2012 4:39 pm

Iron is my issue right now. Especially getting enough without resorting to a lot of beef (higher calories/fat).

Was just on a too strenuous walk with dh. Wind (cold/north) was at our back and I was motoring along effortlessly. We went well outside the village limits and then turned around. I was fine until we decided to walk down to the pier on the river. That meant walking over a small hill and that winded me and I never got my stride back. Momentarily thought of sending dh for the car but decided to push on. (Slowing down meant going only 2.5 mph instead of the 3+ we were going before, partly to stay warm as we walked into the wind, partly to get home faster.) On the way home I realized that my reduced energy needs to be taken into account so I changed my anticipated snack from baked Ruffles to my cereal which has about 10% RDA of iron.

But I eat cereal with milk and that inhibits the absorption of iron so I thought about the frosted mini-wheats in the cupboard. I eat those without milk as a snack food. Discovered that frosted mini-wheats has 50% RDA, 5x what spoon sized shredded wheat has (yet same fibre and fat content and only 20 cal more per serving.) Turns out the frosted ones are fortified with black strap molasses. Guess what I had for a snack (along with a half glass of orange juice)?

Now I'm reading that while the RDA is 18 mg of iron for women, the body only absorbs 10 - 30% of the iron in the diet. So does that mean that I should be shooting for 5 - 10 times as much iron or does the RDA take into account the limited absorption?

I was going to talk with the minister about how she keeps her energy up with her bleeding (she has this too) but she nearly handed the remainder of the service over to me after the sermon because she felt so faint. (She recovered during the hymn after the sermon so didn't ask and turned down my offer to come help with the second service.) Her hemoglobin is insanely low right now. Turns out it was low at her blood test in December but no-one called to tell her so she discontinued the iron supplements at the end of January. It has been dropping since then which explains why she is so exhausted right now. On the other hand, it pointed out to me that iron is really key to getting through this phase of my life and I'm obviously going to need some blood tests to monitor this.

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Nancy
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Re: Health and Fitness April, 2012

Postby Nancy » Sun Apr 29, 2012 6:06 pm

K in C I used to need extra iron for heavy bleeding prunes oat meal raisins were among things on that diet I got from the health dept. you could do a search on it and find more I'm sure.

I've weeded the back bed I'm working on this weekend and taken a walk 8-) sun is out still for a bit clouds are coming in from the west.

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Re: Health and Fitness April, 2012

Postby Harriet » Sun Apr 29, 2012 11:17 pm

Unsulphered Black Strap Molasses is a tried-and-true product for restoring iron, too.

I didn't get my exercise in this evening. Dd13 had put the gluing-down of parts of a poster-board project off and it turned into a much bigger deal than she thought, because mistakes were made and needed re-dos. I helped, and she and I are pretty tired from all that, especially since in the middle of everything we had to make a run to Staples!

Eating was good. Fajitas, I have found, are fun, have fiber, without being too full of sugars or sodium, and you can go heavy on the veggies.

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Re: Health and Fitness April, 2012

Postby Kathryn-in-Canada » Mon Apr 30, 2012 8:50 am

OK, doctor's appointment is at 10:30.

I started 200 mg of ibuprofen at dinner, bed and this morning. The second tampon through the night was not full to overflowing, or even full. Ironically, in my kick to get healthy, I stopped my night ibuprofen just over 2 weeks ago. At that point I was spotting and thought maybe it was like aspirin and thinning my blood. But apparently it can cut blood flow by 1/3 (and seemed to last night.)

My stats for the month are amazing despite all this. Down 6 pounds, can go longer/faster/steeper on the treadmill each day, not as stiff in the mornings (it does get worse through the day when I sit too much) and I'm walking faster on our walks to the general store. Sleeping more too (but that may be a negative due to low iron.)

I cut diet caffeinated drinks from my diet except when I was out but had to bring them back in because of my tiredness. That has helped perk me up a lot.

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Re: Health and Fitness April, 2012

Postby Harriet » Mon Apr 30, 2012 11:10 am

Great report, Kathryn! Stamina and weight loss, too.

I was just thinking of Nancy's oatmeal suggestion as I had a packet of the kind of GlutenFreeda oatmeal that has raisins this a.m. - oatmeal with raisins would be a good product for iron, wouldn't it? In the first place as Nancy said, oatmeal has iron, plus the raisins do, too, and it tastes just fine made with water rather than milk. Now, I like to put butter on it and I'd think most people would - would butter inhibit iron absorption, too? Btw, our local healthy grocery manager tells me he can't keep this particular product on the shelf. It was almost gone when I last shopped but he found 2 boxes for me way in back behind other products, and I bought them both! Steel cut is better for me in some ways (I can choose how sweet I will make it, plus less sodium), but not certified gluten free, and has less fiber. So there's a trade-off there, especially since packets can be made up so conveniently.

I am "even" again today. Sigh. I ate so sensibly yesterday, but the scale only allows that I "made up" for the previous day. On that day, HRH cooked supper and made a marvelous dinner. I was thinking, well, I went a little over but it won't be so bad - eat the dinner and be grateful. THEN ohmigoodness, out of the kitchen he comes with a wonderful dessert - he had been simmering raspberry sauce on the back of the stove, hiding it as a surprise, and it was poured over a slice of cheesecake!!! It was meant as a celebration of my good news from the dr the day before, which he said was a big relief to him.

That's one of the times when we have to consider how much I want to lose weight against how much we want to show others appreciation (similar to birthday parties) and enjoy time with others. The next morning I was a pound over!!! Of course, the cheesecake had 400 to 500 calories, but even that doesn't equal gaining a pound. But the problem is that along with sugars, it is extremely high in sodium, which takes time to correct.

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Kathryn-in-Canada
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Re: Health and Fitness April, 2012

Postby Kathryn-in-Canada » Mon Apr 30, 2012 3:45 pm

(((Harriet))) It is hard to balance good diet with appreciation/celebration. Food is so much more than just the fuel we need to keep going. It is a medicine, a comfort, a celebration, and a relationship builder. We communicate over food and we communicate using food. We rely on it so much for communication, that when we take it away as a tool of communication, there is a huge void.

As I reported in PWYC, I've had blood work done (awaiting results, which should be faxed to me) and have NSAIDs to use to reduce the bleeding. I've bought blackstrap molasses. I grew up with molasses and bread on the table for every meal until I was about 6, and after that only at my grandmother's. So molasses has a "comfort food" property to it for me (although that was table molasses, not blackstrap.) I need to eat something when I take the pills so have pita shells that have 20% of my daily iron and will combine those with the molasses which also have 20%. That should go a long way to boosting my iron intake. For about 240 calories, I'll be able to have that downed with a drink of orange juice, to speed absorption, and have something on my tummy to help combat the negative side-effects of the pills.

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Re: Health and Fitness April, 2012

Postby Nancy » Mon Apr 30, 2012 7:44 pm

The winds dried off the grass enough so that I could mow the back yard again it was needing it done again with all the rain and warm weather we've been having here.

More high iron foods:
Mollusks (oysters, clams, scallops)
Turkey or chicken giblets
Beans, lentils, chick peas and soybeans
Liver
Artichokes

chocolate is on the high iron diet read the following for more info.
http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/pathology_lab_medicine/clinical_labs/pdfs/HighIronDiet.pdf

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Kathryn-in-Canada
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Re: Health and Fitness April, 2012

Postby Kathryn-in-Canada » Mon Apr 30, 2012 8:08 pm

Nancy, that's good news about chocolate!!!!

I've just been going through Laurel's Kitchen (my go-to nutrition book even though it is decades old) and note that the watermelon I had for dessert had 1 mg and the berries 1.5 mg of iron. So there are lots of high fibre, low cal, places to add iron easily. Especially since the molasses wasn't an overwhelming success!

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Re: Health and Fitness April, 2012

Postby Harriet » Tue May 01, 2012 12:13 am

Food sources of iron

That mention of chocolate got me to google chocolate and iron together and I came up with this article. I've never heard of this site before, but they certainly are timely with some info for us. There is a LOT of info on iron down below the first part of the article, too - I almost missed it.

One note - please don't eat that full cup of dried apricots mentioned here unless you are willing to accept more than 16 grams of sugars along with it!

I ate very well today and am hopeful. I exercised 20 minutes today, including my short (10 mins?) floor work. I was able to be outside around 11:00 for about 15 minutes. Since we went well over 80 today, I was grateful that I didn't wait any longer. I've been giving Sammie and the hens ice.


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