Vitamins and Supplements

I don't like to use any kind of added things in my foods that some people use. I have been asked about it a lot, have I ever used corn husk, or cod liver oil or this or that.... ummm no.... none of it. I have considered a protein powder before but never used one. I would rather just get my nutrients from normal food. I try to use foods that I prepare myself or as in their normal state and try to avoid processed foods to some extent. I have lunch meats, sandwich cheese and low carb ice cream, I am not a health nut/organic person by any means but over time I have watched what happened when I had certain foods more and I noticed a difference when I have more processed foods vs. more foods in their natural state. I want to know exactly what I am eating so I can put it into FitDay. I even entered in the information for my vitamin into FitDay. I like FitDay!

 I avoided taking vitamins for a long time. I had been told by my doctor and also my trainer to take a multi-vitamin and I was being sooooo bad about that..... I had them for a good 2 months before I finally opened the bottle to take one. I just don't like taking them, they smell funny and I don't like taking medicine or anything really. It wasn't that I was forgetting them, I was avoiding them! Anyway, I have been taking them again daily for the past week and I don't know if they really help or not but my nutrient report in FitDay showed that I was lacking in a lot of nutrients, so I decided to give it a try. I figure it shouldn't hurt me. But the vitamins have some caffeine in them, so I learned not to take them before bed. lol

I am not totally sure if the two are related, but I had been stalled for almost a month, maintaining but not losing anything and I go to the gym a lot and it was making me mad. Normally I won't care if I don't lose a pound or two as long as I keep losing inches, but I had a month where I only lost 1 inch over all my measurements. So I had been looking at everything, my foods, could anything be hidden in what I was eating, was I counting all the ketchup and seasonings and everything, yep, I was, nothing was getting missed. Was I sleeping enough... well no, but I never have when I lost the rest of my weight either, so well... OK, I should sleep more, but that's probably not the issue. I exercise a lot so that wasn't the issue either, plus I had changed up my workout, added things and increased time and distance and weights. I wasn't doing anything "wrong" so I just thought ok, I was stalled and the scale would move sooner or later.

Then all of a sudden I lost 10 lbs within a week's time and thought ok, now we are getting somewhere again! Then I retained water and the numbers was going up .3, .4, .5 a day and I was getting annoyed but my inches were staying the same and then my inches went down but my weight went up 2 lbs and then I thought ok, am I just building muscle? Retaining water? What's going on here..... Then I realized something.... when my weight suddenly started going down again was when I had started taking my vitamin, but then I stopped taking it for awhile. Since taking it again this past week my weight has been less each day, yet I didn't change anything with the foods I normally eat, how much I eat, or how much I exercise, if anything I exercised less this week because of being dehydrated.

Reports like these are just another reason why I  like FitDay! (If you click on the charts they will get bigger, then just hit the back arrow to come back to this page)

RDA Nutrition % Before the Vitamin:

RDA Nutrition % After the Vitamin:

Total Nutrition Before the Vitamin:  
(The Red numbers shows a deficiency)

Total Nutrition After the Vitamin:  
(The Green numbers mean you have enough)

~So is the vitamin related? Maybe.
~Does the vitamin help weight loss? Maybe.
~Could it just have been water the whole time and it is a coincidence? Maybe.
~Am I gonna keep taking my vitamin? Yes.
~Would I suggest that you find a vitamin that you like? Yes.
~Should I also consider a calcium supplement even though I am still young? Yes.
~Am I going to take a calcium supplement? I dunno, I should but I don't want to yet.
~Should I take a potassium supplement? Yes.
~Am I going to take a potassium supplement? I dunno.....
~Am I going to try to get more sleep? Maybe.....  but not likely for awhile anyway.
~Is CJ stubborn? VERY!!!!!!!!!!!!

Chicken Sausage Penne (Dreamfields Pasta)

I tried some of this pasta about 5 years ago and I didn't care for it then, but I liked it this time. You have to be careful in the cooking process and not cook it too long or it can make more of the carbs be digestible. There is also some debate over reheating it and baking it once it is boiled can have the same effect.

I was only cooking the low carb stuff for myself so I split the box of 6 servings of pasta into 2 bowls. Yes, I actually counted the dry noodles to make sure it was even..... Someone saw me doing this and laughed at me, but I take my food tracking seriously since getting closer to my goal and working out more I pay attention to everything that I consume in a day. But when I first started I only counted carbs. I was getting dizzy at the gym because I was only eating 700 to 900 calories per day, which is way too low..... I was not trying to be that low, it just happened over time with me cutting my portion sizes down. Anyway, I don't eat it unless I add it to my tracker now.

This isn't a "Low Carb" sauce per say, but out of the entire grocery store selection it was the one with the lowest carbs on the shelf at 4 carbs per 1/2 cup:  (and yes Fanny Meat Sauce made me giggle a bit)

I put the extra pasta in a sandwich bag to cook another time and I put half the jar of sauce in a container and put it in the freezer:

The cooked pasta. I boiled it for exactly 10 minutes, turned the heat off at 9 minutes and it was still boiling at 10 minutes. I drained it right away and hit it with the kitchen sprayer with cold water immediately. This stops the cooking process and keeps the pasta from breaking down into the stage where your body can absorb more carbs. I rinsed it for a few minutes, drained it and let it sit in a separate bowl without any hot ingredients touching it:

The Grilled Chicken Breasts, seasoned with Fresh Ground Black Pepper, Garlic and Italian Seasoning:

The Chicken cut up and ready to go in the sauce. I used 12 ounces of chicken::

Half the jar of sauce before the chicken went in it. (If I make this dish without the pasta then I would add grilled onions, bell pepper and fresh garlic to the sauce, but I didn't want extra carbs and didn't feel like chopping them all up and didn't really have time to either.):

The sauce with the chicken added in:

The cheese was added to the sauce, I used 1 cup of Mozzarella and 4 Italian Sausage links were cooked and then chopped up and added to the sauce. I nuked the sauce and cheese for a minute before adding the sausage:

Then I separated the sauce, sausage, cheese and chicken mixture into 4 equal portions, about 1 cup each:

Then I separated the pasta into 4 equal portions and yes I counted the noodles again....I put the 3 extra servings in the fridge for later with the extra sauce/meat/cheese mixtures.

My thoughts behind keeping them separate is so that when I go to re-heat them I can just nuke the sauce mixture and not nuke the pasta. Then I can make sure the sauce is not too warn and stir in the pasta and eat it right away. I have worked too hard and I am far too strict on myself to take a chance in overheating the pasta to where it has a negative effect on me. You don't have to be as strict as I am, this is just my choice. I have also broken this down into 8 total servings per box and jar of sauce, when it should be 6 servings. So you could also eat more then this if you wanted to. I would rather keep my portion of the pasta smaller and then eat some green beans or a salad if I wanted something else with it.

Here is the finished product, it was yummy.
 Chicken Sausage Penne:

I cooked this Monday night and had it again on Tuesday night. It was still the same size portion right about 2 cups but I put it on a dinner plate instead of in a bowl just for visual comparison. I figured most people eat their dinner on a dinner plate instead of a 2 cup bowl or a salad plate. I also added green beans and it was too much food for me to eat at once. I got full, but a few hours later I was hungry again so I finished the rest of it then. I could have easily broken this down into 5 servings instead of 4 and just add a small side salad. Which would make 10 servings per box/jar instead of 8 or even the suggested serving size of 6 servings per box/jar. Also the keeping the pasta separate for reheating worked very well. So far I have not seen any ill effects from this low carb pasta, but it was also cooked correctly. I would just suggest being careful with it so it doesn't over cook and then limit yourself, it is good and it would be easy to keep going back for more. I wouldn't recommend it on induction. But it is a nice treat once in awhile on on going weight loss or maintenance for sure.

This is what was left that I ate a few hours later, I didn't reheat it, I just ate it cold and it was still good. I don't sleep much and I am awake really late so I am not afraid of having a snack at night if I am hungry and going to be awake for awhile.

This is the excel spreadsheet that I used to figure out the nutrition information per each serving based on my serving size. Again, don't let this part scare you, to do low carb you only have to count carbs, not calories and everything else. I do this extra work for me because I like to keep track of the data so I can look at it later. I use FitDay, there is a link to it on the right in the side bar.

FitDay - Fitness Log (Food & Activity Tracking)

I have been asked a lot of questions about food tracking.
Do I do it?
Do I count calories?
Do I worry about fat? etc....
Well, Yes I do track my food intake and also my activities, but this is only a recent thing for me within the past few months. I use FitDay and it did take awhile to get it set up the way I wanted it and I entered a lot of custom foods to make it easier to use. I gathered up all the foods I normally eat with my laptop on the counter and started entering the nutritional values for all of them. Then I combined things together that I normally put together in one meal, so I could just select the meals I always have prepared the same way in the same portion size and not have to select each individual ingredient separate. It works great, it is so handy and I like being able to look back and see the past data and see what I ate when I finally lost a pound after being stalled for a few weeks. Or check and see if I had a lot of sodium that resulted in water weight gain.

I had always just counted the carbs and not paid attention to anything else. I didn't realize it at first but I had cut so many things out and my portion sizes are small and I was only consuming 780-920 calories a day and I was getting light headed at the gym, but I wasn't hungry. I never intended on getting my calories that low and it is not healthy and it was not making me lose weight. It actually made me stall for a couple of months. My body wasn't getting enough calories and I was likely putting myself into borderline starvation mode even though I wasn't hungry. So I started to try and vary up my selections a bit more and not just live on tuna and grilled chicken, especially on days that I was going to the gym. I have to have a meal or a snack 30 minutes to an hour before going to the gym. It is usually something like boiled eggs, hamburger patty, baby carrots, a 2 oz. chunk of cheese or bacon.

In looking back at all this data next to each other and thinking about the foods I was eating most often when I was losing the most weight, I was having about 1500-1600 calories a day and about 100 to 150g of fat and staying under 20 carbs per day. Over time I had changed what I was normally eating almost every day and was just not eating enough anymore. I didn't ever think someone would tell me to eat more food! lol. That was a shock to hear for sure, because when I was 525 lbs and still eating carbs I would eat huge portions and still be hungry all the time. Anyway it was kind of fun to go get a bun-less Baconater and actually NEED the additional calories that it had instead of being afraid of having too many like a lot of people are when they think about eating a Baconator while losing weight. I love being low carb!!! I get to have my bacon! I <3 Bacon!!!


Anyway there is a link to Fit Day on the right hand side of my blog, or just go Here to sign up on FitDay.com I just use their free version and I like it, but I have been curious about their paid version. I might try it for a month or two and see if the added features are worth it. Before that I would use an Excel spreadsheet and I think FitDay is easier for comparing the data. My only real complaint is that is does not subtract the dietary fiber from the carbs, so I just manually adjust it by editing the food entry and if it was 10 carbs with 6 grams of fiber then I will just enter the carbs as 4 grams instead of 10. That way my numbers are accurate for the daily total.

Don't let the thought of tracking your food overwhelm you, especially if you are new to low carb. Just keep counting your carbs and get more comfortable with what foods you can have and what you need to avoid. But as you get closer to your goal and the longer you are low carb you will find yourself being less hungry and if you get to a point when you stall then you might want to take a closer look at everything you are consuming and see if you notice any patterns like I did with the extra sodium from. Different things affect people differently and tracking your food is not a requirement, but I highly recommend it. I am so strict on it now that I won't eat something unless I can enter it into my FitDay. During the day I will look at it and it often determines my dinner choice that day.


Some examples of the reports you can run in FitDay:

This is my own personal nutrition information as viewed like a food label. Information like this lets you see which nutrients you are deficient in and better evaluate if you want to take a multi-vitamin or not.

Just thought I would add this, if you happen to be on another plan like Weight Watchers that counts points, you could easily make FitDay work for you to help you track your points as well. Just pick one of the nutrients that isn't one you care about tracking like maybe "Monounsaturated Fat" since it is not commonly listed on food labels anyway or one of the minerals you don't want to count. But if you want it viewable on the main preview page then use something like the "Protein" value's slot. Then enter in the food values as normal but for that nutrients just enter the points value and know that, that nutrient really stands for your points. Then FitDay will add it up for you like normal and you will have a daily record of your points.