After some feedback on my calorie vs. nutrition ratio - fortnight average

[brendanhill]

Can you comment on my cronometer results from the last fortnight and any tweaks I should make?

I am 35 male... 186cm... 88kg... BMI 25.7, with the aim of losing weight (eventually get BMI < 20) and living longer and healthier. My recommended calories are are about 2400 by conventional measures and I have been aiming for <2000 recently.

Over the last 10 years I have been vegetarian for while, then vegan (not especially healthy though), but this year I incorporated bivalves (mussels/scallops/oysters) and more recently fish into my diet to diversify my food sources and get essential nutrients from food in preference to supplements. So I am "pesca-vegan"... which is not actually really a real thing in reality..... but still manages to outrage the True(c) vegan community....... with whom I still share the same ethical motivation towards animals.

For the last fortnight I have logged my intake religiously on cronometer, apart from from zero calorie liquids - water, tea and black coffee. The results are mostly good but there are a few imbalances I would like feedback on.

There were many categories I overshot the target quite significantly:

- Overshot "net carbs" by 54%
- Overshot fat by 20%
- Overshot Vitamins and Minerals almost across the board by 20-1000%

Does this overshooting imply

a) any problems (no red zones from cronometer...); \
or
b) that I could usefully reduce my daily calorie intake even further through portion size, without nutritional deficiency? After all the bad press about "carbs" is 54% a bad overshoot, if it's from good sources?

Vitamin D & Calcium I failed to meet the target (this is average over 2 weeks so not a daily blip!), causing many "Nutritent scores" to be <100%. Vitamin D I have supplemented and increased sunlight exposure, but Calcium I have not. I have struggled to find a stronger source of calcium within this diet. I have already been eating sardines (but turns out they have fairly low RDA% and I don't want to eat every day...), loads of leafy greens, but it turns out my biggest source is blackstrap molasses (about 1 tbsp each morning - 13% of total calcium) followed by enriched rice milk (9% of total calcium), which don't seem like very natural sources to rely on. Does this suggest I should start supplementing Calcium too or is their some magic food within the "pesca-vegan" diet I should investigate?

My ratios are good apart from Zinc:Copper. my plan is to eat fresh oysters once per week to try and correct this since they are absurdly high in zinc. Does anyone else have this ratio problem and how have you addressed it?

I am disturbingly low on "Lycopene" hitting 3% on average (under Antioxidants). I don't much about this and a quick search suggests it is not essential, but has various positive health effects... but I can't find any great ways of approaching 100% other than eating colossal amounts of of cooked tomatoes and pasta source... which seems like the tail wagging the dog. Should I bother trying to meet this target?

Thanks for all your feedback.

 

-Brendan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 12, 2020 by brendanhill
add lycopene question

[mccoy]

16 hours ago, brendanhill said:

There were many categories I overshot the target quite significantly:

- Overshot "net carbs" by 54%
- Overshot fat by 20%
- Overshot Vitamins and Minerals almost across the board by 20-1000%

Does this overshooting imply

a) any problems (no red zones from cronometer...); \
or
b) that I could usefully reduce my daily calorie intake even further through portion size, without nutritional deficiency? After all the bad press about "carbs" is 54% a bad overshoot, if it's from good sources?

The overshoot is probably not going to cause any probs, but this should be checked for blood sugar. I regularly measure my fasting blood sugar with one of those portable devices and sometimes measure my peak after 2 hours from the meal. Fasting BS should not exceed 100 mg/dL in a regular basis and not exceed 150 mg/dL after 2 hours (from ADA guidelines). The best fasting values are below 90. 

Also, basic blood lipids should be analyzed regularly (once a year is good).

[mccoy]

16 hours ago, brendanhill said:

Vitamin D & Calcium I failed to meet the target (this is average over 2 weeks so not a daily blip!), causing many "Nutritent scores" to be <100%. Vitamin D I have supplemented and increased sunlight exposure, but Calcium I have not. I have struggled to find a stronger source of calcium within this diet.

D3, there is no other feasible choice really than supplementation or sun exposure. The levels should be checked by blood analyses.

Calcium, you are approaching 100% so I wouldn't worry, but I opened a thread on Ca-rich mineral waters. When I ate vegan, I used to drink these waters and reaching the RDA was very easy.

[mccoy]

16 hours ago, brendanhill said:

My ratios are good apart from Zinc:Copper. my plan is to eat fresh oysters once per week to try and correct this since they are absurdly high in zinc. Does anyone else have this ratio problem and how have you addressed it?

Some of us think this (checking ratios attentively) constitutes an exaggerated micromanagement of diet. Anyway, most of us, me included, supplement with zinc. 10 mg early in the morning with water is enough.

[mccoy]

16 hours ago, brendanhill said:

I am disturbingly low on "Lycopene" hitting 3% on average (under Antioxidants). I don't much about this and a quick search suggests it is not essential, but has various positive health effects... but I can't find any great ways of approaching 100% other than eating colossal amounts of of cooked tomatoes and pasta source... which seems like the tail wagging the dog. Should I bother trying to meet this target?

NO, a normal dietary intake of tomatoes, watermelon and so on should be enough, I don't know why cronometer has such a threshold for lycopene, I would open a thread in the cronometer forum

Edited August 13, 2020 by mccoy

[mccoy]

Last: your lysine is close to 100% RDA but a check that it doesn't go down too much would be good. That's a potential issue in some vegan diets.

[brendanhill]

On 8/13/2020 at 2:47 PM, mccoy said:

Some of us think this (checking ratios attentively) constitutes an exaggerated micromanagement of diet. Anyway, most of us, me included, supplement with zinc. 10 mg early in the morning with water is enough.

mccoy thanks for all the detailed feedback.

I'm interested to know why some think checking ratios is micromanagement. If there are medical reasons why the ratios matter then isn't it worth considering? For example my Zinc:Copper ratio was well outside the recommended range early on and I adjusted by including fresh oysters once a week which will likely correct this alleged imbalance.

In the case of Zinc:Copper my reading is that the need to attain this ratio is disputed and there is some evidence that just attaining the targets is good enough - so many that specific one is less important.

[mccoy]

12 hours ago, brendanhill said:

In the case of Zinc:Copper my reading is that the need to attain this ratio is disputed and there is some evidence that just attaining the targets is good enough - so many that specific one is less important.

More precisely, we've discussed how metals compete to be bound to biological compounds according to physio-chemical considerations (energy) and that it's probably desirable that copper, for example, does not overwhelm zinc to avoid excessive competition. In this regard, following the precautionary principle, it would be better to adhere to such ratio. Assiduous adherence though may be a hard duty, so many of us, I included, prefer to take targeted supplementation. In the case of omega3/omega6 ratios, we discussed that there is not probably conclusive evidence that high ratios, close to unity, are really necessary. My problem with that is the fact that adherence would entail to renounce to many healthy foods like pumpkin and sunflower seeds for example.  

My bottom line is that it may be good to follow those ratios, but it's far better to concentrate on other parameters indisputably governing healthspan and longevity, like blood sugar, blood lipids, blood pressure, exercising, attaining the targets of all nutrients, checking regularly with blood analyses and so on. If time abounds and fine-tuning is desired, that's up to our own decisions whether to be very precise on all subtle aspects.

As I've written in my recent post on blood analyses, I had a few surprises, like a very high blood iron, beyond normal range, even when eating no heme iron and with many supposedly iron-binding compounds (phytates, polyphenols and so onI). I was ready to supplement with iron but without the lab results I would have done a pretty bad thing.

Also my IGF-1 turned out to be pretty low even though I eat plenty of methionine, which supposedly abnormally increases IGF-1 and is avoided like the devil by strict CR practitioners.