The biggest area that I need to look to improve on is the amount of protein that I eat. Over the course of the days, I noticed a trend of eating a certain type of meat everyday. I could cut back on my protein my not eating meat everyday, and have a different option such as salads. Also I would have to make sure that there would be no chicken in these salads to reduce my protein intake.
Another area that need to improve on is my iron intake. I was 73% below my recommended amount. I could improve in this area by eating more iron rich foods such as spinach. I should avoid more red meats since I am already about 91% above my recommend amount. One way I could do this is by making more smoothies. When I make smoothies I add a ton of different fruit and about 2 cups of spinach. If I were to make one of these every other day, my iron intake would greatly increase.
I also need to eat more vitamin A rich foods. I was 64.4% below my recommend daily value. One way to increase this is by eating more fish and vegetables. The vegetables could again come from the smoothie that I would make every other day. Also I could eat more salads as meals, like lunch for example. This would increase my vegetable intake as well, therefore raising the levels of vitamin A also. I could eat more fish by eating foods such as poké, or sushi. These foods contain fish, and are very delicious at the same time.
I also struggled in the vitamin C category. I really under ate in this category, going along with the general trend. One way to improve on this category is by eating more fruits, more specifically citrus fruits. Citrus fruits contain a lot of vitamin C, so if I ate more of these fruits it would increase. As stated before, I could make more smoothies, which include oranges, so that could be one way I would increase my vitamin C intake.
I need to also work on eating more fiber. One way to improve would be to eat more vegetables and beans. I noticed that the on day 4, I ate Chipotle for dinner. That was the highest amount of fiber that I consumed thought the whole process, at 24.8 grams for the whole day. This shows how even though I did eat more fiber, I was still below the recommended value of 32.5 grams. I also just need to eat more vegetables in general. I saw that out of the five days I logged my diet, I had vegetables on only three of those. This is really eye opening to the fact that I do not eat enough vegetables. If I were to increase the amount of vegetables that I eat during each meal, on top of that smoothie I would make every other day, then my fiber intake would definitely increase.
Unlike what I thought, I actually under ate in the sodium value. I ate 40.9% below the recommended value of 3117.6 grams. I guess a way to consume more sodium would be by eating more salty foods or ham. However, I would have to be careful with the amount of ham I eat since I already eat way too much protein.
Another surprising category was my calorie consumption. I actually under ate by 27.8% of the recommended value. One result from this could have been because I did not eat much in a certain day. For example, on day 4, I only ate five different items, one of them being water. A simple solution to this problem is to eat more during the day. I also need to be constantly eating a breakfast. By doing this, I would eat more calories, and have more energy during the day.
The two categories that I did well in were in fat and calcium category. I was near perfect for the fat being at 0.12% in over consumption. In the calcium section I consumed 6.1% under the correct amount. Both of the sections correlate to each other in a way because I drink a lot of milk. Milk is high in calcium, and contains a good amount of fat since I drink 2% milk. A way to consume more calcium is by maybe eating yogurt for breakfast. This would increase my calcium, and at the same time having breakfast, which would increase my calorie intake.
