The 95% Challenge

bracconiere

and for that i had to use Ctrl-V also to get the box to take the link...

Anyway that's my plan for tomorrow. It includes a biotin, choline supplement, dolomite. because there's not much data for the vitamins....And dolomite is just white dirt, so it's as good as a vegetable right?

bracconiere

wait i forgot the beer! 98% baby!

bracconiere

so the mesquite twigs is a bunch of branches thrown in the pressure cooker, and cooked for 30 min. i do a iodine starch titration, and a 12oz glass has about 50mg vit c in it. probably more too, but all i can test for myself is vit c.

Butternut pie for a, i'm going to make some ravioli with lentil pasta, fill them with my pesto. and sautee in some soybean oil...

the lite salt i blend myself, i buy potassium chloride and sodium chloride in 5lb bags, mix 50/50, and then add half a gram of potassium iodide to the mix for iodine...

low on fiber, i think that's why i couldn't get it above 95%...Meat does that to a person, splurge on jerky, not enough fiber...

Eliisa

Congratulations, bracconiere! You are the winner of our 95% Challenge! Woo-hoo!

I sent you a quick email if you wouldn't mind checking your inbox... just a couple quick questions for you Awesome job with the challenge! You did great and thank you so much for participating!

tcolvinOH

Just out of curiosity, how many participants were there, in total?

bracconiere

@tcolvinOH , lol, just us, just us...@vickie didn't even join.

i don't want a free sub but a t-shirt that said "I owe this body to CRON-o-Meter" would be awesome!

Hilary

@bracconiere , this contest was primarily for social media but we extended it to include our forum users as well! There were a number of other contestants from Instagram and Facebook who also participated, and 2 other lucky contestants won Cronometer t-shirts! Stay tuned for more contests! and congrats!

bracconiere

Oh, didn't know, sorry. But...but....I WANT A T-SHIRT! i'm more then happy to give you guys money!

Vickie

I totally wanted a Cronometer mug and was very close to submitting an entry myself! But by the time I remembered the contest was already over. Oh well!

bracconiere

Yeah, i was thinking mug too. but figured they wouldn't send me a big enough one. i like to drink 16 oz cups of coffee....

And i looked over the site, no merch store...i even checked on ebay to see if there was anything there! lol

So the two runners up got priceless t-shirts!

bracconiere

In that challenge if i set chromium to 0 min, i can 100? since there's no data for it in the db's. would that have been considered cheating?

BRBWaffles

It's too bad I'm just seeing this now, 'cause I just realized that I've averaged 95% completion over the last three weeks, and 93% completion over the last six months, haha.

LindyLoo

I'm not even coming close to 95% with very little calorie deficit. I don't know how you all do it.

BRBWaffles

@LindyLoo

Here's a typical day for me. Maybe you'll find something among my food selection inspiring.

bracconiere

in the beginning , i did A LOT of searching....took me 6 months to come up with my diet...mostly beans, sunflower seeds, and rice bran is a winner for me.....little bit of fruits and vegtables...i can do it for 1400 cals, which leaves me room for beer

LindyLoo

I think it might be the vegan diet. I'm having the most trouble with certain B vitamins (excluding B12, which I supplement), vitamin E, zinc, and sometimes some of the other minerals. Some things are probably under counted when I eat processed food, but it tends to the low side even when I don't (or at least try to estimate with whole food substitutions ). I'll check out some of the vegan threads. Maybe I'll just wind up having to take a multi, but I'd rather get as much from food as possible.

BRBWaffles

@LindyLoo

I wouldn't worry about vitamin E too much. Your need for vitamin E changes daily and is completely dependent on your polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) intake. As long as you're keeping a minimum of 0.4mg per 1g of PUFA in your diet as an absolute baseline, you're probably OK. In my opinion, ideally you want 1mg of vitamin E per 1g of PUFA. I write about it here.

Some B vitamins are pretty hard to hit on a vegan diet. B2 and B3 can be particularly difficult. B6 is easy to get on paper, but in practice it is actually much harder to get on a vegan diet. I write about that as well, here.

Minerals are tricky on a vegan diet. A lot of people scoff at the idea that the anti-nutrients in certain foods are of practical concern. Personally, I don't think they're of much practical concern to an omnivore, but they're highly relevant to vegans. This is because, other than fortified foods, plant foods are a vegan's only source of minerals. Whereas an omnivore has a lot more reliable options at their disposal. I'm not sure I can give very good advice here, because the vegan foods that are highest in minerals are also generally highest in the anti-nutrients that bind them.

I might have a partial solution for you. You could use the Nutrient Density Cheat Sheet that I produced and choose vegan foods that are above the 40th or 50th percentile in both the "Minerals" column and the "Low Anti-Nutrient" column. This should give you vegan friendly foods that are high in minerals and low in anti-nutrients. Some of the foods that meet these criteria are: Rice Krispies, pineapple, wakame seaweed, V8, berries, chai tea, and milk substitutes. Honestly, it's slim pickings.

LindyLoo

@bracconiere @BRBWaffles The ones I struggle with the most are B3 and B5. B2 seems to be pretty easy because of fortified soy milk. From what I can tell, I'm going to need to start eating a lot more mushrooms, at the very least. I'll check out the cheat sheet and see what's there. If I have to take B complex, it's not the end of the world. I already take B12, EPA&DHA from algae, and sometimes iron. I have reflux, so I often use calcium before bed.

LindyLoo

I'm finding the trend charts helpful for going back to see what I ate on days where I was close to or over the target. Tofurky has a surprising amount, but I don't want to rely on that too much since it's so processed. According to their website, Ezekiel bread has B5, but it's not listed in their nutrition facts, so doesn't show up in Cronometer. I think part of the issue is that I'm a pretty small person. I don't need to lose any weight, but my maintenance is set at 1739. Not super low, but annoying.

bracconiere

niacin, was what i found rice bran for. and pantothenic acid is why i have a cup of coffee in the morning...

rice bran i serve in my granola recipe, and coffee is easy enough....

and i just eat rice bran to save calories, brown rice is good for niacin also...

bracconiere

i'd recomend nutritiondata.com's search function, cron-o-meter is way better for nutrient tracking, but it's search i find wanting....

BRBWaffles

@LindyLoo

I think I may know your issue. You might be adding foods with incomplete data. Unless you're adding foods from the USDA database or NCC database, they'll most likely be incomplete. Instead of adding brand names of foods, search for the foods by what they actually are and add the USDA or NCCDB entries. For example, instead of adding "silk soy milk" or something, just look up soy milk. Instead of looking up Ezekiel bread, perhaps try to cobble together a recipe based on its ingredients.

bracconiere

to use this, you do kinda have to start from scratch...

but even starting from scratch, i still need 16oz of coffee for pantothenic, and rice bran for niacin......

LindyLoo

@BRBWaffles I'm trying to do that where I can. It also seems that ESHA sometimes lists more info as well. I probably eat too many processed foods, tbh. The NCCDB does have some brand name stuff. Are the name brand entries not as complete even when they're listed there? If so, I may just try to make rough guesses instead.

@bracconiere I had no idea that coffee was that nutritious, haha. Unfortunately, I don't really like coffee. Mushrooms and some seeds seem like good things to add. What do you mean by starting from scratch? Do you mean planning my diet from scratch? I'm kind of doing that anyhow because I never planned as an omnivore other than just trying to make sure I ate protein (not just meat), veggies, and starches/whole grains.

bracconiere

i mean cooking from scratch, only limitation of cron-o-meter or any db. kinda have to do home cooked meals...

and, all in all, coffee isn't that nutritious, just loaded with riboflavin & pantothenic acid...

when i first started out i ate a lot of bean soup, along with my granola....then i transitioned to bean flour mixed with vital wheat gluten...

Dash

Last three days I’ve been over 95!

Kiashu

Almost there.... Zinc is the hard one - I don't eat shellfish, and the other main good sources would either blow my fat budget (red meats) or involve ridiculous amounts of some vegetable or other (I already have four cups a day on average, 600g).

LindyLoo

You're pretty close, @Kiashu! Pumpkin seeds are a pretty good source. Some legumes and whole grains are good, too.

Phoenix4life

@bracconiere I don't eat turkey or shellfish either....no meat. I checked my chart and I have over 200% zinc. The one multivitamin that I take daily fills in the zinc. Love pumpkin seeds but eliminating seeds/nuts until I reach goal weight. The one exception is I choose to eat one healthy fat a day (usually in a salad/dressing)...choice of one tbsp seeds or nuts or nutbutter or avocado.....no oil! I keep my fat close to 10%. But this doesn't solve your zinc issue.
I don't eat any processed foods.

mccoy

99% of nutrients at about 2200 kCals, on a lacto-vegetarian diet