Calorie Count Crock!

Maybe I'm expecting a bit too much here. But I just entered what my wife ate yesterday:

32 ounces starbucks coffee (breakfast), 1 pint raspberries/blackberries, 1 banana , 1 bowl rice krispies, 1 cup nf milk (lunch), 2oz turkey, 2 oz swiss cheese (dinner), 6 dove choc. miniatures, 1 huge rum drink.

This horror of a diet received a B+ on the nutrition scale. A BEE PLUS???

The people running this site need to give better feedback than this.

I totally agree. I had cereal (granted it was multi bran), a tuna melt and fries, and red bull (sugar free) and carrot ginger soup. That was also a B+. If I ate a tuna melt or anything similar to that everyday I would not only be overweight but just plain unhealthy. They also suggested I eat canned soup (an A!).

I believe it's a general consensus that the grading system is incomplete.  It appears to grade a food against itself, instead of accounting for relative quantity to other foods consumed.  It just averages the grades of the individual foods she ate, without giving weight to the "huge rum drink" having more impact that all the fruit and low-fat protein she had. 

Generally, it's one area that could use improvement, and one area in which many people have to ditch the grade and make their own judgements.

Save forthe ungodly amount of coffee, that's a surprisingly good diet. You aren't choking down bags and bags of crisps, and despite what you think raspberries/blackberries, bananas, milk, turkey and cheese are all good for you in moderation. Even the chocolate is good for you. Rice crispies provide the carbohydrates you need and, again save for the coffee and rum, is pretty damned healthy.

Sure, it's not A+ material, you're missing veggies, but take into account the sheer nutritional value in those foods. Even if they may be high calorie, a banana is backed with a **** load of good things for you. Same goes for raspberries, black berries, turkey, and milk.

From the CC FAQs:

Foods : What is the Nutrition Grade? (FAQs)

The Nutrition Grade was developed with the goal of helping people improve the nutritional quality of their diets. This tool is fully automated and does not feature any manual corrections - hence all items are evaluated objectively and following the same set of rules.

As you may know, not all nutrients are equally good for you. Some of them, like cholesterol, sodium, and saturated fats should be avoided as much as possible. Some other ones, however, such as minerals and vitamins, are essential for your health. Thankfully, the USDA devised the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) figures for each one of these nutrients, which were used as the foundation of the Nutrition Grade's algorithm.

Obviously, foods rich in minerals and vitamins are graded highly, and their good points are all listed right next to their grade. Undesirable nutrients contribute to the bad points. Even though the USDA does provide RDA values for these nutrients, these values must be understood differently from those for the desirable nutrients; the undesirable RDAs should be viewed as the very last limit, whereas the desirable RDAs mark a target to shoot for.

The Good and the Bad Points provide a summary of what the Nutrition Grade identifies as the food items' special strengths and weaknesses. Those points are then converted to a numerical format, and then finally turned into the well-known letter format (A-best; F-worst).

No automated tool is perfect, and the same is true for this one. Please understand that Nutrition Grade only checks how close or far away a certain food is in respect to your RDAs. There are many more aspects that need to be considered for Health, and this is only one of them.

Finally, Nutrition Grade will not necessarily help you lose weight. It will, hopefully, help you get it done as healthy as possible, but you could, for example, eat only perfectly graded food items and still end up gaining weight. Weight loss is all about counting calories and it is not necessarily related to health - but health and weight loss are also not mutually exclusive. In other words, you should keep an eye on your calories, and at the same time, also try to get as good a grade as you can.

No veggies, correct. But what you didn't see was that her caloric intake, minus the rum drink and chocolate was about 800 calories. I'm trying to convince her she needs to eat more, including more healthy foods. I thought by plugging this in I'd have some backup ammunition.

All I got was blanks.

Well, the grade has nothing to do with the AMOUNT of food that she's eating... just what types.

If you have her enter her stats into the tools available on the site and show her her recommended calories for weight loss or maintenance that might work better.

You can find the tools under "Tools" and you'll want to show her the Burn Meter and Calorie Target.

Unfortunately, I think the way you're trying to get your wife to change her eating habits seems a bit... underhanded? You're going out to get ammunition to unload on her? I don't think that's going to work.

She has to see for herself the problem and decide for herself that she wants to change. You can't force her to, even if you only have the best of intentions. =/

(But clearly I don't know you're relationship, I just know I would be really hurt if my boyfriend did this to me, and it would make me more stubborn to resist his help.)

I agree with tincognito- She has to want to change. It is nice that you are concerned for her health, but the only one you can control is you. Let me confess, I have had a few days where I have consumed pretty much the same things your wife did, and I have managed to lose more than 40 pounds. Making a habit of eating like that is not a good idea, but overall one or two days a month wont hurt. In fact I have a "huge rum drink" just waiting for me tonight! Is she a teacher, we seem to drink more than others for some reason, lol.

Original Post by doliver442:

Maybe I'm expecting a bit too much here. But I just entered what my wife ate yesterday:

32 ounces starbucks coffee (breakfast), 1 pint raspberries/blackberries, 1 banana , 1 bowl rice krispies, 1 cup nf milk (lunch), 2oz turkey, 2 oz swiss cheese (dinner), 6 dove choc. miniatures, 1 huge rum drink.

This horror of a diet received a B+ on the nutrition scale. A BEE PLUS???

The people running this site need to give better feedback than this.

 

 

I agree.  This is not what I would consider a good diet, and should be completely unacceptable to a health conscious adult.

My recommendation is to immediately switch to vodka, or better yet, Bombay Sapphire.  But rum?  Unthinkable!

Thanks for the advice and support, and I'm not trying to control her, just hoping she eats SOMETHING  before 5pm besides coffee.

And I'm no angel, my friends. I've just come off a stretch where anything and everything was in play, including an entire's day's worth of calories in beer alone...after dinner.  She's not a big drinker, so the big rum drink was no big deal. I was probably just peeved that I couldn't have one since I'm trying to be good at the moment. I'm allowing myself one pint of British Ale tonight.

Still, I wish this site, or other, could put all the elements together. I do admit it has been very educational and usefull in controlling the amount of calories I'm eating, and being aware of them.

Good luck to all

That is quite a challenge . . . it is very hard to change our eating habits, much less someone else's.

I don't think her diet is "a horror", just that she's making a few very common and unhealthy choices:

1. Trying to lose weight by eating less than 1200 calories a day
2. Skipping breakfast
3. Not eating enough veggies

I would start by encouraging her to eat breakfast and more veggies.  I've heard of women who survive off of less than 1200 calories but never lose weight because their body is in "preservation" mode . . . apparently it is really hard to convince them that they are not eating enough (it's counter-intuitive), but when they eat more eventually their metabolism revives and they begin to lose weight.

Good luck!!

Ok, this is what my counselor tells me every week about eating less than 1200 calories. The "starvation mode" thing is real.  If you don't eat enough, your body reacts by slowing down your metabolism and hanging on to every little calorie you consume because our bodies are trying to protect us from death.  Good bodies.

If you skip breakfast, you don't kickstart that metabolism so it can work like a well-tuned engine, burning the whole day's worth of calories at a higher rate.

That's why people who eat less and less in the hopes of losing are shocked when they have gains.

I'm advised to keep the engine warm by NEVER skipping my snacks (2-3 a day, consisting of 100-150 cal.)

Anyway, I'm so with you!  It seems to be working for me.  I'm never hungry and I have enough energy to exercise.  I would doubt that it's possible to have great workouts on 800 cal. a day, or even to get out of bed in the morning.

Original Post by doliver442:

Maybe I'm expecting a bit too much here. But I just entered what my wife ate yesterday:

32 ounces starbucks coffee (breakfast), 1 pint raspberries/blackberries, 1 banana , 1 bowl rice krispies, 1 cup nf milk (lunch), 2oz turkey, 2 oz swiss cheese (dinner), 6 dove choc. miniatures, 1 huge rum drink.

This horror of a diet received a B+ on the nutrition scale. A BEE PLUS???

The people running this site need to give better feedback than this.

 

 

The final nutrition grade is just an average of all the grades of the foods that were logged. The average takes into account the number of grams in each serving logged.  In this case I think the large amounts high value furits, turkey, non fat milk and even the cereal, outweighed the smaller quantities of chocolate and alcohol.

Don't go by the grade.  Use a food pyramid guide to illustrate what goes into a high nutrition, balanced diet.  The Mayo Clinic website has a wonderful article on Using a Food Pyramid.  Another great resource is the World's Healthiest Foods website.  See their list of the best foods!  Don't for get the CC+ Advice section!  We have our own nutritionist, Mary Hartley.  Do some reading and see if you can get her to read as well.

Every one of us is responsible for what goes into our own mouths.  It's very hard to convince someone who is underinformed.  Maybe you're going to have to do this by example?

Thanks again to all for the tips, advice and encouragement. By the way, the pic I have posted is of my two nutty twin uncles, not me. 

By the way, the wife gets away with eating just about anything she wants. Her family is thin, and they stay that way. I'll never forget the first time she made me strawberry shortcake...for DINNER!

My family, totally opposite. We look at cake and turn into blowfish.

She is actually trying to eat more fruits and veggies, so we are making some progress.  

I rarrely if ever get below an A all you have to do is eat a salad and it bumps everything right back up.