You Are What You Eat

I track my food. I don't do it because I am on some wild diet fad; I do it because I am a number cruncher. I love spreadsheets and lists and comparing how one day or week or year compares to another. I like knowing if I am eating too much sodium or not enough vegetables. I think it's fun! I have been tracking my food pretty religiously for about a year and a half (before that it was only on and off) using Lose It and it has shown me some interesting things.

First of all, I don't eat out very often, but when I do, it makes it harder to track food. You have no idea what is being put into the dishes that you are eating. There is a reason their polenta tastes different (dare I say better?) than mine. That reason is...BUTTER. The same goes for things like pre-sweetened yogurt and pre-made tomato sauce and canned beans. There is salt and sugar and goodness only knows what in there. So, what my point was going toward was that tracking has made me more aware of how much better it is to eat a REAL piece of fruit rather than a canned one, or to make my own tomato sauce rather than dumping a jar in a pan.

So, back to the statistics. On Lose It, you can make some graphs and pull up some numbers and this is where it begins to get fun. For instance, I pulled up my most logged items for the past six months. Here is what items were on the top of the list.

Hearty oats is a mix of oats, chia, flax, almond milk and raisins. I got tired of entering each one separately, so I made it into a recipe. The same goes for cabbage salad, which includes the dressing. There are a few problems. For instance, it says I ate 48 peaches. This is actually 48 peaches. However, for strawberries, it is cups not actual berries. And bananas is actually one banana, not a cup of bananas. I wish that it were more standardized.

Or yogurt, for instance...The number 67 indicates the number of times that I HAD yogurt. I may have had a cup; I may have had a 1/4 cup. You never know. However, I do like that the top items are all real foods! I have to be honest with you though, coffee was actually my number one item, since I have it almost every day!

The other thing I found interesting was the breakdown of where my calories are coming from. Although now that I compare it with the above list, I am not really surprised.

Apparently I snack a lot. I do put fruit in the "snack" category a lot of the time, so you can see why snacking wins over meals pretty easily! Besides fruit, I often snack on yogurt (with fruit), nuts and Craisins (so the list on top is consistent with the graph below!). My carbs are also high, which is mostly due to the fruit, and the sugar that comes from my new favorite snack, the dried young coconut.

FYI: The American Heart Association recommends: less than 1500 mg sodium per day / 30 minutes of moderate exercise 5 times a week / 4-5 cups of fruit and veggies per day / 200-300 mg cholesterol per day (or less). 

So, if the title of my post is correct, I guess I am a big blob of oatmeal. With little chicken legs.

Are you running the CIM? For tips, check out my guest post over at Terzah's!! And don't forget to stop by Jills for more Fitness (and food) related posts!

Do you track your food? Do you know how much sodium you are getting each day? What do you think your most eaten foods would be if you had a top 10 list?

Read More

Interesting WW2 facts

80% of Soviet males born in 1923 didn't survive World War 2

The highest ranking American killed was Lt. Gen. Lesley McNair, killed by the US Army Air Corps.

Between 1939 and 1945 the Allies dropped 3.4 million tons of bombs, An average of about 27,700 tons of bombs each month.

12,000 heavy bombers were shot down in World War 2

2/3 of Allied bomber crews were lost for each plane destroyed

3 or 4 ground men were wounded for each killed

6 bomber crewmen were killed for each one wounded

Over 100,000 Allied bomber crewmen were killed over Europe

There were 433 Medals of Honor awarded during World War 2, 219 of them were given after the receipiant's death

From 6 June 1944 to 8 May 1945 in Europe the Allies had 200,000 dead and 550,000 wounded
The youngest US serviceman was 12 year old Calvin Graham, USN. He was wounded in combat and given a Dishonorable Discharge for lying about his age. (His benefits were later restored by act of Congress).

At the time of Pearl Harbor, the top US Navy command was called CINCUS (pronounced "sink us"), the shoulder patch of the US Army's 45^th Infantry division was the swastika, and Hitler's private train was named "Amerika". All three were soon changed for PR purposes.

Germany lost 110 Division Commanders in combat

40,000 men served on U-Boats during World War 2; 30,000 never returned

More US servicemen died in the Air Corps that the Marine Corps. While completing the required 30 missions, your chance of being killed was 71%. Not that bombers were helpless. A B-17 carried 4 tons of bombs and 1.5 tons of machine gun ammo. The US 8^th Air Force shot down 6,098 fighter planes, 1 for every 12,700 shots fired.

Germany's power grid was much more vulnerable than realized. One estimate is that if just 1% of the bombs dropped on German industry had instead been dropped on power plants, German industry would have collapsed.

Generally speaking, there was no such thing as an average fighter pilot. You were either an ace or a target. For instance, Japanese ace Hiroyoshi Nishizawa shot down over 80 planes. He died while a passenger on a cargo plane.

It was a common practice on fighter planes to load every 5^th found with a tracer round to aid in aiming. That was a mistake. The tracers had different ballistics so (at long range) if your tracers were hitting the target, 80% of your rounds were missing. Worse yet, the tracers instantly told your enemy he was under fire and from which direction. Worst of all was the practice of loading a string of tracers at the end of the belt to tell you that you were out of ammo. That was definitely not something you wanted to tell the enemy. Units that stopped using tracers saw their success rate nearly double and their loss rate go down.

When allied armies reached the Rhine, the first thing men did was pee in it. This was pretty universal from the lowest private to Winston Churchill (who made a big show of it) and Gen. Patton (who had himself photographed in the act).

German Me-264 bombers were capable of bombing New York City but it wasn't worth the effort.

A number of air crewmen died of farts. (ascending to 20,000 ft. in an un-pressurized aircraft causes intestinal gas to expand 300%!)

Germany lost 40-45% of their aircraft during World War 2 to accidents

The average German officer slot had to be refilled 9.2 times

The US Army had more ships that the US Navy.

The German Air Force had 22 infantry divisions, 2 armor divisions, and 11 paratroop divisions.
None of them were capable of airborne operations. The German Army had paratroops who WERE capable of airborne operations.

When the US Army landed in North Africa, among the equipment brought ashore were 3 complete Coca Cola bottling plants.

84 German Generals were executed by Hitler

Among the first "Germans" captured at Normandy were several Koreans. They had been forced to fight for the Japanese Army until they were captured by the Russians and forced to fight for the Russian Army until they were captured by the Germans and forced to fight for the German Army until they were capture by the US Army.

The Graf Spee never sank, The scuttling attempt failed and the ship was bought by the British. On board was Germany's newest radar system.

One of Japan's methods of destroying tanks was to bury a very large artillery shell with on ly the nose exposed. When a tank came near the enough a soldier would whack the shell with a hammer. "Lack of weapons is no excuse for defeat." - Lt. Gen. Mataguchi

Following a massive naval bombardment, 35,000 US and Canadian troops stormed ashore at Kiska. 21 troops were killed in the fire-fight. It would have been worse if there had been Japanese on the island.

The MISS ME was an unarmed Piper Cub. While spotting for US artillery her pilot saw a similar German plane doing the same thing. He dove on the German plane and he and his co-pilot fired their pistols damaging the German plane enough that it had to make a forced landing. Whereupon they landed and took the Germans prisoner. It is unknown where they put them since the MISS ME only had two seats.

Most members of the Waffen SS were not German.

Air attacks caused 1/3 of German Generals' deaths

By D-Day, the Germans had 1.5 million railway workers operating 988,000 freight cars and used 29,000 per day

The only nation that Germany declared war on was the USA.

By D-Day, 35% of all German soldiers had been wounded at least once, 11% twice, 6% three times, 2% four times and 2% more than 4 times

Nuclear physicist Niels Bohr was rescued in the nick of time from German occupied Denmark. While Danish resistance fighters provided covering fire he ran out the back door of his home stopping momentarily to grab a beer bottle full of precious "heavy water". He finally reached England still clutching the bottle, which contained beer. Perhaps some German drank the heavy water...

Germany lost 136 Generals, which averages out to be 1 dead General every 2 weeks

Read More