Personal Diet Analysis - Essay Example

"Personal Diet Analysis" is a great example of a paper on food and nutrition. I am a 42-year-old female that weighs 180 pounds and has a body fat percentage of 31.693%. I am 5 feet and 6 inches, and my BMI is 29.05 kg/m2. This diet analysis was conducted on three consecutive days i.e., 07/12, 07/13, and 07/14. Since I have a BMI range of 29.05, I am overweight, and I agree with these stats (Ashwell & Gibson, 2019). I have been living a sedentary lifestyle for most of my life, with little to no physical activity.

However, over the last few months, I have been hitting the gym with aerobic being top of my exercise plan. Furthermore, lately, I have been going for occasional walks for an average duration of 1 hr a day. I plan on continuing to hit the gym and doing other forms of exercise.Analysis In most cases, my daily carbohydrate intake level was a lot slower than the recommended amount. According to the report, I only consume about 477.568 kcal out of the (1,295.1-1,870.7) recommended amount of calories.

The decline in calorie intake levels can be attributed to less physical activity, stress, and increased consumption of vegetables. Even though my carbohydrate intake is low, it is still proportional to the total calories my body needs. My body needs an estimated daily calorie of 1850, whereas my plate analysis recommends calorie levels up to 3200 per day. Hence, my carbohydrates are still within the daily recommended amount of total calories. I usually try my best to consume some whole grains, which do not comprise brown rice.

I have also noticed that my dietary fiber is about 75% of the daily recommended amount, which stands at about 25.0g/day. Including more foods like popcorn and berries can be a perfect way to increase my dietary fiber.One thing that I am always cautious about when I eat is checking for the number of sugars that are in it. For fruits and natural sugars, it is not as large a deal, but for items like candy and other sweet foods, they should be constrained (Lim, ET AL., 2019). I think this lifestyle choice is reflected in my analysis as, on average, I rarely take sugar as it is not recommended.

For fat, my consumption was slightly lower than it should have been. I averaged 382.935 kcal over the three days. This fell under the DRI range that is based on 575.6-1,007.3. As I was averaging a much lower caloric intake, fat made up 31.693% of my daily total caloric intake. While this is not astronomically low, it could be increased by replacing the food I eat with more top fatty foods such as extra virgin olive oil. My fat distribution is pretty good with saturated fats, not making up more than 10% of my total calories.

My cholesterol levels were less than mg recommended. However, I may want to slightly improve my cholesterol levels by eating an egg a day since it is essential to have cholesterol in your body.On average, I consumed 369.284 kcal of protein that is about 30.563% of my total caloric intake. This is within the DRI of 10 to 35 percent. My RDA for protein is 65 grams per day, so my average consumption of 92 grams per day was way too much than the recommended amount. I could stabilize my protein intake is to reduce my serving size of chicken or fish by 1 ounce at dinner time, which would give me a little less protein without much altering the fats intake (Webster et al. 2019).During the three days, my vitamins and minerals do appear to below.

However, the analysis does not include my One a Day Men's Health Formula daily multivitamin that I take every day. While in this class, I realized that my vitamin and mineral intake was lower than it ought to be, so I started taking a vitamin to supplement what I wasn't getting from my food. I could still improve my vitamin and mineral intake by eating more fruits and veggies. Specifically, my Vitamin D and Vitamin A intake were lower than they should be (without taking into account my multivitamin).

One way to help raise these levels would be to eat more spinach, carrots, salmon, and eggs.My daily intake of sodium was below the recommended amount of 2,300mg. It fell to 1500mg on average for the three days. Sodium is another mineral that I try to be conscious of my consumption with, as increased amounts can be a risk factor for hypertension. The highest sodium in my diet came from the kielbasa and tamale, which are not food items that I consume regularly.After analyzing my diet over the three days, I have concluded that I am not at an increased risk for disease.

I also do not have any significant risk factors as I do not smoke, have a family history of heart disease, and have neither hypertension, hyperlipidemia, nor diabetes mellitus. The only risk factor that I can associate with my analysis is that I have a mostly sedentary lifestyle. While this is far from my preferred lifestyle, it is necessary for my well-being. If I continue to eat this amount of food, I believe I would lose some more weight. I have learned a lot through this class, and one thing that I have implemented is the consumption of a daily multivitamin.

I plan to continue exercising more and being more active.