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What About Vitamins Minerals and Nutrients ?

As you lose weight maintaining balanced nutrition is important. At the same time attempts to try to track too many things is one reason many give up a program. Many people I interviewed while working on this diet plan, all tried the dozen or so sites or programs and that track everything you eat. I used one for about four months It took me about 10-15 minutes to enter what I planed to eat or ate, and it would not let me enter in weight of food or calories directly - All of the sites I tried had the same confusing "Servings" vs weight and volume issues found on USDA labels. They forced you to use the USDA database with all 23 nutritional items tracked. Just becomes confusing and I never trusted calorie estimates. I had to worry about about Na, good fats, bad fats and the 23 other things. In the end, I stoped using those sites because just too much to track and way too complex and went to my simple spreadsheet -
The Daily Log. I do my daily Carnot log in under 2 minutes every day and the final caloric numbers are in my total control, using a spreadsheet and I am good at guessing weights and Cal-Index after 6 months of training. I have my daily weight plugged into the Heat Engine Model as final judge and jury - it is the final check that I am accurate not kidding myself about anything.

The fact is if you pick the right foods based on the Cal-Index Menu, and do best to maintain an average Cal-Index of about 0.5 to 1.0 per day, you will have a healthy, nutritious food plan and for now, and no need to track anything else. We know that because spent 100's of hours data mining the USDA database based on both the Cal-Index cheat sheet categories as well as 100's of Carnot meals.

The table seen below shows mean values of key nutrients vs Cal-Index
Carnot Periodic Table categories (0.25 to 9.0). Were going to focus on Total Lipids (all good and bad fats) vs Cal-Index as an example. We will show you how we got the 0.25 to 1.0 Lipid value.
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I think we made an interesting discovery - You can eat foods in all categories 0.5 to 9.0, but if you try to keep your average Cal-Index under 1.0 each day, you will likely get the minimums for all important nutrients, reduce your Lipid intake, increase protein intake. You do that by selecting foods and ingredients from all categories, just in the end you keep within your calorie budget for the day, and do best to not go above average Cal-Index of 1.0.

We have spent 100's hours data mining the USDA database for all Vitamins and Minerals, fats, and most everything you need tied to Cal-Index using a well known data mining program (
DataDesk 6.3) . Data mining makes it possible to discovery relations and correlations between many variables in large data sets. We provide a data desk file and a .csv file of the current USDA database in the Download tab. Additional details are provided in the Diet Science tab.

On the left is a Cal-Index histogram from the data miner of all 7,906 entries. Below the histogram is a scatter plot of Cal-Index vs all Lipids. Can quickly see that Lipids go up as Cal-Index increases - not a surprise. Now place your mouse over the image and see when we select the 0.5-1.0 the Category B. range we get two things - the red shows those selected items, and we added a statistical report. Mean is Lipids 1.40g/100g same as table seen above.

So what does that mean ? It means you will not have to worry about Lipids no matter what you eat as long as Cal-Index average is between 0.5 and 1.0 and you stay within the calorie budget for any day - actually it is a bit more complex that, but that statement is true. It also means you do not have to worry about Protein or Carbohydrate content, or mineral content other than two items. We found Fiber and Na may take some extra care and attention, more to come below and see Fiber and Low Na, and High Na tabs.

I will show you how fast and easy it is to maintain that .5-1 Cal-Index range and stay within a calorie budget in the
Carnot Daily Table. I have learned after 6 months how to do both naturally - I still keep my log but for fun - However, I do not need the daily log to lose or maintain my weight or stay healthy anymore -- I am a Carnot Black Belt Ninja.

Sodium and Fiber

We cover details of these in separate tabs below.

Sodium
is easy to eat and add to any meal. Too much Sodium (Na) can have a major effect on your daily weight by increasing blood volume (see Low Na, and High Na tabs). I have is a Na war story: I ate some half-sour pickles one day I bought from the store - They have a Cal-Index of 0.18 and about 11 calories/pickle,  and I ate 3-4 pickles. Next day I gained over a pound because they were so salty. I could taste the salt when I ate them. I discovered they were made in 15% brine solution (I measured it using a refractometer) so can they can be mass produced in few days. So I learned how to make pickles myself but use 3.5% brine (see Recipes tab). Everyone says my pickles are the best, easy to make and they are not salty - I do not gain weight when I eat my pickles for a snack. Water retention weight will vanish in a day or so, but can be discouraging, and you only need 2,300 mg of Na a day, plus it is not great for your blood pressure. Well documented that salt reduced diets help lower blood pressure. By the way this has nothing to do with water retention. You blood volume can expand by many liters with no change in blood pressure. The Na reduced diet reduces blood pressure do to changes in several vascular active hormones. Not necessary to track Na just look for low sodium ingredients when you can and don't add too much salt. For example V8 Juice has Cal-Index of 0.18 and can get when traveling - I always ask for low Na V8, and if drinking V8 at home I add tabasco sauce to spice it up a bit.

Dietary Fiber is a carbohydrate but does not get counted in any calorie count see Fiber tab.. It helps maintain regular bowel movement, feeds important bacteria in your digestive system, helps prevent cancer, and can help make you feel like your full. When you sort the USDA database using the Fiber column, it is a surprise what is high and what is not so high. You need about 25 grams of Fiber per day. Based on the average of 1.33 grams in the .5 to 1 Cal index range that would require about 1900 calories per day - again this is a simplification, but when we look at individual meal data where I have maintained an under 1.0 Cal-Index we often have under 20 grams of fiber. So I pick high fiber winners as part of my menu - Artichoke hearts are on the top of the list they have a Cal-Index of 0.46 if cooked Sous Vide or en Papillote (in Parchment) and 6.8 grams of Fiber per 100 grams. I often eat a Quest Protein bar as my morning breakfast - they all have 20g of Fiber. (see Links Ingredients). A morning Vitamix Drink also makes great breakfast at home, and if you use Raspberries, Blueberries, Cranberries We list Fiber high Fiber foods that have Cal-Index of under 1.0 in the Mined USDA List tab.


Bottom line: is if you focus on eating fewer calories than you burn and keep the average Cal-Index at 0.5- 0.7 you're also going to have great nutrition for most important things. Let me emphasize that you need to pick things that give you a well balanced diet. Fish meet with sauces, etc.. are all OK, just want to keep average Cal Index below 1.0 and use Portion Control to keep calories at your target weight loss level.
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