Do You Need to Manage Your Micronutrients?
Micronutrients are an important part of any healthy diet. They are comprised of all the various vitamins and minerals that your body needs in tiny quantities to stay healthy. They are different from the three major macronutrients that your body needs. If you thought counting calories was overwhelming, the idea of counting micronutrients is way more complicated. So, how much managing do you really need to do with your micronutrients?
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff
Unless your doctor has told you that you have a deficiency in one particular area, there probably isn’t much need for you to spend your day tracking your micronutrients. After all, it would take forever to add up all the calcium, Vitamin A, phosphorus, zinc, iron and other nutrients one by one. Even with a handy app, this process is somewhat incomplete, and it doesn’t tell you enough about your overall health.
Focus on Variety
The problem with trying to manage your micronutrient intake on a day to day basis is that it’s nearly impossible to hit the recommended daily value every day of the week. You would lose your mind trying to find recipes that filled every hole. Instead, you should be looking at your weekly average in each of the four micronutrient categories: water-soluble, fat-soluble, micro-minerals, and trace minerals. Getting a general idea of how you are doing in these four larger categories is much easier and takes way less work. It can also show you instantly where you are lacking.
If you do discover that you are lacking in one area, you should focus on adding more variety to your diet rather than trying to eat one particular food to fill the gap. When you get in a routine of eating the same meals over and over, even if they’re healthy, you may be leaving out something important. Instead, you should try to rotate in a wide range of colorful vegetables and lean meats so that you never end up with a diet that is too heavy on one side of the scale. Strangely, different colors of vegetables tend to correspond with different types of micronutrients, so mixing in red, orange, yellow, purple and green veggies is a great way to guarantee that you are covering all your bases without having to dive deep into the numbers. If you’re unsure of where to begin, consider a meal plan like Lean Lifestyle’s, which lets you select from a wide variety of pre-made menu items that use fresh vegetables of all kinds. The Sesame Ginger Salad is a colorful meal that really delivers in the micronutrient category. Since these meals are already prepared, you won’t have to suffer through a learning curve of how to prepare strange new ingredients.
Get Help With Micronutrients With Lean Lifestyle
Ultimately, managing your micronutrients is complicated even for experts and dietitians. You will be far better off trying new things and focusing in big picture categories than trying to count each micronutrient daily. This is made simple with Lean Lifestyle’s food delivery service, and you can even see it for yourself in the colorful vegetables that show up in the recipes you choose. Keep it simple, and you can get all the micronutrients you need.
