Nutrition Is Important or Something

I've always had problems with being tired too much, which is partially because I have a crazy sleep schedule and sometimes caused by stress and things, but it's been really bad lately. After about ten hours of sleep last night and finally forcing myself out of bed after noon and still being exhausted, I realised I may have a nutrient deficiency. 

At the suggestion of several people, I downloaded My Fitness Pal, which is an app you can get for Android or iPhone. It tells you what your goals should be for certain nutrients (though I wish it was a little more extensive in the vitamins it includes) and you can customise everything if their goals for your height and weight seem off. It has a huge log of foods for you to search to create your log, and you can scan any barcode to enter its nutrition information. I've actually had a lot of fun scanning things and creating my logs. After logging today's and yesterday's foods, it's pretty easy to see that I'm not getting enough potassium. I know I can judge solely off a couple of days, but I ate more foods with potassium than usual today and I still only got about a third of what I should. But it's a really cool app because I can see what I need to eat more (or less) of throughout the day as I log things. It's definitely something I would recommend to those who feel they may not be getting enough essential nutrients. 

However, I can see this being a really, really dangerous app for anyone who struggles with weight and body image. I added like 500 calories to what the app suggested for me because it is so low. If you have any sort of guilt associated with food or you restrict yourself from eating, please do not use an app like this. I'm not sure this is even healthy if your goal is to lose weight. After completing yesterday's food log, the app told me I would gain 9 pounds in 5 weeks if I ate like that every day. This doesn't account for genetics and activity and so many possible variable. Plus, unless you're weighing and measuring every single thing you eat, there's a whole lot of estimation involved. Please don't take this app too seriously; use it to get healthy.

Listening to: All You Can Do by Watsky