Taking better care of myself.

Now that I realize that I might live into old age, I'm determined to start taking care of myself.  I wasn't a completely slug before, but as I am trying to create new health habits as part of my retirement, I realize that 1) I wasn't as virtuous/healthful as I thought and 2) this is harder than it looks.

I have a Fitbit - one of those electronic pedometers - and since I retired I have been recording on their site both my exercise beyond steps and what I eat.  (It's time consuming, even with their huge database of foods and their nutritional values.) I've also signed up for their "premium services", which let me track some additional things.  Things I have learned:

• Even though I go to the gym or get some other form of exercise almost daily, I have discovered that I am not especially active by the measures that count.  After reading articles like this one in the NY Times, I've been trying to increase the number of active minutes in my day (actually, the tracking program I use has "active calories", but they don't exactly explain what it means.  It's some form of intensity weighted minutes, but I don't know the formula)
• I've been trying to get my calories earlier in the day, based on reports like this one .  My Fitbit tells me that if I want to lose weight I should have at most 30% of my calories in the evening.  That's not easy.  
• This article suggests that as people get older, we need more protein (about 25% more a day).  I've discovered that I don't even get the amount needed by younger people, so I need to increase my protein intake a lot.
• Of course, we all need fiber, and I had always believed that my intake of mostly whole grains meant I was getting enough fiber.  Fitbit tells me that I'm typically about 25% low.
• Like almost everyone else, I get too many of my calories from fat.  I suspect that if I would give up butter, I would be OK, but that would be a big sacrifice for me.
• On the good news side, I do pretty well on sodium. I come out barely over the amount allotted a non-hypertensive person. I suspect that Fitbit overestimates my sodium intake, as I often substitute in the tally some prepared item that is similar in composition to a homemade item I made (it's a lot less work than entering all the ingredients one by one), and I think many of those are higher in sodium than the things I make.  
• I also do OK on added sugars, which surprised me a bit.  To the best of my ability to count this (it's harder to count than other things), I'm pretty close to the very low limits of 6 teaspoons/day. 

Now that I know reasonably well what my deficiencies are, I've been trying to move the needle in the right direction.  I'll talk more about exercise in another post.  The food changes are surprisingly difficult.  I'm not sure about how to make any of the changes I need (other than lowering the fat percentage, and maybe that would come as a side effect of making the other changes).  If I get more fiber and protein into my diet, the amount of fat should go down, no? But where does this fiber and protein come from?  I often have yogurt or eggs for breakfast, but that isn't enough (and neither of those has fiber). I have meat for at least one other meal and sometimes two.  Why isn't that enough protein?  Now that it's spring, I will easily eat some more fruit.  Will that be enough more fiber? Why is it that health articles are quick to explain what's wrong with our diets/lifestyles, but never seem to give practical advice about how to change them.  

No wonder so few people meet these "official" health goals.  It's not easy, at least given the diet we are starting from.