i spent $450 on groceries, $220 on cleaning and bathroom supplies and $150 on supplements, and i'm now entirely stocked up on everything imaginable until the spring, when i'll need to do that again. grocery bills will be for perishables - fruits and vegetables, breads and eggs and cheese. that's how i keep my monthly bills down - i buy pantry items in bulk ahead of time. it requires a little bit of expenditure up front to appreciate the savings in the long run.
let me do this again.
- the b and c are being cut in 4 and taken every six hours instead of all at once. they are here and i've been doing this for a few days, now.
- 100 iu of e at 0:00 on mondays, wednesdays and fridays, with sunday left optional.
- i am going to buy a kelp tablet i can cut in 4 and take 1/4 of the tablet every day at 6:00. this will give me a little more than 150 mcg of iodine/day, which is the rdi.
- 1000 iu of d at 12:00
- the a is being cut in 1/2 and 1/2 is being taken at 18:00 daily. this is 2500 iu daily. this is between the rdis for women and men, and probably right for me. i ordered this yesterday and it should be here this week.
- i am going to take 2 tums after each full meal as a calcium supplement for now on (800 mg elemental calcium)
- i'm deciding not to take pills for vitamin k. i eat a salad-based diet and i take a lot of estrogen. so, i want my blood a little thin and might be concerned about overdoing it on vitamin k creating clotting risks. this is the one vitamin i want to keep a little low. i have seen no symptoms of a difficulty coagulating.
- i'm going to take a tbsp of flax dissolved in a glass of water daily at 15:00 for omega-3s. i should meet the rdi of them, at 1.7 g of ala, if i do that.
- i'm going to note that i drink at least 250 ml of soy and 4 mini cups of coffee a day and usually closer to twice that
- i have devised a daily minimum meal made up of:
a bowl with:
- 3 tbsp of raw, unroasted, unsalted, hulled sunflower seeds (longstanding)
- 3 tbsp of hulled hemp seeds (longstanding)
- 3 tbsp of hulled chia seeds (bought, added)
- 3 tbsp of wheat bran (longstanding)
- 3 tbsp of soy lecithin <------not yet
- 30 g of all bran (longstanding)
- 1 tbsp of paprika (longstanding)
- 1 tbsp of ground cumin (longstanding)
- 1 tbsp of dried oregano (longstanding)
- 2 cloves of garlic (longstanding)
- 1 beet (longstanding)
- 1 avocado (longstanding)
- 50 g broccoli (longstanding)
- dried dill, caesar, hot sauce, nutritional yeast for flavour (yeast does have some b vitamins still) (longstanding)
with
- one banana (longstanding, bought)
- one orange (longstanding, bought)
- two pieces of untoasted quinoa-flax bread with unclear spread (longstanding)
- one tum (longstanding)
that has
- in total, 12+ g of omega-3s
- 23+ g of omega-6s
- 55+ g of mostly complete protein, which is about right on the rdi for my weight, maybe a little more. i would prefer to barely meet the rdi or just miss it for protein. excess protein is hard on your body and stored inefficiently as fat. high protein diets are stupid.
- minimal saturated fat for absorption (some in the dressing, avocado, soy lecithin)
- some carbs. whatever. carbs aren't worth measuring.
- it's all stored the same way. your body uses less energy to process carbs and more energy to process protein but it does the same thing with excess amounts of them, which is store it as fat. what i'm more interested in is the fact that flax, hemp, chia, soy, quinoa and in fact also sunflower are all complete proteins and have all 9 essential amino acids, although the sunflower seeds are low in lysine (and high in vitamin e, selenium, omega-6s). i'm not aiming for a protein salad, but this would be pretty effective if i was.
- 180%+ rdi for magnesium
- 160%+ rdi for phosphorus
- 110%+ of the rdi for potassium
- 120%+ rdi for calcium
- 210%+ of rdi for manganese
- 30+ mg of iron (elemental) (300% of a 10 mg amount but i have absorption issues and need it)
- 195%+ of rdi for copper
- 125%+ of rdi for zinc
- 125%+ rdi for selenium
- 110%+ rdi for molybdenum (not including the high amount in soy milk that isn't bioavailable)
- 175%+ of the rdi for choline (960 mg) & an additional 100% in the form of betaine (550 mg).
- some sulfur in the garlic
- some inositol and salicylic acid in the orange
- extra food-based vitamins (carotenoids, b vitamins, a little c, some d, a fair amount of e and some k)
- around 950-1000 mg of sodium. ish. which is a decent minimum meal amount.
this will be taken at 3:00 am or 9:00 am on days where i didn't eat a full meal the previous day and will be intended to ensure i'm meeting daily rdis while i continue to lose weight. this may mean i go longer between meals. but this isn't a meal, and is not intended as one. it is not high in calories but is very high in nutrients.
the bread is still pretty fortified and the flax-quinoa bread has a fair amount of ala. the soy has lost a lot of vitamins but is still worthwhile. the all bran in canada has been stripped to almost nothing, like the yeast, but it's still a good source of betaine. i'd like to get some better caesar dressing as i eat a lot of it.
i did not initially measure iodine because i assumed the salt in the bread, caesar and hot sauce was iodized. in fact, the salt in the bread and the soy or not iodized and i have not yet heard from frank's, or contacted great value or all bran. i feel this is a failure by health canada, which should be mandating iodine in soy milk, bread, cereal and sauces like frank's and casear. what is a good source of daily iodine, then?
don't tell me to just eat salt. health canada stupidly tells you to eat a teaspoon of table salt a day. that's 6 g of salt. the mayo institute says to keep it under 1.5g. you'd need to eat around 4g of table salt a day to meet the iodine rdi. that's a disgusting amount of salt that is going to make you fat and give you heart problems. in fact, in 2026, table salt is not a feasible source of iodine for healthy people to use because the fortification level is way too low. it should by increased by roughly 5x so that you only need less than 1g of table salt, which is still more than you should eat, to meet the rdi. further, there should be a recognition by health canada that fewer canadians consume table salt today than in the past. i do not use table salt for any purpose at all (i don't even buy it) and i am no longer an obscure minority. there should consequently be further iodine fortification mandated in soy milk, bread, pasta and other processed foods, under the realization that iodine is scarce in the diets of healthy people, today.
when i was doing my initial diet design, i wanted to include seaweed, but it never happened and it still looks to be infeasible.
i don't drink cow's milk because it's utterly disgusting and i don't eat seafood because it's not worth the risk for mercury and other contaminants.
that leaves eggs and cheese as the only substantive sources and i'd have to eat an unrealistic amount of cheese, daily, to meet the rdi.
i'm left with the reality that i am going to have to take an iodine pill due to insufficiently mandated iodine fortifications in the utterly backwards failed state we call canada. this should be included in bread and soy and i shouldn't need to worry about it. i'm consequently not including iodine levels in the minimum meal because it's in the supplements list.
not measured:
- chloride (i should get enough in the city water in windsor)
- chromium
- boron
- fluoride (windsor's water is back to being fluoridated, that should be fine)
- nickel
- carbs (who cares?)
- glucose (this should be low)
- calories (calories are irrelevant to human health)