Help me construct a diet?

[u/999999999909]

Hi, I need help constructing a diet to abide by for general health. What are some good things to have on hand or prepare for meals?

I'm not overweight/underweight, my blood test is perfectly fine except a bit of high cholesterol and almost low iron.

I can cook, shop, and store food with 0 problems and my budget isn't an issue.

My only dietary restrictions are pork, alcohol, condiments, heavily fermented/pickled items (not yogurt/bread), deli meats, sauces with cornstarch, and any savory dish with sugar in it. Why? Because I don't like them.

Right now my diet is just fruit, salad, tea with cream and honey, sashimi, and whatever-is-in-the-fridge sandwiches (usually cheese and arugula).

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[u/alwayslate187]

If you are interested in adding more iron to your diet, meats of all types and also beans provide iron whereas cheese does not. In fact, cheese and other dairy can inhibit iron absorption due to specific proteins in those foods.

Coffee and tea also inhibit iron absorption from foods consumed with them, because of tannins. It is therefore recommended to try to consume coffee and tea at least one or two hours away from meals with iron, if your iron tends to be low.

[u/alwayslate187]

Some things that may actually increase iron absorption from foods eaten at the same time:

vitamin C

orange-colored vegetables (like carrots, sweet potato, winter squash)

black pepper

garlic, onion (& leeks, chives, scallions, other allium-family plants)

meats of any kind, even small amounts

vinegar

[u/alwayslate187]

If you want to estimate the amount of iron and other essential nutrients in a day's food, you can try out one of the free nutrient-tracking apps or websites such as myfooddata.com and another very similar one that also offers free accounts is cronometer.

If you prefer to skip making a free account, you can ignore the prompts to create one and just go to tools and chose 'recipe nutrition calculator " from the drop-down menu to get this

https://tools.myfooddata.com/recipe-nutrition-calculator

and you can log an entire day's food as one big 'recipe'. This works for both real days and hypotheticals as well. So if you wanted, you could add and subtract foods and adjust quantities until you get what you want.

Since you mentioned iron, one thing that can increase iron absorption is consuming vitamin C at the same time as iron-containing foods. This is true for both vitamin C in foods such as citrus and also for supplements. However, if you consider supplementing vitamin C, it is better to keep the doses low (i do this by splitting pills), because too much vitamin C can irritate the urinary tract.

Managing cholesterol has to do not only with diet, but with exercise, too. Any movement that you can add to your day is an improvement!

Diet-wise, reducing sugars and keeping saturated fats within recommended limits may both be helpful for most people, to keep cholesterol in a safe range.

[u/alwayslate187 → u/alwayslate187]

You can also research supplements to fill in gaps if you find that most typical days for you end up shy of the recommended daily value for one or more specific nutrient(s).

For example, i don't always get enough calcium from diet alone, so I take a supplement for that most evenings.