Iron

[liv]

Iron is my problem mineral

I know Atkins recommends not taking supplements because we get enough from the foods we consume. But I never do. I think the recommendation is 18 mg but I barely get half than that. If you are using fitday or something similar what are your numbers? I am just wondering. Maybe I am eating the wrong foods?

[mizski]

I never really paid much attention to the iron #s in FitDay but I just looked. On a day where I had 14mg FitDay says it's 179% RDA but there is no DV %. Looking over the last month, my average range seems to be 4mg - 8mg iron/day with some high days ranging from 12mg-14mg. It all depends upon what I ate that day.

Those numbers only measure the iron in my foods and do not take into account how much was absorbed. Different foods and food combinations affect iron absorption.

The iron RDA/DV for pre-menopausal women is 18mg; post-menopausal women, 8mg and men age 19+, 8mg. Based on that I seem to be in an ok range for 8mg/day.

I don't know what to tell you. I eat a wide variety of allowed foods and that's all I'm getting for iron. I only have ~1200-1400 cal/day though so I'm not eating as much as many people do. Besides liver, the highest iron foods are lentils and beans and even if in that rung, the portions are pretty small meaning one would still not get a whole lot of iron from them.

I don't think your iron levels would be a problem unless you are menstruating very heavily in which case you would need more. I'll be interested to see what others have to say.

[Barb1965]

Can't help you either with exact numbers, but I know when I'm doing Atkins faithfully, my iron actually tends to get too high (had a complete hysterctomy at 26 so no bleeding here). I donate blood every 6 weeks to keep mine in the right range. They love that high Iron O Positive blood, lol.

Maybe you are eating more fish and poultry than me who loves a good cut of beef or ground beef?

[liv]

Thanks for letting me know guys.
I seems to be getting around 5 mg right now but my food intake is low now as I am in ketosis. But even when I am not in ketosis and I'm eating more levels are low.

I absolutely need more iron I am cronic low.

I guess when Atkins make those recommendations it is probably more based on measuring the actual level of iron in the blood than on the iron we have in our food.

I take supplements but am barely hanging in there (my peri menopause are giving me periods from ****) so I wondered how others were doing with their foods.

[pinkfusion]

i never thought to look at that but just based on the foods that i eat i am consistently under 100% and i dont shy away from red meat. i do take a supplement with iron in it though which makes up the difference.

[liv]

Thanks pink
I ran into a bad period of iron deficiency again. I tried to make for it in pills and became constipated. Cannot win on this one. I am now OWLing which for me means more foods (I fall off ketosis before I hit 20 carbs) so more foods but I am still not close in getting needed iron through foods. I'm working on it though.

[DarlingBri]

As far as I know, spinach is the highest iron natural foood source.

You are taking a mutli-vitamin without iron as recommended, yes? My compromise is to take a multi with very low iron - all the multi's I looked at had tons but I found one with 5% of the RDA, which I don't think is near enough to get stopped up but should help.

Also I put flax on salads just in case

[liv]

Absolutely NOT taking multivitamin without iron. I am needing all the iron I can get.
Spinach has a good reputation. I did chicken livers. And I think I will keep up with that. I also realized that tahini is high on iron so I think I will get out my bottle and make some hummus. Yeah those dark greens like spinach is supposed to be good. I will pick up some kale next time I hit the grocery store.
Thanks for the suggestion bri