Watch your Sodium Levels

Luscious · 05-16-2008, 07:59 AM

Watch your sodium levels folks !! Last week I went to doc and my blood pressure was very high - much higher than ever in the past.

I started looking at ways to reduce it - and one solution was to reduce salt intake - well i have NEVER added salt to my food, so didn't think this was a solution. But then I started tracking my sodium intake. It seems many low fat foods have much higher sodium levels - for example the Weight Watchers cottage pie I had purchased was 1,000 mgs of Sodium *gasp*. I was also making a healthy home made vegetable soup - the stock had 1200 mgs per cup (I was having 2 cups a day). Even the V8 juice I thought was so good for me is loaded with sodium. By the time I added up everything in a day, most days I was over 5,500 mgs sodium - that is more than twice the daily recommended limit of 2,400 mgs.

So 3 days ago I switched everything to low salt varities, and stuck with natural low sodium produce. Hopefully my blood pressure will be normal tomorrow when I get it checked. The other benefit - I dropped 2 kgs of excess fluid in 2 days :-) I guess that explained why the scales didn't move for 2 weeks.

Aphrodite1984 · 05-17-2008, 09:03 PM

Wow, I didnt realize that sodium was such a problem. I am not a food salter either, so its something that I never really think about. I will definitely add that to the list of things I check nutritional labels for!

Luscious · 05-18-2008, 06:07 AM

Yep, after a week on low sodium intake (<2400 per day) blood pressure is back to normal, and scales dropped 3.5 kilo (7 pounds) this past week.

Fanny Adams · 05-24-2008, 04:08 AM

Yes, sodium can sneak up on you. When I was in the full liquid post-op phase, I stopped losing weight and started regaining and it took me several weeks to work out that even though I was only taking in around 5-600 calories a day, it was almost all in canned soups, which are high in sodium themselves, and I was pouring on the salt in an effort to satisfy hunger pangs with "flavour". I've stopped putting salt on almost all my foods now (still have to have a little sprinkle on eggs and tomatoes), don't add it in any cooking and avoid processed foods as much as possible.