Lets talk about Sodium!!
 

I have been but on a low sodium diet! Looking for recipes and any suggest to help me succeed.

Lowering my sodium has been my greatest dietary challenge. When I first started I was usually over 4 grams of Na a day, and only about 1.5 grams of K. Totally out of whack. Now I'm getting about 2.4 grams Na and over 5 grams K daily. It's the ratio between the two that's important.

For now I'll just say that I've decreased my canned goods intake and of course avoid fast foods. I'm cooking more meals at home where I can control the sodium. I've also switched to "No Salt" table salt which is 100% K and zero sodium. Took some getting used to, but now I prefer the flavor over regular sodium chloride.

Don't forget that a big part of electrolyte balance is increasing your amount of potassium. There's a thread on the board which lists all the foods that are high in potassium and low in calories.

I had to put this off.

When I started tracking food intake, I was stunned at the amount of salt I still ingested.
And considering my old eating habits, it must have been 3 times that easy, so as bad as 4000 mg a day might sound, it's actually a huge improvement.

My BP is 115/75, so this is a battle I decided not to fight at this time. Once I reach my goals - 11lbs more to go out of a 78lb total loss - I plan on fine tuning my diet to restrict salt to 3000, and that's just as low as I can get on a 4000 calorie a day eat plan.

I eat a lot!

Maybe my intake is not so bad considering that.

Is there anything out there that can flush sodium out of your body? I use to think more more water.. but i recently read that, that is a myth? any other ideas??? Cause there are occasions where I take more then I should and i feel it the next day... any ideas???

I don't think water is a myth. Maybe it doesn't work that well for some people but I can say that when I have high sodium the more water I drink flushes it out of my system faster.

I agree with April that water will help flush it; everything I've ever read suggests this. Another way would be to sweat. I love sitting in a sauna and sweating, it's very healthy. Or you could try a hot bath at home, you'll sweat a lot and won't even know it.

Vito...I wondered that this summer while laying out, I sweated a ton because it was very hot & sunny. Is that the same type of sweating as "working up a sweat"?

As far as I know there's no difference between sweating from working out and sweating from just laying around or in a sauna. I've read that when we perspire we lose sodium and I've never seen any distinction between the mechanism. But somebody correct me if I'm wrong...

That adds benefit to my relaxation of laying in the sun then! It is one of the things that I discovered I like to do this summer once I started taking off the extra flubber.

I think the really solution is to reduce the amount sodium so that you do not need to sweat it out. I have had several follow up visits by a nurse since I got out of the hospital.
She wants me to try and stay below 140 mg.of sodium per serving which is hard to do with todays processed foods . Example salad dressing most have 250-400 mg of sodium per serving.

She suggest diluting them using vinegar (rice wine vinegar). Half bottle of salad dressing topped up with the vinegar reduce the sodium in half. I tried it with Kraft Catalina and it is real good