What is a healthy way to add sodium and protein to your diet without adding too much calories?

nousername88

I've been on a clean: no sugar, no gluten, no dairy diet for about 1 week now. I feel low in energy and a little moody too. I work out 4 times a week, 60 minutes each session. Myfitnesspal food tracker suggested that I eat 2,300mg of sodium. My diet showed that I was only taking 200mg per day. I don't like anything that's too salty. I also don't want to get sodium from processed food. Is there a better way to get the recommended daily sodium?

Chief_Rocka

Salt your egg whites

jgnatca

Protein by weight has the same calorie load as carbohydrate so simply change out some of your carbohydrates with the same amount of protein.

This is how to add salt that isn't hidden in processed food:


"1500 mg of sodium equals about 3/4 teaspoons or 3.75 grams of salt per day, while 2300 mg equals about one teaspoon and 6 grams of salt per day"

So you only need to add one teaspoon a day.

Need2Exerc1se

Frozen boneless skinless chicken breasts. Add salt when cooking if the sodium still isn't high enough.

blktngldhrt

for sodium, i drink chicken bouillon. 10 calories. not sure how clean it is. I'm guessing not clean at all.

i second the salt shaker.

4legsRbetterthan2

turkey lunch meat!
ground turkey tacos

sympha01

200 mg a day is a red flag. It is nigh impossible to achieve that if you're eating food, even if you've given up dairy and bread -- unless you're just eating fresh fruits and vegetables, and even that seems unlikely to me. There's sodium in fresh meat, for example. There's a surprising amount of sodium in many green leafy vegetables (I'm looking at you, chard!) and sometimes things like tomatoes. Like, you could easily get 200 mg sodium from 1 cup of fresh diced tomatoes plus 200 g of fresh spinach.

If MFP is saying you're getting 200 mg of sodium a day, I think the MOST likely thing is that you are inadvertently choosing inaccurate database entries when you log, or are otherwise logging inaccurately. In my experience, a HUGE percentage of the database here is missing lots of information: user-entered by people who only cared about calories and left the macros or sodium or fiber blank, for example. Look at your database entries with a skeptical eye. If you are mainly eating fresh fruits and veg, be sure and choose the entries that have no asterisk next to them -- they are really the only ones that you can trust. Same with unprocessed meat (i.e., any meat that isn't sausage, deli-style, smoked, or cured): use the non-asterisk database entries to get a good overall accuracy for the nutritional info including the sodium base.

Your diary isn't open, so I can't say for sure that the next possible problem is that you're logging accurately, but eating way too few calories, period. That's the only other way I can imagine achieving <200 mg daily.