sodium levels!!!! particularly uk

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xojox
xojox Posts: 187 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I put a post on here the other day called 'meant to be fat'. I was feeling particularly low after not losing weight for several weeks.

The post resulted in LOTS of responses, some offering advice, some offering tough love!! all of which was needed i might add :blushing:

The majority were mentioning sodium levels, now after getting over my sulk, i started today to really look into this, and boy is it a shock!!!

For the most part the uk foods are completely wrong when it comes to sodium levels in the database!!

For example i love my cup a soup, they are an ideal lunch that i can quickly eat at work ; on the database it states there is no sodium, however there is 0.55g in 1 sachet!!

The other problem i have noticed with food being entered is that the database is in mg - not g, so when entering an amount for the above food a lot of people are adding 0.55, they should be adding 550!!!!! huge difference.

So if you're at a standstill take a look because it has really shocked me

xjox

Replies

  • Luckymam
    Luckymam Posts: 300
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    I will do! Although I still think our lack of weightloss is due more to a plateau than sodium. I understand that too much sodium can make you retain water but surely your body can only hold so much? Even if you were holding onto 10lbs of water, if you're losing fat, then it should still register on the scales surely? x
  • MLgarcia3
    MLgarcia3 Posts: 503
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    drink LOTS of water! flush out the sodium.. the scale didn't seem to be moving for me for a few days and it bummed me out.. so i started drinking more than the recommended amount when i noticed i was going over on sodium, and then my weight went down :-)
  • julest25
    julest25 Posts: 140 Member
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    I'd noticed the gram / milligram thing too. My problems not so much salt but my love of wine:drinker:
  • Tasha1476
    Tasha1476 Posts: 220
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    Sodium levels are INSANE, I just started watching them a few weeks ago when I hit my first plateau, and like you I was SHOCKED. I was taking in double sometimes triple the amount of recommended sodium... Once I got that under control (along with starting to Calorie zig-zag) the weight started coming off again. Hopefully now that you understand sodium and how ridiculously high it is in stuff (mostly processed stuff) you can avoid it. :D
  • Kate_UK
    Kate_UK Posts: 1,299 Member
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    Wow I drink lots of cupa soups, I didn't realise that they were so high in salt!
  • rubysparkle
    rubysparkle Posts: 362 Member
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    Actually this is interesting to me because i too have been logging my sodium from UK products and my sodium never gets anywhere near meeting the half way mark, let alone going over it, most things suggest it has zero sodium so this is something i need to watch out for also.

    On another note i always found a tsp of cider vinegar in my water (once a day) helped get rid of water retention. :)
  • Tasha1476
    Tasha1476 Posts: 220
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    Actually this is interesting to me because i too have been logging my sodium from UK products and my sodium never gets anywhere near meeting the half way mark, let alone going over it, most things suggest it has zero sodium so this is something i need to watch out for also.

    On another note i always found a tsp of cider vinegar in my water (once a day) helped get rid of water retention. :)

    Thanks for posting the vinegar thing! I will have to try that!
  • goron59
    goron59 Posts: 890 Member
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    I get confused by salt vs sodium... As a result I tend not to enter sodium/salt levels when entering into the DB. A general consequence, I suppose, is that you can't rely on MFP to track it for you.
  • johnthefatman
    johnthefatman Posts: 205
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    To convert salt to sodium multiply salt by 4/10 or put another way sodium = salt * 0.4

    sodium in MFP is measured in milligrams - always a whole number

    Many UK products have the gram value entered as a decimal e.g. 0.55 which should of course be 550

    If the value entered is less that 0.5 MFP will round down and show 0

    So you can have 5 items all with sodium entered as decimal grams that would show 0 sodium while actually adding up to your whole daily RDA.

    If you are tracking salt / sodium always check the nutritional values and edit them where its wrong.

    I have tried to suggest to Mike the man that this could be fixed by some clever data manipulation in the data base but after initially responding to me he has gone silent - maybe we should all mail him.

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