Lets talk about sodium.

Mykaelous

Alright so there are a lot of threads about general weight loss but in this thread I want to talk about sodium intake and its effect on water retention. I've never been too concerned about sodium because my health instructor at my university said that you don't need to worry about sodium intake if you don't have high blood pressure, maintain a good amount of daily activity and drink lots of water.

My daily sodium intake is between 4-5k, which is more than double the recommended value of 2300 mg. This is simply due to my reliance on canned and frozen food which tends to be high in preservatives(salt). While this certainly won't affect fat loss it does appear that this can effect your weight at the scale and bloating. I am less concerned about weight than I am about bloating due to or related to sodium. This is because I like to take pictures every Monday to monitor my progress and it would be nice to take a non-bloat picture from time to time so see my real progress.

So my question is what techniques do people employ to get rid of bloating due to sodium techniques? How many days should I expect it to take for bloating as a result of sodium to go way? For example should I try to drop my sodium to 1000mg for 3 days before taking photo's to get the best most ripped look?

Aaron_K123

..my health instructor at my university said that you don't need to worry about sodium intake if you don't have high blood pressure, maintain a good amount of daily activity and drink lots of water.

I tend to agree.

My daily sodium intake is between 4-5k, which is more than double the recommended value of 2300 mg.

The reason MFP defaults to track "sugar" and "sodium" in addition to your macros is to help out diabetics and people with high blood pressure. I don't think having 4-5k of sodium for someone with normal blood pressure is a problem at all.

While this certainly won't affect fat loss it does appear that this can effect your weight at the scale and bloating

Oh it most certainly can do that. It takes about 2 pounds of water to solubilize just 400mg of sodium to the bodies preferred sodium concentration.

am less concerned about weight than I am about bloating due to or related to sodium.

Oh well if it is a vanity thing then yeah if you limit your sodium you will have less water retention and less bloat or "puffiness". That said, do NOT overdo it, you need sodium for health.

So my question is what techniques do people employ to get rid of bloating due to sodium techniques?

Limit sodium intake, drink lots of water. Thats about it. If you take this to an extreme though you can cause yourself some major health issues.

Aaron_K123

Hope you don't take offense to this but if your avatar picture is a most recent picture of you and you wish to be at your "most ripped" you are going to have to lose considerably more bodyfat to achieve that before bloat from sodium is going to make much of a difference.

I would say the same thing to myself given my current %bodyfat so I'm not saying this to insult you, just saying practically speaking you aren't cut enough that sodium bloat is going to hide your six pack because...well...no six pack.

MrTolerable

What is important with sodium is finding your potassium relationship with it.

If I were to have 4k of sodium daily I would have pimples all over my face - UNLESS I hit my potassium ratio.

And it will indeed cause bloating -but not for guys our size :smokin: