having a hard time reducing sodium

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  • tetecia
    tetecia Posts: 75 Member
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    I have to keep my Sodium at 1,500 mg/day or under. What i've found is to stay AWAY from all forms of Processed foods. Some days i'm really good, others i go over like crazy because i have something from the frozen foods section. Also, if you drink Soda; that's got like 800 mg/sodium in just 1 12 oz can. Also, try to cook your meals from scratch. Use as many fresh vegetables, or frozen without preservatives as possible to keep the sodium down. Also, when you put sauces on your food when cooking; read the label. A lot of sauces have loads of sodium, especially if you don't measure out the amount of sauce per the exact amount of protein you are cooking for. There a loads of Low Sodium cookbooks you can check out, as well as The American Heart Association website (heart.org) has a mini low sodium cookbook that is at least worth a look. That's just a few things i've realized learned over the years.
  • mdonovan
    mdonovan Posts: 44
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    Chuck out anything frozen/processed, up your veggie intake and drink more water than you ever thought possible. My husband and I have been cooking everything ourselves from scratch, and I rarely come close to my sodium limit.
  • NaturallyOlivia
    NaturallyOlivia Posts: 496 Member
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    Seems like everyone is giving pretty good advice. I have trouble with it to, I dont cook at all so everything I eat is processed... I've learned to look at the label and buy low sodium products (even canned vegetables have a lot!) If you can, get fresh fruits and veggies.. A lot of the weight watchers labeled items tend to be lower than some oters but not all so look at different versions of the same product if you can. Good luck!

    If you *have* to eat canned veggies, try rinsing them in water before you heat them up. That will get rid of a lot of added sodium.

    This is a good idea. Very simple but I would never have thought of it!
  • Tdk4685
    Tdk4685 Posts: 293 Member
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    When I first started I was worried about sodium as well but once I saw the breakdown I realized it wasnt all that bad. Stay away from processed and fast foods. Those are the killers. I still use the salt shaker on what I fix at home and I rarely go over the daily allowance.
  • lyndalpn
    lyndalpn Posts: 151 Member
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    As everyone else has said. Processed food has lots of salt - its a cheap preeservative and enhances the flavours that are lost in the processing. The less processed food you eat the better.

    My sodiuym intake ranges around 800-1500 a day most days and occasionally hits 2,000 if I have eaten out. I am not specifically aiming for it to be low, I just dont eat much processed food so it ends up that way. When I do use canned things in cooking (like tinned tomatoes or kidney beans for example) I specifically look for the low salt or no salt varieties - but you can still see that they have a lot. For me, the major contributors to my salt intake are canned beans and fish.

    Remember that fruit and veg are low in salt, in the most cases low in calories and almost all low or no fat. Its actually pretty easy :)
  • jjmeyers2010
    jjmeyers2010 Posts: 34 Member
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    oh my gosh everyone... thank you so much for all of the comments, advice, etc..etc. I really appreciate it. I just got done reading through all of them... I will just plug away and looking for good recipes, stop getting processed foods as much as possible.. can't wait to go check out that web site www.dashrecipes.com (thank you to who posted that) someone mentioned pop, I think.. I am trying to drink more water than anything else, but sometimes I just want a pop so I started getting Sprite Zero... (most diet pop is gross to me) but I can drink this and I actually like it and its zero calories, zero fat, zero carbs... but it does have 35 mg of sodium.. not too bad.. and worth it to me when I want a pop... much healthier than most, for sure. Anyway, thank you EVERYONE for your input.

    Julie

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