please help with question

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olynick
olynick Posts: 31 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Its been easy to keep my calories and carbs down,fat and protien sometimes get into the red but not by much most times.I added sugar and sodium to my list and they sometimes go into the red almost by double.......is that going to make a big difference on my weight loss?

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  • Bells5001
    Bells5001 Posts: 75 Member
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    Sodium will effect your blood pressure and water retention if you find it up. Elevated sugar can hinder your weight loss. It's good that your carbs are down :-)
  • nxd10
    nxd10 Posts: 4,570 Member
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    Sodium is insidiuous. If you start reading labels for sodium, you'll be surprised where you find it and how you can get rid of it. For example, swiss cheese can have less than 1/4 the sodium of cheddar.

    For people who are sensitive (my husband), it makes a huge difference in blood pressure. Other people are less sensitive. But water retention? That it does for everyone.

    MFP doesn't differentiate between added sugar and natural sugar from fruit. I have read from many sources that it is the added refined sugar in packaged food that really adds to weight gain. So you need to look at your diet to see what it is. It has to do with the speed with which your body metabolizes it and how much your insulin spikes with it (glycemic index). Again, particularly for people who are sensitive to it, it can really affect weight gain.

    I am neither diabetic nor insulin resistance, but I, personally, am quite sensitive to that. High glycemic foods just make you HUNGRY.
  • pspetralia
    pspetralia Posts: 963 Member
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    High sodium can make you retain water. That will make your scale go up most of the time.
    In my opinion, MFP has low protein goals, so going into the red on protein is a good thing.
  • DavPul
    DavPul Posts: 61,406 Member
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    Its been easy to keep my calories and carbs down,fat and protien sometimes get into the red but not by much most times.I added sugar and sodium to my list and they sometimes go into the red almost by double.......is that going to make a big difference on my weight loss?

    Nope
  • olynick
    olynick Posts: 31 Member
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    Ok thank you,i noticed some things like apples add to my sugar a lot like 19 grams and i think tomatoes add a lot to sodium like in salads or chilli.MFP starts you off with a list of 4 things it tracks and gives you the option to track an additonal 2 more so i added sugar and sodium,is this the best route or should i track something else that would make my weight loss more?I am not sure if i have problems with high blood pressure or anything so if it is not that important should i pay more attention to something else?I really want to maximize my weight loss.
  • olynick
    olynick Posts: 31 Member
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    Also i am doing more things than just counting calories like........i also take raspberry ketones to help my metabolism,i do 20 minutes of Zumba mon-fri,and i just quit drinking a lot of soda and now i drink at least 5 16oz waters a day along with eating slightly better than i used too and using mfp.
  • olynick
    olynick Posts: 31 Member
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    oh im 40 years old and weigh 266,i was at 276 but i lost 10 pounds in the last 2 weeks.
  • olynick
    olynick Posts: 31 Member
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    thank you
  • JesterMFP
    JesterMFP Posts: 3,596 Member
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    Ok thank you,i noticed some things like apples add to my sugar a lot like 19 grams and i think tomatoes add a lot to sodium like in salads or chilli.MFP starts you off with a list of 4 things it tracks and gives you the option to track an additonal 2 more so i added sugar and sodium,is this the best route or should i track something else that would make my weight loss more?I am not sure if i have problems with high blood pressure or anything so if it is not that important should i pay more attention to something else?I really want to maximize my weight loss.
    How many tomatoes are you having? They shouldn't be adding "a lot" of sodium to your log. If you want to bring your sodium down, the things to look at are highly processed foods, especially ready-prepared meals, foods from restaurants, soups (if you don't know what's gone into them), certain cheeses and meats, smoked foods.

    I noticed in your diary entries like "Homemade - Beef Chill" and "omlette", both of which have a lot of sodium. Did you make these yourself? Did you enter the nutritional info yourself? If not, it could be way off. If you made a home-made omelette, I can't imagine why it would have so much sodium, unless you manually added a lot of salt. Eggs contain some sodium, but not that much.

    As far as weight loss goes, sodium isn't important. It can affect water weight, but that would be usually if you suddenly ate a lot more sodium one day than you usually do - you would probably have a temporary spike on the scales. The jury seems to be out on how important it is for general health, if you don't already have blood pressure issues. If you're worried, another thing to look at is potassium levels, as ideally you should be having a roughly equal intake of sodium & potassium. Potassium can be harder to track though since a lot of foods aren't labelled with it. As a rule of thumb though, more fruits and veggies means more potassium.

    It looks like you're making some good changes all round though. :)
  • olynick
    olynick Posts: 31 Member
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    Thank you and yes i made the omlette and homemade chilli myself but i actually used the data base for the food entries and i know that those could be off because it wasnt entered by me.I wouldnt reallly know the first thing about entering all the facts myself and then figuring it out by portions.Luckily the chilli is only a once in a great while thing.This program is really helping me tho and no i dont think i have any issues with high blood pressure and that sort of thing i was just wondering if its going to make a big difference in my weight loss.May i add you as a friend

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