Do I need more sodium?

Day four now, so definitely still a 'noob'... I've managed to fairly easily stay within my 1,300 calories per day so far, and have now started to pay more attention to the other variables. One of them is sodium. On each of the four days, the 'target' has been 2,300mg and I have only used about 300mg at the most. I don't add salt to anything I cook, so all of my sodium intake should be registered correctly in the food diary.

Is this a cause for concern - do I need to up my salt intake?

Replies

  • Miamiuu
    Miamiuu Posts: 262 Member
    If you feel alright with your current diet I would stick with it. Recommended sodium amount ive read is no more than 1500, but if I had a way to eat and have very little Id go with the low sodium. May I ask what you are cooking in a day to keep your sodium so low. I have prehypertension and since everything has sodium Im not sure how to eat extremely low.
  • AJ_G
    AJ_G Posts: 4,158 Member
    Too low of sodium, just like too high of sodium is not a good thing, try to aim for the recommended amount and I'd say get at least 1000mg a day if you can. Also try and keep sodium and potassium levels as even as possible.
  • 257_Lag
    257_Lag Posts: 1,249 Member
    300 a day is almost impossible! When choosing foods to log make SURE that they have a sodium count. Sometimes when people add foods to the database they don't include the sodium because they aren't tracking it.

    To give you an idea what I am mean, 1 stalk of celery has 88 mg of sodium in it straight out of the ground.

    I try and go low sodium and even staying under 1500 is tough. Doable, but tough. And this is with no added salt and very, very little processed food.
  • gabbymom2
    gabbymom2 Posts: 175 Member
    Why don't you open your diary....that seems really low.
  • Thanks for the replies everyone. I think perhaps then I'm eating more sodium than the food diary is registering - if I put in e.g. fresh carrots, I was assuming the app would include info on how much sodium is in them, but I reckon I've misunderstood. I've just googled them and it says there are 69mg of sodium in 100g of carrots. That's not showing up in my diary so I think I was relying on those figures too much.
  • knra_grl
    knra_grl Posts: 1,566 Member
    um yeah even raw foods have sodium and surprising high amounts sometimes so I would watch what entries you are using from the data base :ohwell: