High Calorie, Low Sodium food tips?

bubbagump626
bubbagump626 Posts: 2
in Food and Nutrition
Hello all, my doctor has told me to follow a low-sodium diet for a rare health condition (not blood pressure). I have to keep my sodium count per day to 1500 mg or less per day, even spread out 400x4 meals or 500x3 meals.

However, I am also an athlete who works out, am naturally skinny, and usually maintain/gain weight by lifting and packing on the calories/carbs and eating 4+ times a day. I want to hit a minimum of 2500 calories per day, ideally 3000. Calories and carbs will not affect my health condition.

Most diet programs or fresh meals you can buy/prepare all have low calorie+low salt in conjunction, not in the inverse.

So my question is this...how do I increase/maintain calories while cutting down on salt??

Oh, and ideally food that is ready-to-eat (bought or ordered online) or easy to prepare (less than 10 mins), I am super busy.

The only food that fits this criteria that I can think of is steaks...however eating steaks everyday is not sustainable and probably not healthy either.

Anything else?? Help!

Thanks.

Replies

  • KarenJanine
    KarenJanine Posts: 3,497 Member
    Oatmeal made with wholemilk
    Rice
    Heavy cream
    Avocado
    Nuts (unsalted)
    Fresh fish and lean meats
    Potatoes

    In general, avoiding processed food will eliminate a lot of salt. Cooking meat/fish/vegetables from fresh without adding salt and you should be fine. You may find you need to eat a fairly large volume of food to meet your calorie goal.
  • bubbagump626
    bubbagump626 Posts: 2
    Thanks!

    Is store bought oatmeal ok? The kind you just add water to?

    What kind of nuts do you recommend? Almonds? Cashews? I heard peanuts are bad for you?
  • susannamarie
    susannamarie Posts: 2,148 Member
    If you're trying to pack on the calories you might not even want lean meats necessarily.

    Try chicken leg quarters, they are super cheap compared to steaks, you can roast a bunch in a pan at once on an evening or a saturday, and then take out one at a time and nuke them until they're gone. Goes well with rice or potatoes, which also will help you pack in the calories. If you go with potatoes you could even roast them in the oven at the same time as the chicken and get all your prep done on one day, then nuke them as well.
  • kyregi
    kyregi Posts: 55 Member
    I have started to eat low sodium at the beginning of the year, but I am one of the "typical" cases and have to be lean and low sodium. But I think you can do a lot low sodium and still eat any calories. So here are some recommendations:

    First of all I'm living in the US and here they add quite often a "solution" to meats. You want to watch out for that because that always bumps up the sodium per serving. So look for meat that is in its natural state. And then you can eat pasta with meat sauce. Where I would go with the leanest meat I can get you can stick with the versions higher in fat. Chicken thighs and wings are off my list because of fat, you can eat those. And don't forget about pork: pork chops and roasts are delicious and usually not really low fat. Also think about stews. You can do those with all different kinds of meat, most often you will find recipes for beef and lamb.

    It might be hard to get much pre-prepared and just microwavable, but you can do that for yourself. Get all the low sodium, no sodium added ingredients and make stews and pasta sauces in batches and then freeze. That makes your daily life easier, you "just" have to spend a few days per month doing the cooking.

    Finally, what I learned the last few months to be sure about the sodium in anything is to read the labels over and over and not to assume anything. No matter if you think it tastes "salty" or not, it might have loads of sodium in (or not).

    Good Luck!

Categories