Holy salt intake!

Ugh, I was wondering the same. Today I ended up like 3,000 mg over!

I have a history of hypertension and just really started watching it a few weeks ago.

I think as long as your healthy I wouldn't worry about it too much. It's very hard to avoid. Basically you can't eat out anywhere and can't eat pre-packaged food. Things like sandwich meat, sausage are horrible. Chips, salsa, ketchup, not great. Frozen meals and/or pizzas = horrible.

cholloway88 wrote: »

@quiksylver296 Mine says my daily goal is 2300, and I'm usually over by 1000 or so. A few things I should have mentioned are that I'm lactose intolerant and I struggle with chronic pain so my workouts are limited to walking and swimming for the time being.

Unless you have medical issues, I don't think it's a problem.

Disclaimer: I am not a medical professional and am talking from my own personal experience.

If you don't have hypertension, you should be fine.

I aim for 3,000 mg because studies have shown that below 3,000 mg is bad for the normal population. However, I rarely make that goal, and usually end up with 1,500 mg or so. I might have to just start eating salt.

I've always had my sodium limit set to the lowest RDA recommendation of 1,500 just to see how hard it was to do but the RDA for a healthy person is 2,500. I'm plant based and I don't add any additional salt to my food, lowered my processed food intake during the week and find that it's very easy to stay around 1,500. However, whenever the weekend comes and I go out to eat, I never worry about it but just don't add additional salt to anything.

I think going over sometimes is Ok but going over consistently raises blood pressure, causes water retention, and puts unhealthy individuals at risk of heart attacks, strokes, kidney disease, etc.

I'm sure it's not good for healthy people in the long run so I changed my habits and started replacing all my condiments with salt free or low sodium options, reduced processed foods and stopped adding salt to everything.

Just a good habit to start doing that will become natural! I don't miss it! I go out to restaurants and push that salt shaker away!

Common foods with a lot of salt in it are bread, cheese, sauces on restaurant entrees and dressings on salads, frozen chicken, including those you buy at the grocery and those you buy at the restaurant, and processed meat. If you are consuming canned vegetables, many of those also have a lot of added salt, but there are many canned vegetables that do not have added salt.

I do not display sodium in my food diary, preferring to track potassium instead. When I check up on the sodium, it tends to just indicate when I've had restaurant meals with a spike up.

Out of curiosity, I just averaged out my sodium for the last 30 days and came to just under 2200, not including added salt in cooking. Wiki tells me that 2300mg is ~1tsp, and I'm pretty confident that I add about 1/2 tsp salt during cooking (I prepare most of my meals at home), so that would bring my sodium up to nearly 3300. Other than when I was obese or sick, I've always been on the lower end of a healthy blood pressure (it was 102/67 at my last PCM visit), so from personal experience, I think going over by 1k or so on some days isn't that big of a deal. I do notice more water retention after super high sodium days, but on the whole I think you're probably okay if your other health markers are fine. If you're worried, just make a note to ask your doctor about it the next time you go in.

What are you eating that pushes you so far over? Identify these things and swap them out for lower sodium foods.

The usual culprits for me are:

Bread
Bacon
Cottage Cheese
Take away (out)