Sodium ... are you counting it???

[Sunny702 2]

I was talking to a friend (she had lapband last year with EXCELLENT results) yesterday regarding what I've been eating. She was giving me suggestions on things that have worked / not worked for her. So I mentioned that I eat Jimmy Deans Turkey Sausage for Breakfast. Then we went on to talk about my slow weightloss. Then she mentioned that maybe I'm eating too much sodium. The turkey sausage has 490mg. I'm not sure how much Sodium you're supposed to have per day?? She suggested egg whites for breakfast but I don't like eggs (unless they're boiled ... with Franks Red Hot Sauce). Then she suggested oatmeal ... but I don't like that either. LOL

I need to broaden my food options ... lol

Sooooo what's your take on Sodium???

[RickM 1,747]

The basic government guideline is 2400mg per day max, though there is no real minimum amount of sodium needed (at least until you get into serious endurance athletes who can lose too much sodium to sweat.) The typical American diet handily exceeds that amount, which is why it is such a concern amongst those who are concerned about what other people do. With our limited (by volume, if nothing else) diet, I am comfortably meeting that number, despite routinely having turkey sausage or bacon for Breakfast. Something on the order of 1300mg per day or less is used for those who need to reduce their sodium intake for blood pressure or other medical reasons.

The other side of the sodium coin is potassium, in which the typical American diet is usually deficient. Sodium and potassium work together to control Fluid flows thru the body, specifically in and out of our cells. Our legacy diet (when we were all hunting and gathering in the bush) typically had around five times as much potassium as sodium, and that tends to be what our bodies prefer. The modern western diet tends to be the reverse of that. Recommended potassium intake is 4700mg per day which I used to routinely hit pre-op, but am only getting in 30-40% with my limited volume post-op diet (fruits and veg are thegenerally the best dietary sources) so that is something that I am watching with my labs - potassium is difficult to supplement without prescription.

The sodium intake is certainly something that should be watched with whatever tracking tool that you are using (you are tracking your intake, aren't you?) and this is as good of a time as we will ever have to get a handle on it before our doc (or cardiologist) sometime in the future tells us to cut out the sodium. Much of the sodium in our diets comes not from salt or what we think of as salty foods, but from the processing of much of the packaged foods we eat (as in MSG - monoSODIUMglutamate - and other preservatives), so that is part of the reasoning behind the movement to avoid packaged/processed foods. It has not been something that I have agonized over, but is one facet of my general move to a healthier diet - I was decent pre-op other than volume - and am seeking to improve that long term as part of getting into maintenance mode. Yesterday I was at 1600mg sodium, of which a third was those breakfast sausages (and was surprisingly at the 50% level on the potassium - maybe my efforts are working if things are improving without specifically thinking about them.)

Good luck on your journey, and congrats on your friend's results with the band - it sounds like she should have some useful advice that is transferrable to us.