1 week guide to a low salt diet for lowered blood pressure and better health
Welcome to the Eat Better, Get Healthy series, part 2.
If you’re new here, check out the introduction to the series and part 1 right here.
In part 1 of this series, we talked about vegetables. Most of us don’t get nearly enough fiber in our diets, and a major part of that reason is because we don’t get enough vegetables. That’s why we started with getting enough vegetables. At the end of part 1, you were challenged to hit 8 servings of vegetables by the end of the week.
How did you do?
Today we’re talking about salt.
Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is the leading cause of strokes and a major cause of heart disease. And 1 our of 3 of us have high blood pressure. Most of us don’t even know it.
That’s why part 2 of the Eat Better, Get Healthy series is all about how to eat less salt.
Salt and our diet
There’s a LOT of salt in our diet. That is, in the average western diet.
If you eat anything packaged, pre-prepared, or cooked by a restaurant more than a couple times a week TOTAL, you’re probably getting more salt than you think. Top that off with salty snacks during the day, and there’s a good chance you’re salt scales get tipped most days.
I know mine do.
Most of us get almost double the amount of salt we should be getting.
A low salt diet is considered 2000 mg (2 g) per day. The average person gets around to 3400 mg of salt a day. That’s a pretty big difference. 2000 mg is just under a teaspoon of salt in a day and that’s not a whole lot.
Best practices
Sodium 140 mg or less (or 5% and under) is considered a low salt food.
300 mg or more (20% and higher) is considered a high sodium food.
If you’re eating 3 meals a day, aim for meals that have between 500-600 mg of sodium. This will put you at about 1500-1800 mg of sodium from your primary meals. And then you’ve got 200-500 mg to play with for snacks. If that’s your thing.
At no time do you EVER want to be 100% salt-free.
Sodium is an essential electrolyte that helps to manage everything from blood pressure to muscle contractions to nerve function. We need it to live, we just don’t live WELL when we have TOO much of it.
Your Challenge
1 Week to a Low Salt Diet
GO HARD THIS WEEK: No added salt for a week
This is not easy, but it DOES work. Going free of added-salt for a week is the best way to drastically bring down your salt intake. If you can do this, by the time the week is over you’ll taste salt in a completely different way.
I’ve done this before and it’s pretty amazing how it happens. Your sense of taste resets and you’ll taste salt in everything. And that’s the point.
If that’s a big ask, here’s a few other ways you can significantly bring down the amount of salt you eat on a regular basis.
Cook without using added salt
This especially helpful if you tend to use packaged foods like sauces, frozen foods (not veggies) and seasoning salts. (like Adobo, Lawry’s and garlic salt).
Check the ingredients on your spices to see if it’s a seasoning salt. If salt’s listed, it’s got a LOT of salt. If you want to know about your packaged foods or sauces, check the nutrition facts label. Anything that’s got more than 200 mg PER SERVINGS is on the high side.
Remember, we want our meals to be around 500-600 mg of sodium.
Cut salty snacks in half
If you’re snacking on foods that are covered in salt or flavoring, this is where you’re starting. Chips, fries, salted cashews (or whatever nuts you like best) are just the start. Doritos, cheese doodles, any kind of crackers all count too.
Figure out how much you eat every day. If it’s not daily, how much do you eat a week. Whatever the number, cut that in half. If you eat a bag of chips every day with lunch, now you’ll eat half that bag. If you go through a box of crackers a week, that box should last you 2 weeks now.
Another way of looking at it: it should take you twice as long to eat the same amount.
Skip sports drinks, and go easy on the energy drinks, stick with water
One of the reasons hydration drinks keep us hydrated is the additives in them. Salt being the number one item that helps to keep us hydrated. Salt helps us retain water, which is part of what keeps us hydrated.
This is great for long distance runners training for a marathon, but kind of unnecessary for the average person who is not training for a marathon.
Stick with water. Even if you have a daily 30 minute jog. You don’t need to put the extra calories you just burned back into your body with a Gatorade, and you surely don’t need to add any extra salt to your day. A bottle or two of water will do you just fine.
Eat more potassium
LOTS more. Sodium brings our blood pressure up, and potassium brings it down.
Sodium and potassium are natural antagonists in a lot of ways. Nature’s way of keeping us in check. But it only works if we actually eat more potassium and less sodium.
We should be getting around 4700 mg potassium a day, and we get much closer to 2000-3000 mg a day.