Low Sodium Diet Journey - Part 2

How hard is it to consume 2 grams or less of sodium per day? I started out thinking it would be difficult when a low sodium diet was recommended for one of my family members but it has been easier than I anticipated. This is the second post in a series that documents our family’s ‘learning experience.’

Swiss cheese is generally lower in sodium that other type so of cheese.

Popcorn can be a low sodium snack using a hot air popper, unsalted butter and a no salt seasoning.

Bread is often high in sodium because salt and soda are part of the recipe for making bread. Watch portion sizes and begin making plans to get the nutrition of grains by including whole grains in soups or as a side dish (quinoa, bulgur wheat, brown rice, etc.)

Homemade soups can be made very simply with low salt broths and canned tomatoes broth can be made from scratch blending vegetables (put them in a blender with water) to make a robust broth - then adding chunks of vegetables and meat. Purchased broths that are low sodium tend to be in cartons rather than cans.

Realize that meat, eggs, and dairy are natural sources of sodium….even without added salt. Watch portion sizes. Highly salted meats like ham, bacon, or lunch meats can only be eaten in small portions - or not at all - on a low sodium diet.

Make your own salad dressing. Almost all the packaged dressings are very high. Try sour cream with milk and seasonings….or lemon juice and olive oil with seasonings….or different flavors of balsamic vinegar.

Canned beans almost always are high in sodium but cooking dried beans and freezing portions not used immediately can provide quick, low sodium additions to meals.

Previous Low Sodium Diet Journey posts are here.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 5, 2013

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week. Click on the light green text to look at the article.

Frosty Morning Walk - photographs from the Prairie Ecologist

Your Amazing, Aging Brain - from Lynne Spreen

2012: The year’s science and tech news in one graphic - from the BBC. How many of these did you spot during the year?

Rita Levi-Montalcini has left the building - the Nobel-Prize winning neurologist died recently at 103

Stunning Satellite Photos of Earth From Outer Space - my favorite is the one of Painted Desert, Arizona

12 Awe-Inspiring Photos of Lightning - the very first one (of the Eiffel Tower) was the one that caught my attention…but all of them are spectacular

Should Jerry Brown Just Ignore His Cancer? - too much medicine?

Tomorrow’s world: A guide to the next 150 years - from the BBC

Gorgeous Otherworldly Photos of Colorful Forests

Antarctica’s Adorable Emperor Penguins - my favorite is the one with the larger chick with a wing/flipper around the small chick next to it

Can You Spot These Camouflaged Animals? - maximize the window before you start to look. Some of these are really tough.

Rose Hips

A few weeks ago - one of the views from the hospital window was an open area with rust colored trees and green grass. A few days ago I found myself in the area. It was in front of the outpatient building of the hospital. The rust colored foliage was mostly on the tiles of the walk.

I had not been able to see the rosebushes from the hospital window - but from the ground they were the high point of small area. The cold temperatures of the last week or so had dried some of the roses in place and the rose hips were a nice orange to contrast with the yellow of the dried roses.

Finding a small beautiful place among the cluster of buildings was a great way to end the flurry of medical appointments.

Low Sodium Diet Journey - Part 1

How hard is it to consume 2 grams or less of sodium per day? I started out thinking it would be difficult when a low sodium diet was recommended for one of my family members but it has been easier than I anticipated. This is the first post in a series that documents our family’s ‘learning experience.’ 

  • Keep a running total of sodium consumption each day at the beginning. The purpose is to develop a good sense of the sodium content in various foods. Make changes to your normal diet so that it is easy to stay under the 2,000 mg per day goal.
  • Use labels on packaging or the internet to get sodium amounts (per serving) for foods. I like http://nutritiondata.self.com/ - a clip of the screen from that site for ‘celery’ is below. Celery is one of the higher sodium vegetables.
low sodum.jpg
  • Experiment with no-salt blends (like Mrs. Dash) in lieu of salt. My favorite Mrs. Dash blend is Caribbean Citrus.
  • ‘Hint of Salt’ crackers are tasty. We’ve tried Triscuit, Wheat Thins, and Ritz. Keep the portion size in mind!
  • Generally - processed foods are high in sodium because they have a lot of added salt. Read labels carefully. Bottles salad dressings and ready-to-eat meats are almost always very high; develop alternatives for these in your diet.
  • Buy salt free (i.e. 0 sodium) versions of products like butter/margarine and peanut butter. These are products that are available in most grocery stores. The flavor will be different but is often quite acceptable and even appealing.

Roses and Rosemary

Usually ferns or baby’s breath is used in the filler around long stem roses. My sister recently chose to buy flowers that completed the color of the roses and then trimmed the rosemary plant in the garden to add extra greenery. It looked great and adding the rosemary smell to that of the roses was very appealing as well! Rosemary is now on my list to plant in my garden in the spring.

I am babying the rosemary I kept in a pot on my deck through last summer…so I might be able to just plant it as soon as the weather warms enough in Maryland.

The First of 2013

I did not stay up to celebrate the first minutes of 2013. I enjoy getting up to see the first sunrise instead (although it was cloudy so I took the picture at the left of wind chimes and winter trees at the time of 'sunrise').

 

 

New beginnings are so full of potential. Just as sunrise is a prompt to review the plan for the day, New Year’s day is a good prompt for writing some goals for the upcoming year. This year I am using a start - stop - continue grouping. I’ve learned over the years to include specific ways to measure the goal in the goal statement itself or as an associated note.  Here are some examples from my list for 2013.

 

 

Start 

  • Losing the last few pounds to get down into the ‘normal’ range for my height by April 1.
  • Upgrading landscaping and garden around the house by early summer

 

Stop 

  • Drinking soft drinks (diet Pepsi is my downfall!)

 

Continue 

  • Volunteering with the Friends of a local nature center (4-8 hours per week).
  • Reading about even numbers of fiction - history - arts/social - technical books at about the same rate as previous years.
  • Writing 3000 words per day when I am at home.
  • Gardening in pots on the deck
  • Using travel or hosting guests to break up the year.
    • Monthly visits to public gardens or conservatories
    • Tucson in the early spring
    • House guests in the early spring
    • South Carolina in the early summer
    • West Virginia in the fall