Episode 18: Sodium Part 1: What It is, How Much You Need, and How It Affects Your Health

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Welcome to the Reclaim Podcast. I’m your host, Leah Van Dolder. I’m a weight loss dietitian and a mindset coach and this program is for you if you’re a busy working woman or female entrepreneur and you’re ready to take charge of your health, you’re ready to lose weight and make lasting positive change in your life. The only kicker is that you’re on the brink of burnout. You’re exhausted, you are frustrated, you’re feeling discouraged and uncomfortable and this is how I help my clients. Giving you simple, practical and savvy strategies to help you achieve your goals while reducing your stress, boosting your mood, your energy and your self-confidence. To learn more about working with me, check out my website at leahvandolder.com.

Welcome to the show. Hey guys, welcome to this week’s episode of the Reclaim Podcast. I am going to be putting my dietitian hat on today and guess what we’re talking about? We’re going to be diving deep into sodium. This is going to be a two-part series and in this episode I’m going to be teaching you all around what is sodium, what does it actually do in your body and then we’re going to be talking about where you find it and also what’s the right amount for your body and maybe what’s too much and of course I’m going to give you some awesome action steps so you can start being aware of how much sodium you’re taking in over there. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Let’s get right into it.

So I absolutely love the conversations that I have with people on Instagram and this is just a friendly reminder. If you’re not following me on Instagram, go do so. My handle is leahvandolder and I actually got the idea for this topic from one of my friends on Instagram and she was like, you know what, we hear about sugar all the time but what about salt? Is it that bad for us? How does it affect our body? How does it affect our weight loss?

And I wanted to come on here and answer all of those questions because if she’s asking them, of course other people are asking them too. So I’m going to start off by talking about what sodium actually is because here’s the thing. We often use those words interchangeably as sodium and salt but actually they’re two different things. Salt is a crystal, right? It’s that table salt that you’ve got in your salt shaker and 40% of that little salt crystal is made up from sodium. The other 60% is made up from chloride. Now sodium is a mineral that is found in and put in a lot of foods, packaged foods, processed foods. So it’s found in our food supply. So there is a difference between the two.

I’m going to talk more about sodium because there are definitely some recommendations around how much sodium is good for us and what seems to be the tipping point when things start to go downhill in terms of our health. So sodium is a mineral and it is found in a lot of foods that we eat. The function within your body, it plays a really big role in your cell function and your organ function, particularly within your heart, right? It plays a big role in regulating your blood pressure. It also plays a big role within your muscle contractions and it helps with keeping nerve impulses running smoothly within your body.

And the other thing, I mean, it really helps to maintain a healthy fluid balance. Anybody get the old edema swells or you can barely pull your rings off after you go have Chinese food, that’s because you just had a big kick, a sodium in your diet and now it’s just holding on to all the water so it plays a really big role in fluid balance within our body. I was laughing the other day, I think I had something way too salty. I’m like, my fingers look like sausages. Like what is actually going on here? So that’s how it works within your body.

The other big question that I get here is, well, where do we often find it in our diet? And I think the majority of us know that sodium is found in our food supply, but the majority of sodium that we take in, we consume is found in processed foods and not just processed foods. I’m talking heavily processed, ultra processed and packaged foods. And it can be quite eye-opening too. When you start to pay attention, how much sodium is actually in the foods that we’re consuming?

And how much is the sweet spot in terms of how much sodium is good for you? Well, recommendations, about 2300 milligrams of sodium per day is considered a good recommendation to stay at or below. You could absolutely go too low in terms of sodium within your body. And you really want to stay between the range of 1500 to about 2300 milligrams of sodium, because just as too much sodium is unhealthy for our body and can cause dysfunction within your body and your organ health, the same thing can happen when you’re not taking in enough sodium.

Now, I’m going to tell you, in the 10 years of me being a dietitian, it is way more likely that you’re taking in too much salt versus the other way around. And I was actually just online too. I’m like, I wonder what the average is for how much sodium people take in in their diet. And I expected about double. And I just proved myself right. The most recent stats for Health Canada and also for North America, typically we’re seeing an average of about 3500 to 3800 milligrams of sodium consumed in a day.

So that’s well over 2300. And hey, if you’re digging this episode so far, go take a couple seconds of your time to go rate five star and review. It honestly helps the podcast so much and helps the growth and my ability to get these out to you every single week. So thanks so much for doing that.

So now that we know what your recommendation is, right? About 2300 a milligram of sodium per day or less, and don’t dip below 1500. I want to answer a very common question of, well, if I put salt on my food, is that okay? If I take the salt shaker, is it okay? Is a sprinkle okay? Yeah, for sure. Cause guess what? That’s not the, that’s not the big killer when it comes to sodium intake, a little bit of salt on your potatoes or a little bit of salt on your green beans, no big deal.

I mean, it would be a different story if you are having a big shake of salt, but a little bit, not a big deal. Cause again, remember with salt, the breakdown of it, 40% of salt is sodium and the other 60% is chloride. So a little sprinkle of salt, no biggie. It’s the sodium that’s found in foods, particularly packaged foods, restaurant foods, good old takeout foods, canned goods, packaged things, cured meats, things like that. That’s what is more, in my opinion, it’s more important to focus on versus the little bit of salt that you’re putting on your potatoes and veg.

So let’s play a little game here. Cause I find this is really, well, it’s, first of all, it’s fun and it opens up your eyes as to how much sodium truly is in some of the foods that you may be buying on a regular basis. So I was talking to a client the other day cause she’s got some weight loss goals in mind, but also she’s got a really strong family history of hypertension, right? So high blood pressure, even some cardiovascular disease. So for her, not only weight loss goals in mind, but health goals in mind, such as her heart health.

And we were looking at sodium and the amount of, or the amount of sodium in common foods that she was eating. And she was blown away with some of the sodium found in the box burgers that she was buying. Some of the salad dressings that she was buying, some cured meats from the deli and some of her favorite wraps and pizzas at restaurants.

So for box burgers, and again, if the aim is about 2300 milligrams of sodium or below every day, how many grams of sodium do you think are in some boxed burgers? Well, just for fun, I went to the grocery store last night and was taking a look around. Some of them have up to 1200 milligrams of sodium in one patty. That’s half of your day’s sodium in one patty. Canned soups are another one. I mean, some of those Campbell’s canned soups or other brands too, they can have anywhere from 800, 900. I’ve even seen ones close to 1000 milligrams of sodium in a can of soup.

Now you’re going to want to hang out with me for the second part of this sodium series, because in part two, I’m going to be talking all around some ways to reduce the amount of sodium in your diet and just some little tweaks that you can make to your meals, to your snacks, and also within your grocery shopping. So definitely catch part two of this. The other one that I was looking at was jerky, beef jerky. Every brand is a little bit different, but some of the brands have 1500 milligrams of sodium in a bag of beef jerky.

Same thing with restaurant foods. If you’re looking at your fries, wings, pizzas, wraps, ribs, alls, pretty much anything on a menu at a restaurant, especially a chain restaurant. Oh, nachos is another doozy. I was looking at nachos with this client the other day and we almost fell over because it was 2800 milligrams of sodium on one plate of nachos. So it’s really good to start to be aware of this stuff.

And I want to give you an action step because you’re probably thinking, well, how do I find out how much sodium is in the foods that I’m eating? Easy. Every single packaged food that you have in your house, go to the nutrition facts and halfway down, you’re going to see sodium. And you’ll see a number that says milligrams, right? So now you can kind of put it into perspective. It’s like, okay, you know, this slice of bread has 120 milligrams of salt out of my daily cap of 2300.

So that’s a way to put it into perspective. But the other quick and dirty way that I really like to use a nutrition label, you know, that little percent daily value number beside the milligrams of sodium. And you can actually, like, if you’re in your house right now, go grab a box of something or, I don’t know, a salad dressing and take a look at this, because right beside the number of how many milligrams of sodium is in a serving of that particular food, just to the right, you’re going to see this percent number, which is the percent daily value of sodium found in that food.

If that number is 5% or lower, that means that particular food has a little amount of sodium in it, so 5% or less. If that percent daily value is 15% or higher, that means it has a lot of sodium in that food. So that’s a really great tool to start using within your day to day life. Look at the food labels, whether it’s the food in your house, whether it’s the food at the grocery store, because when you’re looking at food labels and looking at the percent daily value, I find that’s really helpful for me when I’m doing comparisons.

Yeah, sure, summer’s here and I love some good boxed burgers. So I’m going to compare some different brands of boxed burgers, because there’s some really great ones out there, right? I love making my own burgers, but sometimes in a pinch, I love pulling out a boxed burger. So looking at the differences in the brands of a similar product, that’s what the percent daily value is very helpful for, comparing two similar products.

So whether it’s boxed burgers, whether it’s soups, whether it’s frozen pizzas, right? There’s some really terrible pizzas out there, but there’s also not so bad ones. So use the nutrition label to not only look at the milligrams of sodium, but seeing if it’s a high percentage of sodium by seeing if the number is 15% or higher in the daily value column.

So there you go, guys. You’ve got some more knowledge, some education around sodium. You’ve got a practical tool to start using over there. And tell me how this is going. Come into Instagram, send me a DM, tell me how much you love this episode and show me some of the things that you are picking out of the grocery store that have lower sodium in them.

And before we wrap up today, you do not want to miss part two of this sodium series, because I’m going to be talking about some healthy tweaks to your meals, to your snacks, to your cooking, to help you reduce the amount of sodium that you are taking in every day. And we’re going to be talking about how sodium affects not only your health goals, but your weight loss. So I will catch you in the next episode.

Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Reclaim Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, I encourage you to follow, rate and review. To learn more about working with me, check out my website at leahvandolder.com. Thank you again for being here. It means the world to be able to connect with you. Girl, keep doing amazing things. You have everything that it takes to achieve your goals and be successful at anything that you want.