Episode 19: Sodium Part 2: How To Reduce It In Your Diet & Improve 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. We’re going to keep going here with the topic of sodium. So welcome to part two.

In today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about how sodium actually impacts your health and your weight loss. And we’re going to be talking about different types of sodium because I get asked a lot, like, is there, you know, good types of sodium, you know, bad types of sodium? And then of course, I’m going to give you some action steps because I want to help you reduce the amount of sodium that you’re eating over there just with some little tweaks. So let’s get right into it.

All right. So how does sodium impact your health? Well, I mean, in part one, we were talking about how sodium is important or why it’s important in your body for cell and organ function, helps with blood pressure, your muscle contractions, your nerve health, and it’s also involved in maintaining fluid balance throughout your body. So it does play a big role in most of your systems within your body.

But the big thing with sodium, when it comes to your health, is cardiovascular health. And like you learned in part one, there’s no surprise that majority of North Americans eat too much sodium, right? We consume almost double the amount of daily recommendation. So what does that do in your body? Well, sodium binds to water. And when we’re having a lot of sodium, all this water and fluid binds to sodium. So it can really affect blood volume and it can affect our heart health because I kind of like to think about it as a garden hose and your blood vessels like a garden hose.

So if you’ve got a ton of sodium within your bloodstream and we know that it holds onto water, you’ve got this big volume of water trying to flow through this little garden hose and it can really increase the pressure within that garden hose. And it’s that pressure over time that can lead to cardiovascular concerns, high blood pressure or hypertension, specific heart disease, even stroke, and even kidney disease. So those are the big health risks associated with high sodium intake over time. And I’m just going to provide you some peace of mind. Say one day or two you have high sodium, you’re not going to experience cardiovascular issues within a couple of days of high sodium intake.

This stuff takes time. If you’re chronically taking in a lot of sodium, it can lead to, or can put you at a higher risk of developing these conditions down the line. So I wanted to share some tips with you today to help reduce your risk.

The other thing too, how does sodium affect your weight? So sodium doesn’t have any calories. It’s a non-nutritive minerals, which means that it doesn’t have any calories, you know, associated to it. You eat sodium as a mineral. It doesn’t give your body any calories, but how it affects your weight is by the water retention. So, I mean, I’m sure you can remember a time where you order pizza or you go and have Chinese food or sushi. And the next morning you hop on the scale and to your surprise, you see that there’s a five to seven pound fluctuation on the scale. You’re like, “Holy smokes, I gained seven pounds overnight!” But, which you didn’t. I just want to share some ration and logical thoughts around that. If you truly gained seven pounds overnight, that would mean that you would have had to slam back almost, oh, I don’t know. Let me just do the quick math here… 15,000 calories overnight, which you didn’t do. So your weight gain is most likely a reflection of water retention.

That happens after a high carb meal. That also happens after a high sodium meal. And you can see it in your body, right? Maybe your ankles swell, maybe your toes swell, maybe your fingers swell, right? You can’t get your rings off and you feel really puffy and bloated and it’s uncomfortable. Sodium can do that to your body. So the best way to quote unquote flush out, start drinking that water, get that sushi sodium out of your system. So that’s how it impacts weight is by the water retention piece of things.

So you’ve learned that sodium is an important mineral to have within your diet. You have to have some sodium in your diet is very important for your overall function of your organs, your muscles, and your health. Too little is not so great. Too much is also not so great. So that perfect medium is around 1500 to about 2300 milligrams of sodium per day.

Now, good sources, bad sources of sodium… I mean, here’s how I like to look at it. Sodium is sodium, right? And I wouldn’t say that there’s good slash bad sources of sodium. What’s more important is actually looking at the amount, the quantity of sodium that you are taking in on a regular basis.

So let’s dive into some action steps for you on how to reduce your sodium throughout your day. And Hey, if you’re loving this episode, go take 30 seconds of your time to go rate five star and review. It honestly helps the growth of this podcast so much and helps with the resources for me to come at you every single week. So thank you so, so much. I really appreciate that.

All right, let’s talk about some action steps to reduce your sodium. Honestly, the biggest one, and this is a big goal that a lot of women have when they work with me is making more home cooked meals. It is no surprise that the majority of the sodium that’s found in our diet is from packaged foods, takeout foods, convenience food, restaurant foods. It is absolutely jammed into most of those foods. So making more meals at home with whole ingredients, that is such a great way to reduce the amount of sodium that you’re taking in in a day because whole foods, I mean, if you’re choosing vegetables, fruits, lean proteins, beans and lentils, nuts, seeds, those foods are low in sodium.

So that’s a really great way to reduce your sodium, make more home cooked meals. And it could be, I’m just thinking of easing into making more home cooked meals because maybe you’re eating out three times a week. So a goal could be, you know, I want to make one to two meals at home. So start, start small and work your way up from there.

When you’re at the grocery store, I really like to look for low sodium options, right? There’s a lot more low sodium or reduced sodium, or you’ll even see on, say, cans of beans or cans of soup or broths, it will say no salt added or reduced salt or reduced sodium. Those are really great options.

I mean, here in Canada, we’ve got, um, what’s the brand? Oh, the blue menu. So president’s choice blue menu. That is a really great line of foods that has reduced sodium in them. And what’s the other one too? I think the compliments brand that’s found in Sobeys, they have a really great line of blue menu options as well, or reduced, uh, reduced sodium and look for it on the label. It will say right on the food package, lower salt or lower sodium.

And I’m sure your next question is, “Well, if they take sodium out of things, do they put more of other things in it to taste good?” I have found that that’s not the case. If they’re reducing the sodium in it, they’re simply reducing the sodium and they’re not chucking all sorts of other things in there. The only one that may have a little bit higher amount would be potassium, but you don’t have to really worry about that unless you’ve got some significant kidney issues. So no big deal there.

The other thing too, that can help you is just being mindful of portions of things. Like, you know what? Hey, I love a good soy sauce, right? With sushi, but instead of doing, I mean, you can do a couple of things here. You could do a lower sodium soy sauce, or you could just really pay attention to the amount that you’re putting on your sushi. So that’s a way of looking at the portions, soy, different sauces, right? Just being aware of how much you’re using.

The other one to finding some swaps, because you can get a ton of flavor in your food without adding a bunch of salt or sauces or soy sauce that really jack up the sodium in your meals. So here’s a couple of things that I really like to use. Say I’m doing chicken stir fry instead of using a ton of teriyaki sauce. Sure. I’ll use some being mindful of the portion, but then I’ll use a no salt added chicken broth to really boost the flavor of that stir fry.

The other thing I like to use in this example, I get a lot actually using that mushroom, that cream of mushroom soup, you know, that you take that can and you put it over a bunch of chicken and stick it in the oven. Oh my gosh, that thing is loaded with sodium. So you can do a lower sodium option, or instead of using the cream of mushroom soup, you could use fresh mushrooms, you could do some thyme, some oregano on there. You could do that low sodium broth.

Sometimes I just like to swap it out altogether for different flavors, like tomato salsa. I’ll do that. I’ll also try pesto. So throw that on top. Some other dips that are out there that you would never think about putting on proteins, such as tzatziki, right? Tzatziki is a really good one. I’m really a big fan of the summer fresh line of dips. So using like a roasted red pepper dip on top, that can really boost the flavor without all the added sodium.

And the last one is using a bunch of spices, herbs, and even citrus in your cooking. So instead of using a bunch of sodium packed sauces, thyme, oregano, chili powder, paprika, using more spices and herbs to flavor your food, and even citrus juices like oranges, limes, and even lemons. I love a good lemon dill salmon. That would be one of my favorites these days.

So those are a couple of action steps to help reduce your sodium intake in your diet, and they will help with your overall body function, your cardiovascular health, and it will help to reduce the puffiness and the bloat that you feel after having a high salt or a high sodium meal.

Thanks so much for tuning in this week, guys. It has been a pleasure to connect with you. And hey, if you want to learn more about working with me, come on over to Instagram. You can send me a DM. I’d love to hear from you or check out the show notes here to click on the link to my website, leahvandolder.com, or there is an application link to directly apply to work with me. All right, guys, we’ll catch up 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 things. You have everything that it takes to achieve your goals and be successful at anything that you want.