I purchased a set of WOK pans and have been cooking Asian foods for five of the last eight nights. I am not unaware of the salt content of soy sauce, and don't use very much of it because I trend towards Thai and Indian foods... Last night when I was grilling and also had the WOK fired up I stopped for a moment to look at the salt content of the fish sauce (important Thai ingredient... basically fermented fish juice- doesn't make things taste fishy, but completes the authentic taste) and almost choked... then I looked at our jug of sweet chili sauce, and did choke and then at some other curry, garlic chili, teriyaki (sp?) and other things I have been putting in our foods... WE HAVE A PROBLEM. I have had a insatiable thirst the last week and my hands are swelling more than ever at night... and now I know why. Last night I put aprox. 9,000 mg of sauce in our dish and we both ate about a 1/3 and there... so I basically consumed MORE than my daily allowance in one meal. That is just one meal... and I tend to like sodium rich foods anyway... so we are going to round off my daily sodium intake (after reviewing my foods) to not less than 5500 mg. UH OH.
I will say that I have probably been averaging that much or more for the last eight days. I have not had a lot of time during the day to eat... so I should actually be down in weight a bit... I know the formula to lose weight, but I really have not explored my sodium issue... YOU KNOW WHAT IS FUNNY THOUGH? My blood pressure is up and it started about three days after the WOK cooking began... do you know what the formula for pushing oneself into hypertension is?
Well, I did it... and I knew it... kind of. When I have had problems with my blood pressure in the past (due to my meds for Narcolepsy) I get a dull headache in the back of my skull. I have had it all week and I have been stressed because of the school crunch and husband, I have been blowing my up my sodium intake... FUCKME. I have also been taking a lot of tylenol and alieve to counter the headache, which wouldn't go away...
I was relaxing in bed this morning and feeling how swollen my hands were and all of this knowledge came rushing into my consciousness at the same time! I also realized that I was probably "up" on the scale... and I weighed myself... and I am. I am up three pounds... FUCKME. I am completely to blame for this, but it still sucks. I had a false picture in my head when I was cooking this food that I was enhancing my weight loss because the veggie to meat to grain ratio was 5/3/1 and I wasn't even thinking about anything else... I know about the sodium thing and I am kicking myself because I haven't addressed it in my diet until now (when it is out of control).
Anyway. I have to get control of the problem. I think that since I started losing weight and cutting down on sugar I have substituted with a bit of a sodium addiction. I think I might have a withdrawal from it as bad as sugar... Let's experiment...
I am going to lower my sodium intake to around 1500 mg a day for the next week. I talked this over with the doctor and the shrink about it and there is mutual approval of the plan. I will have a new focus (you might be surprised at what you cannot eat when cutting down on the sodium). It should be interesting to monitor what happens to my cravings and cravings and anxiety...
I wonder how many of you have had sodium issues or have had to work on cutting back??
