Adiós, Sal.

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The other night I was hungry for a snack. After looking around for something yummy, I stumbled upon some peanuts sitting lonely on the counter. Okay, well maybe they were not lonely, but I was hungry. So, I opened up that blue container and preceded to eat a handful of salty, delicious peanuts. Boy, were they salty. After that handful was quickly gone, I got another...

See, since embarking on a new journey of healthy eating, I have been reading fitness and nutrition articles almost obsessively and many of them say the same thing: limit your sodium/salt intake. Do they know how hard that is??! Sure it is easy to write that down, but actually living it out? Watching your salt intake is a hard thing to measure! Many foods today, natural and certainly processed, have different levels of salt and if I tried to journal every amount of salt I took in, I would quickly drive myself crazy (props to those who are able to do this and if you have any helpful tips, please e-mail them to me). 


Now, I have been limiting my salt intake for awhile and I can definitely tell a difference. I am not adding extra salt to my foods, I intentionally look for "lower sodium" labels, I buy my savory snacks unsalted. Yet, I still felt like there was more that I could do. So imagine my excitement when I got an e-mail on the subject in my inbox . In one of the weekly Jillian Michaels' e-mails I receive, there was an article with tips on how to cut the salt from your diet! Brilliant! I quickly read the tips wanting to know what I was already doing right and ways I could further limit my salt intake. 


If you have been looking for ways to limit your salt intake, just look below and say "adiós" to salt!

Nixing the Salty Six

1. Bread and Rolls -- Even though each individual serving may not seem like a lot, breads add up to a lot of sodium throughout the day!
2. Cold Cuts and Cured Meats -- 3 oz. of deli meat could equal up to 1,050 milligrams of sodium!
3. Sandwiches -- Basically, combining those top two just puts sodium levels through the roof!
4. Pizza -- The easiest way to make this friendlier? Whole wheat dough and lots of veggies.
5. Poultry -- Best to stay organic here. 
6. Soup -- One cup of soup may have half of your daily recommended sodium needs, so it is best to look for those lower sodium labels here.
7. Skip the Salt -- Instead of adding more salt, try adding natural herbs like pepper or salt-free seasonings.

For the whole article from Jillian Michaels and more nutritional information, click here. 

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