Hi, yes I am aware of food choices and sodium. I rarely use processed foods, except for salad dressings. I check the label and management the amount. I mostly buy fresh fruits and vegs, bison meat, and make my own bread without sodium. This helps alot. Once in awhile I eat something that is off this regiment, like yesterday, when we celebrated Scott's birthday with Costco pizza. Not recommended for more than once a year. Also, raw organic celery daily helps eliminate extra water retention. Food is one of the best medicines.

I'm a dedicated label reader have to be if I want to stay alive. Salt to much or to little can do you more harm then good. My husband was a diabetic and me a heart patient so its important to read label,s since there is so much sodium ,fat, and sugar in what we eat from a can.

Avid label reader as well, if sodium is a bit high on a certain food I will try and water it down a bit, try and buy organic foods when affordable😫, don’t really eat out much at All, like to manage my eating, it takes a lot of mental discipline but it’s worth it.

We eat very little processed food. I do read food labels and it’s amazing how much sodium is added. We eat a lot of chicken and fresh veggies. I make most of our meals from scratch and I love to bake. I tend to use less salt than recipes call for. When you get used to eating less sodium you can really tell the difference when you go out for dinner.

@kanaazpereira As the others have also said, we use very few prepared foods. I do use some frozen vegetables, and I buy canned soup for my husband, but soups are generally ridiculously high in sodium. I use myfitnesspal a lot to track calories when I am working to lose weight and I like that it tracks whatever nutrients you want it to, and you can put in the maximum you want of the nutrients. I have 1500 mg for sodium and try to keep it below that. I very rarely salt my food.

My biggest downfall in sodium intake is cheese. Cheese tends to have a lot of sodium. I use goat cheese a lot in salads and omelets, it has about half of the sodium of other cheeses. When recipes call for sodium I just don't bother to add it. There are so many people watching sodium now that there are many products available without sodium. I made a great chicken stew this week and it called for 8 C of chicken stock. I was very happy to see that it can be purchased sodium free!

I eliminated sodium so long ago that I really notice salt in foods when we go out to eat. Restaurants tend to use a lot of salt. I find that the better restaurants cook the food to order and I can often get things without salt added.
JK

Hi im still not sure what the best way to reply is do i just reply like this to a post or do i need to add a bunch names to respond. But let me just try reply. Yes i am a dedicated label reader and always look for the lowest sodium level i can. I also run my recipes thru my fitness apt to check the sodium levels and when eating out most Resturant chains these days have nutrition facts which i can look up either thru my apt or from the internet. Most days i keep it to between 2000-2500 but eating out can get it up to 3000 pretty easily. So on days i treat myself to a diner out i watch the rest of the day closer to keep to my under 2500 level. Im not a heart failure anymore due to my transplant but i want to protect this new heart.

I did a study over a couple years where I kept track of estimated daily sodium intake. I read labels at grocery stores and took notes. This upset staff as they began to see me as a Secret Shopper spying at their store. I found NutritionalData.com and that solved some of those issues. I entered my daily estimates on a spreadsheet and gradually worked my sodium to 3,000 mg per day. My cardiologist was not impressed as he wanted 1,500.

I have since improved my results to 2,000 mg daily intake. I eat out frequently and have devised ways to estimate what the meals contain. Michelle Obama pressed the issue of sodium and many restaurants now have nutritional data websites. One family restaurant I liked had three times the sodium I estimated; they must really use the salt shaker.