This is the real reason you shouldn’t eat salt.
Oh really no salt?
Okay this is a big one my friend….
All my videos are based on the nutritarian diet from Dr. Joel Fuhrman from the book Eat to Live. High nutrient whole foods, plant-based wonderful, wonderful stuff, no salt, no oil, no sugar added. We get plenty of salt in our diet. We get plenty of sodium, from natural plant foods. They just naturally have sodium in them; and we get PLENTY just eating these foods.
Typically around 700-1000 milligrams per day which is plenty to fuel the body’s processes and be healthy. There are some rare cases of people that have low blood sugar and need to kind of watch this, but for all of millennia we haven’t been adding salt as a sort of flavor enhancer. We’ve just been eating natural things that occur. So we don’t need to have extra sodium, we are going to get it right from our natural plant foods, as long as we are eating this wonderful, natural whole plant-based food we are getting 700-1000 milligrams just from the foods we eat.
The American Heart Association recommends that we get no more than 1500 milligrams per day. So this is great because the nutritarian will naturally come in way under on those requirements but did you know the average American gets 3500 milligrams of sodium per day?
That’s more than double the recommendation of the American Heart Association; and some people eat even more on a regular basis. It’s very important to keep in mind these kinds of numbers, I’m not going to bore you with all the reasons why scientifically because we know this the research is not ambiguous.
Studies show that excess sodium intake is linked to diseases such as cancer, strokes, heart attacks, cardiovascular events, kidney disease, asthma, lots of different things are linked; and of course hypertension. So many things are linked to excess sodium intake so you look at all that legit research if you like, draw your own conclusions but it’s not ambiguous. Oh and real quick, there is a cheatsheet for this blog post.
The reason that this particular cheatsheet is going to be really important is because it’s one I want you to print out; keep it on hand with all the rest of your cheat sheets, so you can just remember this little detail.
Understanding these little things little by little as you go along in your journey is going to help you get the whole picture a lot faster.
So sign up HERE. You will get an access email with access instructions with the website and a password. You will get every cheatsheet I have ever put up for you, past present and future; including this one. Print them out and use them as reference!
And whatever you do, don’t believe the all that stuff you hear on the media about Celtic salt, and sea salts, and Himalayan salt and all these fancy salts from every weird place.
That’s just marketing hype.
They’re talking all about how there’s minerals, you can get these trace minerals in these salts. Sure, you can get trace minerals from them, but what does trace minerals mean?
A tiny, tiny bit of minerals, it’s like .00000 whatever of these minerals.
You can get plenty of minerals, like hundreds of times more than this amount of minerals in plant foods. There is no reason to be adding these salts. Of course there are some people who have medical reasons to have a little more sodium, but that is so rare compared to the normal population.
So we definitely get enough in our whole plant foods. We don’t need to add anymore. It’s very important that we don’t actually.
I want to talk about the actual real reason that you shouldn’t be eating salt and once you’re a nutritarian you’ll fully understand this.
The real reason that you should not be adding any sodium to your food is because salts entire purpose as a condiment is to make us eat more of the food.😲😲😲
That is the only reason we use it.
It’s not for the minerals like you may think… “Oh I’m eating for the minerals.” Really what you are using it for is it makes the food taste better and makes you eat more of it.
Is that our goal? To actually eat more food? No it’s not our goal. We don’t set out in the morning and go “Oh man I didn’t have enough food yesterday I really need to eat more today. I just need to be eating more. So I’m going to make it taste better”.
On the whole we need to be losing right, if anything. We need to be eating less food. Especially the processed food, we definitely don’t need more of that.
So one thing I came onto very quickly was this idea, (when I say really quickly that’s a relative term). I didn’t give up salt for the first couple of years of my journey because I just didn’t believe it. I was like “that’s like not me, you know. I have to eat salt. I need to have salt. I love the flavor. I need that kind of burst of flavor, right. I need to have this. If I’m going to be giving up all this other stuff dairy, meat, sugar, oil everything, all these things that I’m used to. I’m certainly not giving up salt”; that was my logic there.
After a couple of years, I had given up so many things at that point I had given up meat, oil, sugar, dairy and I was like…and they weren’t actually that hard. My taste buds changed and I started to really, really appreciate the foods. It takes time for sure, but it really wasn’t this sort of battle I thought it was going to be. So I was like “let me just try to give up salt”.
So I did it kind of in a challenge. And you know what? The first thing I realized like within the first meal, was “oh my god this is actually going to make me lose weight way easier; because I’m just going to eat less, because I just won’t care for the food as much as I did if I salted it”.
I know what you’re thinking though, you’re like “But why would I want to not enjoy my food? Wouldn’t I want to enjoy my food? I don’t want to have a boring life for the rest of my life and hate my food all the time”.
No, no, no that’s not what happens!
So it’s clear we don’t want to eat more, right, we don’t. We do want to enjoy our foods. That’s why we have salt substitutes. I know you’re rolling your eyes when I say that but I promise you when you give up the salt you allow your taste buds to get to the place where you actually appreciate salt substitutes, okay?
So let me give you a few examples of salt substitutes. I have a really, really good video called ten ways to flavor soup without salt and these tips from that video can be used for any food as well, salad and stuff like that. These kinds of things that we have come across in this lifestyle, a no salt lifestyle…they really do help because your taste buds get used to it.
Then you really love them.
Here’s a list of examples:
- No Salt Spice Mixes
- Herbs and Spices
- Mrs. Dash Blends
- Nutritional Yeast (sort of a yummy cheesy powder. Oh my gosh it really kicks so many things up a notch.)
- Lemon Juice and Citrus, (you would be surprised at how well this sour flavor sort of mimics salt a bit. It kind of fools your taste buds into thinking you’re having a bit of sodium. It really, really works and to this day I can’t have soup without having some lemon or lime juice in it.)
I just love it so much. I crave allll those now.
Another few faves are tomato sauce, celery juice, carrot juice; these vegetables are very high sodium naturally so using the juice as a soup broth or using tomato sauces as a salad dressing or mixing it into soup, things like this really kicks things up a flavor notch. It gives you actual sodium. I tend to use that a lot actually.
Interesting enough kale and collard greens, these kind of very high nutrient greens are very high sodium foods in themselves just naturally, so I sometimes just sauté up some kale and mix into a mix of sautéed vegetables and get some sodium in there too.
Also using nuts to blend; like blending up nuts and making more of a creamy feel, plus lemon, even vinegar is a really good salt substitute. It does the same thing as the sour does, kind of gives you that nice sour bitter flavor.
So you can use all these different things in different combinations. You can create your own flavor profiles, I can’t stress it enough, and if you give up the salt you actually give yourself the opportunity to finally like those salt substitutes.
If you don’t give up the salt, you’re not going to be satisfied one day with having a ton of salt on stuff and the next with just having some Mrs. Dash.
That’s not how it works.
It has to be gradual getting better over time ok? It’s important that you actually give your taste buds that rest, you give them the ability to start picking up on subtle nuances of flavor that you couldn’t have noticed before.
I promise this happens.
Consider it this way, let’s just compare tortilla chips. Let me give you an example, let’s say you’re making tortilla chips at home from scratch. You take corn tortilla chips and you cut them into triangles and you bake them at 355 for ten minutes. You bake them, they get nice and crispy, you pull them out of the oven. Now half of them let’s say you leave plain and half of them you sprinkle some salt onto them.
Which ones are you going to want more?
Of course the ones with the salt on them you’re going to eat lots of those right?
That’s a problem… you don’t want to eat a lot of them, but let’s say you challenge yourself, you only eat them when you’re hungry. I promise you that if you wait till you’re hungry to eat these chips the ones that don’t have salt on them are going to taste awesome, because you’re hungry.
Everything tastes better when you’re hungry.
That’s why they say hunger is the best sauce.
You eat some of these tortilla chips that don’t have any salt on them and you have maybe 3, 4, and 5 of them. You are like wow these are really, really good. Then after a while you like these don’t taste so good.
They could use some salt.
They could use something.
This is the whole point you guys, this is what happens; you start to eat those tortilla chips and they taste amazing as long as you’re hungry. Once you start having them and your body is like “okay I don’t really need any more of these, then you’re like these don’t taste so good”.
That’s what you’re going for; you’re going for that natural moment when you’re thinking, “I don’t really want any more of these”. That’s what happens with every food if you have the proper amount, like it’s just a natural amount of flavoring, right.
You’re just using some citrus.
You’re just using some no salt spices or whatever it is.
This is what happens the brain actually can have the space to think about it and go; “oh I don’t need any more of this I don’t want anymore. It finally tells you, you know, stop you have had enough you don’t need any more. So when you eat something whether it is a salad or soup or whatever, now you have space to listen to the signal of you have had enough. Because getting bored with the meal, getting done with eating it, that’s an indication that you have had enough and you could move on.
A natural amount of sodium is going to do that for you, but I’m telling you if you’re sprinkling salt on everything it’s only going to make you eat 20, 30, 40% more then you would have if they had not had salt on them.
I guarantee you.
This is how it works.
This is the main reason that you don’t want to be using salt.
Now it is a transition.
I‘m not going to lie to you and say that it’s fun in the beginning ‘cause it is definitely not.
You have undulated your taste buds with flavor blasted things, like way too much flavor. Your brain is used to that. So your brain is going to go, “oh man I’m really missing what I used to have. This doesn’t have any flavor. I’m sad.”
You can watch videos like The Pleasure Trap by Dr. Lyle and Dr. Goldhammer and read the book. It sort of explains how this works. It really does work like this, it’s fascinating stuff how the brain works in this way.
Then after awhile you really do readjust. You really do get used to a natural amount of sodium and the way the foods are supposed to taste. It allows your brain to tell you when you have had enough finally.
That’s a relief!
Then you are going to be able to have those natural hunger signals and listen to your natural hunger clues and be done when you are satiated and lose weight in the process. You will feel a whole lot better too.
Sooo that’s it for today my friend. I hope you enjoyed this blog post. And just in case you wanna watch it on YouTube you can totally do that too!!
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