McLowSodium

The low sodium diet is going okay for the most part. I do miss my almost-daily visits to Chipotle, as I've gotten them down to once a month at the most. What is the real pits is that I've found some of the best dill pickles I've ever had at a natural grocery store, but at over 1,000mg per serving I don't even think about getting them. My latest meal strategy is to eat a medium sodium lunch, usually aiming for no more than 800 to 900mgs of sodium, followed by making dinner from scratch. I've been keeping Subway in business lately, as I can get a footlong sub that fills me up for around 800mg sodium.

Darcy has been a trooper, as the food I've been making has not had the usual flavor. At least she can use the table salt, but I'm sure my cooking has gotten much blander the past few months.

Maybe it's been the lack of flavor, but I've been losing weight. I've also not been eating my usual mass quantity, so I'm going to have to pay more attention to how much I eat. Today I made sure to eat three huge meals, and perhaps I'll restart the Ensures. I have not been drinking those since I wanted my potty trips to be more, well, normal (if you know what I mean.) I've also tried to eat more fattening food and I ask for more mayo and oil on the subs at Subway. I've also been off the pasta wagon, so maybe it's time to eat more of that too. Actually, my snacks have been strawberries, raspberries, grapes, tangerines, and so on. I need more bad things in my diet to gain the weight. I've also limited my cheese intake (except for swiss/baby swiss) due to the sodium, so that also factors into it I'm sure.

Believe it or not, one of the meals I've had recently was on a trip to McDonald's, where I don't think I've eaten in at least three years. I got a Big Mac w/o the meat and the Southwest salad w/o the chicken and dressing. It was actually quite low in sodium all things considered, although they refused to give me a discount of any sort. I wrote them via the website to ask about that, and they said it's up to the individual locations. One thing I found extremely useful about the McDonald's website, and why I went there in the first place, was that they let you make a virtual order and customize the ingredients, and then it adds up the nutrition information for you. That's a nice touch that I wish other places would let you do. For example, I can't find a way to substitute beans for meat at Taco Bell's website and get the correct sodium level, and even Subway's website requires an external calculator. In any case, it's good to know I can count on McDonald's when I'm traveling if I have to.

On a good note, I've only taken the meds that make me expel water (ahem) once, as my leg swelling has not made a comeback in a long time. I guess I should take it every day since I'm sure I'm retaining water, but I've noticed that even without it I'm back to using the bathroom on a regular basis again.

You may notice that I've added a link to my blog on the right. Donate Life is an organization that doesn't seem to have an agenda beyond that of spreading organ and tissue donation awareness. If they were associated with anything remotely political or religious I'd take it down, but given that so far they seem to be on the up and up, I even got the special Maryland license plate that many states are offering.