Keeping track sucks! I’ll just say it! It sucks!

Maybe I will challenge myself to track my food on this blog (count sodium only, not calories or anything else) for a while to see if (a) I’m capable of that sort of commitment, and (b) it spurs some new blogging inspiration.

Lets see if I can remember what I ate today:

1/2 Cup Milk – 51 mg
1 Cup Corn Chex – 289mg
1 cup OJ – 2mg
Breakfast total: 342 – Not bad!

2 slices asiago bread – 416mg? not sure of sizing
6? slices deli turkey (maybe 4 oz?) – 1494mg?! not sure on this one either
1 tsp mustard – 57mg? that is a surprise
3/4 cup french fries – 496mg …this is starting to hurt…
1 tbs ketchup  - 167 mg
Lunch Total: I can’t count that high… OK fine, 2,630mg. OUCH. Someone needs to work on healthy lunches at work!!

1 ciabatta roll –  270 mg
green giant “healthy weight” frozen veg  (entire box, 2 servings ) – 480 mg
Dinner Total: 750 mg, which is still too much for one meal.

(sodium amounts are from the USDA Nutrient Database for Standard Reference except for the dinner stuff which I found elsewhere online.)

wow, it always amazes me how tracking your food makes you SO NOT HUNGRY. Blech.

So Today’s estimate of sodium intake is 3,722mg.

Um, yeah, maybe I need to start paying attention again. Also, I lied, I kind of am hungry.

I just went to my ENT Doc for a follow-up visit to the sad and depressing diagnosis in March. I had another hearing test (audiogram) and my hearing is NORMAL!! Wahooo! There is still a bit of a difference between my left and right ear, but both ears are in the “normal” range. Yay for normal!

He explained that a small subset of Meniere’s Patients never get the dizziness symptoms (I still haven’t) and those patients are said to just have “Endolymphatic Hydrops” which just refers to some kind of inner ear craziness:

wow, look how engorged that membranous labyrinth is! (um, click through to see what the normal one looks like. it's like those games where you have to find the differences in the 2 pictures!)

So the plan is for me to just keep taking my little green and yellow water pill every morning for the rest of my life and to keep sodium around 2g a day for the rest of my life. You know, as best as I can. Without going crazy. FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.

In other news, are there enough of you out there to do a product giveaway? I might have an offer to do one that I’d be interested in trying…I feel like a real blogger now that I’ve got an offer to give away products!

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP.

A somewhat mid-range tone that’s clearly audible. Starting last night, I’ve been hearing some craziness in my left ear again, not at all like what I thought “tinnitus” would be…

I’d describe it as a low bass tone, sometimes interrupted with short stops rather than being continuous, and (thankfully, I guess) barely audible. It’s pretty distracting because I was just laying in bed last night trying to notice it enough to characterize it. Hmm, I’m listening for something that isn’t there, I think that means I’ve officially gone nuts? It was sort of reverberating. I was trying to tell if it had a pattern to it, if it was in sync with my heartbeat (I don’t think it was) or whether I was imagining the short interruptions entirely and it really was a continuous low tone… I guess I eventually fell asleep and woke up to hear it once more.

There may have been a day or two that I forgot to take the diuretic pill  I’m supposed to take to keep the Meniere’s under control. Whoops! Maybe that’s why I’ve been hearing it. I took the pill this morning and I think the tone is gone for now, but then again it’s harder to listen when there’s ambient noise in the room!

I don’t have much for you in the way of low-sodium eating today… lately I haven’t been paying much attention to sodium… just trying to stay away from over-processed food and seeing if I can get away with it!

Then why have I been experiencing the telltale symptoms of Meniere’s lately? My left ear has been booming? pounding? boom-boom-powing? I don’t know how to describe it… whumping? It kind of reminds me of how a baby’s heart sounds on a heart monitor/ultrasound I think, (from what I’ve heard in movies… no babies for this girl!) except not that loud, thank goodness. I also have distorted hearing through my left ear on phone conversations again and feel a “stuffy” kind of pressure in my left ear.  It’s really distracting at work, and builds the pressure (no pun intended) to get back to strictly low sodium (as in, strictly under 2,000 mg not “as low as I can go”!!)

But then I wonder about the other triggers for Meniere’s. I haven’t been drinking any alcohol or caffeine (thank goodness I’m not a coffee person!) but then there’s stress. I am pretty sure I read somewhere that stress can be a trigger and OH MY GOD has work been stressing me out lately. It’s not like I can measure my stress and keep it under 2,000 mg a day (I wish!), and the doctor didn’t say, “make sure to not get so stressed that you want to slam your head onto a sharpened pencil” so how can I tell if this added stress is really contributing to my symptoms?

At this point I can only guess. I’ll pay closer attention to my diet in the next few days and hope that the feelings subside. One month until my next hearing test and ENT appointment!

The thing is, “cutting back on my sodium” gets really frustrating when I go off the deep end and EVERYTHING starts seeming like a “bad sodium choice” because it has sodium in it. Any sodium at all.  Let’s just say it culminated in a sad incident at Whole Foods wherein I was already very hungry, tired, and stressed when I walked up to the prepared foods section and sheepishly inquired about the sodium content of their offerings. The nice man behind the counter ever so gently informed me that gee, he really wished there was something for me, but everything is seasoned with salt and pepper so he can’t be sure if anything is ‘low sodium’ and so he’s very sorry, but Does Not Have Anything For Me.

I naturally translated that in my head as, “You can never merrily break bread with friends and family because you are not allowed to eat normal food that everybody else enjoys in a carefree manner.”  In my already weakened state, I thanked him anyway and began wandering the aisles as my eyes welled up with tears, at which point I made a beeline back to my car where I burst out crying and drove home like a crazy person wailing behind the wheel. I called my poor sister [I know, bawling AND talking on a cell phone while driving. Don't hate.] who listened to me sob my sad story to her about how I would never eat anything again without dying homeless and alone. She obviously talked me down and by the time I got home I was sane enough to make egg in a bowl, my favorite breakfast recipe ever, which also happens to be low sodium when you use Trader Joe’s no-sodium wheat bread! Thanks, Heather!

egg in a bowl, in all its gooey glory

Ever since that incident, I have been kind of saying f*ck it, I Will Eat What I Want and Not Sweat the Sodium.

A week later, when I was comparing Meniere’s notes with my dad, he put things into perspective for me. He told me that 2,000mg per day basically means 3 meals with a 600 mg allowance, which still leaves 200 mg for snacks. (that seems completely obvious, I know, but apparently it took my father pointing it out to me for that to sink in.)

That crazy low-sodium cookbook I got is all about MINIMIZING SODIUM AT ALL COSTS which is really not necessary in my case, at all! Thank goodness! I was really driving myself batty trying to scrutinize every food and only eat it if it was REALLY low in sodium. I mean, it’s great to find foods I like that happen to be low is sodium (like frosted mini-wheats) but if have cheerios instead and I take in 200mg of sodium for breakfast, IT’S NOT A BIG DEAL!!

I guess that’s just typical me, seeing everything in black and white…. sigh!

Anyway so here I am in the gray area of aiming for a “moderate” sodium intake. 2,000 mg per day. Not 500 mg per day. By the way, my doctor messaged me back confirming that it’s really not necessary to aim for less than 2,000 mg per day. As long as it’s not consistently over 2,000 mg per day, I’m all good.

So here I go again, learning how to eat. Let me check out how I did today so far: (look, I’m listing out my foods in proper fit/food-bloggin’ fashion!)

1/2 Cup Kodiak Cakes Pancake mix: about 320 mg
Maple Syrup and OJ: not enough sodium to count

Gigantic (I mean gigantic) Slice of Bacci’s Pepperoni Pizza outside of Wrigley Field:  hmmm, I’ll guess about 650 mg??
Pepsi and Peanuts at the Park (yay alliteration): Probably totaling around 300 mg?

Whole Wheat Pasta and Homemade Low-Sodium Pasta Sauce: Maybe 60 mg?
Rice Milk Ice Cream: Another 60 mg or so

Approximate total for the day:  1390 mg?!

See, if I had eaten all this 2 weeks ago I’d be freaking out that I did HORRIBLY and we would clearly all die homeless and alone because I ate Pepperoni Pizza and everybody knows Pepperoni has sodium in it. But now I can be [slightly] more rational and see that we’ll all die but maybe not alone and definitely not homeless. I’m the picture of mental health! I swear!

Me and two of the Birthday Boys

So this morning my eyelids feel puffy and my wedding rings are tight around my finger. There was no alcohol whatsoever involved during the entire evening, and yet I’m feeling overtired and sluggish. Yep, I’ve got a sodium hangover.

Luckily the strategy to get over a sodium hangover is much like getting over a regular hangover – drink tons of water and have a greasy breakfast! OK, not the greasy breakfast part. I had my tasty shredded wheat with no sodium this morning. But bring on the water!!

What’s your strategy to get over a hangover? Are you all about the greasy breakfast or do you just sleep it off?

*yes, for three generations in a row, women in my family have married men who were born on April 21st. What are the odds of that??

yum yum!

I love it when I find “regular” foods that are ALREADY low in sodium!  It inspired me to look at some other cereals and their sodium contents:

Frosted Mini Wheats: 5 mg per 59 g
Kashi Autumn Wheat Biscuits: 0 mg per 54 g
Cheerios: 190 mg per 28 g
Cracklin Oat Bran: 150 mg per 49 g
Kix: 210 mg per 30 g
Cocoa Puffs: 150 mg per 27 g
Rice Krispies: 220 mg per 33 g

Kind of a random selection, I know… I just wanted to illustrate the vast range of sodium within the breakfast cereal category. Obviously I went out and stocked up on Kashi Autumn Wheat and Frosted Mini Wheats! What’s your favorite cereal? Check its sodium content and leave it in the comments!

This chart can be woefully unrealistic in defining how much is eaten “per eating occasion,” and this can skew perceptions on what you are actually putting in your body when you eat an entire can of soup (as I am doing right now at my desk at work)  that contains “about 2″ one-cup servings. Last I checked, it is not customary to eat a half-can of soup during one “eating occasion.”

But I digress. At Trader Joe’s yesterday evening, I picked up one of their “Low Sodium” product guides, which lists the things they carry that are 140mg or less of sodium per serving. This is what the FDA defines as “Low Sodium.” I was shocked and excited to see “Spanikopita” listed under the “Miscellaneous” category. I darted straight to the frozen section and grabbed a box of those delicious phyllo dough triangles and read the nutrition facts. Sure enough it was 120mg of sodium, which qualifies it as a “Low Sodium” option……. Serving size: 1 piece. HA! How is that a low sodium choice? How will it help my daily intake of sodium to take two teeny bites and put 120mg of sodium in my body? That is a sodium-dense food, in my book.

I’ve linked to this chart before, but this time note how “Low Sodium” is defined clearly as 140 mg or less per serving (RACC) and “Very Low Sodium” is less than 35 mg per serving. This would make sense if the serving sizes on packages were realistic, but they are obviously not!

I would have probably wanted to eat 3 or 4 pf those little spanakopita guys. That would have totaled up at 360-480mg of sodium – a quarter of my entire day’s allotment – all in an appetizer that would not even fill me up for a full meal. So explain that one to me, FDA…

And THAT is the problem with “Low Sodium”!!

hello, convenient snack that might be good for me!

In my last post, I started to talk about how you can’t always trust what the front of the package says when it comes to label claims. So I was definitely a little wary when I picked up this box. I was happy to see it was a shocking 0mg of sodium per serving!!! I merrily tossed it into my cart and went on with the rest of my shopping.

Ha. whoops. By the time I was enjoying them for lunch today [OK, there was nothing else easy to bring. I know triscuits is not a complete meal, but give me a break, I'm a busy gal!] I noticed some tiny sparkling crystals adorning the tufts of toasted what. I immediately looked up the nutrition info again and saw the sodium content is actually 50mg of sodium, something my frazzled grocery-shopping brain failed to recognize.

That’s still not a bad sodium deal for a easy and convenient snack item, especially since I would argue that these Triscuits are actually tastier than their full-salt counterparts. My hypothesis is that they toast them just a bit more to enhance the flavor that is lacking from the low salt. It ends up being delectable.

Moral of the story: not only can you not always trust food labels, but you can’t always trust your frazzled mind to read food labels properly!

deli counter version of the prepackaged stuff

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has detailed rules about what food companies can put on their labels. Saying “Lower Sodium” is called a “Nutrient Content Claim.” There are many other types of label claims, but I won’t get into those now. You can read about other nutrient content claims  (i.e. “reduced-fat,” “low-calorie,” etc) at this website.

Back to the deli aisle: that healthy-looking deli meat that’s enticing you with its “lower sodium” claim is actually only required to be 25% less sodium per serving than “an appropriate reference food” that is not low in sodium. For deli meat, a typical serving can contain about 550mg of sodium (that’s in a tiny 2oz of meat.) A 25% reduction would put you around 413mg of sodium per serving, which is definitely NOT a good low-sodium choice.

Other words to be wary of on labels are: “Reduced,” “Less,” and “Modified.” Also watch out for “Light in Sodium” which indicates the level has been reduced by at least 50%, which still may not be enough if it’s a high sodium food.

So in a nutshell, always read the Nutrition Facts Panel! Look at the amount of sodium (in mg) per serving, and make note of the serving size! If the package says 90mg sodium per serving, but you eat 5 servings, you’re still in for a sodium sucker punch. BAM!