Cut Down Salt Intake to Lose Weight

Salt Intake and Risk of High Blood Pressure
Common salt found in the food is composed of two minerals - sodium and chloride. These minerals also help maintain the electrolyte balance in the blood vessels that maintains the blood pressure. While there are no adverse effects of high chloride content reported, high levels of sodium have been related with an imbalance of electrolyte activity resulting in a high blood pressure. High blood pressure, or hypertension, is an important risk factor for both heart attack and stroke.
Salt Intake and Water Retention
High salt intake can also increase the body's need to retain fluid. The more salt you consume, the more water your body retains to dilute it. Your body uses water to dissolve salts that were originally part of your diet. Similarly, low salt you consume, your body retains less water to dilute it. By drinking ample amount of water, you give it the means to wash these salts from your system, so that less water needs to be retained. Foods high in salt make us thirsty causing the need of water to wash away excess salt. This is one of the reasons why bars provide free salty snacks like pretzels and thereby making their customers to buy more drinks.
Salt Intake and Weight Management
High consumption of salt results in weight gain as it causes your body to retain water. Similarly, low consumption of salt can result in weight loss as it causes your body to expel water. Water takes away excess sodium through the kidneys. So a cut down on the salt intake and drinking more water would help to lose and maintain weight.
How to Control Salt Intake
The use of salt shaker at the dinner table only accounts for about one-third of our daily salt intake. Up to about half of our salt intake is from processed foods, such as burgers, fries, and chips. Some items that do not taste highly salted can contribute significant quantities of sodium to our diet, such as bread, tomato sauce, cakes and biscuits. Bottled mineral waters can contribute a significant amount of sodium. Another way to counter effect salt intake is by drinking adequate amount of water on a daily basis. Although it is hard to recommend amount of water as everyone's body is different, drinking half of your body weight in ounces of water seems to work for most people. That is, a person of 150 pounds of body weight should drink at least 75 ounces of water every day.
Final Word of Advice
Eat Less Salt.
Dr. PJ Prakash has a Ph.D. in Nutrition from the Univ. of Rhode Island (USA). Want to find out about nutritional weight loss, then visit his site on how to choose the best nutrition to lose weight.

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