Sitting around and recovering from my walk/jog a few days ago, I happened to be watching the local PBS station. They had a diet guru on TV and I hadn't thought too much about what I was watching because I was tired, but he said something that made me stop and think: “Are you getting high empty calories from any processed food you're eating? Cut them out and replace them with raw foods and you'll get more bang for your buck.” I've heard this many times, but this time I remembered something I had forgotten: it's hard to overeat on carrots and celery because you feel full too fast.
I'd been thinking about the ramen noodles for a few days because I didn't like the fact I was consuming 380 calories on this meal. I had mentally budgeted myself to be somewhere in the range of 800 to 1000 calories per day, and if I stuck to the low end of 800, nearly half of my “calorie budget” was spent on this meal. I didn't like that thought at all because it meant I would be starving later on or exceeding the calories, so I wanted to replace it and use the ramen noodles as an occasional option.
All those thoughts received not a gentle wake up call, but a plowing over like a train. Going back to the grocery store, I happened to be looking for a nutrient in the vitamin aisle, which they didn't have. As I searched the shelves, I saw a little old man sit down near me and the sounds of clicking and an electrical motor being used. I hadn't noticed it before, but there was a free blood pressure machine and I decided I should at least have some idea where I was on the scale.
I figured my blood pressure was going to be a little high since I hadn't been taking care of myself prior to this point. Sitting down, I forced my sleeve up and slid my arm down into the mechanical cuff. The last time I had checked my blood pressure was a few years ago, and I remember the systolic number was 93, which wasn't that great, but it wasn't classified as high blood pressure (according to the doctor who wrote me up, I had high blood pressure over “90”). Quietly waiting as the machine did its thing, I noticed the “high blood pressure” chart on the label in front of me was at 140 on the systolic, and that's as high as the chart went. The cuff hissed as it released and then the moment of truth flashed on the screen: systolic was 152 and diastolic read out at 101.
How high my pressure was, I didn't know, but I'd never seen my pressure that high before. Was I five minutes away from a stroke and a heart attack since I passed the highest marker on the machine, and did it automatically dial 911 with a pressure like mine? One can't help but be full of questions, and even if the machine wasn't 100% accurate, I knew even if it was off by 10%, my readings were still too high.
Walking through the door, I called my friend Laurie and asked for her advice. I thought I was doing the right things with vitamins, diet, and exercise, but now I wasn't sure. She has been out of the cardiology field for a while, and although she said I was doing the right things, it might be a temporary spike in blood pressure that sometimes happens with the start of an exercise program. This was something I hadn't heard before, but it was nice to know it might be a partial contributor.
Once I hung up the phone, I sat down and started to pen a quick email to another friend, elaborating on my dieting mistakes with the sodium monster that I thought I had in check. It wasn't until I started to think about my current diet during this email that I decided to find out what the daily recommendation for sodium intake was, and it turned out to be 2400 mg a day, but they were actually recommending 2000 mg for most people. I started to add up my mistakes and realized even with cutting out half the salt in the ramen noodles, I was still registering 2600 mg of salt. This is when it hit home I wasn't as diet and salt savvy as I believed I was.
This realization scared me enough to change a few more behaviors. I went into the kitchen and started stripping it bare of salty foods. All unopened food went into plastic grocery sacks with the full intention of giving it to a friend's kids who could “afford” to burn off the high salt by simply breathing. In the end, I filled up eleven sacks. Where did I find the salt?
