Now in Week 5 of my latest attempt to improve fitness, I was taking a look at dietary cholesterol and sodium intake. Old-school recommendations for cholesterol were ≤300 mg, while the latest research is more to try to minimize it and get a blood test now-and-again to watch your levels (unless, of course, you have any condition which suggests you do otherwise). Sodium used to be 2000 mg, these days I see recommended limits closer to 2400 mg with again a general recommendation to “minimize” sodium intake.
Given my family history of high cholesterol and blood pressure, I’ve been watching these intakes but have not been trying to control them. Now that I’ve successfully controlled macros, I’m taking a closer look. My sodium since April 19 has averaged 3623 mg/day, and it’s spiked as high as 5214. Dietary cholesterol is 411 mg on average and has gone as high as 650 mg. Both of those are high, I think.
Based on food planning through June 20, which includes my first week “break” where I will not be eating at a calorie deficit, my average is going to be 443 mg and 3517 mg/day of sodium. There’s a significant spike in cholesterol that week, +50% over the preceding two months.
So, in my food-tracking/-planning log, I’ve now taken to some extra conditional formatting for each food: A yellow warning if cholesterol is >150 mg for any one food, and a big red warning if it’s >250 mg. For sodium, it’s 1000–1500 mg for the yellow, and ≥1500 mg/food for a red warning.
I’m hoping that this will cue me in to (a) maybe try to adjust recipes a bit to lower sodium, and (b) try to minimize having foods that go into the yellow/red more than once a day. For instance, I eat salad with canned meat (chicken, tuna, and I just added turkey to the mix). The meat (not tuna) is high in dietary cholesterol, so if I’m having another food that day that’s particularly high in cholesterol, I can see that and switch to a different meat, or eat the salad that day without some feta cheese (also high in cholesterol), or if I have a treat that fits in that day and I’ve planned for ice cream (high in cholesterol), switch that out for something else that’s lower in cholesterol. Same thing goes for sodium, though for sodium it’s easier to adjust a recipe, like cut down on the fish sauce 30% for a Thai stir fry.
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