We Need Sodium

by Lisa P | More from this Blogger

04 Jun 2008 04:43 AM

"Everybody says to stay away from salt but in your blog about water flavorings you said sodium is good. What are you talking about?"

Yes, it is a good idea to stay well away from salty foods and added table salt when you're trying to lose weight. First of all, too much sodium will cause you to retain more water than you'd likely care to. Secondly, salty foods just generally tend to be bad for the diet. I'm not talking about beverages with sodium in them. I'm talking about the traditionally salty foods like potato chips, French fries, fried fish that we load up with salt.

Having some sodium in beverages, especially those beverages you may drink during exercise or outdoor activities is a good thing. You may not have ever experienced this phenomenon yourself but when a person has been really sweating hard and is wearing a dark tee shirt, you can see white stains develop where they sweat. Those are from the sodium that comes out when we sweat. (They do wash out.) You may also notice that when sweat gets in your eyes during a workout, it burns like a son of a gun! My point is, when we sweat, we lose sodium. The human body requires a certain level of sodium to operate. Sodium is necessary to good muscle function among other things.

Sodium is one of the great electrolytes contained in Gatorade. The problem with drinking lots of Gatorade is that Gatorade also contains a lot of sugar. For those trying to stay hydrated and still lose weight, I highly recommend drinking Gatorade's G2 brand beverage. (It is a fairly new product but you can find it in most grocery stores these days. It comes in grape, orange and fruit punch flavors and has half the calories of regular Gatorade.)

Learn more about Lisa P

Lisa used to be a freelance writer and Community Manager for Families.com, but she has finally made the jump to novelist.

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