The Experiment - Salt is not worth it's...err...salt.
As I mentioned in a couple blogs ago, last week was a weight plateau for me. I hovered around the same weight the whole week. I understand there will be times when plateaus occur. I studied several articles that suggest ways to break that plateau. Some suggestions were to change up the caloric intake of each meal. For example, maybe have a smaller breakfast and a larger lunch. This is supposed to shake up your metabolism somehow. I don't really buy that but that is what they said. Also, and this makes sense, they say to increase your exercise. There were other things said but the thing that made the most sense was to increase the exercise. I decided to give it another week to see if things picked up again. That week was this week. Guess what happened! I GAINED weight.
The first time since I began blogging, I actually gained weight. I was so distraught. I could NOT understand what was going on. I had not changed a thing. Same lack luster exercise, same caloric intake. Why on EARTH was I gaining weight???
Obviously, this took the wind out of my sails. I moped around most of the week hence, the lack of blogs. What good things have I to share if I am putting on the pounds? I stuck to my diet though. I know it was working at one point so I had no choice but to stick to it. I am not giving up!
Then, about mid-week I noticed something. The prior weekend I did my grocery shopping. I went to my usual Costco and I also went to a new market called Mi Pueblo. Mi Pueblo is a massive Mexican grocery store that just went up in a nearby neighbor hood. There were all kinds of cool things there. There were different kinds of cactus, weird, prickly fruits that my bf got stabbed with while he tried to pick it up, lots of different kinds of peppers (I picked up some jalapenos and poblanos for my grape salsa) and a huge array of things in cans that I had no idea what they were. I was quite excited and a bit overwhelmed when I got the the hot sauce section. I love hot sauce. The spicier the better, but I like it to have some flavor too. I spent way too long in that aisle. It was sort of late at night and we were tired so I finally just chose a random bottle with Spanish writing on it containing a red liquid. I figured, it is red, it is Mexican, it must be hot and tasty!
I brought my new hot sauce to work and used it on my turkey breast slices for lunch. It turned out to be a very tangy sauce but not spicy at ALL. As such, I had to put a truck load of sauce on every single bite just to get the slightest inkling of spice. It was almost a soup. I wanted that heat to help boost my metabolism. I thought I was doing a good thing for my weight loss. That is until about mid-week when I was eating my turkey and gulping down the "hot" sauce. I started to look at the label of the sauce. I realized that I had not looked at the ingredients or the nutrient label when I bought the sauce. I was just figuring it was like all the others, ground up chilies, vinegar, water...blah blah. I saw the nutrients that were written in Spanish and then, in tiny writing, English.
Ingredients: Water, Salt, Sugar, Citric Acid, Chili Peppers....(then there was a list of things I did not know what they were, probably to thicken up the sauce like guargum and xantham gum and other horrible things)
Serving Size: 1tsp
Calories: 0g
Total Fat: 0g
Cholesterol: 0g
Sodium: 315mg
Total Carbohydrate: 0g
Protein: 0g
>insert record scratch here<
315 Milligrams of Sodium??? *scratches head*
doing a little math.....I was eating at least three ounces of the stuff a day, carry the one......
I was eating about 5985 mg of sodium for lunch every day. HOLY CRAP!!!!
I might as well be dumping pure salt into my mouth and chewing. No wonder I was gaining weight. I was retaining water...apparently a LOT of water. I took the bottle of poison and brought it downstairs to the break room. No one in there was willing to touch the stuff. I just wanted it as far away from me as possible. Every man for himself! I left it down there and didn't return. Not until today, that is. I wanted to take a picture of the nutrient label and the label and the ingredient list because it was like a UFO or a ghost sighting. No one would believe me. Alas, much like a UFO or ghost sighting, it was gone. I searched the refrigerators, the trash, even the recycling....poof. Gone. Good riddance.
Once I got rid of the liquid weight gain I bounced back very nicely. I am happy to say that I weigh less than I have ever weighed this whole year. I have another distraction this weekend but I feel so much better knowing that I am not a total idiot when it comes to losing weight. I guess I am still doing things relatively right. At least for me I am. This weekend my food group meets. Our theme is Tex Mex BBQ. I looked it up, there is very little that is healthy. I have decided to make a hominy casserole. It will have cheese in it. Just warning you. I will post any delicious recipes I deem to be healthy enough to share.
I have 42 days to lose 10 pounds. Go me!
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