My Secret Weapon to Reducing my Sodium Intake

One of my many health related goals this year is to get my salt intake down and keep it down.  That's not easy when you love salt like I do.  But I'm pre-hypertensive and my doctor advised me to reduce my salt intake.

Do you know what food tastes like without salt?  NOTHING, that's what.  Ok, that's an exaggeration, but to a life long salt lover, that's how it feels sometimes.

What has helped me is discovering seasonings and learning how to use them.  When you pile salt on all food you really don't think about any other seasoning.  Also, salt isn't evil.  It's essential but in very small quantities.

Mrs. Dash and a few other seasonings have saved me.  They are really good and I can pile them on my food with no guilt.

The Mrs. Dash brand has a lot of flavorings to pick from and I think I have them all.  To those I've added taco seasoning, onion and garlic.  I still use a pinch of salt here and there, but I rely heavily on these for taste enhancement.

Starting The Starch Solution - Meal Prep

Along with going vegan I've decided to focus on starch.  It's a vegan plant based diet that is whole foods with emphasis on getting plenty of starchy vegetables.  The diet was developed by Dr. McDougal and after lots of reading and research it looks good so I'm giving it a try.

I will continue my intermittent fasting from 5 pm till 7 am.  It has become a habit and I believe it is helping me in my weight loss journey and improving my health.  I like giving my body a period of time to completely digest what I've eaten before beginning to eat again.  It's easy because 8 of my 14 fasting hours are spent sleeping.

So yesterday I grocery shopped.  I bought loads of potatoes, grains, fruit and green vegetables.  Here's some of my meal prep for the coming week:

 I bought three of these for convience.  You just pop this 1 lb. container of potatoes into the microwave for 5 minutes and then add the seasoning pack.  I ate one Saturday and it was very good.  Great for lunches too.

 I bought a big bag of hash brown potatoes with peppers and onions.  Buying potatoes like this make it so convenient and they turned out great.

 I bought a big bag of sweet potatoes.  I bakes half of them and I'll cook the rest as needed.  You can't go wrong with sweet potatoes.  They are perfect just plain with anything.

 This was a big bag of mixed vegetables.  I added an onion soup mix and boiled them.  I'll add these veggies to grains and potatoes.

 I bought several boxes of grains.  This is a wild rice mix.  I'll add veggies and even potatoes to my servings.

 I love baked green beans.  I'll chop these and add them to potatoes or cooked grains.

 This is two bags of a blend of brussel sprouts, kale, cabbage and carrots.  I added the soup mix and boiled it.  I'll be adding this to grains or potatoes.

 This is a container of fresh mushrooms with a packet of soup mix.  I mashed some of the red potatoes and added in the mushrooms.  So good.

 The above and bottom photo are both grains; couscous and quinoa.  I'll be adding veggies to both.