post-lose blues

So after feeling great about losing six lbs last week, I've gained 1lb back and feel awful. One, I'm frustrated because there is not an obvious reason why, and secondly, because its been a half lb gain two days in a row. The first day I could deal with, a slight fluctuation is normal, but upward motion two days in a row is upsetting.

The only thing I can think of is that I had more Asian food the last two days, both home-cooked by my nanny and also eating out. While I don't think I went over my daily calories and I don't think that I over-ate, the only thing I wonder about is the sodium. I know the soup was salty last night, but it was water (fresh broth) based, not oily, so I thought it would be fine.

Last night I got to thinking about sodium in food, as my husband and I were watching The Biggest Loser. It was an old season airing here in Asia, and the challenge was that the contestants were forced to eat out every meal for a week. This is a great challenge in my opinion, because you can't NOT eat out, and its important to know you can do it and how to still be healthy. At a Mexican restaurant, one of the contestants had a salad with grilled shrimp, dressing on the side, and a small side of black beans (made without lard). So she thought she had a healthy choice, and Jillian Michaels starts harping on her about the sodium content. I felt like I missed something. Did this woman have high blood pressure, a heart condition? Or, does sodium affect weight loss? It could not have come at a more relevant moment for me.

Of course I know you can retain water if you eat too much sodium, but I've never thought of this as being a problem for overall weight loss. I drink lots of water and I guess I thought that will flush out in a day or two. But this is something I'm going to look into, I'm not a regular viewer so I've obviously missed where they had talked about this before.

The bottom line is, nothing is worse than thinking you've done the right thing and then not seeing results. It just makes me want to know where I went wrong, so I can fix it. It's the not knowing what to fix that is frustrating.

Today, I'm cooking all my meals and controlling 100 percent what goes in my body. My hope is that I still have progress by my next week weigh in - despite this upward motion.

Oh, and I'm so focused on sodium at the moment that I swear my hands are swollen today... Paranoid? Or am I on to something?


UPDATE!!!
Tracked down a video of Jillian Michaels explaining why sodium is bad for weight loss. This is a post about how to shed some weight quickly, like how to slim down for a special event, etc. But what's interesting to me is what she says about the role of sodium on weight in general, and I bet when I have Asian food, which often has msg and salt, plus sometimes soy sauce, that I'm getting way beyond the daily amount of sodium. This of course doesn't mean that I'm retaining 50 lbs of water weight, but it does mean I could be seriously impairing my metabolism - blocking my own progress.

Here's her key points:

• Sodium slows your metabolism
• Sodium causes you to retain excess fluids
• Limit your salt or sodium intake to only 1500mg a day so you won't retain any fluid (water weight) and for an extra weight loss boost...
• Lower your salt intake to 500mg for only a few days (usually no longer than 2 days) to shed those water pounds quickly and...
• The main high sodium foods to avoid are: canned, frozen, processed, & packaged foods and...
• Drink 2 liters of distilled water each day to flush out the excess water weight you're carrying around now - Distilled water is basically PURE water with no salt or minerals in it and...

See her explain it all here.