One man's voice Thoughts, rants and commentary of a simple man

A salt on my lifestyle

A few weeks ago I was watching a FitTV show that highlighted two fat brothers that desperately needed to lost weight. They had a history of diabetes and heart disease in their bloodline and when they went in for their initial physical, the physician looking them over noticed they had purple colored freckles on their lower legs (between the ankle and the knee, wrapped completely around the lower leg).

The physician also noticed that when you press on the lower leg area (anywhere that is not a bone) you would get an indentation that does not immediately restore itself. She mentioned that this condition is called pitting edema.

A few years ago I noticed this very condition in my lower legs. I went to the doctor and the only diagnosismy doctor gave me for this condition was that I was fat. Literally, that was it.

Since I was now armed with a name of this condition I decided to contact my doctor again. This time he esxplained what pitting edema is and how it not so much a precursor to heart disease or diabetes as much as it is an indication that you are A) fat; or B) heavily salted.

He also did a physical on me and noticed that my blood pressure is borderline high. He told me to reduce my sodium intake and start losing weight. "No problem" I thought. After all, just six years ago I managed to lose 107 pounds in 10 months. It should be no problem to do it again.

Except there is a problem. Last time I lost weight I was in no way concerned with my sodium intake. In fact, it was never a consideration when looking at things to eat. Now it is. And now I cannot seem to find any food conducive to a fast paced lifestyle that has low sodium content.

Today, at Trader Joe's, I noticed that while everything all natural, much of it is not low in fat or low in sodium. And the things that are low in sodium are also low in volume, meaning I would have to eat a ton of it just to be sustained.

Now don't get me wrong. I know there are plenty of food items out there that are low in sodium that I can buy and prepare for myself. The hard part of that is the time needed to prepare anything. There are only so many hours in my day and finding even an hour for myself right now is almost impossible.

But I supposed I am going to have to do what I have to do. Finding out that there is a possibility that I could be prescribed high blood pressure medication scares the hell out of me. So I suppose if life is not motivating enough for me, perhaps death might be?