I forgot to answer your question. Yes, I am VERY happy with how my food tastes. It is so much better! I am sure one of the reasons I do not go off plan. Here are a few of my recipes:

Chicken fajitas - Chicken breast cooked with onion and green/red/yellow peppers, seasoned with cumin, chipotle, and homemade salsa (chopped red onion, chopped tomatoes, chopped cilantro, squeeze of lime, and pepper), filled in a corn torilla (that I cook in a pan with Pam), topped with guacamole (avocado, diced tomato, diced onion, squeeze lime, cilantro, and pepper), lettuce and sliced tomato. Awesome!

Breaded Tilapia - Dip the tilapia filet in egg, sprinkle chipotle powder on it, then dip it into panko crumbs. Put Pam on a pan with 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil, and fry on the stove. I am not a fish person, never ate it, knew it was something I should incorporate into my meals, and omgosh I can eat this every day. AWESOME!

Chicken Parmesan - Dip the chicken breast in egg, then into panko crumbs, place on a cookie sheet (that I spray with Pam), bake in the oven at 375 degrees for 22 mins. Top with a little mozz cheese, and tomato sauce (I make my own), then put back in the oven for 4 - 5 mins. As a side I usually make a caesar salad (mixture of romain and spinach lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, boiled egg (crumbled), turkey bacon (chopped up), with caesar dressing.

Turkey burger - grilled turkey burger on 100% whole wheat bun (grilled too), topped with avocado slices, turkey bacon, lettuce, and tomato! I hated turkey burgers, when I made it this way, omgosh I was in heaven. Awesome flavors and texture.

Eating low sodium/sugar doesn't mean you are eating plain food, like grilled chicken and steamed broccoli. I love experimenting with food, and trying new things.

Salt is not the enemy it once was - it's even worse. I take it most of you are younger so you haven't seen the damage yet but it will come. The RDA for sodium was lowered to 1,500 mcg. Why do you suppose that was...government mad at the salt producers?

My research indicates that with sodium, balance is very important! Too little sodium and you risk serious health problems, too much sodium and you risk serious health problems. This includes a possibility of death from too little sodium as well as a possibility of death from too much sodium.

What is a person to do? For me I am tracking my input and keeping it to 2000 mg or less daily although I most likely will change to 1500 as my goal shortly.

For most of my 67 year life I ignored sodium and used salt freely. I loved the taste of it and I used to joke that the only reason I ate popcorn was for the salt. This April everything changed when I needed a double coronary artery bypass operation. Was salt partly to blame? I do not know but I do know that it could be and now when I have too much sodium I rapidly get the symptoms of heart failure. My cardiologist assures my that I do not have heart failure now but the fluid build up from sodium could cause it. He also says that if I cross the line and get heart failure it will be permanent.

I am enjoying life too much to play games with salt. What if the Mayo Clinic, the American Heart Association and so many more are right. Lets just say I am not willing to gamble when the stakes are this high.

Larry,

If you feel better, I think that's a great reason to do it!

Your recipes sound great, but I'm afraid I wouldn't like them without a big dose of salt. That's a nice thing about salt, though, is I can just put some on my own. I never salt anything my family eats, just pass them the salt shaker if they want it.

I hope your dad is doing okay. That sounds like a hard road.

This is one thing I wonder about... The anti-salt people seem to be claiming that salt damages you over a lifetime, but then they also make it sound like lowering your salt will instantly take care of the problem. If so, why not wait till I've got high blood pressure?

Also, I'm not sure who is mad at who, or if anyone is. But I assume these are all the same people who said that we should all be on super low fat diets in the 70s. And, in fact, I did see something in reference to a 1977 senate committee that made recommendations to lower salt intake, and that is the same year the fat stuff really got going. I have to say, if this all started with those anti-fat people, that is a big red flag that it's all a bunch of hooey.

I can understand that. I think I would lower salt in your situation, too, even if I still had my current misgivings. I hope it helps, or if it doesn't that your other changes take care of the problem. Seems like you're being very pro-active!

ETA: Larry, I keep meaning to say that my great-grandmother lived in Brooksville when I was a kid and I have fond memories of it.

Thank you. He is living with it now, and it is sad. Nothing can be done, he has to watch his sodium now, when he is bad, he blows up, literally gaining 20 plus pounds of water weight, then ends up in the hospital, sometimes for 5 day....2 weeks, all depends on how long he was doing bad things until he went into the ER. He still hasn't learned, which is sad. Like I mentioned earlier. What we do now will catch up with us later. If we take care of our bodies while we are young, we will be in better shape as we get older. That is my plan. I want to live life to the fullest. I wish you the best!

@ Larry, Thanks for all of your great posts! I hope you are doing well. Great job on turning your lifestyle around.