So many forum members use My Fitness Pal so I decided to check it out and I really like it. Most of my days my calories are under the daily allowance, but my sodium is almost always high. I'm curious if your sodium intake affects your water weight gain.

If your sodium amount changes daily by a large amount, yes you will see huge changes in water weight. Especially after eating a high sodium meal. If you have about the same sodium daily, I wouldn't worry too much about it even if you have more than fitness pal recommends.

My sodium intake makes me balloon! If I have fries or pasta with parm or mashed potatoes with salt, etc , it's not uncommon for me to be 5 lbs up. I like hiddenstar's idea of consistency. If you always have, for example, 2000 mg of salt, who cares what MFP says. Extra salty foods will make you spike for sure.

I'd say just keep an eye on it. If you bloat one day, you can know it's just water and not beat yourself up

I re-checked MFP my sodium is all over the place. It's anywhere from 1,000 under the daily quota to 2,000 over the daily quota. I guess I need to be more careful about that from now on. :/

Thank you both!!! One more question... Will drinking a lot of water on the high sodium days counteract the sodium or not really?

It could help a little but truthfully, it takes me 2-3 days of drinking lots of water after a high sodium day to get back to normal.

Bummer. Thanks for sharing your experience!!

I ate Chinese food last night. Not a lot but enough that the salt content will skyrocket my weight and I don't want that depression.

No matter how much water I drink to try and rid it, the only way I will lose the actual pounds is with time (and not eating the leftovers of course).

Water weight is depressing, esp. combined with PMS water retention. Ugh.

Unless you have high BP, I wouldn't worry about watching your sodium intake. Everyone's weight is up and down for lots of reasons. That's why I weigh daily and take the average. As long as you don't overthink the numbers on the scale and focus on the big picture, you will be fine.

However, if you notice a jump in the scale, look back at your sodium intake from the day before. It could at the very least explain the jump!

How funny, this is something I also discovered after I started to use My Fitness Pal! Adjusting things so that my sodium levels are more appropriate has actually made a difference in how I feel, at the very least. We'll see next week at the dietitian if it's made more of a difference in other areas too!

ME TOO!

I had a huge energy boost when I started using MFP, when I lost about 12 pounds in a few days. That HAD to be all water weight, so my guess is the cut to my sodium intake is what did it (I had been eating out, and eating lots of ramen noodles for 2 weeks before that).

But, yeah. Huge energy boost. It was similar to the high I get every spring after the first few full days of sunshine.

Last Straw - Ugh yes! Chinese has worst salt for me too. LOL But it's so deelish going down.

No Name - Yes, I have high blood pressure. That's a large part of why I was concerned. As long as I take my meds it's normal, but still... I want to be more careful now that I know.

Bardess - If you don't mind me asking... did it make a big difference at the dietitians too?