Your guide to lose weight

About Salt

About SALT


  Salt is an element vital to life and present to varying degrees in every food, so adding salt at the table is always superfluous. Salt is just a condiment that improves the flavor of food, sharpens the appetite, and is all too often used purely out of habit.

A Low-Salt Diet Is Never Dangerous You could and even should live your whole life on a low-salt diet. People with heart and kidney problems or high blood pressure live permanently on low-salt diets without suffering harmful effects. However, people with natural low blood pressure and those who are used to using salt on their food should exercise caution.

A diet too low in salt, especially when combined with a large intake of water, can lower blood pressure. If your blood pressure is already naturally low, this can produce fatigue and dizziness if you get up quickly. People with low pressure should not go overboard with salt reduction and should limit their water intake to 1½ quarts per day.

On the Other Hand, Too Much Salt Leads to Water Retention In hot climates, salt pills are regularly distributed to workers so that they avoid dehydration.

By the way, we often hear people complaining that they have put on 2 or even 4 pounds in one evening after a lapse in their diet. Sometimes a weight gain like this is not due to a real lapse. When we analyze exactly what was eaten, we can never track down the 18,000 calories of food required to produce these 4 extra pounds. It was simply the combination of an oversalty meal accompanied by wine, beer, or cocktails. Salt and alcohol combine to slow down the elimination of the water drunk. Never forget that 1 quart of water weighs about 2 pounds, and 2 teaspoons of salt are enough to retain this water in your body’s tissues for a day or two.

This being the case, if during your diet you cannot avoid a professional dinner engagement or a family celebration that will force you to put aside the rules of the Diet, then at least avoid eating salty foods and drinking too much alcohol. And do not weigh yourself the next morning, because a sudden increase in weight may discourage you and undermine your determination and confidence. Wait until the following day—or, even better, 2 days—while returning to the diet, drinking mineral water with a low mineral content, and cutting back on salt. These three simple measures should be enough to get you back on track.

Salt Increases Appetite—Decreasing Your Salt Intake Decreases Your Appetite This is a simple observation. Salty foods increase salivation and gastric acidity, which in turn increase your appetite. Conversely, lightly salted foods have only a slight effect on digestive secretions and no effect on appetite. Unfortunately, the absence of salt reduces thirst, and thus when you follow the Diet, you need to accept that during the first days you will have to make yourself drink a large amount of liquid so that you boost your need for water and reestablish your natural thirst.

During the pure protein diet and throughout the whole stages, any mention of calories and of calorie counting is to be avoided. Whether a few or many calories are eaten has little effect on the results; what counts is eating only the prescribed foods. So the actual secret of the program’s first weight loss stage is to eat a lot, even to eat in anticipation, before the hunger pangs take over.

Hunger that turns into an uncontrollable craving that can no longer be appeased by pure proteins leads the careless dieter toward comfort foods with little nutritional value—sugary, creamy, rich, and destabilizing foods that nevertheless have a strong emotional power.

By following the Diet, you have replaced a calories system with a categories system. There is absolutely no need for you to count calories; all you need do is stay within the categories. But if count calories; all you need do is stay within the categories. But if you stray away from the list of permitted foods, you are no longer allowed to eat any quantity you like, and you will have to start counting how many calories you eat.