I've been dealing with this a long time after DH had 7 By-passes in two different operation, full cardiac arrest & years of heart attacks until he got a heart transplant. Here are a few tips that have worked for me, (altho' sodium wasn't a problem for him.) He loves peas & beans which made it a lot easier. Transplant Dietician said he was allowed 60 gr. of fat per day but I try to keep it at 40 since even meds don't control his cholesterol well. It takes a while to shop 'cause yout must read labels! Bacon: I do give it to him once a week after rolling in paper towels, cooking in microwave- then pressing to lift grease. Eggs: Using only egg whites, lightly whipped then one drop of yellow food coloring swirled a bit before scrambling i non stick skillet. We're Southern & love the flavor of smoked hog jowls in greens, beans, etc., but I boil it, remove the meat & refrigerate it til' fat congeals so it lifts off...then just use the broth. Pot Roast & occasional baked Ham is done the same way. Buy only very lean ground meat & fat free broths for soups. I also buy Parkay Spray "Butter" 0 fat, calories & cholesterol, and the fat free salad dressings. Grocery shopping day is also cooking day (no need to put is all away, drag it out to cook a bunch of seperate meals.) First I build a fire in the grill then make beef patties. Then using more lean ground meat w/onions I brown it & as it browns I prepare chicken for baking. When beef is well done I put it in colander in the sink & pour boiling water of it & let it drain. Pour into paper towel lined bowl & press. When cool I put it in serving size freezer bags & flatten for quick thawing. Chopped onions are done the same way, so whatever amt is needed can be broken off easily. It can then be used for spaghetti, ect. (Sometimes we have Spaghetti Red (no meat) with lots of garlic & Italian spices.) Baked chicken breast (skin & fat removed) were so unappealing to him 'til I browned them first in skillet with non-stick spray. I buy large packs & cook them all at the same time for future use (saves on utility bills too.) 8 x 8" Pyrex dishes each get one so I can add different flavorings. One gets Frajita seasoning, one Italian, one Pace Picante. etc. While the chicken bakes I cook burgers (& sometimes Orange Roughy fish) on the grill- but not all the way thru. Cool & put each in a freezer bag- when ready to use a quick skillet warm up finishes the cooking process (we like ours well done.) I also make Stir Fry meals a lot. A little meat goes a long way when cut in small pcs. & it's a great way to use leftover meat. Soups are made with the fat free broths. Desserts are fat free puddings, jello w/ fruit. I also make this: Finely shredded cabbage in Lime jello, a layer of crushed canned pineapple, then layer of finely shredded carrots in Orange jello. AND, look for this *Banana Pops to make chocolate flavored bananas on a stick. It's by Concord Foods & only 5 gr. of fat. (www.concordfoods.com) By the bananas in our store. Feel free to e-mail me with any questions & Good luck! Suzi

As previously mentioned any recipe can be made without added salt but, you do have a challenge. As people age they tend not to taste foods as they once did. Then they make up for it by salting the food. You need to start with foods where you can 'kick it up a notch'. Things like chili with the hot peppers and onions. Saute fresh veggies and then deglaze with white wine making sure the water and alcohol are completely evaporated. When you make chicken soup you would make the broth of course (No canned! Not even "low sodium"), but add lemon rind. The oils bring out the flavor of the meat and veggies. Consider buying organic fresh foods that have more taste than factory farmed foods. So many people nowdays salt fruits like watermelon and cantaloupe because they have no flavor. Introduce him to new veggie and fruits that he has never had before so he has no "memory" of what they taste like. Try using snowpeas instead of the common peas for instance. Depending on how strict his diet must be, you may be able to buy low sodium versions of some items he loves. You can get things like soy sauce in a low sodium version. That way he can 'taper down' with some dishes until he can love eating them with no sodium at all. They key is using quality ingredients. Making French style dressing using balsamic vinegar and olive oil and then customizing with fresh garlic, dried red peppers, dill, and other things, beats out those bottled dressings. Use goat yogourt as a base for creamy dressing. Canned condensed soups at the store have so much filler in them - usually flour. That is why they salt them up. Making you own soups with lots of flavorful veggies you will wonder why you ever bought canned soups in the first place. Condiments and garnishes are going to be hard to substitute with no sodium version. Unsalted butter for instance tastes just awful on its own on top of mashed potatoes. It just gives one a greasy mouth feel. Try making the mashed potatoes adding garlic or using yogourt, sour cream or buttermilk to make them flavorful. Stir in some herbs too. So many people buy canned and jarred items loaded with salt and HFCS they themselves for got how foods are suppose to taste. Once you get to making your own sauces and salsas you will want to make them in huge batches for the whole family. It he is one who is used to salting meats try marinad or meat rubs. Make your own from dried spices. By making your own salt free dishes from raw basic ingredients you will notice a drop in your grocery bills too. Ka-ching!

Hello, Im writing this so others can avoid MY awful experience with this Âjump start 48 Âhour diet, sometimes called the Hollywood Diet. ItÂs Monday now and IÂm almost feeling normal again, but still very weak. Ever have stomach flu? ThatÂs what this was like. Saturday morning, full of determination, I mixed up a batch of the WomanÂs World recipe of the diet. Since it had more protein, it sounded more healthy than the Hollywood version of the Âjump-start recipe. Besides, I donÂt care for papayas or apricots, which may be the source of the bitter tang some users have complained about. It tasted just FINE, and I had my first shake at around 10 am, then went about my usual weekend activity, which was sewing. Not too strenuous. I worked steadily with a big container of water next to me, taking sips off that to keep hydrated as many have recommended. When I got hungry, I drank another fruit shake. Of course I used the toilet a lot more with all this liquid, but IÂd expected that, after all, I was trying to clean out my system. In articles IÂd read about this sort of diet IÂd learned our bowels can hold from 2-7 pounds of wasteÂwhich accounts for most of the Âweight lost in this diet. Of course, once youÂre back on regular food afterwards it all comes back, a little detail the TV infomercials leave out. Around 4pm my dogs came in and began staring at me. Not normal behavior for them. They are very perceptive pooches and their message was clear: ÂAre you feeling bad? They were right. I was feeling woozy, and had a headache, which I attributed to the sudden diet shift. I drank more water and decidedÂafter sewing a long seam up the wrong wayÂthat I needed to compromise on this. My weakness was such that I couldnÂt sit up to sew anymore, so I lay down on the bed and thought things over. As in the Slim Fast diet the idea of having one sensible meal for dinner made sense. So I had one (with some Tylenol) and felt a little better, but not much. I found I was too weak to sit at the sewing machine even then, and my trips to the toilet were becoming more frequent and cramp-ridden. Ditto for my between-runs rests. I dozed the rest of the slow evening, lurching up from bed to deal with bouts of out-and-out diarrhea, cursing myself for being so stupid. I got NO sleep that night, only catching short, shallow dozing between stumbling to the bathroom every 30 to 40 minutes, and groaning with cramp. Throughout all that my little dogs snuggled close, giving what comfort they could. I had chills, then the sweats like a fever victim, terrible cramps, and a thunderous headache that no amount of Tylenol would fix. I kept drinking water, knowing that if I didnÂt keep hydrated IÂd only feel worse. Finally I took a dose of Emetrol for the nausea. Exactly 30 seconds later I was bent over the tub with an uncontrolled case of the heaves, and remained there in abject misery for the next half hour. I crept back to bed, extremely weak, and went back to the chills, cramps, and sweats routine for the rest of the night. In the morning I still had the awful headache, and the shakes kept me from standing upright for more than a couple minutes. The cramps had abated, so I felt certain I was on the down side of the bell curve. I continued drinking water, and in the afternoon managed to keep down a couple finely chewed crackers. I remained bed-ridden the whole of the day. By evening I had dry toast and an egg. So, there it was: the 24-hour give yourself stomach-flu symptoms diet, and, NO, I did NOT lose ANY weight. The only jump-start to my system darn near burned out the battery, leaving me incapacitated for 2 days, weaker but wiser on the third. (And full of gas!) I will mention the one time I did lose weight a couple years back. I reduced my calorie intake to 1000-1200 a day, stopped drinking caffeine and anything fizzy (including diet fizzy drinks) and increased my walking to a mile a day. I lost 30 pounds. ItÂs the same old story, the quick miracle fads just donÂt work. I was able to stick to this one for only 8 hours before my body violently rebelled against the abuse. Had I stuck to it for 48 as the regime calls for IÂd have landed in a hospital with a bunch of health care workers shaking their heads over me, too polite to ask ÂWhat were you THINKING???? So you think about it now. As for meÂIÂm going back to the old routine. ItÂs slower, but more certain and 200% healthier. Pat Elrod

You can pressure can veggies w/o salt. Sometimes there are textural changes without it, though. I'd recommend doing a test batch before going whole hog. Have you pressure canned before? Commercially frozen vegetables can be had w/o salt, but you do have to read each package as it varies from one brand to another. Salt is added to preserve the color. Frozen vegetables with seasonings and sauces tend to be very salty. Unsalted veggies should be less than 20 mg/ serving which accounts for what's there naturally. And, of course, home frozen veggies can be any way you like them. Now, re pickles: Pickling salt is about the same mg/quarter teaspoon as table salt (590 mg). Some brands of pickling salt may vary. Although you are combining the salt with water to make a brine (and you won't be consuming the salt that stays in the brine) still the point of pickling is to have the saline brine and the vegetable reach a saltiness equilibrium so the pickle is just as salty as the brine when the pickling process is complete. And in this instance, salt is not there for cosmetic, or even solely for flavor, purposes, it's there for functional food safety reasons. Otherwise your cukes would be a slimy, disgusting, foul mess instead of nice dill chips. The other issue is that it is complicated to calculate the mg/Na (sodium) in home-made brined pickles. Food companies can simply pay to have samples of the product tested to make the labels. Here's a rough way to calculate it for home-made pickles:You could take the total amount of salt added in the recipe (figure 1/4 c is four tablespoons, which is twelve teaspoons then times whatever the package of brining salt says, in this case we'll use 590 mg per quarter teaspoon or 48 times that 590 or 28,320 mg of sodium in the entire batch, counting both the brine and the pickles, by volume. ) Then you have to figure out the volume the pickle piece occupies relative to the entire volume and divide that into the 28,320 mg to get the amount of sodium (theoretically) in each piece. More or less. Pickles are a tasty little condiment, so even though my DH is on an very low sodium diet we still eat them. But in very small quantities. However, I also buy some commercial pickles because it's easier than doing all this calculations. There is surprising difference among the brands, Vlasic is pretty salty; my store brands are all over the place, but there's one brand that seems to be consistently the lowest among the various types of pickles. It's Mt Something Olive? Ida?(I am not at home right now, but could check for you. It may be a regional one in the Northeast.) I "allow" up to 75 mg of sodium for condiments per day out of 1,000 mg/day budget, which is very generous. The dietician thought it would be better to only allow 40 mg for the condiments. But we eat very little prepared food, so we have more room the add in tasty extras. Bread is the hardest thing to work with because, there again, salt is both for taste and also for function in managing the development of the dough. How low are you trying to go in mg/day? Most people here in the US eat 4,000-5,000 mg. It's recommended that we lower that to 2,000 for good health, even though 1,500 would be best for people with normal health. A cheesburger can easily exceed 1,750 mg/NA - along with all its other less-than-great things. Lowering sodium is tough but it can be done. Takes about 6 weeks to get accustomed to it. Don't use salt "substitutes" unless your Dr. specifically OKs them. They are loaded with potassium salts instead of sodium salts, which can be a problem for some people on low-salt diets. I can make some other suggestions about managing the food prep for a low-salt diet, if needed. I really worked at it at first. Now it's second nature. HTH L.