Hello,

You write that the recommended daily allowance is 500 mg of sodium, and for athletes, it can be up to 2000 mg. How should I properly set this value for a client? How can I find out how much sodium a person has lost through exercising?

Thank you.

You will never set the exact value; it is not feasible and essentially not the goal when creating a meal plan. The principle (not only in this direction) is to strive for the nutrient content you want to monitor in the diet to move towards values that are generally (populationally) presented while roughly corresponding to the needs of the individual for whom you are designing the meal plan.

In the case of sodium content, it is necessary to learn to balance its amount in the diet with the level of physical activity and the degree of sweating, where the greatest losses from the body occur due to the sum of both factors. That is why the difference between the two values is so significant, but in practice, it can be much greater. You will never know exactly how much sodium is lost during physical activity. In research, sweat analyses are conducted and the contents of individual minerals are monitored, from which commonly presented population recommendations are subsequently derived. These should be considered truly general. If sodium intake is too low, you will notice this in practice after a few days of such a deficit through increased fatigue—athletes are able to define this state better by feeling because they perceive their bodies much more sensitively than the non-athletic population.

Themes:  Weight loss   Sodium