I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) in 2005, which kick started this whole living healthy business. I’m an emotional eater and was overweight for most of high school and my early 20s. The diagnosis was a wakeup call to make healthier life choices – along with taking the Pill to control PCOS symptoms, I started exercising and eating better, which resulted in a weight loss of 13 kg from my highest weight of 62 kg to 49 kg. I felt and looked better.

Fast forward to 2009. I was diagnosed with prehypertension (most likely because of the Pill and shitty genetics – more whinging on this in another blog post) early this year and was told by my doctor to eat less salt or no more scripts for the Pill.

I love salt. I love hot chips with chicken salt, salted fish, tinned sardines and bacon. At the same time, I’m anxious about giving up the Pill. I know that being on it long term takes a toll on the body, but I’ve had such great success with curbing my PCOS symptoms that I’m loath to give it up. Of course, there’s also that small matter of an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. So I chose to give up salt.

I wasn’t prepared for how difficult it was going to be and find myself cheating a lot. It doesn’t help that I’m a bit of a foodie – low sodium products just seem a bit pointless. The day after my last big salt binge I decided that I need to take this low salt diet more seriously and Unsalted Nut was born.

My mission is to give this low salt thing a go for the next four – six weeks and schedule an appointment for another test to see if I get any positive results. This blog was created as a tool to help me be more accountable for my diet and to help low sodium newbies get started. I didn’t have anything to help me get started aside from Google, so this diet was (and still is) a steep learning curve.

This blog is created to be starting point for beginners – a repository of useful information, recipes, product reviews and practical tips on eating less salt and more of the good stuff. If you’re already eating less salt you probably won’t find anything new, but I appreciate any tips and recipes you can throw at me.

A little bit about me: I’m 28 and I live in sunny Australia. I love good food, cats, trash TV, surreal comedies and fashion. I’m originally from East Malaysia so the best way to get to my heart is definitely through my stomach. E-mail me at unsaltednut at gmail dot com to share any useful info or if you just want to say hi.