Why My Celery Diet Didn't work

When I was a young wife and expecting my first child, I was a wee slip of a girl at 5'8" and 120 pounds. I didn't diet. I didn't watch what I ate. For crying out loud, I didn't know what a diet was. I spent my days nibbling on anything I felt like eating and especially cakes, pies and other goodies.

Then I got pregnant for the first time. Oh what a difference a day, a week, a month makes. I kept eating in my normal fashion and by the sixth month I was a whopping 45 pounds heavier. I didn't know it but I was headed for eclampsia or whatever it's called these days. All I know is that it is critical and can kill both the mommy and the baby.

My doctor warned me I needed to not only not gain any more weight but I needed to lose some of the weight I had gained. So off I went from that doctor's visit to follow what I thought was a healthy diet. For the couple of weeks, all I ate were fruits and vegetables. My diet consisted of raw carrots, celery, apples, bananas and grapefuit juice. I felt like I was starving but I kept to it and only ate fruits and vegetables, but mostly celery because I was a finicky eater and didn't like most of the vegetable and fruits. Any time, I wanted something to eat I was gnawing on a stalk of celery.

My next doctor's appointment rolled around and I didn't feel any heavier and I sure was hungry. When I got on the scale, I had gained 7 pounds. I was flabbergasted and my doctor was horrified. I conjoled him saying I was starving and hadn't eaten anything that wasn't a fruit or a vegetable, but that wasn't good enough. Into the hospital he put me.

Here I was 7 months pregnant and weighed in at a whopping 170 pounds. I was greeted by the hospital dietition who went over exactly what I had been eating to make me this blown up jellyfish of an expectant mother. When I got to the celery she all but guffawed in my face. "My Lordy," she intoned, "Celery is nothing but tubular salt. No wonder you are gaining weight so rapidly." For the next week, I was treated to bland no salt food. Like I said I had never had to worry about weight and had no idea how to diet.

That is my tale of how I dieted on fruits and vegetable and gained almost 10 pounds doing it. If you want to diet, I suggest you get your doctor involved and perhaps a dietition wouldn't hurt either.

Since this was a personal story and I didn't do any research on the nutritional value of celery, I decided to go and do my homework.

It seems that the nutritionist of the world are now exponing the value of celery in the diet but when I went and looked up the components in the vegetable, this is what I found: The most abundant mineral in celery is potassium, providing 166 mg, or 5 percent DV. It supplies 3 percent DV of calcium (25.6 mg) and manganese (0.1 mg). You'll also obtain 0.1 mg of iron, 7 mg of magnesium, 15.4 mg of phosphorus, 51.2 mg of sodium, 0.1 mg of zinc and 0.022 mg of copper.

The important factor here is that in every stalk of celery you eat you are intaking 51.2 mg of sodium. For someone who needs to restrict their salt intake, this could be a factor if you were to overuse celery.

While I restrict my use of table salt, I do use sea salt in my cooking. I use only a pinch for an entire recipe. When I make roasts, I use celery as a seasoning around my roast along with onions and carrots for flavoring. I have gone away from stuffing my turkeys mostly because it cuts down on the cooking time, but I do use the french style of roasting by stuffing the turkey with a few celery stalks and onions in the main cavity. The celery and onions permeate the meat to give it some additional flavor.