Is hidden salt in your food making you gain weight?

When we want to eat right, we count calories, track carbs and avoid sweets. But there's one ingredient that most of us overlook.

When most of us think of eating too much salt, this is what we think of. But surprisingly, table salt only accounts for a small part of our daily diet.

Doctors say most of the salt we eat, we never see and that’s what often leaves us feeling hungrier and heavier.

Dr. Martha Gulati, with Ohio State's Wexner Medical Center says, "Seventy-seven percent of the sodium in our diet, comes from processed food. And that's what people have to realize."

When we eat too much salt, we retain water, which adds weight. And excess salt actually makes you hungrier. If you're not careful, you can eat a lot with very little effort.

Dr. Gulati says, "In fact, if you eat one meal out at a restaurant, in general, most restaurants, that would be about 5-thousand milligrams of sodium."

That's more than twice the recommended amount - for an entire day. But it's not the only place salt is hiding.

Even fresh cut meat can contain extra salt often just to make it look better.

Dr. Gulati says, "At the grocery store, often they inject sodium into it to make it plumper. They make a mixture of water and salt to make it look better on the grocery shelf."

Even fruits and vegetables can have excessive salt especially if they're canned.

That's a lesson Rosalyn Brown learned the hard way. After surviving a heart attack, she reads the label on everything she buys and cuts out all the salt she can.

"The other thing I had to cut out: fast food. I had to learn how to go to the store, buy fresh fruits and vegetables, and prepare them at home."

Doctors will tell you that’s the best way to keep hidden salt from sabotaging your diet.

In addition to adding water weight, eating too much salt has also been linked to weaker bones and more severe asthma in men.