potassium deficit

nursesarah79

OK.
EVERYDAY THAT I LOG I AM WAY UNDER MY POTASSIUM GOAL. I DONT GET THAT!
EVEN WHEN I EAT A BANANA AND OR OTHER HIGH POTASSIUM FOOD IT STILL SAYS THAT I AM NOT GETTING ENOUGH.
I DONT KNOW HOW ACCURATE THIS IS BECAUSE I AM NOT HAVING ANY SYMPTOMS OF HYPOKALEMIA AND I ALSO TAKE A MVI DAILY.
SO DOES ANYONE ELSE HAVE THIS PROBLEM?
ANY SUGGESTIONS?
THANKS IN ADVANCE!

Knbrooks42

I think a lot of people struggle with this. I know I am way under too. One thing that a friend and I found is "No Salt". It is a salt substitute but is ONLY potassium. I'm pretty sure there are no calories or anything else. You may look into putting this on your foods. Hope this helps!

nursesarah79

thanks!
never thought about that!
and it will help me cut down on my sodium as well!

fitterpam

Yup - I have Half Salt (similar to No Salt). I use it instead of salt to cut out the sodium and up the potassium. But also you can look at the other foods that are high in potassium. Make sure to get a variety because they do have other nutrients that you need.

All meats, poultry and fish are high in potassium.
Apricots (fresh more so than canned)
Avocado
Banana
Cantaloupe
Honeydew
Kiwi
Lima beans
Milk
Oranges and orange juice
Potatoes (can be reduced to moderate by soaking peeled, sliced potatoes overnight before cooking)
Prunes
Spinach
Tomatoes
Vegetable juice
Winter squash

saigesmommy

I feel like a lot of the user added content on here does not include accurate potassium data. For example if you go to Jennie O ground turkey it shows no potassium, but if you go the the generic ground turkey added by myfitnesspal it shows 200+ per serving. This could be a contributing factor. I am getting frustrated with my "low potassium intake" as well, but I am not sure that it is accurate.

SouthernBell86

Yes, Saigesmommy is right - a LOT of food here doesn't have any potassium information entered for it, but the reality is that almost every food has at least a little tiny bit. I have been going in to all foods I eat and editing the nutritional information and adding the potassium value to it so that I can actually get a good idea of how much potassium I'm getting. I still tend to come up short - sometimes I only get 2,500 out of 3,500 mg, but it's a lot better than before I entered all the potassium information.

In order to know how much potassium is in foods I go to http://www.bitelog.com/narrow-food-search.htm?q=potassium+in&action=Search&options=1&redir=redir&food_quantity_text=1&unit_no=piece

bitelog.com is a great website for finding out random nutritional information. Sometimes I have to round up things out when I can't find the product exactly, but I know what the bulk of the product is made out of. You may want to try doing this. Since I started correcting things I just went through a period of time where I had to do a lot, and then it tapered off since I eat a lot of the same foods on a regular basis.

Oh and you know one of my favorite potassium boosters is coconut water - you can get original flavor which I like best, or they have other flavors with other fruit juices added. It's 600 mg of potassium in a cup, compared to 422 for a medium banana. And it's only 46 calories for one cup, compared to 105 calories for a medium banana. The same can be said for a lot of the other fruits listed. They are great things you should try and eat on a regular basis in your diet, along with other potassium rich foods, but if you come to the end of the day and you have a large potassium deficit, it is easy to grab some coconut water to give yourself a good dose of it without going over on calories.

saigesmommy

So..... I agree with SouthernBell86. I have been adding in the potassium myself as well. I have been using

http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/SR17/wtrank/sr17a306.pdf

which is the USDA nutrient database for the Potassium content of foods. After adding in enough I have decided that I am not going to track my potassium intake anymore. I am currently eating my favorite chips "Red Hot Blues" and they don't even have potassium listed on their label on the bag. Like SouthernBell86 said, there are so many foods that have potassium in them that I think they don't even put it on the labels. More comprehensive food labels would be nice though I hope our posts help you :happy:


Oh, and I am most definitely going to try the coconut water! That's a great tip, thanks so much!

selbyhutch

My potassium tends to be really low & I have to take a supplement for it. It try to also eat lots of bananas & often thrown in a teaspoon of wheatgerm to recipes.