Potassium, how on earth to get enough?!
feistyale
Posts: 2 Member
Hey there everyone!
I am really struggling on how to get enough potassium into my diet every single day. I am on a strict 1200 cal plan that is also very sugar conscious. Adding a banana, some spinach, or a small handful of pistachios just isn’t getting me anywhere near my daily requirements and is eating up calories I’d rather spend elsewhere by leaving me hungry.
How do you get enough potassium in your diet while also maintaining a decent low fat, low sugar, low calorie diet?
Everything I’ve read says to not take supplements for potassium… But I feel like that may be my only option if I want to stay true to my diet. However, my research on potassium supplements has kind of fallen short because there’s not a ton of details out there about what is actually safe.
Help a girl out!
I’m all ears!!
I am really struggling on how to get enough potassium into my diet every single day. I am on a strict 1200 cal plan that is also very sugar conscious. Adding a banana, some spinach, or a small handful of pistachios just isn’t getting me anywhere near my daily requirements and is eating up calories I’d rather spend elsewhere by leaving me hungry.
How do you get enough potassium in your diet while also maintaining a decent low fat, low sugar, low calorie diet?
Everything I’ve read says to not take supplements for potassium… But I feel like that may be my only option if I want to stay true to my diet. However, my research on potassium supplements has kind of fallen short because there’s not a ton of details out there about what is actually safe.
Help a girl out!
I’m all ears!!
0
Replies
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Hey there everyone!
I am really struggling on how to get enough potassium into my diet every single day. I am on a strict 1200 cal plan that is also very sugar conscious. Adding a banana, some spinach, or a small handful of pistachios just isn’t getting me anywhere near my daily requirements and is eating up calories I’d rather spend elsewhere by leaving me hungry.
How do you get enough potassium in your diet while also maintaining a decent low fat, low sugar, low calorie diet?
Everything I’ve read says to not take supplements for potassium… But I feel like that may be my only option if I want to stay true to my diet. However, my research on potassium supplements has kind of fallen short because there’s not a ton of details out there about what is actually safe.
Help a girl out!
I’m all ears!!
The problem is not that you aren't taking in enough potasium, the problem is that most labels do not include information about potasium... since it's not on the label, it will not be in the database. Odds are that you are getting plenty of potasium in your diet. The only way to be sure would be to look up the food in a comprehensive database like the one supplied by the USDA.
I would also agree with the people who tell you not to supplement potasium unless you are doing it under a Dr's care - excess potasium can lead to serious health issues.7 -
Are you deficient in potassium?2
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Hey there everyone!
I am really struggling on how to get enough potassium into my diet every single day. I am on a strict 1200 cal plan that is also very sugar conscious. Adding a banana, some spinach, or a small handful of pistachios just isn’t getting me anywhere near my daily requirements and is eating up calories I’d rather spend elsewhere by leaving me hungry.
How do you get enough potassium in your diet while also maintaining a decent low fat, low sugar, low calorie diet?
Everything I’ve read says to not take supplements for potassium… But I feel like that may be my only option if I want to stay true to my diet. However, my research on potassium supplements has kind of fallen short because there’s not a ton of details out there about what is actually safe.
Help a girl out!
I’m all ears!!
For starters, potassium isn't required on nutritional labels and such...since the database is crowdsourced from users, and most of that information won't be on food labels, it also won't be populated in the database. Trying to accurately track micro-nutrients on MFP is a fairly futile endeavor.
Secondly, on 1200 calories, it wouldn't be unusual at all to have vitamin and mineral deficiencies...that is one of the reasons that MFP sets that as the absolute lowest. From a calorie standpoint, things like low sodium V8 and other canned/jarred tomato products are your best bet for potassium...Potatoes are also a tremendous source of potassium...they blow a banana out of the water and are filling and I don't put them in the category of being particularly calorie dense.
Thirdly, no...you shouldn't supplement with potassium unless you are actually deficient as per blood work and under the care of a physician who is monitoring this.13 -
cwolfman13 wrote: »Hey there everyone!
I am really struggling on how to get enough potassium into my diet every single day. I am on a strict 1200 cal plan that is also very sugar conscious. Adding a banana, some spinach, or a small handful of pistachios just isn’t getting me anywhere near my daily requirements and is eating up calories I’d rather spend elsewhere by leaving me hungry.
How do you get enough potassium in your diet while also maintaining a decent low fat, low sugar, low calorie diet?
Everything I’ve read says to not take supplements for potassium… But I feel like that may be my only option if I want to stay true to my diet. However, my research on potassium supplements has kind of fallen short because there’s not a ton of details out there about what is actually safe.
Help a girl out!
I’m all ears!!
For starters, potassium isn't required on nutritional labels and such...since the database is crowdsourced from users, and most of that information won't be on food labels, it also won't be populated in the database. Trying to accurately track micro-nutrients on MFP is a fairly futile endeavor.
Secondly, on 1200 calories, it wouldn't be unusual at all to have vitamin and mineral deficiencies...that is one of the reasons that MFP sets that as the absolute lowest. From a calorie standpoint, things like low sodium V8 and other canned/jarred tomato products are your best bet for potassium...Potatoes are also a tremendous source of potassium...they blow a banana out of the water and are filling and I don't put them in the category of being particularly calorie dense.
Thirdly, no...you shouldn't supplement with potassium unless you are actually deficient as per blood work and under the care of a physician who is monitoring this.
Everything he said, plus broccoli. Fresh or frozen steamed broc has a ton of potassium per calorie.*
*Make that a kitten-ton...
https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2357/25 -
L1zardQueen wrote: »Are you deficient in potassium?
This, and what others have said.
I log at Cron using whole food entries, which do have potassium, and the best bang for the cals are vegetables. I eat lots of veg (10+ servings/day) and am pretty much always over my potassium, even on unusually low cal days.
I do agree with those saying that you might want to reconsider if you actually need to be on 1200, especially if you exercise at all.
Also, coffee has some. I never logged coffee until I realized that.4 -
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Potatoes have lots of potassium more than banana's..if you're doing 1200cals and you want to hit Potassium 100% everyday, you will need to be strategic with meals, fruits &veggies are where its at; I do a smoothie with Greens Powders Recipe:
Greens blend powder
1cup frozen fruit
1cup water or OJ
comes to roughly 140-300calories0 -
Others have covered the potassium issue so I will talk about the 1200 calories. Unless you are very very short AND sedentary, you can eat more than 1200 calories and lose weight just fine.
https://www.aworkoutroutine.com/1200-calorie-diet/
As you will see in the article, eating 1200 calories when you don't have to can be counter-productive to weight loss:
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I worried about the same thing when I started noticing that I never met the potassium goal and that most days I was WAY off. I had lab work coming up in a couple of months though so I decided I would not worry about it and just see what my potassium level was in my bloodwork. It was perfectly fine despite me failing miserably at potassium per MFP. My advice: don't waste your time worrying about potassium. 😃2
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Apricots, potato skins, mushrooms, all rich in potassium.1
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Coconut water2
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body armor lyte has 20 cal and 700 mg of potassium
5.5 ounce can low sodium V8 has 30 cal and 700 mg potassium0 -
I've never understood why they associate banana with potassium. It doesn't even make in the top 100 sources of potassium.
This is the USDA official list of food per potassium content. It's a PDF file.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.nal.usda.gov/sites/www.nal.usda.gov/files/potassium.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjL89i3ocfuAhUDYawKHXJ4BZQQFjAAegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw093tN4d3YX7OqPnmjPsja90 -
"Lite" salt has potassium. But if you are thinking you are "low" because of the numbers MFP data base gives you, it's probably not a thing - many, many of the entries don't have potassium #s at all.2
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I've never understood why they associate banana with potassium. It doesn't even make in the top 100 sources of potassium.
This is the USDA official list of food per potassium content. It's a PDF file.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.nal.usda.gov/sites/www.nal.usda.gov/files/potassium.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjL89i3ocfuAhUDYawKHXJ4BZQQFjAAegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw093tN4d3YX7OqPnmjPsja9
It seems rather arbitrary, as it's ranked by mg of potassium per "measure," in which the measure is different for different foods -- 1 cup of one food, three cups of another, one "piece" of a fruit, etc. It would be more helpful if it were mg of potassium per calorie, or at least mg of potassium per 100 g (but per calorie, or per 100 cals would be best for people who are trying to fit X mg of potassium into their calorie budget)/3 -
two words: egg whites
1 cup of egg whites ie your breakfast is only 125 calories 0 fat and serves up 375 mg of potassium
honeydew melon is another excellent source at 0 fat, though the sugar may be a concern for you
also if you haven't done so already pay for MFP and it will show you which foods deliver which vitamins and minerals0 -
B_Plus_Effort wrote: »two words: egg whites
1 cup of egg whites ie your breakfast is only 125 calories 0 fat and serves up 375 mg of potassium
honeydew melon is another excellent source at 0 fat, though the sugar may be a concern for you
also if you haven't done so already pay for MFP and it will show you which foods deliver which vitamins and minerals
I don't pay for MFP and it shows me the same vitamin and mineral info that is available in premium. Both versions use the same crowd-sourced database.4 -
Bananas?
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Can I ask why you're looking at your potassium stats it is a deficiency also why a strict 1200 if that is based on the MFP recommendation please do not use this as it is very inaccurate and takes very little about a person into account and you may be very under eating.
Lucy
[edited by MFP mods]0 -
This is cool, as you can look at potassium-rich foods ranked by 200 cal servings or 100 g servings, as well as whatever they define as common serving. https://tools.myfooddata.com/nutrient-ranking-tool/Potassium/All/Highest/200cal/Common/No
It leads to some silly results (coffee wins with the 200 cal serving, since you have to drink a LOT of plain coffee to get that many cals, and greens score high too, for similar reasons), but looking at all three options or just using common sense is informative.1 -
"Lite" salt has potassium. But if you are thinking you are "low" because of the numbers MFP data base gives you, it's probably not a thing - many, many of the entries don't have potassium #s at all.
Yes, I'm anemic and look at iron values - the majority of the time the value is missing or wrong in USER-created entries (I've never had an issue with micros in ADMIN-created entries that were pulled from the USDA database.)
Also, potassium was not required to be on food labels until 2018, so many older entries may omit it for that reason as well.1
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