Skip to main content

If you can sell potato chips...

If you can sell a bag of potato chips, why can't you sell 1000mg potassium pills?

I've finally found an answer to my cravings and heart palpitations, and unfortunately, it's potato chips. It's not that I've jumped on the safe starch bandwagon, it's just that it suits my current needs:


  • I tend to get low on salt and potassium. The chips have a lot of both, making my heart and energy level feel normal.
  • I'm too wound up about moving to be very hungry. Therefore, I can eat half a bag at a time because I'm not eating much else. I've turned into one of those people who's lost weight eating potatoes.
  • My stomach hasn't been normal since those three courses of antibiotics from my root canal. The chips feel good on my stomach if I don't eat too many.


Downsides:

  • Acne, gas, a bit of reflux, and probably a lack of certain nutrients. 


Potassium isn't one of those nutrients, though. An eight-ounce bag of potato chips has 3727 mg of potassium; a potassium tablet has 99. No wonder I had to pop the potassium pills like candy pre-chips. If I could just get a pill with 4000mg of potassium and chase it with something salt-encrusted, I could get all the relevant nutrients without the acne and other problems.

Potato chips are generally considered junk food, but they do have quite a lot of nutrients, and I usually get the kind cooked in coconut or avocado oil. If a person was carb-agnostic and ate potatoes, what would be wrong with eating the potatoes in the form of chips cooked in natural oils?

Be that as it may, I need to do something other than eat chips. I got a bottle of potassium pills and some probiotics, which helped immediately after my root canal; maybe I need to continue taking them to help absorb nutrients. I'd like to get back to eating normally because I feel better physically and mentally--it's just that  my normal food now sounds like something that would give me a stomach ache. I haven't even been able to look at a fish in months. That, and I have to keep the kitchen clean for potential house buyers to look at. I've been eating lots of take-out.

My plan is to have some eggs or sausage in the morning, a low-carb lunch, dinner if I feel like it, and potassium pills with all of it. Probiotics as directed, and avoid skipping the vitamins.
Labels:

Comments

Galina L. said…
If potatoes give you pimples and reflux, you may try something else with potassium. There are other foods high in potassium besides potatoes like pumpkins, fish, avocados. One avocado, for example, contains more than 1000 mg of potassium. Sometimes I like to blend together avocado with tomatoes, onion and red pepper, it is like a vegetable smoothy, you can add a lot of salt there and all spices and garlic you fancy, vinegar if you like, and liquid things are easy to consume when not hungry. Well, you may consume it with your chips - it is even more potassium, and you would need less potato chips.Vegetables like a squash are rich in magnesium, mushrooms too. I just thought about making a gallon of soup with a mix of dried(dried mushrooms are easy to re-hydrate in a microwave in a container with water) and fresh mushrooms, with added shredded squash and even some potatoes, and freezing it in portion-size containers. I like containers, it is easy to de-frost in a bowl of water - faster, than in a microwave.
October 20, 2015
valerie said…
Have you tried salt substitute? It is pure potassium chloride. Seems like it would be easier (and probably cheaper) than those 99mg pills.

Here in Canada, I can find it in any grocery store, right next to spices and regular salt. They call it "NoSalt." There is also "HalfSalt" which is a mix of sodium chloride and potassium chloride.
October 20, 2015
Galina L. said…
If potatoes give you pimples and reflux, you may try something else with potassium. There are other foods high in potassium besides potatoes like pumpkins, fish, avocados. One avocado, for example, contains more than 1000 mg of potassium. Sometimes I like to blend together avocado with tomatoes, onion and red pepper, it is like a vegetable smoothy, you can add a lot of salt there and all spices and garlic you fancy, vinegar if you like, and liquid things are easy to consume when not hungry. Well, you may consume it with your chips - it is even more potassium, and you would need less potato chips.Vegetables like a squash are rich in magnesium, mushrooms too. I just thought about making a gallon of soup with a mix of dried(dried mushrooms are easy to re-hydrate in a microwave in a container with water) and fresh mushrooms, with added shredded squash and even some potatoes, and freezing it in portion-size containers. I like containers, it is easy to de-frost in a bowl of water - faster, than in a microwave.
October 22, 2015
Larcana said…
That's tough! I couldn't eat them because of the reflux I get from too much salt.
Best of luck with it.
October 24, 2015
Val said…
Very late catching up on blog-reading, but sorry to hear of your troubles post root canal, Lori!
Hope things have gotten back on an even keel.
I myself have been teetering on my plateau for MONTHS, so it's certainly time to shit or get off the pot. It may be that this is my New Normal since I seem disinclined to buckle down & do the work necessary to "Get On Down" - in which case I need to make the best of it (insert platitudes here). All the best, Val
December 02, 2015
Lori Miller said…
Sorry, everyone, for the delay in posting comments. They never showed up in my email and I didn't check blogger.
December 04, 2015
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blog Lineup Change

Bye-bye, Fathead. I've enjoyed the blog, but can't endorse the high-fat, high-carb Perfect Health Diet that somehow makes so much sense to some otherwise bright people. An astrophysicist makes some rookie mistakes on a LC diet, misdiagnoses them, makes up "glucose deficiency," and creates a diet that's been shown in intervention studies to increase small LDL, which can lead to heart disease. A computer programmer believes in the diet and doesn't seem eager to refute it because, perhaps, scientists are freakin' liars and while he's good at spotting logical inconsistencies, lacks some intermediate knowledge of human biology. To Tom's credit, he says it's not the right diet for everyone, but given the truckload of food that has to be prepared and eaten, impracticality of following it while traveling (or even not traveling), and unsuitability for FODMAPs sufferers, diabetics and anyone prone to heart disease (i.e., much of the population), I'm...
24 comments
Read more

Collagen-filled Low Carb Burritos

Low-carb, grain-free Mexican food is hard to find, but it's easy to make your own at home. This recipe has an authentic ingredient: carne de lengua, or beef tongue. Don't be put off: beef tongue is tender, delicious, and full of collagen. Look for it directly from farmers in your area. To cook it, cut it in 1" to 1-1/2" slices and pressure cook for one hour. Enjoy the delicious broth as a bonus. Ingredients 1 slice cooked beef tongue, peeled and cut into small cubes 1 egg wrap (I use these  from Egglife) 1/4 cup cooked black or pinto beans Chili pepper Oregano Garlic (powdered or minced) Cumin Guacamole (with no emulsifiers) Salsa Shredded cheddar cheese Sour cream or homemade cream cheese  with no emulsifiers  Put the egg wrap on a plate and put the beef and beans down the middle of it. Sprinkle with the herbs and spices. Wrap, turn over and microwave for 1-2 minutes. Spoon salsa over the burrito and sprinkle with cheese. Add guacamole and sour cream or homemade crea...
Post a Comment
Read more

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too.  Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr...
24 comments
Read more

Palpitations Gone with Iron

Thanks to my internet friend Larcana, who alerted me to the connection between iron deficiency and palpitations, I doubled down on my iron supplements and, for good measure, washed them down with Emergen-C. It's a cold medicine with a mega-dose of vitamin C, plus B vitamins and minerals. I don't think vitamin C does anything for a cold (a friend bought the stuff and left it at my house the last time she visited), but vitamin C does help iron absorption. After doubling up on iron in the last three days, I feel back to normal. (I'd already been taking quite a bit of magnesium and potassium, so I probably had sufficient levels of those.) How did I get so low on iron? Maybe it was too many Quest bars instead of red meat when I had odd cravings during my dental infection recently. Maybe because it's too hard to find liver at the grocery store and I haven't eaten much of it lately. Maybe the antibiotics damaged my intestines . And apparently, I'm a heavy bleeder . ...
18 comments
Read more

In Defense of Fast Food

Another modern trend - healthy food should be expensive, not nutrients-dense and preferably exotic, or you would be eating like plebs who live on a dollar McD menu. --Galina L. I don't try to jump over seven-foot hurdles, I look for one-foot hurdles I can step over. --Warren Buffett, pleb who eats at McDonald's Despite all the talk about wild-caught v. farmed, grass-fed v. CAFO and the vilification of fast food, a lot of us plebs benefit simply from carbohydrate restriction. But even though diabetes and obesity are rampant, and carb restriction alone would help millions of people, the impression is out there that you need to eat in a very specific way, far beyond just watching the carbs. Following a low-carb diet is already a high hurdle for many people. If some people want or need to raise the bar for themselves, that's fine with me, but there's no need to turn low-carb into a hurdle that a lot of people can't jump over. Organic produce and grass-fed or p...
17 comments
Read more