Laura Schoenfeld: All right, so as far as keeping track of potassium intake, usually the calorie trackers that we recommend also will track micronutrients. So the one that I usually use with my clients is MyFitnessPal. And that one uses the USDA database to track most micronutrients as well. And the cool thing about MyFitnessPal is that you can actually choose which micronutrients you want to focus on.
So there’s a way to pick, I think, three to five different micronutrients to focus on as far as your report is concerned. I can double-check on that, but basically you get to prioritize certain micronutrients, and potassium is one of those. So I’m just looking, I think you can go to your goals and if you edit your goals … right now I’m just looking at my micronutrient goals, which I haven’t put anything specific in there and I hardly use this program anymore for myself. But the potassium goal is set at 3,500 mg a day. For your dad, you might want to up that to 4,700 mg per day for a goal and then as far as the report is concerned, let me see if, I believe that you can order the priorities. But let’s see.
So you can actually run a report on potassium consumed and then export that. So you can see how you’re doing and see if you’re reaching your goal. You can see what your average is over the last seven days, the last 30 days, the last 90 days. And you can see if you’re hitting those goals and how often you’re hitting them. So honestly I would just use MyFitnessPal to track that and then as far as the easiest way to increase potassium in his food, most plant foods are going to have a decent amount of potassium in them. So I would just say eating lots of different plant foods and having a lot of variety there is going to be helpful. As far as the foods that are highest in potassium, things like white potatoes, tomatoes, avocado, banana, let’s see what else. Sweet potatoes are pretty high, let’s see, some legumes are high. So things like pinto beans, lentils, those are pretty high in potassium if somebody’s eating legumes. Ironically some meats have potassium in them. So things like salmon and turkey, that kind of stuff is going to have a little bit of potassium. There is some potassium in dairy products. So if somebody’s eating yogurt or drinking milk, that’s going to provide potassium. A tablespoon of molasses has about 300 mg of potassium, so that’s a decent amount for that small amount of food. So I can put a list of high-potassium foods on the Facebook page. I would honestly just try to have him eat as many different plant foods as possible as part of his diet, and that’s going to help him get the potassium that he needs. And then on top of that, tracking on MyFitnessPal will allow him to look to see if he’s actually getting to the goals. And if he’s not increasing, some of these really high-potassium foods might be helpful.
So I’m just gonna put, let’s see, I’m going to put that link in the Facebook group along with that emotional eating website. So let’s see. Okay, so I’m going to post that link as well in the Facebook group and as far as you know increasing the high-potassium foods in general, like I said, some of them are really easy because things like tomatoes for example have very low calories. So you’re not going to have to worry about overdoing the total amount of calories that the person’s eating if they’re eating lots of things like tomatoes and mushrooms and Brussels sprouts and zucchini and broccoli, that kind of stuff. And then things like baked potatoes, sweet potatoes, avocado, they’re going to be a higher calorie amount, so they may not have as much room for lots of those in their diet. But for example, one medium baked potato has a most 1,000 mg in it. So that’s a pretty significant chunk of that 4,700 goal, so again the variety of vegetables, variety of fruits, variety of protein sources, really trying to focus on a whole-foods, plant-heavy diet, there’s going to be a lot of potassium in there. So I think that’s the easiest way to do it, and again, just setting the goals in your MyFitnessPal tracking app can help identify if your dad is meeting his needs for potassium. So again, 4,700 mg would be the goal I would put in there.