It is important to your health to make sure you are getting enough potassium in your body on a daily basis. In my research on this nutrient, I have read that you need at least 4,000 milligrams each and every day. So, how do you know if you are getting enough? When should you start looking into taking a potassium supplement?
Personally, I will never take any kind of supplement or vitamin unless I know for a fact that I continue to be deficient in it after at least 4 months of trying to correct the problem naturally.
Using Real Foods.
Whole Foods.
Clean Foods.
It is always best to get your nutritional needs met through quality, whole food choices, and it can be as dangerous to take supplements you don’t need as it is to be deficient in an area.
There are ways to find out if you are getting enough of certain needed vitamins and minerals, as well as if you are consuming too much of a bad ingredient.
Online apps.
Health Symptoms.
Lab tests.
I began to figure out how to adjust my eating habits according to the nutrients my body needed more of or less of by using an online app. As my diet and healthier lifestyle began to evolve, I could see that my eating habits definitely contributed to the health symptoms I had been feeling before my change of diet. I also began to see positive changes in my lab tests at the Dr. office.
But it didn’t happen overnight.
It took time, patience and research on my part, and it continues to be an ongoing process for me. I am still working to bring a couple “numbers” on my labs down, and other numbers up. I currently take a vitamin D3 supplement, because in spite of how much sun I get (and I get a lot), I am still deficient there. After reading the risks of not getting enough D3, I have chosen to take that vitamin.
Where to begin…
A good place to start is to log everything you eat and figure out how much of each nutrient you are actually getting in your diet each day. Luckily, there are many wonderful apps out there that will assist you with this, making it much easier for you, and more accurate. I used caloriecount.com and loved it. I had to log in every single thing I ate, and I could do it in detail very easily with this program. It was a little time consuming at first, but the longer I used it the less time it took each day.
A little extra time spent to lose weight and get healthy is time well spent!
This is what it took for me to see exactly what I was putting in my body.
What an eye opener!
At the end of the day, this program tells you your recommended daily allowances of any given mineral or vitamin, and the graph shows if you are low, high, or within range of it. It does this for the good minerals and vitamins as well as the bad, like saturated fats and sugar. In my daily totals I saw that my potassium levels were low every single day despite my efforts to eat foods rich in potassium.
It just seemed I could never get quite enough to reach the healthy level.
I needed to take action.
I researched which vegetables were high in potassium. Since much of the nutrient content can be found in the stems of some of the vegetables, and heating some of them up also maximized their potential as long as I ate the ‘broth’ too, I decided to make a soup. The choice suited me well, as I love soup, and it happened to be wintertime.
The following is the recipe for my “Potassium Power Soup.”
Kim’s Potassium Power Soup
approx. 9,316 mg of potassium total = about 1,000 mg/bowl
(numbers in parenthesis are the approximate mg of potassium in that vegetable, based on the Worlds Healthiest Foods Nutrient Rating Chart )
1 cup beet greens (1300)
1 cup spinach and/or swiss chard (900 each)
4 medium zucchini (1,300)
6 kale leaves and stalks (900)
3 green onions (scallions) (120)
1 cup broccoli (450)
3 carrots (400)
3 celery stalks (350)
1 lb. green string beans (600)
10-12 brussels sprouts (1200)
1 large bunch fresh parsley (700)
handful cilantro (21)
3 medium tomatoes or 1 can organic chopped tomatoes, no salt added (500)
6 garlic cloves (75)
3 Tbsp tamari
2 Tbsp Bragg’s Liquid Aminos or coconut aminos
3 Tbsp Bragg’s Apple Cider Vinegar (helps your body absorb vitamins and minerals)
2 Tbsp seaweed flakes- or nori/seaweed sheets, toasted, then crumbled to equal about 3 Tbsp
2 Tbsp amaranth seeds (100)
avocado slices for serving, half of an avocado (400)
Choose organic vegetables whenever possible!
If you can only do some organic, choose the vegetables on the “dirty dozen” list!
Wash the veggies (beet greens through garlic), peel carrots and cut ends off string beans. Do NOT cut off kale stems! They contain all the potassium in the kale.
Cut vegetables into big pieces and reserve a little parsley for garnishing, if desired.
Pulse vegetables through the food processor until finely chopped.
Put chopped/pureed vegetables into a large, heavy-bottomed stock pot.
Add 5 cups water.
Add the tamari, liquid amino’s, apple cider vinegar, seaweed, and the amaranth seeds.
Bring to a gentle boil, then lower heat, cover, and let simmer for 30 minutes.
Serve warm, topped with avocado slices, a sprig of parsley or a pinch of cilantro if desired. I also sprinkle some hemp seeds and ground flax seeds on mine.
Store covered in the fridge for use within one week, or freeze in serving size bags. I freeze some in ice-cube trays as well, to use the cubes in smoothies and other recipes.
This is how much one recipe of this soup makes:
1 serving to enjoy immediately
8 lunch-size servings (3 large ladle’s full/bag)
24 “ice” cubes to be used in breakfast smoothies (3/smoothie)
Other recipes you can add this healthy vegetable mixture to:
Meatloaf
Spaghetti Sauce
Chili Recipes
Casseroles
Cream soups
Brownies (I’ve not tried this one yet, adjust recipe a bit to allow for the juices)
A few words of caution:
If your children or your spouse have a serious aversion to green vegetables, make this soup while they are at school, at work, or asleep.
And for heaven’s sake, don’t tell them when you add it to another recipe. It’s taste is subtle and it will not turn the finished product green. They will never know!
Your secret is safe with me!
Get Healthy. Eat Clean. Enjoy Life.
Embrace those Greens!
Fit & Fearless after Fifty 