Potassium Diet

Today I came to an interesting realization...

A few days back, I used to eat like there was no tomorrow, because I truly love eating and I excused myself on the excuse that I made enough exercise to compensate for it. Little did I know that physical activity actually contributes less to weight loss than what you actually put in your mouth... but that's besides the point for this entry.

So, back to the point... I would be at work, totally minding my own business, as usual.

Every now and then my boss would buy pizza for all the team, so that every brain would be fueled without constrain.

Most of the times, all the team would congregate around the pizza and blerch on the delicious cheese and dough delicacy laid in front of us.

Often times this resulted in me eating almost a whole pie by myself, an action that didn't go unnoticed by my peers, yet they just cheered on and further encouraged me to have some more. Sometimes I resisted, sometimes I couldn't... but in the end I would end up returning to my desk and minding my own business.

From time to time one of my peers would give in to temptation and would buy donuts for all the team.

Having such a sweet tooth, I could never EVER resist donuts. There was a time when I would stop doing whatever I was doing and just eat the whole centerless buns, one by one until they were all gone. I soon discovered that I had the ability to eat any number of donuts provided that I had milk in my cup (coffee works too, but I'm not a big coffee drinker).

Only when they all disappeared could I return to my desk...

Once again, I'd excuse myself on the fact that I would be going to do some intense exercise after work, so as long as I countered it I'd be ok.
At some point in life I decided to start dropping the extra weight, and since exercise alone was not getting the job done I consulted a nutritionist who suggested eliminating all carbs from my diet for a few weeks. It might sound easy at first, but most of the food I liked had carbs in it. Pizza and donuts were amongst my most missed items. Nevertheless, the efforts paid off and I dropped a couple of kilograms without any further changes in my routine. Granted, it took me a while to get used to carb-less foods and resisting temptation was the absolute worst part.

After consulting the nutritionist again, I was given some increased flexibility in what I could eat. Now a few carbs were allowed and even encouraged at the beginning of the day. I decided that it'd be a good idea to switch the donut snack for a banana, since the yellow fruit was available for free on my way to the office.

On any given day I would take one or two and would space them out throughout the day. Today I went the extra mile and got the apparently descomunal amount of three (3) bananas. Why? Cause I missed breakfast and I would go exercise by the end of the day, so I needed an extra snack.

My surprise came when I reached my desk and then people would start giving me "expert" advise on how eating 3 bananas is not in my health's best interest.

Naturally, I didn't listen... but the lesson I get from today's experience is that people are fast to applaud your slow self-destruction and will encourage you to push harder towards that vicious goal, whereas I certainly get criticized for eating healthier and trying to gain some 'quality points' back in the mix.

And for the record... bananas turn out not to be a great source of potassium as "everybody knows". Apparently there are over 1,600 foods that are more potassium concentrated than bananas, including beans, parsley, and potatoes. One banana accounts for around 8-12% of the daily recommended intake, and with roughly 23-27g of carbs, I was still at least 2 bananas short of my allowed carb intake, so I was pretty much ok.

You can fact-check me here and here!

Notes:

Tried to make obvious the brands of the pizza and the donuts:

• Renaissance Pizza
• Odyssey Donuts

Both a not too elaborate tribute, but I know it's too difficult to see the detail in such a small drawing.
Naturally, the names of these brands are fictitious.
We do have a community banana stand where people, regardless of whether they work for the Company or not, can stock on yellow deliciousness for free!