Lily wrote:

Recently, mostly while swimming but sometimes while at work, I have started
to get the WORST foot cramps. I had been mowing before I went swimming for
about 3 hours, and i had plenty of water while doing this (not sure if its
related but it seems to be since I do not seem to get them as often if I
dont walk or mow first). They are sort of like a charley horse because the
more I try to stretch out my arch the worse they get and then my calf will
start up as well. I had to get out of the pool the other night after only
22 of my 35 laps completed because I was pretty much incapacitated by it.
My friends magic answer was "Eat a banana or drink some gatorade before you
swim you probably need potassium" but neither is low carb and I already
take a vitamin and extra calcuim daily. What might be another solution
that IS lower carb?

Leg cramps tend to be calcium mre often than potassium. Maybe. I
suggest taking a cal/mag tablet twice a day up from one a day.

Potassium tablets are limited to 99 mg because certain old diuretic
blood pressure medications acted on the potassium channel causing the
body to hoard potassium. Too much potassium causes heat problems. If
you aren't on BP meds consider alterent sources of potassium.

My favorite source of potassium is various brands of lite salt. They
are about 50-50 potassium chloride and sodium chloride. When I first
tried salt substitute that's all potassium chloride I could tell it side
by side with table salt. When I first tried lite salt side by side with
table salt I could not tell. We've had lite salt on our table for well
over 10 years at this point. Some people will claim they can tell lite
salt from table salt but all they actually do is see the label. My MIL
did that. For years she got her potassium from lite salt and had no
idea.

A teaspoon of lite salt has the potassium of several tablets. We take
it as a goal to eat about a half teaspoon each per day of lite salt.
It's a lot at first if you've bene avoiding salt because low fat diets
teach you to avoid salt and you carried the habit in from there. It's
not much if you used to salt food without thinking before eating.

Low Carb since 11/12/03

Suggestion - Add the decade so it's clear what order those numbers are.
I switched to the international standard at the turn of the century so
I've been inconsistantly low carb since 1999-06-21.

235ish/175/135

Wow. Excellent.

Goal for June: 165 for a loss of 10 lbs.

Suggestion - Understand that loss rate is proportional to how much you
have to lose. With 40 to go, 10 per month is an unreasonable
expectation. Consider that Dr Atkins predicted the last 10 would take a
year.