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Potato diet community trial

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Re: Potato diet community trial

#61

Post by kuhewa »

arghwhat wrote: post #40
TJSomething wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Losing weight isn't causal to being healthy. Except that's not how it works. An excess of fat can directly cause problems. Above a certain point, having too much fat causes chronic hypoxia in fatty tissue, leading to chronic inflammation, which can eventually lead to systemic problems like insulin resistance, cardiovascular disease, kidney failure, liver disease, and cancer. Edit: I am specifically referring to abd…

I don't think OP was suggesting that being overweight was healthy or that losing weight was bad. They merely suggested that weight loss does not occur as a result of a healthy diet, but rather as a result of an intentionally deficient diet (technically an "unhealthy" diet). That you can lose weight eating only potatoes is therefore not very interesting and does not imply that the diet is healthy.

There's nothing inherently unhealthy about being in a temporary state of negative energy flux (unless you are already underweight or deficient in an essential mineral or something)

Re: Potato diet community trial

#62

Post by throwaway742 »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #6

i consider myself a potato connoisseur. i have been eating and loving potatoes ever since i can remember and even before as far as my family can tell me. "don't you get bored from eating potatoes"? i am asked on a regular basis. my answer is a standard "potatoes are life, potatoes are my comfort food. now get off my lawn" edit: i am willing to do an all potato diet but its not like i hate anything else, i just cant h…

Same. Potatoes are probably the only food I could solely subsist off of without losing my mine.

Re: Potato diet community trial

#63

Post by pubby »

My long-running pet theory is that eating a large variety of foods is bad for our gut biome. Between breakfast, lunch, and dinner, our intestinal flora cycles through blooms and die-offs of different bacteria. The blooms interfere with bacteria diversity, while the die-offs create waves of toxins that trigger our immune systems. To give an analogy, it's a bit like an ecology having its climate messed with. Imagine a forest that was hot one day, cold the next, dry as a bone on some days, and wet as a swamp the next.

I reckon most animals eat a steady diet of only one or two things, and people did too for a very long time (on a seasonal scale). It was only recently that we ate so many different foods so frequently, and this coincides with a rise in gut-related illnesses and obesity in first world countries. Many people see success treating these diseases with some diet, but what's interesting is how different and disjoint these diets are. For example, both carnivore diets and vegetarian diets have seen success treating inflammatory bowel disease. Perhaps this success isn't due to eating one food over another, but rather to the reduction in variety a diet brings.

Re: Potato diet community trial

#64

Post by notahacker »

dgfitz wrote: post #45
arghwhat wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think OP was suggesting that being overweight was healthy or that losing weight was bad. They merely suggested that weight loss does not occur as a result of a healthy diet, but rather as a result of an intentionally deficient diet (technically an "unhealthy" diet). That you can lose weight eating only potatoes is therefore not very interesting and does not imply that the diet is healthy.

> an intentionally deficient diet Aren’t all diets whose goal is weight loss “intentionally deficient” ?

There's a difference between "slightly too few calories to sustain current weight level" and "total absence of certain essential nutrients meaning the body can't grow or indeed adequately replenish cells regardless of the mass of food consumed"

Re: Potato diet community trial

#65

Post by cassianoleal »

mvdwoord wrote: post #20
DeWilde wrote: post #4

> It sounds like a dumb gimmick that could never work, but there are a surprising number of people out there saying that they tried it, it worked for them, and they kept the weight off for months or even years after. Losing weight isn't causal to being healthy. In most cases it correlates because gaining weight is usually done through eating unhealthy (excess calories, refined sugars, etc.) so going on a healthy diet…

"Losing weight isn't causal to being healthy." Strictly spoken, true, but being overweight definitely is causal to decreased health.

> being overweight definitely is causal to decreased health.

Even that is not necessarily always true. I imagine being oevrweight is generally much healthier than going through famine.

Re: Potato diet community trial

#67

Post by scarmig »

My guess here is that the potential benefits come from potatoes satiating better than most other cheap calories and that you quickly get tired of eating potatoes and just quit eating.

Another approach that I've been experimenting with that makes pretty much any diet satiating: semaglutide. FDA approved as of last year, and for people whose main issue with dieting is constantly feeling like you're starving (most dieters, I would bet), it effectively destroys appetite. It's one of two drugs I've tried for weight loss that have been effective for me, and its side effect profile is far, far better.

Re: Potato diet community trial

#68

Post by poulpy123 »

Smaug123 wrote: post #23
DeWilde wrote: post #4

> It sounds like a dumb gimmick that could never work, but there are a surprising number of people out there saying that they tried it, it worked for them, and they kept the weight off for months or even years after. Losing weight isn't causal to being healthy. In most cases it correlates because gaining weight is usually done through eating unhealthy (excess calories, refined sugars, etc.) so going on a healthy diet…

There is at least one case where your argument is clearly false: sleep apnea is often directly mechanically caused by bodyweight, causes health problems when untreated, and is strongly associated with being fat and/or muscular.

AFAIK sleep apnea isn't reversible by losing weigth (which doesn't mean that overweigth isn't at least one of the cause)

Re: Potato diet community trial

#69

Post by kilroy123 »

chihuahua wrote: post #52

Half of the internet is people shouting that "carbs will kill you", and then there's people who argue that eating only carbs is the best idea ever. The only thing that makes sense to me is that any extreme position is wrong. E.g. only carbs, no carbs at all, only meat, only plants.

It's not that carbs will kill you. It's more like, people growing up on western diets, have such destroyed metabolisms, that you have to resort to going very low carb to try to fix or mitigate the damage.

I think the real tick is not eating highly processed food. Eat highly nutritious whole foods.

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