Thoughts on the potato diet • Hacker News Board

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#461

Post by trentgreene » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 9:51 AM UTC

trentgreene wrote: post #458

fsckboy wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are ignoring what he said. I don't know if it's true, but he's saying CI is not simply a function of how much you put in your mouth, but how much of that your body absorbs. the other answers here are more detailed, I just wanted to state it simply.

Not ignoring it - the in in calories in isn’t what you put in your mouth, it’s what you can absorb. Hence why you don’t count fiber towards your calories. Again, the digestion point seems to reinforce CICO. If you gain weight because your digestion is slower (let’s grant the point), it’s not because your body some how treats calories differently, it’s that you’re getting more calories from your food. Your calories in…

I also say, to whatever readers may care, the reason I belabor this point so much is that obesity related health issues have a massive effect on QOL, public health and personal mental health. I say this having grown up in the southern US, having obese family, having my own fitness / weight loss problems, having seen gangrene diabetic foots with my own eyes. I know vividly what it looks like for someone you love to be heavy, miserable specifically because theyre heavy, and totally hopeless that “they just can’t lose the weight”.

Throwing information out like this (w/o source and at best poorly replicated), that CICO is useless because of digestion rate, is incredibly dangerous because it falsely legitimizes that hopelessness. It traps people. And it maybe only applies in Anyone and everyone can lose the weight. It’s just CICO. You gotta figure out your input and output to account for the minor individual variances, and lock in a lifestyle to do it. But it’s just CICO at the end of the day.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#462

Post by lm28469 » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 10:44 AM UTC

gopalv wrote: post #460

safety1st wrote: post #30

There's actually some science behind this diet. Potatoes are the highest scoring food on the satiety index. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/15-incredibly-filling-f... Basically they're the most filling food per calorie. So if you subscribe to the idea that losing weight is mainly about how many calories you consume, a potato heavy diet should be effective. And an all potato diet, while monomaniacal, even more ef…

> And an all potato diet, while monomaniacal, even more effective. I met someone on a Potatoes + Curd/Butter diet and he said something that stuck with me - "You need to eat the skins too". So you can't just eat fries or mashed potatoes, but more like baked potatoes in skin with sour cream. Seems a bit crazy, but it seemed to make him happy & felt like he was discovering something unique rather than being forced by s…

> So you can't just eat fries or mashed potatoes,

You can keep the skin for both of these though, especially fries, it's delicious, for mashed potatoes it's a bit weird but if you're lazy it works

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#463

Post by devoutsalsa » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 11:39 AM UTC

goodpoint wrote: post #266

devoutsalsa wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your body stores calories you eat, and it's really good at it. If you eat too much of anything (that contains more calories than the calories required to digest it), you will gain weight. Eat too much fried chicken, gain weight. Eat too many oranges, gain weight. Eat too many beans, gain weight. You can probably gain weight from eating too much broccoli, although I'd get sick of broccoli before that happened.

Did you just repeated the previous point without understanding anything of what I wrote?

Calories surplus equals weight gain. Are you saying you disagree with that? Because it sounds like you don't believe that.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#464

Post by GordonS » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 12:21 PM UTC

omginternets wrote: post #459

GordonS wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but unless the ratio is heavily skewed towards fat and protein, in reality it makes little difference (as tested with a glucose meter).

Ah that makes sense. Out of sheer curiosity, can you quantify “heavily” from your experience? Are we talking about 3:1? 10:1? Also, is this by weight or by calorie?

Yes, something like 3:1 (by weight) at a minimum, for me personally. That would extend the time-to-hypo significantly for me, from 0.5h to 1-1.5h.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#465

Post by ValentineC » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 12:41 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #258

mixmastamyk wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just listed a bunch of things that don't make sense? See a specialist rather than quibbling over the definition of doctor.

You ever tried eating fish with bones in it? It takes me forever. By the time I finished picking the bones out of 700 calories of fish it'd be time for my next meal. Meanwhile I have friends who eat fish just fine and get full. FWIW Salmon drenched in butter and lemon does the trick, but that kind of feels like cheating. Maybe fish sticks would fill me up? Heck if I know. Peanut butter is another one, plenty of peopl…

> You ever tried eating fish with bones in it? It takes me forever. By the time I finished picking the bones out of 700 calories of fish it'd be time for my next meal.

I have a technique that works well 80% of the time: just pull the spine upwards and hope none of the smaller bones break off — and that's a nice, mostly deboned fish!

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#466

Post by sph » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 1:12 PM UTC

goodpoint wrote: post #212

seadan83 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My unsupported personal belief is that the human body processes different carbohydrates in very different ways. Carbs that come from starch are not equivalent to carbs from cane sugar, and yet again not equivalent to honey, and again not equivalent to high fructose corn sryup, and again different from breads & pasta. Ratio of fiber to carbohydrate and how that carbohydrate is processed by the body is also important a…

> personal belief is that the human body processes different carbohydrates in very different ways This is nutritional science 101. Slow-digesting carbohydrates like big-flake oats are really good. Fast-digesting things like sugars, processed foods, fast food and meat products are bad as they create spikes in the glycemic index.

> meat products

Are you saying meat products cause spikes in glycaemic index? Seriously?

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#467

Post by lucideer » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 1:34 PM UTC

xeromal wrote: post #287

lucideer wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sweet potato doesn't contain B12 - you're probably thinking of Vitamin A. Dairy doesn't contain enough B12 to supplement you on it's own, which is why the study recommends against and instead suggests taking an actual B12 supplement (Puritan's Pride lozenges) 4 weeks shouldn't be enough time to develop a serious B12 deficiency but doing this for longer could impair you cognitively.

Is there an easy way to test your B12 when on this diet?

It's typically via blood test, I'm not aware of any easier methods

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#468

Post by lucideer » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 1:37 PM UTC

lucideer wrote: post #276

zhynn wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did the SMTM study and they prohibited dairy. So I got my B12 from sweet potato.

Sweet potato doesn't contain B12 - you're probably thinking of Vitamin A. Dairy doesn't contain enough B12 to supplement you on it's own, which is why the study recommends against and instead suggests taking an actual B12 supplement (Puritan's Pride lozenges) 4 weeks shouldn't be enough time to develop a serious B12 deficiency but doing this for longer could impair you cognitively.

fwiw, I wouldn't personally be a massive advocate of supplements - dietary sources are usually better if possible - so not sure whether the study's supplement recommendation here is a good one. Just quoting the instructions given to participants

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#469

Post by jrvarela56 » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

code_duck wrote: post #165

jrvarela56 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did and would recommend. It shows you the impact of foods in your blood glucose and made it easier to convince myself and change my behavior. Some lessons I got from using it for 2 months (these are personal, some should apply to most people): - Plantains cause a BIG glucose spike (I thought they didnt; in my case even more than pasta or rice) - Walking ~10min after a meal removes the glucose spike of even pretty l…

Why do you feel you need to change your food intake, and how do you interpret your CGM results? If you don't have a form of diabetes it doesn't really make a difference. Your glucose will go back down to 85 fairly soon.

Family history of developing type 2 diabetes. I take the CGM results as a sign of my pancreas having to pump out insulin to counter the blood sugar. From what I understand, consistently exceeding certain level (110/120? forgot) for prolonged periods (an hour was the warning given by the device) eventually leads to insulin resistance.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#470

Post by jrvarela56 » Tue, Jul 12, 2022, 1:45 PM UTC

dubswithus wrote: post #237

pcorsaro wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what this person is saying. "Big glucose spike(s)" actually are the cause of diabetes. The more regular spikes a person has, the more resistant to insulin they become, which is where type 2 diabetes starts. The point of the comments I believe was just to say that certain foods cause different responses in different people. If plantains cause a large spike in a person, I would say that person should probabl…

> "Big glucose spike(s)" actually are the cause of diabetes. The more regular spikes a person has, the more resistant to insulin they become, which is where type 2 diabetes starts. People who don't have diabetes or pre-diabetes spike. But I hardly see a body of work that suggests that everyone is at risk of diabetes. > If plantains cause a large spike in a person, I would say that person should probably not eat them…

> People who don't have diabetes or pre-diabetes spike. But I hardly see a body of work that suggests that everyone is at risk of diabetes.

The problem is consistently exceeding a certain level of blood sugar for extended periods of time. I think this is how you develop insulin resistance.

> People from South America eat them every day and they aren't linked to diabetes as far as I know.

I am from Panama, where we eat a lot of plantains. That's why I decided to test because it's a staple and I would have never put it in the same category as other carbs (bc I thought they had enough fiber to counter).