Thoughts on the potato diet • Hacker News Board

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#111

Post by orzig » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 6:26 PM UTC

yelnatz wrote: post #94

ksenzee wrote: post #87

I spent a few weeks eating only potatoes and vegetable oil, several years ago. It wasn't for weight loss, it was because I was breastfeeding, and my baby had some kind of protein sensitivity we couldn't nail down. Potatoes turned out to be a safe food for him, so that's all I ate for a while. As it happens potatoes are my favorite food, and I had vegetable oil available so I could eat fries/chips/crisps, but even the…

Did you lose weight while on it? Any benefits you noticed?

Having recently given birth, and breast-feeding, is (Ahem) the mother of all confounding factors

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#112

Post by TedShiller » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 6:26 PM UTC

This is actually great if your goal is to lose muscle

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#113

Post by zoover2020 » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 6:27 PM UTC

myth_drannon wrote: post #90

Belarusian people are the original inventors of Potato Diet - highest consumption in the world.

I though Dutch people eat more of them annually

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#114

Post by layer8 » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 6:27 PM UTC

> EVERYTHING WORKS. (at least in this short term) How to explain this? Well, what does everything have in common? Every diet restricts food choices.

Now I wonder what is the minimum N such that switching diets every N days ad libitum would work.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#115

Post by dmix » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 6:27 PM UTC

reddit_clone wrote: post #74

sph wrote: post #53

Low protein and low fat, super carb heavy diet, what can go wrong?

I wouldn't judge quickly. For several decades, fat was considered bad in all forms. Now views are changing..

it sounded to me like the OP was critiquing it for being low fat + high carb

Are you saying that views on carbs might change like it did for fat? Keto is pretty much the best supported thing we've got, plus diabetes being so prevalent, so the argument against carbs is pretty solid.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#116

Post by dmix » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 6:27 PM UTC

Aren't potatoes high starch which is generally avoided with keto-type diets?

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#117

Post by darkhorse222 » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 6:28 PM UTC

I can't speak generally, but when he asked if I'd prefer five bacon hamburgers or like twenty potatoes to get through the day, I would definitely choose the burgers.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#118

Post by maerF0x0 » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 6:28 PM UTC

hirundo wrote: post #97

I lost over 100 pounds on a potato diet. And then gained it all back, plus some. Same goes for a raw vegan diet and a less strict McDougall vegitarian diet, and then a paleo/keto diet. When it comes to yo yo dieting I'm an overachiever. Yes, 100+ pounds on each. I do not recommend that. So out of desperation and pain I did something I thought I never would or could resort to. Carnivore. It hasn't fixed all of my prob…

They're all elimination diets, and lifetime adherence is the reality (albeit slightly more calories during maintenance than fat loss phases). Carnivore is one such elimination diet, with the mild advantage that it provides a lot of protein and thus has a muscle sparing effect, and increases the TDEE due to the digestion process.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#119

Post by PuppyTailWags » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 6:29 PM UTC

sph wrote: post #56

csours wrote: post #35

If this is interesting I highly recommend "The Hungry Brain". Some other thoughts: Obesity is not a disease of over-eating, it is a disease of managing hunger. "Losing weight" is a terrible goal. "Changing Body Composition" is a much better goal. Specifically change the proportion of fat to muscle. ---- If your immediate answer is "Those are the same thing but with different words!!!" then here are some questions to…

> Obesity is not a disease of over-eating, it is a disease of managing hunger. Indeed it is, and the solution to managing hunger (i.e. returning your whole insulin and leptin system to a more optimal baseline) is NOT going for a 90% carbohydrate diet. That's exactly why we have a bloody obesity epidemic. It's a fun thought experiment, but reading the comments in here people actually think this is genius and sustainab…

By this logic, the obesity epidemic should've happened in the 17th century when the potato was introduced to the rest of the world and became the staple crop of poor farmers everywhere.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#120

Post by nsxwolf » Mon, Jul 11, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

ramesh31 wrote: post #15

Eat less food and move more. There's literally nothing to losing weight beyond that. It's incredible to me the amount of mental gymnastics that people will perform to avoid facing this.

This is obviously not a solution - everyone says this, everyone already knows this, and yet there's still an obesity epidemic.

Unless you have a way of motivating most people to follow this advice, day in and day out, it will not be a solution.