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Thoughts on the potato diet

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Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#121

Post by zoover2020 »

soared wrote: post #21

This is really well written and easily digestible. It’s rare that content about diet is lighthearted and fun! No outlandish claims, very little misconstrued science, but tons of funny fads. Usually you’d have to dig deep to find the root of the authors point in articles like this, but the simplicity is baked in from the start.

Would've agreed if it wasn't for proteins as a macro which have been suddenly forgotten in its entirety.

Even if you're not working out, your body still craves proteins. Neglecting this is dangerous

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#122

Post by mattgreenrocks »

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…

This was my discovery as well. Keto, at its core, amounts to optimizing for satiety. Typically that takes the form of increasing fat intake, and progressively lowering carb intake. For most people, this results in fewer calories ingested, as fats + protein heavy diets make it hard to overeat. I burned through my excess weight rapidly: maybe 2-3lb a week IIRC?

After that, it changes to figuring out how many net carbs you need. I've found that this amount changes and is not a hard and fast rule. When I started keto, I aimed for 20g total (I don't recommend that low). Now, it is more like 50-100g. There's also the mental shift: carbs are not bad, they're just a tool.

The thing that feels most unfair is once your body gets to a lower weight, you're accustomed to eating less, and you've 'reset' things, I found I had a lot of leeway in what I could get away with, diet-wise.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#123

Post by corrral »

hahajk wrote: post #107
corrral wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fish is high on my personal satiety index, because I didn't eat much of it growing up so never developed a taste. Result is that when served fish I eat a little to be nice but don't enjoy it at all. That'd certainly help me eat less. Oddly, I love calamari and sushi.

Of course, eating food you don't like so you end up eating less doesn't sound like the way to go through life!

IIRC a study made it on here once (a couple years ago, maybe?) that boiled down to "we're fat because modern, affordable, low-or-zero-prep food tastes too good and is too varied"

One of my not-well-backed suspicions is that this is closest to the truth of any of the various attempts to explain this.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#125

Post by GordonS »

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…

This seems highly unlikely to me.

I have reactive hypoglycemia, and can say that potatoes spike my blood glucose levels more than table sugar - they have a really high glycemic index, and anyone with blood sugar issues should totally avoid them IMO.

And the thing about foods with a high glycemic index is that they cause you to feel hungry when your blood sugar rapidly drops back to baseline.

I find protein and fat way more satiating than, well, anything else. For example, eat 2 eggs for breakfast and I guarantee you won't even think a out food again until lunch time, if not dinner time.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#126

Post by jrvarela56 »

nostrebored wrote: post #65
sph wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

CGMs should disillusion people of this pretty quickly. I really wish more people would try them for a month just to see how they respond to certain foods.

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 large meals

- Intense exercise before (duh) removes the glucose spike of any meal, even with big desert/ice cream

- Eating veggies (or taking fiber pills) before a meal removes the glucose spike of most meals

Some of these things I had read about online, but seeing the impact live on my own blood glucose made the lessons stick.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#127

Post by hirundo »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #118
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.

It has been 20 months on carnivore. I never made it past a year on the others, and it was a strain to go that far. Doing this is no strain. If protein alone has this effect it is more than a mild advantage for me.

I did not start from a standard american diet this time, but from a clean keto diet, so yes carnivore was an elimination diet for me, but what I eliminated was vegetables, fruits, cheese, etc. For me those eliminations seem to be providing an advantage.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#128

Post by TrisMcC »

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…

Do you really believe that the obesity epidemic was caused by people eating 90% carbohydrate diets?

The "high carb meals" at McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut... are all also (and more per calorie) high in fat.

Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil to your mixed-green salad? That has turned into a high fat salad. Most people cannot avoid cheese or nuts on salad, either.

Eating the potato diet with sour cream/butter/cheese: High fat.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#129

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

jsiaajdsdaa wrote: post #79
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…

Satiety is a mental construct. I've been underweight, normal weight, and overweight in my life. What your brain tells you to put in your stomach is almost entirely divorced from nutritional requirements for thriving and surviving. The only way to be exceptionally healthy and thin is to ignore the urge to overeat, and this urge is extremely dynamic on a per human basis. As a result, some people out there will eat a ca…

I've never managed "underweight", but having been as high as 320+lbs and as low as 161lbs, I agree. The key to losing weight is to find ways to ignore what your brain tells you to eat and stick to a calorie intake limit that matches the base metabolic rate of your target weight.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#130

Post by com2kid »

entropicgravity wrote: post #49
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…

Thanks for this, but I'll stick to the peanut butter diet :)

Peanut butter doesn't fill me up at all. I can consume 1k calories of it, nothing, still hungry after.

Same with fish, I cannot get full eating fish in any quantity. Shrimp, sure, but not fish.

Nuts, same deal. I'll eat 500+ calories of nuts, does nothing for me.

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