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Thoughts on the potato diet

dynomight.net

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Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#221
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

> eat 2 eggs for breakfast and I guarantee you won't even think a out food again until lunch time, if not dinner time. I usually eat 3 scrambled eggs when I have them for breakfast. Lunch can't come soon enough afterwards. I think my record is 7 scrambled eggs. I'm sure I had normal lunch that day.

Eat 1 cup organic whole oats, half cup of milk, 4 diced strawberries, and 1 tablespoon of brown sugar.

Should be good until 2-3 in the afternoon, at least in my experience.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#222
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.

[deleted]

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wa…

> I have reactive hypoglycemia Makes sense that this diet wouldn't work for you - but I think using this argument is sort of like arguing that peanuts are unhealthy because some people are allergic to them. Fun Fact: You can let your potatoes cool down, and then re-heat them, to significantly lower the glycemic impact. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29629761

Seems like the linked study only applies to pasta. Whether it applies to potato is unknown.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm overweight because I eat too much. Eat caloric surplus, gain weight. That part isn't complicated. Why I eat too much is another question...

No. A healthy diet is a diet that provides you with the right amount of nutrients without leaving you hungry or unsatisfied. By not being hungry and unsatisfied you'll then stop overeating (surprise!). "My diet is OK, I just eat too much" is all wrong: there is a complex relation between caloric intake, which foods are eaten, hunger, satisfaction, energy, mood etc. Many fad diets "work" even if they are not grounded…

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.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. There really is something special about potatoes that just makes them far more filling than they "should be": https://nutritiondata.self.com/topics/fullness-factor

That list is ... suspect? > Lowfat yogurt I've never been satiated eating lowfat yogurt. I actually recently started buying high fat yogurt (10g+ of fat) and it is super satiating. Given I can eat 3x the amount of lowfat yogurt and still not be full, I'm not buying it. > Watermelon Maybe due to bloating from water? > Bean sprouts I challenge anyone to get full eating just bean sprouts. Again, they are more akin to dr…

>Has anyone in the history of humanity ever been satiated eating popcorn? To be fair I know a few people who go to the movies and eat only a small bit, but most people I know can easily down an entire large bag and it'll have no impact on their appetite soon after.

I'll take this one. I actually 100% agree that list is useless, but an entire bag of microwave popcorn is extremely satiating to me. It's the perfect midnight snack IME because it is only 400ish Calories and yet takes up a large volume of space and takes a significant amount of time to eat.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#226

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 wa…

> 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.

That's not what satiety means (at least in this context), right?

I'm reading OP's definition as "you'll eat less [calories] per sitting because you'll feel satiated more quickly", rather than your "your feeling of non-hunger will last longer".

The two seem pretty orthogonal definitions to me.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#227
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Potatoes are calorie dense. No. https://gurmeet.net/Images/food/calorie_density/CalorieDensi... Boiled potatoes are 870 kcal per kilogram. 1 kilogram of potatoes is a lot.

Having done 28 days of the potato diet, this is true. It is difficult to get over 1kcal of potato. Eating two kilos of potato in a day is heroic. I would eat like 1 kilo per day, and be satisfied-full. It's wild.

I could definitely eat 2kg of potatoes a day. As french fries. Kind of ruins the whole point though

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#228
Just take a GLP-1 agonist long term and be done with the dieting and bankrupt will power.

Wegovy (semaglutide) and Mounjaro (tirzepatide) have set a new bar in weight loss drugs.

15-20% body weight loss over the course of a year.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#229

The point about prep being time-consuming is no joke. I recently (maybe 4 months ago) started a fairly strict whole food diet, and the prep is insane. Whole vegetables take real time to wash, clean up, store, and prep for cooking. Then you need to cook it. But like the potato diet, it's extremely easy to stay full and lose weight. Unlike the potato diet, there's a ton of variety. It also seems to have completely reve…

Prep time is the biggest concern I am aware of on the nutritional side. My best answer to this category of excuses is to amortize the prep time by making more of whatever and then freezing the leftovers in meal-sized containers. Buying an instant pot & a box of those 2-cup pyrex storage bowls was the best series of personal health choices I've ever made. Granted, not all food works out with a round trip through the f…

YMMV, but I got great returns on investing in a proper chef’s knife, and learning how to use and maintain it properly. There’s a real pleasure in dicing an onion or whatever in seconds. Knowing I can do that helps lower the ‘activation energy’ of cooking versus takeout, as does just generally loosening up about cooking.

My favorite meals are often thrown together in 20 minutes with zero planning, and certainly no recipe. Knowing a few fundamentals (see Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat) gets you a long way.

Re: Thoughts on the potato diet

#230

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.

Well yeah, * You can't sell a book with just 6 words in it * People will pay you a lot of money if you can convince them they don't have to do that

The food industry on the other hand is innocent and doesn’t want to sell you junk like soda pop that makes you even more thirsty. Get real.
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