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Potato Diet Riff Trial: Sign Up Now, Lol

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Re: Potato Diet Riff Trial: Sign Up Now, Lol

#31

Post by alecst »

Taikonerd wrote: post #15

I really enjoyed SMTM's "A Chemical Hunger" series[1]. But recently they've gone into weird fad-diet territory with their potato obsession. Like, they crow that the potato mono-diet "works," in that the people who successfully followed it lost weight. Well, sure -- all of those 70s fad diets "worked" in that sense! Grapefruit and popcorn? Sure, you can lose weight on that! But their own numbers show that people regai…

The way I see it, the point of the very article you're replying to is to find a friendlier version of the potato diet that might be more fun or sustainable.

Maybe they'll find that people who replace one of their daily meals with french fries end up losing weight over time. Who knows. I think it's good to be positive.

Re: Potato Diet Riff Trial: Sign Up Now, Lol

#32

Post by tech-historian »

Taikonerd wrote: post #29
yungporko wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i don't understand what you're trying to say here, of course anybody who loses weight by changing their diet will gain the weight back if they go back to eating the way they were before, isn't that just common sense?

Well, I guess I'm saying a "good" diet is one that can be sustained indefinitely. The fact that an extreme diet produces good results in the short term isn't surprising or interesting, because virtually nobody can (or should) follow an extreme diet for the rest of their life.

A diet that you can follow forever is called a lifestyle. For many diets and many people, it's really hard to convert into a lifestyle, because the of the restrictions and predictable cravings.

Side note, there's a thing called the Potato Hack [0] that proposes 3-5 day potato-only diets for short term fixes. A "potato fast" if you will.

[0] https://potatohack.com/

Re: Potato Diet Riff Trial: Sign Up Now, Lol

#34

Post by [deleted] »

Taikonerd wrote: post #15

I really enjoyed SMTM's "A Chemical Hunger" series[1]. But recently they've gone into weird fad-diet territory with their potato obsession. Like, they crow that the potato mono-diet "works," in that the people who successfully followed it lost weight. Well, sure -- all of those 70s fad diets "worked" in that sense! Grapefruit and popcorn? Sure, you can lose weight on that! But their own numbers show that people regai…

[deleted]

Re: Potato Diet Riff Trial: Sign Up Now, Lol

#35

Post by ForkMeOnTinder »

toyg wrote: post #16

I remember Kevin Smith talking about his first stab at dieting, following the instructions of the "guru" that got Penn Jillette lean: basically, he ate nothing but potatoes for something like 3 months. The point wasn't that potatoes were particularly good for you, but to "reset" one's attitude towards food, eating only when hungry rather than for pleasure or to deal with stress - because after a few weeks, one is so…

This is the reason I do a potato month once a year. It's like a tolerance break from food, except you're not actually starving yourself.

Re: Potato Diet Riff Trial: Sign Up Now, Lol

#36

Post by ForkMeOnTinder »

corry wrote: post #22

Does anyone remember a meta study that showed ANY even slightly reasonable restrictive diet works because they almost by definition dramatically reduced sugar and HFCS in the diet, and if you just controlled for that, the individual types of restriction didn't matter? I can't find it on PubMed or in my bookmarks. If memory serves - high/low fat, high/low carb, high/low protein, etc - didn't matter as long as the rest…

It's the calories. People have lost weight by eating nothing but McDonalds (and strictly counting the calories of course)

Re: Potato Diet Riff Trial: Sign Up Now, Lol

#37

Post by n2d4 »

Taikonerd wrote: post #15

I really enjoyed SMTM's "A Chemical Hunger" series[1]. But recently they've gone into weird fad-diet territory with their potato obsession. Like, they crow that the potato mono-diet "works," in that the people who successfully followed it lost weight. Well, sure -- all of those 70s fad diets "worked" in that sense! Grapefruit and popcorn? Sure, you can lose weight on that! But their own numbers show that people regai…

I found A Chemical Hunger interesting when I first read it, but later people pointed out a whole bunch of severe mistakes (eg. [1] [2] [3]).

I don't know, I'm not a nutritionist, but the inaccuracies plus all the potato-conspiracy stuff made me doubtful of SMTM. My main takeaway was that no one, not even people in the field, really knows how food works.

[1] https://nothinginthewater.substack.com/p/contra-smtm-on-obes...

[2] https://basedprof.substack.com/p/smtm-mysteries

[3] https://someflow.substack.com/p/criticisms-of-a-chemical-hun...

Re: Potato Diet Riff Trial: Sign Up Now, Lol

#39

Post by seanwilson »

For people saying any diet works, I think the interest here is the rules of "eat as many potatoes as you want" are very easy to follow, it's unambiguous if you followed it properly, simple to buy the ingredients anywhere and when eating out, it's cheap, is meant to work fast, and you aren't going to feel hungry which helps a lot. Most fad diets don't tick as many boxes.

Feels obvious to me that it works via “calories in, calories out” though. 2kg of potatoes a day is about 1500kcal so it's hard to overeat.

For the participants it didn't work on, surely the most likely cause that should be controlled for is how many potatoes they ate or how much oil/butter (some of the most calorific ingredients we use) they had on top?

And not if participants avoided tomatoes ("Tomatoes are our top bet, but other possible blockers might be: wheat, bread, grains more generally, maybe meat.")?

Re: Potato Diet Riff Trial: Sign Up Now, Lol

#40

Post by candiddevmike »

yungporko wrote: post #18
Taikonerd wrote: post #15

I really enjoyed SMTM's "A Chemical Hunger" series[1]. But recently they've gone into weird fad-diet territory with their potato obsession. Like, they crow that the potato mono-diet "works," in that the people who successfully followed it lost weight. Well, sure -- all of those 70s fad diets "worked" in that sense! Grapefruit and popcorn? Sure, you can lose weight on that! But their own numbers show that people regai…

i don't understand what you're trying to say here, of course anybody who loses weight by changing their diet will gain the weight back if they go back to eating the way they were before, isn't that just common sense?

You'd think there would be some long term benefit to fad diets around the lines of hunger suppression or helping folks better recognize when they're "full".

IMO, there's a psychosomatic angle for restrictive diets that is similar to a placebo.

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