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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

#71

Post by DominikPeters »

n2d4 wrote: post #37
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…

There are also these posts, pointing out many inaccuracies:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ/on-not-get... https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-proba...

SMTM have never responded to it, and they have lost my confidence for that reason.

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

#73

Post by CharlesW »

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…

> I remember Kevin Smith talking about his first stab at dieting, following the instructions of the "guru" that got Penn Jillette lean

Penn's a very good writer and hacker (this is a temporary diet hack, after all), and if you're interested you can read more about this here: Presto!: How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales: https://www.amazon.com/Presto-Pounds-Disappear-Other-Magical...

Penn credits Ray Cronise for literally saving his life. You can read his 2014 paper The "Metabolic Winter" Hypothesis: A Cause of the Current Epidemics of Obesity and Cardiometabolic Disease, here: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/met.2014.0027

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

#74

Post by ajmurmann »

coffeefirst wrote: post #41
soared wrote: post #8

I imagine anyone who is researching diets this heavily and is willing to sign up for a weird one may have lost weight regardless of if they used the potato diet or not - they committed to serious lifestyle changes that caused them to lose weight. Maybe it’s potatoes, maybes it’s everything the person changed in their and potatoes didn’t offset those.

And also, they're not eating out . This is a 100% vegetarian home cooked diet. At least for most Americans, even if there's literally no other mechanism in play, that's an absolutely massive change.

That could be a riff you contribute to this study. Only potatoes at home, but eating out. Probably would be similar to their half-potatoe diet though

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

#75

Post by dalbasal »

tomxor wrote: post #66
dalbasal wrote: post #60

Diets seriously need to be considered through the lens of Occam's razor. First, radical dietary changes cause rapid fluctuations in weight regularly. Not fat, weight. Second, if you eat only one thing or are generally restrictive... You will probably lose a lot of appetite. It's no good going off on some theory about pottasium. Occam's razor suggests that this also works for the been soup diet, fruit diet, etc. It is…

> You will probably lose a lot of appetite This, probably almost any natural food that is not too sweet will work. Overeating manufactured "food" devoid of nutrition, pumped full of sugar and refined carbs has become the default in the western diet... That a potato-only diet is an improvement highlights just how bad it has become.

Even ice cream or French fries have a decent shot at working.

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

#76

Post by kbelder »

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.

Sometimes, though, an extreme diet to lose weight can allow you to make some lifestyle changes (such as exercising regularly) that do have lasting impacts. Being significantly overweight can really make physical activity difficult and demoralizing.

I agree that it they often aren't sustainable and need to transition into a more sensible long-term diet.

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

#78

Post by bumby »

beanjuice wrote: post #10

Beautiful. We are in a golden era of citizen science, where access to knowledge, tools to connect, tools to process data, and the ability to communicate this is at an all time high. The kind of stuff you see on Youtube is amazing: people like AppliedScience achieving incredibly things in the garage, or recently NileRed took a nature paper [0] 1 step further and published it on youtube [1]). From a chemist/material sc…

>Whether the results of the Riff trial may ever have a p value suitable for nature/science, likely not. When it comes to the human body and our biology, a mass trial like this may even be more useful than traditional studies

Can you explain this further? I'm curious about it, because at face value it seems like it is somewhat contradictory. On one hand, you're saying it won't likely be demonstrably significant enough to generalize, but then you say it will be more valuable. Are you saying it's value is in it's non-generalizability? I.e., each person finds what 'riff' works for them? I thought the point of publishing results was, in part, to separate the wheat from the chaff so we don't all have to run a ton of self-experiments.

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

#79

Post by lawlessone »

kbelder wrote: post #76
Taikonerd wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sometimes, though, an extreme diet to lose weight can allow you to make some lifestyle changes (such as exercising regularly) that do have lasting impacts. Being significantly overweight can really make physical activity difficult and demoralizing. I agree that it they often aren't sustainable and need to transition into a more sensible long-term diet.

We really need multiple words for diet.

It means at least two different things:

It can refer to specific planned period of eating a certain way to achieve a certain end.

e.g. Atkins diet(please look up how he died before considering this), fodmap diet , low GI diet, potato diet

It can also refer to the normal way a particular person at particular place and time in history eats.

e.g The Roman diet, Celtic diet, American Diet, French diet, Pandas diet, Neanderthal diet ,Vegan/Vegetarian diets, Kosher/Halal diets

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

#80

Post by bumby »

throw932490 wrote: post #59
bumby wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It decreases inflammation, and gives your gut chance to heal. It may improve sugar digestion, liver and so on. Are there clinical trials that show these outcomes in patients? (To clarify, I don't mean studies that show potatoes have potential chemicals/mechanisms related to those outcomes, but actual trials with patients that saw a scientifically meaningful difference in those outcomes after a potato diet.

I do not read studies, but this pops from google [1] Potato diet is a baseline in fasting community. Before you do long water fast, you need to go on detox. Doing potato diet for couple of weeks is strongly recommended. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6928682/

Your linked study did exactly what I cautioned against. It's in-vitro. It's pointing to potential mechanisms, not a clinical outcome on patients. I know you said you don't read studies, but maybe it's a good idea before drawing conclusions.
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