Thoughts on the "potato diet"?
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GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »Wait. Moderation is for people who want to spend years and years and years "on a diet"... what exactly is just eating a single food for the rest of your life?
Moderation is nothing more than eating like a person who has self-control. I understand this concept has been skewed and might seem out of the realm of possibility to people who feel they are addicted to food or eating, but all moderation means is eating a reasonable portion of foods so that you're achieving energy balance. The presumption that you're "on a diet" connotes some negative deprivation thing happening, and is a bit disordered, imo.
If the idea of eating reasonable portions of food is seen as negative, you still have much to learn, grasshopper. Eating just potatoes isn't curing your problems. It's masking them.
Eating a single food for the rest is both crazy and pretty close to the traditional diet of ancestral humans and native populations.
I have to say, telling someone who's 100lbs overweight to "eat like a person who has self-control" probably isn't going to help them much.
But let's be honest, you're losing me at the word "portions." I just eat. Sometimes a lot. Sometimes a little. I don't keep track. It's just food in my belly, and the weight goes away. Why think about portions when I don't need to?
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GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »Wait. Moderation is for people who want to spend years and years and years "on a diet"... what exactly is just eating a single food for the rest of your life?
Moderation is nothing more than eating like a person who has self-control. I understand this concept has been skewed and might seem out of the realm of possibility to people who feel they are addicted to food or eating, but all moderation means is eating a reasonable portion of foods so that you're achieving energy balance. The presumption that you're "on a diet" connotes some negative deprivation thing happening, and is a bit disordered, imo.
If the idea of eating reasonable portions of food is seen as negative, you still have much to learn, grasshopper. Eating just potatoes isn't curing your problems. It's masking them.
Eating a single food for the rest is both crazy and pretty close to the traditional diet of ancestral humans and native populations.
I have to say, telling someone who's 100lbs overweight to "eat like a person who has self-control" probably isn't going to help them much.
But let's be honest, you're losing me at the word "portions." I just eat. Sometimes a lot. Sometimes a little. I don't keep track. It's just food in my belly, and the weight goes away. Why think about portions when I don't need to?
Because some day you will hit goal weight...and you won't understand how to maintain it, as far as energy balance goes and CICO. Unless you are going to eat potatoes for the rest of your life.
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GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »Wait. Moderation is for people who want to spend years and years and years "on a diet"... what exactly is just eating a single food for the rest of your life?
Moderation is nothing more than eating like a person who has self-control. I understand this concept has been skewed and might seem out of the realm of possibility to people who feel they are addicted to food or eating, but all moderation means is eating a reasonable portion of foods so that you're achieving energy balance. The presumption that you're "on a diet" connotes some negative deprivation thing happening, and is a bit disordered, imo.
If the idea of eating reasonable portions of food is seen as negative, you still have much to learn, grasshopper. Eating just potatoes isn't curing your problems. It's masking them.
Eating a single food for the rest is both crazy and pretty close to the traditional diet of ancestral humans and native populations.
I have to say, telling someone who's 100lbs overweight to "eat like a person who has self-control" probably isn't going to help them much.
But let's be honest, you're losing me at the word "portions." I just eat. Sometimes a lot. Sometimes a little. I don't keep track. It's just food in my belly, and the weight goes away. Why think about portions when I don't need to?
I wasn't instructing you, I was telling you what it's like to eat in moderation.
Being defensive isn't conducive to productive discussion.
For me, personally, I felt that I needed to learn to need to eat correct portions because I considered overeating to be one of the reasons I was fat in the first place.
I spent too many years blaming the food I was eating and looking for different ways of eating to fix the problem.
It sounds to me like you're doing the same thing.
Yes, I know I'm being blunt here.
Bear in mind, I've lost 94 pounds, so I'm not without sympathy for someone with a lot of weight to lose.
But I had to face the cold hard truth that it wasn't the damned food I was eating. It was that I was eating too much of what I ate.
That's why I considered portions important. There are still some things I like to eat a lot of. I am a volume eater, but never of calorie dense items. I keep those portions small. I might eat up to a pound of steamed broccoli or baked spaghetti squash, though. Or a big salad. But my proteins and fats and starches are all in reasonable portions.4 -
GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »Let me ask you, how lean are you?
I'm not meaning to be rude, but there's certain fine-tuning that often needs to occur if you have goals that go beyond wanting to just no longer be overweight.
Your approach is sounding like it's working because it sounds like you have a lot of weight to lose.
What I'm trying to do here is show you that there's nothing inherently wrong with other approaches because other people have different goals and that tracking is a way to obtain them.
I'm personally looking to get quite lean because I have systemic autoimmune arthritis, and the less pressure on my joints, the better. I'm a small person and my calorie budget is tight. I can only create a small deficit. Having a devil-may-care attitude about calories wouldn't work for me because I don't have a lot of body fat to lose.
Oh, no, that not's rude at all. Totally a fair question. I'm 175lbs now and could easily lose another 40-50lbs. (I'm only 5'5", if that seems rather light for a guy.)
As far as working because I have a lot of weight to lose, go look up pictures of all the doctors who promote plant-based diets, such as John McDougall, Caldwell Esselstyn, Joel Fuhrman, and Neal Barnard. They're all extremely lean. So I could be wrong, but I don't think it's just working because I'm really fat.
I'm not qualified to comment on your arthritis, but serious health issues seem like something I'd want to have monitored by a doctor and dietitian I trusted. If your calorie counting is doctor-recommended, I'd never try to talk you out of it.0 -
paperpudding wrote: »So. Much silliness. And contradiction - if you are drinking beer and eating pizza, you are not eating only potatoes.
No, everyone is not getting fat and sick - I know many people who are neither.
Nor does everyone who doesn't eat 'real food' whatever food you mean by that, die a slow and horrible death.
And, sure, heart disease and cancer are killing people. Something has to kill them - nobody lives forever.
Eating healthily and being a healthy weight will help you stay healthy and alive for longer - but it won't stop something killing you eventually. And it probably won't stop cancer killing you at all - most cancers are not related to dietary intake.
Sure, you lost weight eating mainly potatoes. You could equally have lost weight eating any other food, or combination of foods - as long as in calorie deficit. It's not the potatoes being special, it is the total calorie intake.
So much hyperbole.
I think you missed my first post. I didn't eat only potatoes. I only did that for a few days as an experiment after reading Penn Jillette's book.
My diet is mostly grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables. There's nothing really extreme about it. I even drink beer and eat oil-free crackers. It became totally normal for me after about a week. Restaurants are the only difficulty, and I've even become fine just drinking water while everyone else eats.
So obviously, no, potatoes aren't a cure-all. I'm just pointing out that they are nutritionally complete so you hypothetically could survive on them if you had to.
And yes, it is the calorie intake. We're not in disagreement there. The only thing that's ever been shown to consistently prolong life in animal studies is calorie restriction.
And yes "everyone" is hyperbole. But compare the percentage of fat and sick people on the American diet to the percentage of fat and sick people on, say, the traditional Okinawan diet of 90% sweet potatoes and rice. The food is the problem.
Per 100 grams --- Not COMPLETE, but close
Vitamin B-12 µg 0.00 0.00 0.00
Vitamin A, RAE µg 0 0 0
Vitamin D (D2 + D3) µg 0.0 0.0 0.0
Vitamin D IU 0 0 0
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I'm glad to see SpudFit mentioned, but it sucks a lot of people are hating on him.
Dude just today finished a year of eating nothing but potatoes and lost over 100lbs. I was actually chatting with him on Twitter yesterday and ate a plain potato tonight to celebrate his acheivement.
Yes, it goes against everything anyone ever told you, but potatoes are nutritionally complete, and you can survive on them pretty much indefinitely.
Boring? Sure. But if you can hack it you'll lose tons of weight and totally redefine your relationship with food.
I've only done 3 or 4 days myself, but even that short time totally warped my perspective.
It's really, really worth trying. Just think of it as a fast—if you're not hungry enough to eat a plain microwaved potato, you're not hungry.
I 100% recommend it, if only as an experiment to learn about your body and your hunger drive.
I posted a link about this above. They are better than most other single foods, but leave a lot to be desired nutritionally. No comparison to a varied healthful diet.
It might have worked for this one person (remains to be seen), but I am skeptical of the idea that not eating anything but potatoes will make one's relationship with food better. It seems to be avoiding dealing with it entirely, really much like juicing.4 -
GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »Let me ask you, how lean are you?
I'm not meaning to be rude, but there's certain fine-tuning that often needs to occur if you have goals that go beyond wanting to just no longer be overweight.
Your approach is sounding like it's working because it sounds like you have a lot of weight to lose.
What I'm trying to do here is show you that there's nothing inherently wrong with other approaches because other people have different goals and that tracking is a way to obtain them.
I'm personally looking to get quite lean because I have systemic autoimmune arthritis, and the less pressure on my joints, the better. I'm a small person and my calorie budget is tight. I can only create a small deficit. Having a devil-may-care attitude about calories wouldn't work for me because I don't have a lot of body fat to lose.
Oh, no, that not's rude at all. Totally a fair question. I'm 175lbs now and could easily lose another 40-50lbs. (I'm only 5'5", if that seems rather light for a guy.)
As far as working because I have a lot of weight to lose, go look up pictures of all the doctors who promote plant-based diets, such as John McDougall, Caldwell Esselstyn, Joel Fuhrman, and Neal Barnard. They're all extremely lean. So I could be wrong, but I don't think it's just working because I'm really fat.
I'm not qualified to comment on your arthritis, but serious health issues seem like something I'd want to have monitored by a doctor and dietitian I trusted. If your calorie counting is doctor-recommended, I'd never try to talk you out of it.
Low weight doesn't equal lean though. Fast weight loss causes a lot of muscle loss too2 -
On diabetes and HCLF diets, I'd ask esfoster5 to check out the end of this thread for the discussion of whether HCLF diets are a good approach. I also have read that they are (not getting into the can it be cured discussion), from reading the same people esfoster5 seems to like. I'm more skeptical about those people in general, although I am pretty high on the WFPB diet being a good approach if done correctly. As you will see, the one person suggesting it might be a good approach got smacked down and didn't really have the knowledge to pursue it. Therefore, if you think the information provided is incorrect, esfoster5 (I'm not particularly interested in IR/T2D myself and haven't done the research), I'd invite you to jump in. I think it would be valuable:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10437679/the-obesity-code-unlocking-the-secrets-of-weight-loss-by-jason-fung#latest0 -
GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »I wasn't instructing you, I was telling you what it's like to eat in moderation.
Being defensive isn't conducive to productive discussion.
For me, personally, I felt that I needed to learn to need to eat correct portions because I considered overeating to be one of the reasons I was fat in the first place.
I spent too many years blaming the food I was eating and looking for different ways of eating to fix the problem.
It sounds to me like you're doing the same thing.
Yes, I know I'm being blunt here.
Bear in mind, I've lost 94 pounds, so I'm not without sympathy for someone with a lot of weight to lose.
But I had to face the cold hard truth that it wasn't the damned food I was eating. It was that I was eating too much of what I ate.
That's why I considered portions important. There are still some things I like to eat a lot of. I am a volume eater, but never of calorie dense items. I keep those portions small. I might eat up to a pound of steamed broccoli or baked spaghetti squash, though. Or a big salad. But my proteins and fats and starches are all in reasonable portions.
Ah, that "someone who's 100lbs overweight" wasn't me specifically, just a generalization. I'm just saying if someone's ended up obese, there's probably an issue deeper than just not having self-control. I can't imagine anyone would choose to be overweight if it was that simple to change it.
I think here's where we disagree. It's the food. I wouldn't have believed it myself until a few months ago, but I can eat mountains of what most diet books would call junk food (carbs, carbs, carbs) and at worst maintain my weight. Unless something changes, I see no reason not to stick with this. I feel great.
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Per 100 grams --- Not COMPLETE, but close
Vitamin B-12 µg 0.00 0.00 0.00
Vitamin A, RAE µg 0 0 0
Vitamin D (D2 + D3) µg 0.0 0.0 0.0
Vitamin D IU 0 0 0
B12 – Made by bacteria. Don't wash the potatoes. Drink dirty water.
A – Fair. Eat sweet potatoes instead.
D – Go outside. Stand in the sun for a bit.
There, you can now live forever on one food.
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Highly recommend The Diet Fix: Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work by Yoni Freedhoff, M.D., specifically the section called "A (Very) Brief History of Dieting." He somewhat hilariously sums up all the diets ever known to man. This falls under the "crash diet" category. He says this: These diets aren’t meant to be a “for good” solution but rather just a “for now” solution. Generally, they just involve eating very little of anything and sometimes as much as you want of just one very specific thing. The cabbage soup diet, the grapefruit diet, and the so-called master cleanse (that modified juice fast based on lemon juice and cayenne pepper) are this category’s most obvious examples.
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GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »Let me ask you, how lean are you?
I'm not meaning to be rude, but there's certain fine-tuning that often needs to occur if you have goals that go beyond wanting to just no longer be overweight.
Your approach is sounding like it's working because it sounds like you have a lot of weight to lose.
What I'm trying to do here is show you that there's nothing inherently wrong with other approaches because other people have different goals and that tracking is a way to obtain them.
I'm personally looking to get quite lean because I have systemic autoimmune arthritis, and the less pressure on my joints, the better. I'm a small person and my calorie budget is tight. I can only create a small deficit. Having a devil-may-care attitude about calories wouldn't work for me because I don't have a lot of body fat to lose.
Oh, no, that not's rude at all. Totally a fair question. I'm 175lbs now and could easily lose another 40-50lbs. (I'm only 5'5", if that seems rather light for a guy.)
As far as working because I have a lot of weight to lose, go look up pictures of all the doctors who promote plant-based diets, such as John McDougall, Caldwell Esselstyn, Joel Fuhrman, and Neal Barnard. They're all extremely lean. So I could be wrong, but I don't think it's just working because I'm really fat.
I'm not qualified to comment on your arthritis, but serious health issues seem like something I'd want to have monitored by a doctor and dietitian I trusted. If your calorie counting is doctor-recommended, I'd never try to talk you out of it.
Well, I don't really need my calorie count monitored by my doctor. It's quite simple for me to assess my TDEE and work out a deficit from there. For being arthritic, I'm pretty active and take in a decent whack of calories a day for an old short lady
The point, though, is that to sustain my lifestyle, I need to be accurate about counting those calories, because my deficit is small. I need to stay active to keep my joints limber. I need to eat to fuel my activity, so I need those calories. See the conundrum?
The other issue not being talked about here is one of satiety. That is individual. What is satiating to you and automatically regulating your appetite right now at your current level so that you're creating a deficit might not always be so and wouldn't necessarily hold true for every one else. A great many people find that fat satiates them (I'm not one of them, in fact I eat low fat but not as low as you).
Relying on satiety to regulate calorie content is the cornerstone of other ways of eating (such as keto) with other macro splits. However, it's still not necessarily going to get people down to very lean levels or enable them to achieve certain specific physique goals unless they track and do some deliberate tweaking (along with appropriate training). That's all I'm saying.0 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »On diabetes and HCLF diets, I'd ask esfoster5 to check out the end of this thread for the discussion of whether HCLF diets are a good approach. I also have read that they are (not getting into the can it be cured discussion), from reading the same people esfoster5 seems to like. I'm more skeptical about those people in general, although I am pretty high on the WFPB diet being a good approach if done correctly. As you will see, the one person suggesting it might be a good approach got smacked down and didn't really have the knowledge to pursue it. Therefore, if you think the information provided is incorrect, esfoster5 (I'm not particularly interested in IR/T2D myself and haven't done the research), I'd invite you to jump in. I think it would be valuable:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10437679/the-obesity-code-unlocking-the-secrets-of-weight-loss-by-jason-fung#latest
I don't feel qualified to jump into that myself.
But it looks to me like one random person on the internet criticizing both a HCLF diet and the ADA diet for not being good enough. And attacking the researchers for being PETA funded—again, I'm not qualified to comment on Neal Barnard's animal-rights activism or whatever PCRM does besides promote eating plants.
I'm withholding an opinion on low-carb diets (for diabetes and otherwise) until we have a multiple-decade study of people eating low-carb high-fat. We know it can be helpful short-term, but I don't think the science is settled on the long-term risks.1 -
lemurcat12 wrote: »On diabetes and HCLF diets, I'd ask esfoster5 to check out the end of this thread for the discussion of whether HCLF diets are a good approach. I also have read that they are (not getting into the can it be cured discussion), from reading the same people esfoster5 seems to like. I'm more skeptical about those people in general, although I am pretty high on the WFPB diet being a good approach if done correctly. As you will see, the one person suggesting it might be a good approach got smacked down and didn't really have the knowledge to pursue it. Therefore, if you think the information provided is incorrect, esfoster5 (I'm not particularly interested in IR/T2D myself and haven't done the research), I'd invite you to jump in. I think it would be valuable:
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10437679/the-obesity-code-unlocking-the-secrets-of-weight-loss-by-jason-fung#latest
I don't feel qualified to jump into that myself.
But it looks to me like one random person on the internet criticizing both a HCLF diet and the ADA diet for not being good enough. And attacking the researchers for being PETA funded—again, I'm not qualified to comment on Neal Barnard's animal-rights activism or whatever PCRM does besides promote eating plants.
I'm withholding an opinion on low-carb diets (for diabetes and otherwise) until we have a multiple-decade study of people eating low-carb high-fat. We know it can be helpful short-term, but I don't think the science is settled on the long-term risks.
In that case, you shouldn't trust any diet. For every study showing how good for you any given regimen is, there's another showing that it will give you cancer of the AIDS.5 -
GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »I wasn't instructing you, I was telling you what it's like to eat in moderation.
Being defensive isn't conducive to productive discussion.
For me, personally, I felt that I needed to learn to need to eat correct portions because I considered overeating to be one of the reasons I was fat in the first place.
I spent too many years blaming the food I was eating and looking for different ways of eating to fix the problem.
It sounds to me like you're doing the same thing.
Yes, I know I'm being blunt here.
Bear in mind, I've lost 94 pounds, so I'm not without sympathy for someone with a lot of weight to lose.
But I had to face the cold hard truth that it wasn't the damned food I was eating. It was that I was eating too much of what I ate.
That's why I considered portions important. There are still some things I like to eat a lot of. I am a volume eater, but never of calorie dense items. I keep those portions small. I might eat up to a pound of steamed broccoli or baked spaghetti squash, though. Or a big salad. But my proteins and fats and starches are all in reasonable portions.
Ah, that "someone who's 100lbs overweight" wasn't me specifically, just a generalization. I'm just saying if someone's ended up obese, there's probably an issue deeper than just not having self-control. I can't imagine anyone would choose to be overweight if it was that simple to change it.
I think here's where we disagree. It's the food. I wouldn't have believed it myself until a few months ago, but I can eat mountains of what most diet books would call junk food (carbs, carbs, carbs) and at worst maintain my weight. Unless something changes, I see no reason not to stick with this. I feel great.
You have stated elsewhere that you understand it's about CICO, so if you're eating "mountains" of junk food and maintaining your weight, surely you understand that you weren't eating past the point of your maintenance calorie level?
Surely you understand that the foods you eat now make you feel full at a point where you're consuming them in portions that contain enough calories to create a caloric deficit?
Surely you understand that this means it can't be about the food?
I urge you, for your own good to stop thinking this way. It's fine if you're happy to keep eating this way, but I am telling you from hard-learned experience that thinking it's the food is not going to keep the weight off long-term.
One of the first things we calorie counters learn is how to get the most bang for our buck, calorie-wise. That means eating foods that keep us full for the fewest calories. "Junk food" to you didn't keep you as full, so you ate more, and maintained a higher weight. The food you eat now is more satiating, so you eat less of it, calorically speaking.
It's not that it's the food, it's that you're managing your calories by making smarter choices with it. Junk foods can still be incorporated into one's diet in moderation. If they're not satiating, just don't make them the mainstay.4 -
Gallowmere1984 wrote: »In that case, you shouldn't trust any diet. For every study showing how good for you any given regimen is, there's another showing that it will give you cancer of the AIDS.
I was just praying the other night, if only my cancer had AIDS...
I'm actually specifically curious about the long-term cardiovascular risks of low-carb high-fat. They could be minimal or they could be great. I really don't know. Until I see pictures of heart disease reversed by bacon and eggs, I'm gonna stay a little skeptical.
0 -
Gallowmere1984 wrote: »In that case, you shouldn't trust any diet. For every study showing how good for you any given regimen is, there's another showing that it will give you cancer of the AIDS.
I was just praying the other night, if only my cancer had AIDS...
I'm actually specifically curious about the long-term cardiovascular risks of low-carb high-fat. They could be minimal or they could be great. I really don't know. Until I see pictures of heart disease reversed by bacon and eggs, I'm gonna stay a little skeptical.
I also have yet to see Diabetes cured by high-carb low-fat. Different intakes for different goals being the point.2 -
GottaBurnEmAll wrote: »You have stated elsewhere that you understand it's about CICO, so if you're eating "mountains" of junk food and maintaining your weight, surely you understand that you weren't eating past the point of your maintenance calorie level?
Surely you understand that the foods you eat now make you feel full at a point where you're consuming them in portions that contain enough calories to create a caloric deficit?
Surely you understand that this means it can't be about the food?
I urge you, for your own good to stop thinking this way. It's fine if you're happy to keep eating this way, but I am telling you from hard-learned experience that thinking it's the food is not going to keep the weight off long-term.
One of the first things we calorie counters learn is how to get the most bang for our buck, calorie-wise. That means eating foods that keep us full for the fewest calories. "Junk food" to you didn't keep you as full, so you ate more, and maintained a higher weight. The food you eat now is more satiating, so you eat less of it, calorically speaking.
It's not that it's the food, it's that you're managing your calories by making smarter choices with it. Junk foods can still be incorporated into one's diet in moderation. If they're not satiating, just don't make them the mainstay.
I think we're talking past each other. You just said yourself it's the food. We can't talk about calories and satiety without talking about food.0 -
Per 100 grams --- Not COMPLETE, but close
Vitamin B-12 µg 0.00 0.00 0.00
Vitamin A, RAE µg 0 0 0
Vitamin D (D2 + D3) µg 0.0 0.0 0.0
Vitamin D IU 0 0 0
B12 – Made by bacteria. Don't wash the potatoes. Drink dirty water.
A – Fair. Eat sweet potatoes instead.
D – Go outside. Stand in the sun for a bit.
There, you can now live forever on one food.
Except for the fact it's devoid of essential fat and low on protein. Do you want to eat 3 kilos of potatoes every day just to get to the RDA minimum amount?2 -
Gallowmere1984 wrote: »I also have yet to see Diabetes cured by high-carb low-fat. Different intakes for different goals being the point.
Fair enough. Even if it doesn't cure diabetes—even if it doesn't cure anything—I'm not aware of any potential long-term health problems that might be caused by a plant-based high-carb low-fat diet.
0
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