Potatoes For Weight Loss and Health page 4

[otzi]

Exactly ... I have access to an ultrasound body fat analyzer.

The game's afoot, Watson!

-PK

PK - If you don't have one, can I recommend you get a blood glucose monitor and several hundred test strips? Before starting, plot out 15 minute increments of blood sugar just before and for 3hrs after eating different foods, then compare it against potatoes.

You can make really cool graphs and you learn something while doing it about how you respond. I think that eating LC primal for years makes us insulin resistant, or at least doesn't provide insulin spikes. Insulin spikes do more than put FFA in fat cells, they cause nutrients to be transported into cells and also interact with leptin. Maybe that's a bigger part of the success of
the Potato Diet than anything.

[heatseeker]

You know what's even more crazy? That super hot man doing, like, insane jumping chin-ups on heatseeker's tumbler.... Drool... Yep, toootally more amusing than over-analyzing a crash diet.... ;-)

Right?! I watched that for like five minutes straight before I reblogged it.

[pklopp]

a) I seriously don't understand why you would do the potato thing but also eat 1g/LBM protein per day. That's not the potato thing. That's just eating a lot of potatoes along with your usual food.

Because the potato diet / hack / whatever is not sustainable precisely because it is seriously deficient in protein and especially essential fatty acids. Your thesis is that the potato is magic. Mine is that it isn't, but rather we're talking about eating an inordinately large amount of potatoes in order to eat enough calories, and most people cannot do this, which results in weight
loss.

b) The point of the potato thing is that it restricts calories without leaving you hungry or totally devoid of nutrients. You're right, potatoes aren't magic, they just happen to be really good at making you feel full and also allowing you complete protein and a bunch of other nutrients. It wouldn't work with strawberries or twinkies or any of the other things mentioned because you'd get incredibly hungry and you wouldn't be getting adequate nutrition.

And you've ascertained this by ... copious self-experimentation eating 10 lbs. of carrots a day? I didn't mention twinkies, by the way. I mentioned fibrous fruits and vegetables which would probably act very similarly to potatoes in the diet. You are also conflating complete protein and adequate levels of protein. Insufficient amounts of a complete protein are still inadequate.

The overall point is if it really is a question of filling yourself up with indigestible fibre in order to keep calorie count low and satiety high, then you can design a diet that is indefinitely sustainable, healthful, has some measure of variety and can help you lose all the weight you want. Because if watermelon, strawberries, carrots work, then probably so will cabbage, cucumbers, zucchini, spinach, and so on... You can also make use of psyllium husk and flax muffins etc. etc.

c) Plain old caloric restriction has a gigantic fail rate. Read literally any thread on these forums started by a woman. That's why we can safely call this a "hack" and not just a crash diet. There is a reason it works the way it does.

What exactly is plain old caloric restriction when you make no reference to the method? My idea to eat 10 lbs. of carrots a day would very easily slot into the plain old caloric restriction category, but you've already decided that it wouldn't work because you happen to prefer potatoes. I think it would work, precisely because you would be too full and too sick of carrots to get anywhere close to your basal caloric requirement. You are right, I am not a woman, and I can't speak on your behalf, but I am thinking that satiety has a lot to do with how much food you have to cram into yourself because there is a practical limit, and that is a gender free concept.

d) As Matthew Berry would say, get off your high horse. Chill out. It's just a fun diet hack experiment. Nobody is killing themselves. You're certainly allowed to think it sounds stupid, and get all condescending and Poindextery about it. And then we as a collective are allowed to tell you you're acting like a douche.

Heaven forbid that I mention wanting to understand the underlying mechanism and for further suggesting that protein just might be important. I can't recall where I said that the idea sounded stupid or that people were killing themselves. Perhaps you ought to check the transcript? Maybe you're confusing what I said with some else?

-PK

[pklopp]

This forum is a place for people to help others and share their experiences, not a pissing contest where you marginalize the successes of others because you don't care for their methods or what they attribute to them.

Where did I marginalize the successes of others?

I most certainly did say that there was no framework proposed to explain the potato magic.

-PK

[otzi]

My idea to eat 10 lbs. of carrots a day would very easily slot into the plain old caloric restriction category, but you've already decided that it wouldn't work because you happen to prefer potatoes. I think it would work, precisely because you would be too full and too sick of carrots to get anywhere close to your basal caloric requirement.
-PK

There is a problem with carrots, though. Carotenosis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Foods associated with this:
Alfalfa
Apples
Apricots
Asparagus
Beans
Beet greens
Broccoli
Brussels sprouts
Butter
Cabbage
Cantaloupes
Carrots
Cheese
Collard greens
Cucumbers
Eggs
Figs
Kale
Kiwi
Lettuce
Mangoes
Milk
Mustard
Oranges
Palm oil
Papayas
Parsley
Peaches
Pineapples
Plums
Pumpkins
Seaweed
Spinach
Squash
Sweet potatoes
Tomatoes
Yams
Yellow corn

[otzi]

I most certainly did say that there was no framework proposed to explain the potato magic.

-PK

There is no potato magic. I think there are a couple of other foods that could do the same thing. Rice and Cassava. Maybe more, but definitely not carrots or any of the others you've mentioned.

[sbhikes]

How can you prove it's hokum if you don't do it for real, insufficient protein and all?

[@lex]

There is a problem with carrots, though. Carotenosis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Damn, now I know where the idea for spray tanning came from.

[pklopp]

Insulin spikes do more than put FFA in fat cells, they cause nutrients to be transported into cells and also interact with leptin. Maybe that's a bigger part of the success of
the Potato Diet than anything.

The principal reason that I want to ensure adequate protein intake is because insulin promotes protein synthesis ... which is a complete waste if there is no supplemental protein being ingested.

-PK

[pklopp]

Damn, now I know where the idea for spray tanning came from.

Since they're lipid soluble, you should be ok as long as you only eat carrots ... !

Still...

-PK