7 ms·

I Am Not Fat

32 points by snow_mac 6y ago

caymanjim 6y ago
I assume the point of the potatoes is to make you hate eating to the point that you stop wanting to eat anything, and once you don't want to eat, you can tolerate a vegan diet for basic maintenance calories.
nallic 6y ago
I - like many other - gained some weight during lockdown last winter. Now round 2 of lockdown I figured something needed to be done, So I have invested in a walkingpad (treadmill for walking speed - it folds up and tugs under the bed when I am not using it.) I have been walking for 2 hours WHILE WORKING FROM HOME now and its perfect ! - loosing around 1 kg/week while eating pretty normal (though I am trying to only have 1 big meal a day and just snack the rest of the time). The walking is not hard and I can walk 10km/day without really thinking about it, because time flies by while working. When work time is over I have all my time free and don't need to spend time on excersise. I would highly recommend this. Walking is a low effort thing that burn more calories than you would think. Its also good on general well being to not sit down all the time.
- emerged 6y ago
  This sort of thing is very effective if you manage to keep the pace just right. After a certain heart rate threshold, the drain on your focus makes it very difficult to be productive.
- snow_mac 6y ago
  What treadmill did you buy? I'm looking for one
  - nallic 6y ago
    its called a Walkingpad - licensed by different companies, but they are all the same.
Koiwai 6y ago
Why the holy fuck is this hacker fucking news?
mjbeswick 6y ago
If your aim is to lose body fat, than that's a terrible diet. If you want to lose body fat effectively, why not copy the diet of bodybuilders that get lean for a living!?
- ReptileMan 6y ago
  Because bodybuilders also live in the gym. And getting into shape and getting lean are two different paths. It is a lot easier to cut when you have lot's of muscles and lots of fat, than just a lot of fat. You can't just copy third of someone's lifestyle. And let's not forget that lots of bodybuilders eat clen and tren hard. When you get a nice cocktail of all kinds of shady substances to modify your metabolism it also makes difference.
- stevebmark 6y ago
  It's a great diet for losing fat (it's just going to be no fun) Suggesting that an average person tries the extreme diet of a body builder of putting on excess fat and then trying to "cut" it is really bad advice.
  - mjbeswick 6y ago
    I'm not suggesting that anyone follow a bulking diet, but following a cutting diet would work and isn't extreme. For example a diet of 10-30% carbs, 40-50% protein, 30-40% fat, with a 400Kcal deficit isn't extreme by any measure! That kind of die, avoiding alcohol and sugar, seems pretty reasonable?
- pizza234 6y ago
  While I personally agree with approach to ask to those successful in order to establish a strategy to tackle a problem, there are a few crucial factors about professional bodybuilders: - they dope themselves to death (in some cases, literally) - they, in general, spend lots of time in the gym, although this is not a requirement to get fit in general - they are gifted in genetic terms, which makes their practices incompatible with regular people. Probably, the best role models are regular people who keep fit with a balanced lifestyle, and even better regular people who do so in shortage of resources (ie. time), since they have to be very effective.
aogaili 6y ago
This won't work very effectively. Your best bet is to fast (water fast) for as long as you can, if you can't then add protein (not carbs). Potatoes is very rich in carbs, your body won't go to ketosis (using fat as fuel) thus you won't see much impact. I also recommend getting smart meter and measure your fat percentage daily so you can tune your diet.
- ReptileMan 6y ago
  He will eat them without flavoring and salt. Chances are he will just not eat too much of the blandness. This is soylent green.
  - aogaili 6y ago
    Yes, or he will quit and go back to his old diet.
- jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
  There is a difference between the whole carb in a boiled potato and the processed carb in something like "potato flour". The whole carb has a much lower glycemic index thanks to fiber whereas the processed carb has a glycemic index closer to table sugar. Foods with a very high glycemic index cause glycation, which is when there is too much sugar in the blood and it starts crumpling proteins and causing other bad health effects. Whole carbs are fine for this reason because they tend to be very bulky and filling, so your stomach will usually be full before you can eat enough to cause bodily harm.
- stevebmark 6y ago
  Yes, it will work effectively. Thinking that entering ketosis is the only way to lose weight effectively is dogmatic (and I'm very into keto).
  - aogaili 6y ago
    How else would you lose stored fat if you don't burn it?
qz2 6y ago
Oh joy another diet fad. They’re just stupid. Just eat a balanced diet with less calories and do exercise. It works. If it doesn’t it’s because you’re cheating. 231lb to 157lb here this year doing just that. 1600 calorie cap and regular exercise, mostly walking. After weight was gone, calories back up to normal and maintain the exercise. I should note that this was achieved by eating less potatoes and fruit and eating more broccoli and cabbage. 99% of it was replacing my broken relationship with food with a healthy one, not an even more broken one.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  Sorry to point it out but you went on a low carb diet to lose weight. The more extreme version of that is keto. Both could be considered fad diets. Keto is exceptionally effective in losing body fat because you stay satiated for longer and don't eat junk. Excess sugar gets converted to fat in the liver and stored for later.
  - qz2 6y ago
    Actually it wasn’t low carb. The entire diet was balanced properly based on what the body required. Aggregate less carbs yes but less of everything and everything in proportion. I found myself regularly having to eat more carbs to make up what I wasn’t eating.
- otabdeveloper4 6y ago
  > do exercise Exercise does nothing in losing weight. (If you've seen the people doing physical labor for 10 hours a day, you know they're not necessarily thin.)
  - mytrile 6y ago
    Physical labour is not exercise, how hard is to understand ?
  - chance_bear 6y ago
    Well, technically not nothing. Exercise can get you a few hundred extra calories burned a day, which will have an impact. But the sentiment is correct. 90% of losing weight is eating less calories. Exercise is still good though, without it a lot of the lost weight is going to be muscle.
lmilcin 6y ago
This is sad. In so many ways. People, please, do not copy. If your aim is to loose weight you absolutely have to provide a varied, balanced, healthy diet. If nothing else, learning to provide it without calorie restriction is already going to help. Your body has to extract what it needs from less food so the food has to be more rich in quality content. Also eating only carbs will mean opening a can of other problems. Your body needs to exercise various metabolic pathways every day. Avoiding fats and proteins in your diet is only good if you are fasting.
- jamil7 6y ago
  Agreed. He’s avoided learning anything about food, cooking and nutrition in favour of treating potatoes like coal. Also why is he cooking an individual meal for every family member? Can’t they all just eat something healthy and he eats a smaller portion of it? Or is this common in the US?
  - Teknoman117 6y ago
    My mother went fully vegan after reading Forks over Knives, and she started having to cook two meals as the other household members (I became an adult and moved out years ago) refused to eat vegan. A year later, mom is now the healthiest of us. Her blood work is perfect and she feels great. Rest of the family is in the same situation we always have been.
    - lmilcin 6y ago
      Probably she isn't eating just potatoes? I have nothing against vegan diet. You just need to know what you are doing and be committed to be balancing the diet yourself. Meat is an easy choice that gives everything the body needs plus some stuff that it doesn't.
      - burnthrow 6y ago
        Where are you getting the idea that potatoes are unhealthy?
jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
I hope this man is getting paid to live like shit and shill penn gilette's book. Americans suck at dieting so much I don't even bother giving advice anymore. The fruits and vegetables are at the store. I'm sure you all can figure it out eventually.
davycro 6y ago
Make sure you are getting your vitamins. Would be embarrassing if you developed scurvy.
- function_seven 6y ago
  Can you get scurvy in two weeks? I'm thinking probably not, and when the this phase is done, he's supposed to transition to a vegan diet. I'm guessing that the potatoes-only period is to make it more likely that the new diet will stick. A cleansing of the old eating habits before establishing the new ones. EDIT: Also, potatoes have a lot of vitamin C in them apparently, however cooking does reduce the content. Does eating an ungodly amount make up for the cooking loss?
- puzzlingcaptcha 6y ago
  In addition, many vitamins are fat-soluble (A, D, E, K), eliminating oil completely is not as great as it sounds.
- burnthrow 6y ago
  Potatoes are rich in vitamin C, there is no risk of scurvy.
stevebmark 6y ago
If he sticks with it, it's going to work. All starch diets bring people to healthy weights. I've been doing (mostly) ketosis for years and I still know his all potato diet can work for weight loss. It's just going to be a very… tasteless… few weeks/months. Your poop is going to be unpleasant too. It's always interesting to me that people can succeed on extreme diets like this rather than adjust their lifestyles to whole food home cooked healthy eating. Like almost no one can tolerate ketosis but they can do extreme diets like day+ fasting or fad diets. The shower thing is completely off base but whatever, this is all extreme. No salt / olive oil on the potatoes is off base too, there's no reason the diet needs to be that boring.
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  The blog entry is day 1, so there's a long way until success. And success isn't eating potatoes for two weeks, but keeping weight off for good.
- pizza234 6y ago
  > It's always interesting to me that people can succeed on extreme diets like this rather than adjust their lifestyles to whole food home cooked healthy eating. Like almost no one can tolerate ketosis but they can do extreme diets like day+ fasting or fad diets. They don't actually succeed. They succeed for a short time, because of the motivation rush, and will post about their success; then they will lose the motivation and consequently their shape, but then obviously won't post about that. Restrictive diets are bound to fail, because it's like fighting gravity, and it's impossible to succeed for one reason or another - burning motivation/mental health being another factor. Dieting is something successful in the extremely long term, ie. decades. - overweight person loses weight in the short term: interesting blog post (for uninformed readers) - overweight person loses shape in the medium/long term: uninteresting because it shows that silver bullets don't work. - fit person stay fit through exercise and balanced diet: uninteresting, because it goes against the silver bullet approach.
  - scaladev 6y ago
    As someone who lost 30 kg of excess weight and kept it off for many years, I second this comment. I have a few acquaintances ("friends" as Americans like to call them) who have gone through literally dozens of fad diets over the years, and either never lost a single pound, or gained it all back after they stopped "dieting". Not a single long term success story among them. When they ask me how I managed to keep the weight off for such a long time, I simply answer "eating what I always have, and calorie counting". Nobody likes to hear that for some reason.
nimchimpsky 6y ago
Just eat less and exercise more, the rest is noise
ngngngng 6y ago
I honestly wish I had an appetite pushing me towards caloric surplus. I have difficulty intaking anything about maintenance calories, so I stay skinny. If I COULD eat a surplus, I would just hit the weights more than I currently do. Compound lifts every day. Throw in some strongman exercises. Being able to eat enough to get fat is a super power, people just don't know where to channel it. This also requires virtually no change in diet, except ensuring you're reaching your protein goals every day.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Four Burger King Regular Chocolate Shakes will put you above maintenance almost certainly. If you don't want to GOMAD or anything and just want calories, just go do that. You can do it in four eating cycles if you don't have allergies / intolerance. Don't know that pure caloric surplus is worthwhile but there you have it.
- TheGallopedHigh 6y ago
  Protein shakes with peanut butter is an easy way to load up on calories and protein.
mytrile 6y ago
The stupidity of people is just... Managing your weight does not mean being healthy. This guy is gonna be a wreck if he continues the stupid diet.
geowwy 6y ago
Best of luck and sorry about the comments here. The keto people need to take a chill pill sometimes. There's no reason why this diet won't work if you stick to it.
ReptileMan 6y ago
Since I am on this road. Getting in shape is paramount. Swimming is probably the easiest way to build lots of muscles for very out of shape person. Long walks. With every gram of muscle you build your lean/fat ratio improves, you BMR improves, any kind of health markers.
disown 6y ago
> After two weeks on potatoes, you go to a plant based, vegan lifestyle until you hit your target weight Aren't potatoes "plant based, vegan"? I swear people go from one extreme terrible diet to another. Going from one terrible diet to another is only gonna cause more problems. What is so difficult about eating a balanced meal. Veggies, bread/rice/pasta, meat/fish/poulty, fruits, etc? If you are fat and want to lose weight, just put less on your plate and only eat that. And move/exercise more. Rinse, repeat. That's it. It's not rocket science.
- senectus1 6y ago
  I know a few "fat" vegans. Its not like their diet is inherently healthy...
  - CodeGlitch 6y ago
    Yeah me too. I knew one guy who seemed to eat nothing but potato chips. Like 3 bags in one go...
    - burnthrow 6y ago
      Just reading this made me thirsty.
  - disown 6y ago
    veganism is an inherently unhealthy diet. it's why they have to take supplements.
- lazyasciiart 6y ago
  I suspect that “going to a vegan diet” means introducing additional foods, but only things that are vegan.
wsowens 6y ago
I feel like a lot of people in this thread are missing the point of the potatoes with no salt or oil. The entire idea is that this diet is incredibly boring and will make a well-balanced vegan diet seem for more appealing by comparison. This way, the author's new diet will seem more exciting and interesting than if they jumped straight from steak and ice cream to rice and beans. A diet of pure potatoes is obviously unsustainable and unhealthy, but this is only temporary. (IMO the keto diet that I've seen other commenters pushing is also unsustainable, but whatever works for people.)
hasa 6y ago
If I were him, I'd just start walking (in addition to fixing the eating habits). One can put "all in" also in walking. Walk until your feet are bleeding :)
senectus1 6y ago
christ.. what an awful diet. for me 13kgs dropped off in about 5 months after lifestyle changes. Stopped adding sugar to drinks (and drinking sweet drinks/ artificial or no) Fast between 8pm and 11am go for a 1 hour bike ride a few times a week. be conscious of how much food i was eating (quantity) I dont have a sweet tooth but savory food I have bad habits of eating until I'm full.
- torgian 6y ago
  I'm kind of in the same boat. I like savory foods, although I also have a bit of a sweet tooth ( but am able to control it ). My problem is the same though; I eat till I'm full, so I've been curtailing that by eating more proteins and really watching what kinds of food I'm eating. Still a work in progress though.
ThePhysicist 6y ago
The only thing that will reliably make you lose weight is putting in less energy than your body consumes. To my knowledge all the dietary fads (low-carb, high-carb, all-starch, interval fasting, ...) have failed to produce any measurable effects in scientific studies.
- toast0 6y ago
  The thing is it's hard to measure the inputs and outputs of your body. And with the same inputs, different bodies will produce different outputs. The thing about scientific studies is they're generally looking for something that works for everyone. If a small number of people in a small study have good results from a fad diet, and they can stick to it, that's good for them, but the study is going to show no significant difference between control and test. The key is finding something you can stick to, has good results for you, and doesn't cause other problems. For a lot of people, that's easy, and for some people it's hard.
- lazyasciiart 6y ago
  My impression is that studies find that any diet can help people lose weight if that’s why they began it - hypothesis is that it’s the change and increased attention that works, not what you change to.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >have failed to produce any measurable effects in scientific studies. That's not a problem, because scientific studies have also failed to produce any great way of losing weight (including the "sticking to it part"), whereas non-scientific diets have worked wonders for individual people...
- stevebmark 6y ago
  There are studies for all of those diets that show weight loss results. "Putting in less energy than your body consumes" is an unhelpful thought that you should stop using. It's both too obvious and also too obtuse. It completely ignores what certain types of foods do inside / to your body. It's possible to gain weight on a caloric deficit and it's possible to lose weight on caloric excess. People who struggle to lose weight while intentionally under eating and trying to exercise more and end up failing, feel terrible about themselves because they believe this unhelpful statement you keep repeating.
mellosouls 6y ago
Worth remembering Penn Jillette used to be a champion for obesity and not taking responsibility for yourself - I'm thinking particularly of the "Bullshit" episode where he attempted to corral science into justifying his own condition, undermining the whole premise of the series. Perhaps he has issued a mea culpa. As he himself says though, this is not a man to follow on this subject. Best wishes to the author here though; moderation and discipline over the long term will be key.
- coldtea 6y ago
  >Worth remembering Penn Jillette used to be a champion for obesity and not taking responsibility for yourself It's easy to do (and probably, one good way to enjoy yourself however it is) when you're younger... After an age though, the consequences of obesity get worse than the fun of eating...
  - mellosouls 6y ago
    True, but he was about 50 when he was making "scientific" programmes saying being fat was down to genetics and sneering at skinny vegetarians.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      Well, that's about the threshold age... Plus, who woulnd't sneer at vegeterians, skinny or not?
paxys 6y ago
"This guy is stupid for trying something that works for him. Instead he should do what worked for me." - this entire thread.
marsvin 6y ago
Glad he stocked some sweet potatoes, too. At least a tiny change in flavour compared to common potatoes. I have to admit I'd rather stick with normal diet. Just recude the intake or increase the consumption.
mikenew 6y ago
This diet is stupid. Objectively. But honestly... I feel like many people (myself included) who eventually ended up with healthy eating patterns actually started out with something stupid. I really do think some people can mentally handle an "extreme" diet more easily than a moderate adjustment. It's just more exciting I guess. And the weirdness of it makes it feel like you've discovered some secret that nobody else knows. In the end, just realizing that you can in fact change your bodyweight is a huge mental win. And as long as you transition into something less stupid after a month or two, I think the net benefit can actually be very positive. ...but seriously; of the three macronutrients, carbs are the only one you don't need to stay alive. It's fine for a while, but I just don't get why if you're going to cut calories to below 1k per day you wouln't instead eat some fats and protein. When you realize that a good part of your weight loss is muscle mass disappearing the whole thing gets a lot less exciting.
Eric_WVGG 6y ago
Penn Jillette is a remarkable guy… three quick stories… One of my friends used to work backstage in Las Vegas, and got invited to Jilette’s mansion for a party. Besides being obese (at the time), he is also very tall, 6’6”. According to my friend, the entire mansion is built to his scale —- every light switch is 6” higher than you expect. Every counter is high. Every chair is a little too tall. It has the effect of making folks feel a bit crazy. He wrote a pulp mystery novel called Sock. It is told from he perspective of a detective’s plush sock monkey. The last sentence of every paragraph is a line from a classic rock tune. He used to write a tech/humor column for PC/Computing magazine back in the nineties. In one column, he described a practical joke wherein one could write an autoexec.bat file that would print a countdown to detonation for airport security dudes who snooped in laptops to find. (As for the efficacy of this “diet,” most of you are overlooking the fact that, like everything Jillette does, it’s a trick. Some folks just need a bit of psychology to get on the track, that’s fine.)
bArray 6y ago
The equation is pretty simple, you need to burn more than you consume. So decrease your input or increase your exercise - or both. There's no shortcuts. Speak to a specialist, they tend to know what they are doing. A few additional points to consider: * First weight you lose will be water (it's why most of these diet programs make big claims in just a few weeks) * As you burn fat, you'll need to drink more water and you'll flush out your electrolytes - take supplements * If you don't workout and eat a certain-ish amount of protein (not too much or less) you'll lose muscle mass instead of fat * Fasting helps you burn fat rather than food intake * It's better to consume fats than carbs - if you can get your body into ketosis then you'll burn almost exclusively fats * Don't underestimate the importance of exercise, even walking (for a heavy person, you're burning a lot more to move the additional mass around)
- emerged 6y ago
  I’ve gone so far as to maintain a consistent weekly schedule of food and water intake and weight myself under the same conditions each day. It’s easy to become distracted by wild weight fluctuations due to water variations if you’re not conscious of how dramatic those variations are day by day.
russellbeattie 6y ago
You're all wrong. The correct way to diet is totally different than what you think it is. You'd have to be a complete idiot to do it one way when another way is obviously more scientific. I once dieted a third way and it was way more effective than the second way, but it wasn't as healthy. You just have to look at the facts. Anyone who isn't doing the right diet - like I've been doing for years now - just doesn't understand how the human metabolism works. It's sad, really, this stuff is just basic. Stick to what's natural and you'll be eating in no time, trust me.
- blkknightarms 6y ago
  Explain with details rather than "everyone else is wrong, I know it all."
blkknightarms 6y ago
There are two ways of dieting I can think of readily: calorie counting and budgeting, and a modified total fast. Calorie counting can work, but the hunger can be excruciating. A modified fast would be water, a small amount of an oil to keep the gallbladder emptying, electrolytes, and vitamins. After 3-4 days, hunger will disappear. The issues with this method are the metabolic rate drop and muscle is reduced along with fat. I don't see how a diet of almost pure carbs (potatoes) does anything but delay weight loss with empty calories. Overall, the goal is to eliminate as much adipose fat as possible since this contributes to greater and greater ghrelin production.
AnonHP 6y ago
Adam, if you’re reading this, I wish you all the best and hope you do succeed in keeping with the plan. With any diet, all that matters is whether you’re able to transform it into a lifestyle change. I know it’s not easy to do this and expose yourself on the web for others to see and read what you are and what you’re trying. But your courage and updates will hopefully inspire someone else. Try not to get disappointed if you hit a plateau in your weight loss journey. It’s not very difficult to lose the first few (or few tens of) pounds, but later it may seem more and more of an uphill battle (depending on many factors). Just stick to the program and keep working on it.
prettyWise 6y ago
He bought a decaf americano today. Uh oh.

32 points by snow_mac 6y ago

I assume the point of the potatoes is to make you hate eating to the point that you stop wanting to eat anything, and once you don't want to eat, you can tolerate a vegan diet for basic maintenance calories.

nallic 6y ago

I - like many other - gained some weight during lockdown last winter. Now round 2 of lockdown I figured something needed to be done, So I have invested in a walkingpad (treadmill for walking speed - it folds up and tugs under the bed when I am not using it.) I have been walking for 2 hours WHILE WORKING FROM HOME now and its perfect ! - loosing around 1 kg/week while eating pretty normal (though I am trying to only have 1 big meal a day and just snack the rest of the time). The walking is not hard and I can walk 10km/day without really thinking about it, because time flies by while working. When work time is over I have all my time free and don't need to spend time on excersise. I would highly recommend this. Walking is a low effort thing that burn more calories than you would think. Its also good on general well being to not sit down all the time.

emerged 6y ago
This sort of thing is very effective if you manage to keep the pace just right. After a certain heart rate threshold, the drain on your focus makes it very difficult to be productive.
snow_mac 6y ago
What treadmill did you buy? I'm looking for one
- nallic 6y ago
  its called a Walkingpad - licensed by different companies, but they are all the same.

Koiwai 6y ago

Why the holy fuck is this hacker fucking news?

mjbeswick 6y ago

If your aim is to lose body fat, than that's a terrible diet. If you want to lose body fat effectively, why not copy the diet of bodybuilders that get lean for a living!?

ReptileMan 6y ago
Because bodybuilders also live in the gym. And getting into shape and getting lean are two different paths. It is a lot easier to cut when you have lot's of muscles and lots of fat, than just a lot of fat. You can't just copy third of someone's lifestyle. And let's not forget that lots of bodybuilders eat clen and tren hard. When you get a nice cocktail of all kinds of shady substances to modify your metabolism it also makes difference.
stevebmark 6y ago
It's a great diet for losing fat (it's just going to be no fun) Suggesting that an average person tries the extreme diet of a body builder of putting on excess fat and then trying to "cut" it is really bad advice.
- mjbeswick 6y ago
  I'm not suggesting that anyone follow a bulking diet, but following a cutting diet would work and isn't extreme. For example a diet of 10-30% carbs, 40-50% protein, 30-40% fat, with a 400Kcal deficit isn't extreme by any measure! That kind of die, avoiding alcohol and sugar, seems pretty reasonable?
pizza234 6y ago
While I personally agree with approach to ask to those successful in order to establish a strategy to tackle a problem, there are a few crucial factors about professional bodybuilders: - they dope themselves to death (in some cases, literally) - they, in general, spend lots of time in the gym, although this is not a requirement to get fit in general - they are gifted in genetic terms, which makes their practices incompatible with regular people. Probably, the best role models are regular people who keep fit with a balanced lifestyle, and even better regular people who do so in shortage of resources (ie. time), since they have to be very effective.

aogaili 6y ago

This won't work very effectively. Your best bet is to fast (water fast) for as long as you can, if you can't then add protein (not carbs). Potatoes is very rich in carbs, your body won't go to ketosis (using fat as fuel) thus you won't see much impact. I also recommend getting smart meter and measure your fat percentage daily so you can tune your diet.

ReptileMan 6y ago
He will eat them without flavoring and salt. Chances are he will just not eat too much of the blandness. This is soylent green.
- aogaili 6y ago
  Yes, or he will quit and go back to his old diet.
jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
There is a difference between the whole carb in a boiled potato and the processed carb in something like "potato flour". The whole carb has a much lower glycemic index thanks to fiber whereas the processed carb has a glycemic index closer to table sugar. Foods with a very high glycemic index cause glycation, which is when there is too much sugar in the blood and it starts crumpling proteins and causing other bad health effects. Whole carbs are fine for this reason because they tend to be very bulky and filling, so your stomach will usually be full before you can eat enough to cause bodily harm.
stevebmark 6y ago
Yes, it will work effectively. Thinking that entering ketosis is the only way to lose weight effectively is dogmatic (and I'm very into keto).
- aogaili 6y ago
  How else would you lose stored fat if you don't burn it?

qz2 6y ago

Oh joy another diet fad. They’re just stupid. Just eat a balanced diet with less calories and do exercise. It works. If it doesn’t it’s because you’re cheating. 231lb to 157lb here this year doing just that. 1600 calorie cap and regular exercise, mostly walking. After weight was gone, calories back up to normal and maintain the exercise. I should note that this was achieved by eating less potatoes and fruit and eating more broccoli and cabbage. 99% of it was replacing my broken relationship with food with a healthy one, not an even more broken one.

rorykoehler 6y ago
Sorry to point it out but you went on a low carb diet to lose weight. The more extreme version of that is keto. Both could be considered fad diets. Keto is exceptionally effective in losing body fat because you stay satiated for longer and don't eat junk. Excess sugar gets converted to fat in the liver and stored for later.
- qz2 6y ago
  Actually it wasn’t low carb. The entire diet was balanced properly based on what the body required. Aggregate less carbs yes but less of everything and everything in proportion. I found myself regularly having to eat more carbs to make up what I wasn’t eating.
otabdeveloper4 6y ago
> do exercise Exercise does nothing in losing weight. (If you've seen the people doing physical labor for 10 hours a day, you know they're not necessarily thin.)
- mytrile 6y ago
  Physical labour is not exercise, how hard is to understand ?
- chance_bear 6y ago
  Well, technically not nothing. Exercise can get you a few hundred extra calories burned a day, which will have an impact. But the sentiment is correct. 90% of losing weight is eating less calories. Exercise is still good though, without it a lot of the lost weight is going to be muscle.

lmilcin 6y ago

This is sad. In so many ways. People, please, do not copy. If your aim is to loose weight you absolutely have to provide a varied, balanced, healthy diet. If nothing else, learning to provide it without calorie restriction is already going to help. Your body has to extract what it needs from less food so the food has to be more rich in quality content. Also eating only carbs will mean opening a can of other problems. Your body needs to exercise various metabolic pathways every day. Avoiding fats and proteins in your diet is only good if you are fasting.

jamil7 6y ago
Agreed. He’s avoided learning anything about food, cooking and nutrition in favour of treating potatoes like coal. Also why is he cooking an individual meal for every family member? Can’t they all just eat something healthy and he eats a smaller portion of it? Or is this common in the US?
- Teknoman117 6y ago
  My mother went fully vegan after reading Forks over Knives, and she started having to cook two meals as the other household members (I became an adult and moved out years ago) refused to eat vegan. A year later, mom is now the healthiest of us. Her blood work is perfect and she feels great. Rest of the family is in the same situation we always have been.
  - lmilcin 6y ago
    Probably she isn't eating just potatoes? I have nothing against vegan diet. You just need to know what you are doing and be committed to be balancing the diet yourself. Meat is an easy choice that gives everything the body needs plus some stuff that it doesn't.
    - burnthrow 6y ago
      Where are you getting the idea that potatoes are unhealthy?

jacobwilliamroy 6y ago

I hope this man is getting paid to live like shit and shill penn gilette's book. Americans suck at dieting so much I don't even bother giving advice anymore. The fruits and vegetables are at the store. I'm sure you all can figure it out eventually.

davycro 6y ago

Make sure you are getting your vitamins. Would be embarrassing if you developed scurvy.

function_seven 6y ago
Can you get scurvy in two weeks? I'm thinking probably not, and when the this phase is done, he's supposed to transition to a vegan diet. I'm guessing that the potatoes-only period is to make it more likely that the new diet will stick. A cleansing of the old eating habits before establishing the new ones. EDIT: Also, potatoes have a lot of vitamin C in them apparently, however cooking does reduce the content. Does eating an ungodly amount make up for the cooking loss?
puzzlingcaptcha 6y ago
In addition, many vitamins are fat-soluble (A, D, E, K), eliminating oil completely is not as great as it sounds.
burnthrow 6y ago
Potatoes are rich in vitamin C, there is no risk of scurvy.

stevebmark 6y ago

If he sticks with it, it's going to work. All starch diets bring people to healthy weights. I've been doing (mostly) ketosis for years and I still know his all potato diet can work for weight loss. It's just going to be a very… tasteless… few weeks/months. Your poop is going to be unpleasant too. It's always interesting to me that people can succeed on extreme diets like this rather than adjust their lifestyles to whole food home cooked healthy eating. Like almost no one can tolerate ketosis but they can do extreme diets like day+ fasting or fad diets. The shower thing is completely off base but whatever, this is all extreme. No salt / olive oil on the potatoes is off base too, there's no reason the diet needs to be that boring.

howlgarnish 6y ago
The blog entry is day 1, so there's a long way until success. And success isn't eating potatoes for two weeks, but keeping weight off for good.
pizza234 6y ago
> It's always interesting to me that people can succeed on extreme diets like this rather than adjust their lifestyles to whole food home cooked healthy eating. Like almost no one can tolerate ketosis but they can do extreme diets like day+ fasting or fad diets. They don't actually succeed. They succeed for a short time, because of the motivation rush, and will post about their success; then they will lose the motivation and consequently their shape, but then obviously won't post about that. Restrictive diets are bound to fail, because it's like fighting gravity, and it's impossible to succeed for one reason or another - burning motivation/mental health being another factor. Dieting is something successful in the extremely long term, ie. decades. - overweight person loses weight in the short term: interesting blog post (for uninformed readers) - overweight person loses shape in the medium/long term: uninteresting because it shows that silver bullets don't work. - fit person stay fit through exercise and balanced diet: uninteresting, because it goes against the silver bullet approach.
- scaladev 6y ago
  As someone who lost 30 kg of excess weight and kept it off for many years, I second this comment. I have a few acquaintances ("friends" as Americans like to call them) who have gone through literally dozens of fad diets over the years, and either never lost a single pound, or gained it all back after they stopped "dieting". Not a single long term success story among them. When they ask me how I managed to keep the weight off for such a long time, I simply answer "eating what I always have, and calorie counting". Nobody likes to hear that for some reason.

nimchimpsky 6y ago

Just eat less and exercise more, the rest is noise

ngngngng 6y ago

I honestly wish I had an appetite pushing me towards caloric surplus. I have difficulty intaking anything about maintenance calories, so I stay skinny. If I COULD eat a surplus, I would just hit the weights more than I currently do. Compound lifts every day. Throw in some strongman exercises. Being able to eat enough to get fat is a super power, people just don't know where to channel it. This also requires virtually no change in diet, except ensuring you're reaching your protein goals every day.

renewiltord 6y ago
Four Burger King Regular Chocolate Shakes will put you above maintenance almost certainly. If you don't want to GOMAD or anything and just want calories, just go do that. You can do it in four eating cycles if you don't have allergies / intolerance. Don't know that pure caloric surplus is worthwhile but there you have it.
TheGallopedHigh 6y ago
Protein shakes with peanut butter is an easy way to load up on calories and protein.

mytrile 6y ago

The stupidity of people is just... Managing your weight does not mean being healthy. This guy is gonna be a wreck if he continues the stupid diet.

geowwy 6y ago

Best of luck and sorry about the comments here. The keto people need to take a chill pill sometimes. There's no reason why this diet won't work if you stick to it.

ReptileMan 6y ago

Since I am on this road. Getting in shape is paramount. Swimming is probably the easiest way to build lots of muscles for very out of shape person. Long walks. With every gram of muscle you build your lean/fat ratio improves, you BMR improves, any kind of health markers.

disown 6y ago

> After two weeks on potatoes, you go to a plant based, vegan lifestyle until you hit your target weight Aren't potatoes "plant based, vegan"? I swear people go from one extreme terrible diet to another. Going from one terrible diet to another is only gonna cause more problems. What is so difficult about eating a balanced meal. Veggies, bread/rice/pasta, meat/fish/poulty, fruits, etc? If you are fat and want to lose weight, just put less on your plate and only eat that. And move/exercise more. Rinse, repeat. That's it. It's not rocket science.

senectus1 6y ago
I know a few "fat" vegans. Its not like their diet is inherently healthy...
- CodeGlitch 6y ago
  Yeah me too. I knew one guy who seemed to eat nothing but potato chips. Like 3 bags in one go...
  - burnthrow 6y ago
    Just reading this made me thirsty.
- disown 6y ago
  veganism is an inherently unhealthy diet. it's why they have to take supplements.
lazyasciiart 6y ago
I suspect that “going to a vegan diet” means introducing additional foods, but only things that are vegan.

wsowens 6y ago

I feel like a lot of people in this thread are missing the point of the potatoes with no salt or oil. The entire idea is that this diet is incredibly boring and will make a well-balanced vegan diet seem for more appealing by comparison. This way, the author's new diet will seem more exciting and interesting than if they jumped straight from steak and ice cream to rice and beans. A diet of pure potatoes is obviously unsustainable and unhealthy, but this is only temporary. (IMO the keto diet that I've seen other commenters pushing is also unsustainable, but whatever works for people.)

hasa 6y ago

If I were him, I'd just start walking (in addition to fixing the eating habits). One can put "all in" also in walking. Walk until your feet are bleeding :)

senectus1 6y ago

christ.. what an awful diet. for me 13kgs dropped off in about 5 months after lifestyle changes. Stopped adding sugar to drinks (and drinking sweet drinks/ artificial or no) Fast between 8pm and 11am go for a 1 hour bike ride a few times a week. be conscious of how much food i was eating (quantity) I dont have a sweet tooth but savory food I have bad habits of eating until I'm full.

torgian 6y ago
I'm kind of in the same boat. I like savory foods, although I also have a bit of a sweet tooth ( but am able to control it ). My problem is the same though; I eat till I'm full, so I've been curtailing that by eating more proteins and really watching what kinds of food I'm eating. Still a work in progress though.

ThePhysicist 6y ago

The only thing that will reliably make you lose weight is putting in less energy than your body consumes. To my knowledge all the dietary fads (low-carb, high-carb, all-starch, interval fasting, ...) have failed to produce any measurable effects in scientific studies.

toast0 6y ago
The thing is it's hard to measure the inputs and outputs of your body. And with the same inputs, different bodies will produce different outputs. The thing about scientific studies is they're generally looking for something that works for everyone. If a small number of people in a small study have good results from a fad diet, and they can stick to it, that's good for them, but the study is going to show no significant difference between control and test. The key is finding something you can stick to, has good results for you, and doesn't cause other problems. For a lot of people, that's easy, and for some people it's hard.
lazyasciiart 6y ago
My impression is that studies find that any diet can help people lose weight if that’s why they began it - hypothesis is that it’s the change and increased attention that works, not what you change to.
coldtea 6y ago
>have failed to produce any measurable effects in scientific studies. That's not a problem, because scientific studies have also failed to produce any great way of losing weight (including the "sticking to it part"), whereas non-scientific diets have worked wonders for individual people...
stevebmark 6y ago
There are studies for all of those diets that show weight loss results. "Putting in less energy than your body consumes" is an unhelpful thought that you should stop using. It's both too obvious and also too obtuse. It completely ignores what certain types of foods do inside / to your body. It's possible to gain weight on a caloric deficit and it's possible to lose weight on caloric excess. People who struggle to lose weight while intentionally under eating and trying to exercise more and end up failing, feel terrible about themselves because they believe this unhelpful statement you keep repeating.

mellosouls 6y ago

Worth remembering Penn Jillette used to be a champion for obesity and not taking responsibility for yourself - I'm thinking particularly of the "Bullshit" episode where he attempted to corral science into justifying his own condition, undermining the whole premise of the series. Perhaps he has issued a mea culpa. As he himself says though, this is not a man to follow on this subject. Best wishes to the author here though; moderation and discipline over the long term will be key.

coldtea 6y ago
>Worth remembering Penn Jillette used to be a champion for obesity and not taking responsibility for yourself It's easy to do (and probably, one good way to enjoy yourself however it is) when you're younger... After an age though, the consequences of obesity get worse than the fun of eating...
- mellosouls 6y ago
  True, but he was about 50 when he was making "scientific" programmes saying being fat was down to genetics and sneering at skinny vegetarians.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Well, that's about the threshold age... Plus, who woulnd't sneer at vegeterians, skinny or not?

paxys 6y ago

"This guy is stupid for trying something that works for him. Instead he should do what worked for me." - this entire thread.

marsvin 6y ago

Glad he stocked some sweet potatoes, too. At least a tiny change in flavour compared to common potatoes. I have to admit I'd rather stick with normal diet. Just recude the intake or increase the consumption.

mikenew 6y ago

This diet is stupid. Objectively. But honestly... I feel like many people (myself included) who eventually ended up with healthy eating patterns actually started out with something stupid. I really do think some people can mentally handle an "extreme" diet more easily than a moderate adjustment. It's just more exciting I guess. And the weirdness of it makes it feel like you've discovered some secret that nobody else knows. In the end, just realizing that you can in fact change your bodyweight is a huge mental win. And as long as you transition into something less stupid after a month or two, I think the net benefit can actually be very positive. ...but seriously; of the three macronutrients, carbs are the only one you don't need to stay alive. It's fine for a while, but I just don't get why if you're going to cut calories to below 1k per day you wouln't instead eat some fats and protein. When you realize that a good part of your weight loss is muscle mass disappearing the whole thing gets a lot less exciting.

Eric_WVGG 6y ago

Penn Jillette is a remarkable guy… three quick stories… One of my friends used to work backstage in Las Vegas, and got invited to Jilette’s mansion for a party. Besides being obese (at the time), he is also very tall, 6’6”. According to my friend, the entire mansion is built to his scale —- every light switch is 6” higher than you expect. Every counter is high. Every chair is a little too tall. It has the effect of making folks feel a bit crazy. He wrote a pulp mystery novel called Sock. It is told from he perspective of a detective’s plush sock monkey. The last sentence of every paragraph is a line from a classic rock tune. He used to write a tech/humor column for PC/Computing magazine back in the nineties. In one column, he described a practical joke wherein one could write an autoexec.bat file that would print a countdown to detonation for airport security dudes who snooped in laptops to find. (As for the efficacy of this “diet,” most of you are overlooking the fact that, like everything Jillette does, it’s a trick. Some folks just need a bit of psychology to get on the track, that’s fine.)

bArray 6y ago

The equation is pretty simple, you need to burn more than you consume. So decrease your input or increase your exercise - or both. There's no shortcuts. Speak to a specialist, they tend to know what they are doing. A few additional points to consider: * First weight you lose will be water (it's why most of these diet programs make big claims in just a few weeks) * As you burn fat, you'll need to drink more water and you'll flush out your electrolytes - take supplements * If you don't workout and eat a certain-ish amount of protein (not too much or less) you'll lose muscle mass instead of fat * Fasting helps you burn fat rather than food intake * It's better to consume fats than carbs - if you can get your body into ketosis then you'll burn almost exclusively fats * Don't underestimate the importance of exercise, even walking (for a heavy person, you're burning a lot more to move the additional mass around)

emerged 6y ago
I’ve gone so far as to maintain a consistent weekly schedule of food and water intake and weight myself under the same conditions each day. It’s easy to become distracted by wild weight fluctuations due to water variations if you’re not conscious of how dramatic those variations are day by day.

russellbeattie 6y ago

You're all wrong. The correct way to diet is totally different than what you think it is. You'd have to be a complete idiot to do it one way when another way is obviously more scientific. I once dieted a third way and it was way more effective than the second way, but it wasn't as healthy. You just have to look at the facts. Anyone who isn't doing the right diet - like I've been doing for years now - just doesn't understand how the human metabolism works. It's sad, really, this stuff is just basic. Stick to what's natural and you'll be eating in no time, trust me.

blkknightarms 6y ago
Explain with details rather than "everyone else is wrong, I know it all."

blkknightarms 6y ago

There are two ways of dieting I can think of readily: calorie counting and budgeting, and a modified total fast. Calorie counting can work, but the hunger can be excruciating. A modified fast would be water, a small amount of an oil to keep the gallbladder emptying, electrolytes, and vitamins. After 3-4 days, hunger will disappear. The issues with this method are the metabolic rate drop and muscle is reduced along with fat. I don't see how a diet of almost pure carbs (potatoes) does anything but delay weight loss with empty calories. Overall, the goal is to eliminate as much adipose fat as possible since this contributes to greater and greater ghrelin production.

AnonHP 6y ago

Adam, if you’re reading this, I wish you all the best and hope you do succeed in keeping with the plan. With any diet, all that matters is whether you’re able to transform it into a lifestyle change. I know it’s not easy to do this and expose yourself on the web for others to see and read what you are and what you’re trying. But your courage and updates will hopefully inspire someone else. Try not to get disappointed if you hit a plateau in your weight loss journey. It’s not very difficult to lose the first few (or few tens of) pounds, but later it may seem more and more of an uphill battle (depending on many factors). Just stick to the program and keep working on it.

prettyWise 6y ago

He bought a decaf americano today. Uh oh.