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Anecdotally, that kind of thing sure works. Back in the day my aunt turned from plump and boring to thin and elegant in a couple of months by eating only chicke

Anecdotally, that kind of thing sure works. Back in the day my aunt turned from plump and boring to thin and elegant in a couple of months by eating only chicken and rice. However, I think those diets only "work" because they make you starve while filling your belly. I guess what they do to your body is that they deprive it of the vast majority of the nutrients it needs. It makes sense that you'd lose weight then, in the same way that it would make sense that you'd lose weight during a bout of serious illness, or after invasive surgery, or an accident etc. It's a sudden shock to the system, you know? So I would be really careful with following one of those diets. You risk losing weight for reasons really deterimental to your health. I would only do this if I had a doctor I could trust that could monitor me regularly.

bambax 4y ago
> However, I think those diets only "work" because they make you starve while filling your belly Another way they could work is because eating the same thing all day every day is extremely boring and makes you not want to eat at all. It would be the case for the most delicious dish, but it's even truer with bland food.
- cheese_goddess 4y ago
  Yeah, maybe. That could be the reason, or an additional reason. I think if I had to eat only one kind of food that I really like (not cheese because there's such a huge variety that it wouldn't really count as "one") I could just about manage to eat only that for two weeks. After that I think I'd be craving something else. Of course, that could also cause me to over-eat to try and make up for the craving. Anyway I don't think this is such an easy diet as the article here makes it sound like. Anecdotally again, the only time I went on an "eat-only-x" diet was during a heatwave when I spent a week or two eating only teaspoonfulls of peanut butter and drinking milk kefir. The reason being that it was so hellishly hot that I couldn't stand the thought of cooking or eating anything more. I think I lost a few pounds during that time.
Taikonerd 4y ago
I think any crazy-restrictive diet can "work," in the sense of short-term weight loss. But the article seems to think that the potato diet will somehow reset something that's gone wrong, leading to the weight staying off after the all-potato phase is finished? That will be the real test...

bambax 4y ago

> However, I think those diets only "work" because they make you starve while filling your belly Another way they could work is because eating the same thing all day every day is extremely boring and makes you not want to eat at all. It would be the case for the most delicious dish, but it's even truer with bland food.

cheese_goddess 4y ago
Yeah, maybe. That could be the reason, or an additional reason. I think if I had to eat only one kind of food that I really like (not cheese because there's such a huge variety that it wouldn't really count as "one") I could just about manage to eat only that for two weeks. After that I think I'd be craving something else. Of course, that could also cause me to over-eat to try and make up for the craving. Anyway I don't think this is such an easy diet as the article here makes it sound like. Anecdotally again, the only time I went on an "eat-only-x" diet was during a heatwave when I spent a week or two eating only teaspoonfulls of peanut butter and drinking milk kefir. The reason being that it was so hellishly hot that I couldn't stand the thought of cooking or eating anything more. I think I lost a few pounds during that time.

Taikonerd 4y ago

I think any crazy-restrictive diet can "work," in the sense of short-term weight loss. But the article seems to think that the potato diet will somehow reset something that's gone wrong, leading to the weight staying off after the all-potato phase is finished? That will be the real test...