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People took some potassium and lost some weight
- PragmaticPulp 4y agoAny time you have people start tracking their weight, it’s not surprising that they might start paying attention to their diet and lose some weight. Without a placebo or control group, these numbers aren’t really useful.
- credit_guy 4y ago> Without a placebo or control group, these numbers aren’t really useful. They are. In general with drugs, you want evidence beyond reasonable doubt that the benefits outweigh the risks. And double blind studies are the way to go. But potassium salt is just not that risky. I bet Tylenol or Ibuprofen are riskier. These guys put the result out there. They explain the protocol (increase dose only if absolutely comfortable). Some people might try and succeed. Some might try and fail. But it's very unlikely some people will try and suffer a heart attack, or some other dangerous side effect. Of course, please don't take medical advice from me, a random person on the internet. If you decide to try this, it would be best to discuss it first with your physician.
- ClassyJacket 4y agoIt's not about safety, it's about knowing whether this is effective. We need a control group to know if it really makes you lose weight.
- vorpalhex 4y agoThe question is not "is this a low risk intervention". It's "is this a placebo, an effect of weight tracking, or an effect of potassium?" If it is due to tracking your weight and you just tell people to take potassium, they will not lose weight.
- notahacker 4y agoThe people that saw the most weight loss were those that also claimed the supplements reduced their appetite looks like supporting evidence for the placebo/weight-tracking effect to me (and if there is an actual mechanism linking potassium intake and appetite, it might be one which only affects the subset of people in a study with a high dropout rate that had something particularly wrong with the levels of potassium in their body and regular diet) The dropout rate is significant too, both in general and in the specific case of this being a self-selecting sample of readers of a blog promoting fringe theories around weight loss(1). One way to get a statistically significant sample for a weight loss treatment being apparently effective is for people to be most likely to drop out of an experiment without submitting any further data the day the scales give them the disappointing news that they've put the pounds they lost back on again. Potassium is apparently already marketed as a weight loss supplement, so I'm guessing there are other studies of varying but generally better quality floating around though... (1)its rather tortuous reasoning why America's obesity rise can't be linked to the rise in average calorie consumption has been posted on here before...
- vorpalhex 4y ago> why America's obesity rise can't be linked to the rise in average calorie consumption I think most (certainly not all) folks agree with the general "people gain weight because they're eating too many calories". I think the interesting question is "Why did people seem to start doing this now?" Ice cream and butter and so on are not new inventions. We as a species have never hurt for desserts or calorie dense foods. So what change is it in our environment which seems to be causing the increased intake in calories? And some of the usual suspects that get trotted out: sweetened soft drinks served in huge quantities for basically free, extremely processed foods with surprising calorie density that still leave you hungry, maybe changes in some of the ingrediants we're using, so on. I suspect, given that lots of intelligent people have worked really hard on this and haven't landed on an obvious single answer, that it's a big combination of things. The more I talk to obese people the more I'm convinced there's some sort of sociological or psychological element as well as a food element.
- dec0dedab0de 4y agoBut potassium salt is just not that risky. I bet Tylenol or Ibuprofen are riskier. I doubt it. Potassium chloride is the active ingredient in lethal injections, too much and it will stop your heart.
- Scoundreller 4y agoToo much $anything, and it will stop your $something you need to live. Having said that, most by mouth potassium supplements are delayed release so you don’t get it all at once (and absorption already slows things down a lot).
- toad_master 4y agoToo much tylenol will destroy your liver. The dose makes the poison. I've been prescribed potassium chloride tablets before.
- fbdab103 4y agoIntravenous potassium is significantly more hazardous than orally consumed. Wikipedia lists the LD50 of oral potassium at 2.6 g/kg. Meaning your standard 70kg dude would have to eat 182 grams (6.4 oz Freedom Units) to hit that limit. Which would be just beyond horrible to attempt to consume that in a sitting.
- scythe 4y agoPotassium chloride is used in lethal injections to the tune of 75 mg/kg. For a typical adult, that's an injection of 4-6 grams all at once. You could never eat that much in a sitting: it would taste horrible and probably cause immediate vomiting, and still it's not so readily absorbed through the gut anyway. See: https://research.wustl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SOP-KCl.pdf https://research.wustl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SOP-KC...
- yywwbbn 4y agoYou could easily eat 4-6 grams (if you wanted to obviously). But absorption us much lower and slower you probably need over hundred grams or so to reach levels that would be lethal
- Waterluvian 4y agoI lost 50 pounds in 2020 with this one trick: I counted calories and stayed under 2100 per day. I didn’t even pay attention to what kinds of food I ate. That came automatically as I would look at a treat and think, “130 calories? That’s so expensive.” I naturally learned what foods made me feel full for longer. It was fun. Diet can be complicated, but I have a feeling that for most of us, it really doesn’t need to be.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago“130 calories? That’s so expensive." That's exactly how I came to lose all the weight I have - I started counting calories which caused me to treat it like a budget. I never deprived myself of what I wanted, but new if I splurged on supper I'd not be able to do as much dessert.
- Waterluvian 4y agoMy favourite part of it is that it’s so simple you can barely call it a system. The diet industry/community really disinterests me because there is so much complexity.
- andreareina 4y agoUnfortunately the simple thing is hard. To the extent that every system that isn’t counting calories works, it works by manipulating appetite and satiety to induce a spontaneous reduction in consumption. People will jump through all sorts of hoops to not feel deprived.
- mkraft 4y agoImagine trying to reign in spending without a budget by drinking lots of water to avoid buying starbucks and other similar indirect tricks. Without the budget you’d easily overspend. This is how I think of calorie counting as the only proper way and other diets as inefficient indirections.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoThis method is simple, and works well enough for enough people, but it doesn't for some. I still kind of agree with you, because I have a sneaking suspicion that people mostly cluster into groups of "any diet / intervention works" and "none of them work". Unfortunately, the body itself is a complex system, and likes to throw curve-balls. Going by some of the things I've read over the years, it's clear the body has defense mechanisms against starvation - such as lowering metabolism and activity levels in lock step with diminished caloric input, or turning you into food-obsessed zombie, hardly capable of a non-food-related thought, until you feed the body enough to cancel red alert. Problem is, for some people, those defense mechanisms seem to kick in before they reach negative energy balance. As simple as calorie counting is, it's not helpful if the body hits the "override" switch before you reach Calories In < Calories Out. I don't know if there's a solution for this case, but I suspect all the variety of diets is really just people doing a blind search in hopes of finding specific tricks that shut down the defense mechanism in subgroups of individuals. (In a sense it's like a puzzle game: your goal is to sneak past a security system without raising an alarm. The security system consists of a great variety of sensors of all kinds - but only a random subset of them are in use, configured with random thresholds. Every player gets their own, unique puzzle.)
- Havoc 4y agoThat was my first thought too. Even mild psychological crutches to limit snacking would do the trick. “I need to report my weight to someone else” def qualifies
- paulpauper 4y agoEven with a placebo and control group it still would not be that useful owing to all the confounders.
- mym1990 4y agoFor me, I simply started tracking what I ate in terms of calorie count, and didn't focus so much on the day to day/week to week weight change. It helped out a lot in generally bringing to light what a "big" day looks like and vice-versa.
- ljf 4y agoI did exactly this about 10 years ago - weighed myself daily, and took fat and measured my circumferences at various points on my body, and wrote it down by hand each day in a table. That alone was all the encouragement I needed to consider what I ate, drank and did.
- MaysonL 4y agoI wonder if one of the reasons I don’t seem to gain weight while being very sedentary, and eating quite a bit of sugar and fat, is that the salt I use is 50/50 sodium/potassium chlorides.
- trashface 4y agoIf its the potassium, you could test the idea with something else like bananas. I remember hearing years ago that Weight Watchers had reformulated their diet and one of the changes was that you could eat "unlimited" bananas. My personal anecdote is I eat a lot of bananas (at least one a day almost every day) and a few potatoes and I'm actually having a bit of trouble keeping my weight _high_ enough (150lbs for 5'10" guy). And I have some issues with keeping muscle mass, though partially that's related to no strength training due to an injury for most of this past year, which hopefully I'm now starting to put behind me.
- NoPicklez 4y agoI’m 5,10, 69.5kg, workout actively including cardio and I eat almost no Bananas. Let’s not all go Bananas over Bananas.
- loeg 4y agoBananas have low caloric density, which is useful if you're trying to consume fewer calories. Apples are another good low-density snack.
- dplgk 4y agoI'm similar. Do you get low blood sugar easily? It seems like people who's bodily readily release insulin (maybe too much) have a hard time gaining weight. Explains why prediabetics gain weight?
- trashface 4y agoI'm not sure if I get low blood sugar. I'm sure if I ate ice cream every day I could gain weight, as I was overweight most of last decade. But now I generally don't eat a lot, little bits throughout the day. I lost my weight with diet and dedicated exercise over a year ago. Then I mostly stopped exercising except for walking, but still kept losing weight. I mostly stabilized around 150, but I have dropped below it a few times (when I do, I sort of binge at my families house). Pretty sure my diet is protein deficient as well (little meat) explaining my muscle issues but then I've always had an extremely hard time putting on muscle, low testosterone probably. Was just thinking that, if potassium is implicated as some kind of weight-loss amplifier, and I am already not eating a lot, then it might push my weight down further than I want.
- paulpauper 4y agoseems too good to be true. If this was possible it would would be all over the news. Pharma companies have been looking forever for non-stimulant supplements that induce weight loss without the side effects of conventional weight loss medications. Given that such a drug would presumably be worth hundreds of billions of dollars in sales owing to the widespread obesity epidemic, there is great incentive to find one, yet none exists. Maybe eating bananas and potatoes induces weight loss due to low calorie density, not the potassium. Or because it's part of an overall diet regimen, which also includes exercise or cutting out soda.
- sp0rk 4y agoI don't think any big pharma companies would be interested in providing a potassium supplement, as they are already cheap, readily available, and not able to be patented.
- memcg 4y agoI have been taking Klor-Con M20 (20 mEq (1,500 mg)POTASSIUM CHLORIDE Extended-Release Tablets) from Upsher-Smith daily for 12 years.
- alwayslikethis 4y agoYou seem to be too optimistic about the motives of pharma companies. They need profits, and for that they need patentable drugs. They are not going to perform those very expensive randomized controlled trials for things they can't patent and sell for exorbitant prices. That's just the way it is.
- quickthrower2 4y agoThat is why CFS wallows in pretrials and fokelaw about how to fix it. That old drug in a low dose is small business.
- quickthrower2 4y agoThe diet people really want is the eat and drink what the hell you like in any quantity and lose weight. That would be a real hit. The diet mentioned here is a restriction diet which is hard work. It is like the revelation of getting an extra $500/m side hussle by waiting tables.
- layer8 4y agoThere’s also this study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6627830/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6627830/
- elchief 4y ago98% of people are deficient in potassium. Does the extra potassium help or just being at the healthy level help?
- LAC-Tech 4y agoObesity is less common at high altitudes because of the watershed. Environmental contaminants build up as water flows downhill and are in much higher concentrations as you approach sea level. 90% of the water I've drunk for the last 2 years has been either been bore water in the mountains, or rain water. It's had no impact on my weight,
- cperciva 4y agoAny biochemists here who want to speculate about potential mechanisms? I can't help thinking about the connection between potassium and insulin -- insulin pushes potassium into cells, to the extent that insulin is the standard treatment for hyperkalemia -- but I can't see how that would result in changes in appetite (which I assume is responsible for the weight loss here).
- fbdab103 4y agoI have a long expired biochemistry degree, but I think the only answer you are likely to find is wild conjecture. Potassium is common in natural food sources, maintained at a fairly steady concentration, and has not previously received much attention as a potential weight loss treatment. If you follow the authors, they are pushing a Lithium hypothesis where lithium is tilting the lipostatic equilibrium towards more fat. Potassium is supposedly able to compete with lithium in the brain and reset the body baseline towards a slimmer build. I have no idea if the theory is correct, but it is more compelling than a lot of the standard hog wash you find. If nothing else, I hope these results push for some more standardized testing: easy enough to pump potassium into a colony of obese mice models.
- flobosg 4y agoThere’s this study from a few years ago: Increment in Dietary Potassium Predicts Weight Loss in the Treatment of the Metabolic Syndrome – https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/11/6/1256 https://www.mdpi.com/2072-6643/11/6/1256 (EDIT) Some additional articles: * https://www.atherosclerosis-journal.com/article/S0021-9150(13)00391-2/fulltext https://www.atherosclerosis-journal.com/article/S0021-9150(1... * https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0055106 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... * https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-nutrition/article/ability-of-selfreported-estimates-of-dietary-sodium-potassium-and-protein-to-detect-an-association-with-general-and-abdominal-obesity-comparison-with-the-estimates-derived-from-24-h-urinary-excretion/9D927A13B047924A918F8AE1C8913645 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-n...
- cypherpunks01 4y agoRandom potassium trivia: Pot ash manufacturing was an extremely important industry in many countries worldwide from the 1400s-1800s, and potash a highly valuable trade commodity. Mainly for it's use in agriculture as a fertilizer because potassium is an essential plant nutrient. Potash was originally made from wood ashes by soaking the ashes in liquid and drying it out, leaving an alkali potash residue. Nowadays it is mined deep underground by circulating liquid into the deposits, then evaporated in surface-level industrial ponds. The first U.S. patent of any kind was issued in 1790 to Samuel Hopkins for an improvement "in the making of Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process". The patent was signed by President George Washington. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potash
- kleinsch 4y agoNon-randomized sample and lots of reaching for stat-sig in the analysis. I gave up when they threw out the non-stat-sig result for their success criteria (29 days) and claimed victory bc 28 days was stat sig.
- srcreigh 4y agoThis is incorrect. The article had significant results for 2 groups (everybody and a subset of the participants) on the 29 day result, and also had significant result when looking at 28 days. They claimed the opposite - since multiple end points and groups all had significant weight loss, it’s not p hacking
- mikojan 4y ago> Previously, we did a potato diet study and found that on average people lost 10.6 lbs over 28 days of potato diet, even though most of them took multiple cheat days. This was a pretty strong effect, so naturally we started wondering, why does it work? Why would you recommend people go on a potato diet without a working theory on why people should go on a potato diet?!
- ankaAr 4y agoFirst thing that came on my mind was The Martian book/movie and How the guy was eating only potatoes. I need that diet now.
- dbt00 4y agoFWIW I did the potato diet in 2018 (Penn Jillette's book). 6'1.5" 250#. Lost 17# in 2 weeks. Lost 35# in 2 months. Stayed off as long as I was eating vegan, high-potato diet. Unfortunately I wasn't able to stick with it for other reasons and I've since regained the weight. I need to cook for people for whom it's not a reasonable diet and enjoy eating meat too much. The conceptual model here intrigues me. I'm pondering maxing potatoes but also eating whatever else I want and see if it helps. (My coworkers literally called it the martian diet. It was funny. I would come to meetings at work eating a baked potato like an apple.)
- xvilka 4y ago> We probably will not follow up on this study at 6 months and 1 year, since the average weight loss was so small. It seems unlikely that 0.89 lbs of weight loss will be statistically detectable several months later. Don't waste your time following this diet, there are better and more effective ways.
- spirit557 4y agoI don't understand the purpose of this "study" in the sense that if you practice some forms of water fasting whether for multiple days or practice eating only one meal per day OR a short 6 hour feeding window per day... you will know the role potassium plays in your body. You need water, salt, potatassium and magnesiums. If you're eating healthy whole foods your liver should have enough nutrients stored away. So basically your body is designed to go between feasting and fasting - to produce and burn ketones from your fat stores versus burning food you consume. The belief that you need to eat 3 meals a day or or snack small meals all day long (constantly producing insulin) is just nonsense. It is not that hard to supplement salt, potassium and magnesium and not eat for a day or more it is actually extremely benefifical for long term health to fast for about 3 days or more once or twice a year. Look up the fat lies by pradip jamnadas on Youtube.
- weird-eye-issue 4y agoYeah just this week I've been eating only once per day in the morning. Plus a small protein shake if I got really hungry later. But the key is to get plenty of magnesium and potassium. If you fast (no carbs specifically) and don't supplement with electrolytes you can go from feeling fine to suddenly feeling like you just need to lay down and have no energy. It's kind of scary
- spirit557 4y agoYes - Honestly i think most people on any given day have no idea what it's like to go 24 hours with zero carbs or zero calories, most are just not aware of this whole paradigm. It's the complete opposite to the last 50+ years of official guidelines. The keto diet, avoiding ALL manufactured vegetable seed oils (canola, cottonseed etc) ,rejecting ancel keys and the last 50+ years of completely horrible dietary guidelines and toxic food pyramids, fasting for autophagy, growth hormone, and restoring insulin sensitivity. Most cancers and diseases find their origin in high processed carbohydrate + seed oil diets, constantly triggered high insulin of the modern day. calories in/out is nonsense. So yea, no thanks on the Eat Potatos study lol
- 4y ago
- ck2 4y agoIt's water weight loss. Potassium competes with sodium. You take enough potassium and it becomes a diuretic.
- zaptheimpaler 4y agoThis is the right answer!
- quickthrower2 4y agoWhy are they doing studies and not measuring lean mass vs. water vs. fat? Might as well have had shoes on the first weigh in and bare feet on the last one!
- sannee 4y agoThat would probably be way out of budget for them (and would discourage most participants if they had to pay for it themselves). Even here, a bioimpedance body composition thingy is like 10$ and a DEXA scan is around 35$.
- nonameiguess 4y agoThis badly needs to be the top answer, not languishing down at the bottom of the page like it is right now. It never stops amazing me when weight manipulation curious people just ignore the entire history of bodybuilding and weight class sports. A standard American diet, especially if you ever eat out, is very high in sodium, and a high sodium:potassium ratio is one of the chief reasons people retain excess water. Either reducing sodium or increasing potassium is a time-honored way to quickly lose water weight that people in sports have been practicing for decades.
- Gatsky 4y agoAfter seeing this proposal a month ago, I contacted the authors of the large SSaSS randomized trial [1] (n ~ 21,000) which compared a potassium salt substitute (75% sodium, 25% potassium) to normal salt. There was no reduction in BMI in the potassium group. Now the amount of potassium consumed was not directly measured, but assumed to be 20g salt substitute per day which equates to 5g KCL or about 2.5g potassium. This was enough to have other biological effects like reducing stroke risk, and was more than most people took in the slimemold study. [1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2105675 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2105675
- quickthrower2 4y ago> In April 2022, we announced the Potato Diet Community Trial. We expected that the potato diet would be really hard to stick to and people would only lose a little weight, if any. But we were wrong — people said the potato diet was easy, enjoyable, and on average, people lost 10.6 lbs over 4 weeks. Not surprising at all. This is the fad diet. Big business. Can they get to an ideal weight and stay there for 10 years (pregnancy excepted)? - is the real question!
- nakedrobot2 4y agowho are these people, and do you trust them if they don't reveal anything about their identity or possible conflicts?
- TexanFeller 4y agoBe very careful not to take in too much potassium, especially if you're taking medications that increase it(ex certain BP medications). That can cause palpitations as well as more severe heart anomalies.
- MagicMoonlight 4y agoThese posts are so stupid. The data graph is literally a normal distribution. Just read some of the older posts. Claims that us on average eating 500 calories a day more than our ancestors is nothing to do with obesity. 500 extra calories a day gains you a pound of fat a week. Over years that would certainly make you obese. People don’t get fat in a two week period.
- netheril96 4y agoIf we are talking about anecdotes, I took a lot of potassium when I was trying to lose weight in 2020. The two things were independent: I didn’t take potassium for weight loss, but they did happen at the same time. The result: the weight loss was not any faster or less painful or more persistent than my other attempts.