Oh man, 2 weeks ago, I started on this journey, the great potato famine. I wasn't going to tell anyone, but I quickly let that go and made it to the front page of the Hacker News. I posted "I am not fat", and oh boy people were mean. Some people listened and I even got new Linkedin connections because people are curious or excited about what I'm doing. Today, I'm going to share my results, talk about what's next and address some of the common feedback.
Feedback
There was a lot of comments, I learned that only about 10% of people read the entire article before posting about it. This shouldn't surprise me, but most of the most hateful and mean comments were from this group of people.
Extreme diets don't work
Well, they do work. The problem isn't their effectiveness, the problem is people don't stick to extreme diets. They do it for a goal or an event, then once they go to the wedding or hot date or whatever, they go back to their old ways of life. The problem isn't just the diet, but their lifestyle. But for those that were like 'he's going extreme, he's an idiot and should do keto.', I don't care. Meh. If you read the post you'd understand, the potato diet was a RESET, like a fast.
Keto is better, stop eating carbs
I got a variant of this several times. Dr Joel Fuhrman, author of the Nutritarian Diet goes into a lot of detail of why Keto is really bad for you in his book The end of dieting. Here are a few other examples. Ketoacidosis is a risk of the keto diet.
The biggest why I'm agianst Keto is my doctor told me that it would likely harm my kidneys and liver, while increasing my risks for heart disease.
Why don't you eat like a normal person, eat less then 2000 calories and exercise
Because I AM A FAT GUY. My relationship with food is garbage. Moderation has ALWAYS been a challenge. I need an extreme intervention, it's either change my life style or get some kind of gastric sleeve. NO WAY. I do not want surgery for a LIFESTYLE change. If I eat like a NORMAL person, IE, STANDARD AMERICAN DIET, I'm going to get fatter. I have to change my relationship with food.
I've done low carb, slow carb, jucing, whole 30, paleo... the problem is not the diet, the problem is me. I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired. I'm not interested in eating like a normal person. Yes, I will eat 2000 calories or less, but eating like an American is killing me. I have a dozen plus medical issues, mainly from the fact I eat like an AMERICAN.
So, no more SAD, Standard American Diet. Cheeseburgers without buns aren't health food, a small French fry is still bad for you and a tall skinny latte from Starbucks will still make you fat.
Plant Based isn't healthy, what about xyz thing?
Protein: Where do cows get their protein?
Fats: No diary? Where will you get your fats? Avocados? Nuts? no, not in weight loss phase. Fat you eat becomes fat you wear. Plus, we're the only species on the entire planet that eat another animal's milk in its diet. We have like 9 different sources of milk, which gives us things like butter, cheese and heart disease.
Omega 3's: Salmon and all fish actually get the omega 3s from algae. They're loaded with omega 3s because algae are a stable in their diet. I'm allergic to ALL fish anyways. So, if I eat a fish, I'll die. No dice for me. Chia seeds, gram for gram, have 8x more omega 3s then salmon. There's a catch, Chia's omega 3s are ALA while Salmon is mostly DHA. Our bodies are less efficent at converting ALA to EPA to DHA, which is what we need. You can also get an algea supplement to get enough EPA and DHA in your diet.
Cheese? Or Yogurt? Or Milk?: Cheese, yogurt and milk are not health foods. Yeah, whole foods does sell them, but they aren't healthy. It's unnatural to get milk after about 2 years old. We're againt the only species on earth that drinks the milk of other animals.
What are you going to eat? Plants. Whole food, plant-based diet. Lots of veggies, beans, legumes, rice and fruit. Minimally processed, ideally if it's in a box on the shelf, it's not going in my belly.
Results
I've been losing weight since November 20, 2020. About 22 days into the weightloss journey, and I've lost 27 pounds. A little more than a pound a day. I need to take after pictures, but I'm also not done. 27 pounds is 27% towards my goal. I did lose a few pounds before I started the potato diet, but not much. Most of the 27 was from eating potatoes.
Potato diet take away
- Microwaving potatoes sucks because it dries them out.
- Crock pot potatoes are good, throw in some pepper, salt, rosemary, onion and garlic for flavor and you won't get enough of the potatoes.
- Potatoes are boring but doing point 2 will make them so much better.
- Drinking black coffee, eating potatoes and drinking tons of water helps you lose weight.
- Fasting became easier once I started potatoes. I went 3 days (not in a row) wihtout any food until dinner.
- My only "cheat" was the small bag of sweet potato chips from Starbucks when I forgot to eat until 3 pm.
- Its normal not to lose weight for a day or two.
What's next
Whole food, plant-based diet. Basically, I'm taking recipes from Forks Over Knives, nutritarian diet, The Healthspan Solution, Happy Herbie and Dr. Klaper to form the basis of my new WFPB (Whole Food, Plant Based) diet.
Things that I'll be eating, include but not limited to:
- Every veggie you can think of, including potatoes, carrots, green beans, lettuce, spinach, celery etc...
- All fruit, oranges, blue berries, apples, dates; less of this as it can harm weight loss
- Grains like Oats, Rice or Quinoa
- Beans, legumes etc...
- Lots of spices
- Heavy on the Indian, Mexican and light on the American style of eating
- Some seeds, chia and flax
Things I won't be eating:
- Nuts (allergy)
- Meat
- Cheese
- Fish
- Crackers
- Things that come out of a box
- Corn, peas and other irritants (these aren't bad, just my body doesn't like them)
I decided to take a technique I learned listening to a podcast; basically, compile a list of all the foods I eat. Then I rotate through this list of 15-20 items to have variety in your diet. I did this before I started this because it was hard to come up with new meal ideas every week. Well, using this approach, I now do it for the Veggie dishes I plan to make. I also plan to go through all my cookbooks and look at the sides as most are vegiterian if not vegan.
So here's what's on my list for things to eat, mostly for dinners. For breakfast I eat oats, quinoa or nothing, lunch will be soup or salad and here's my dinner options:
- Sweet Potato & Curry Soup
- Wild Rice and Mushroom Soup
- Creamy Vegan Potato Leek Soup
- HASSELBACK BUTTERNUT SQUASH
- Vegan French Onion Soup
- Roasted Garlic and Leek Soup
- Mushroom and Lentil Soup with Miso
- Lentil Vegetable Soup
- 8-Ingredient Slow Cooker Chili
- Italian-Style Zucchini and Chickpea Sauté
- Chickpea Tikka Masala
- GREEK QUINOA SALAD
- VEGAN BURRITO
- MUSHROOM BOURGUIGNON
- MEXICAN HOT CHOCOLATE
- QUINOA STUFFED PEPPERS
- RED HOT MISO NOODLE BOWL
I'll keep you posted until then I'm going eat more plants because c'est la vie.
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