I forget how I heard about the Potato Diet. I knew that potatoes were an all-around nutritious food and held many of the vitamins and nutrients that our bodies required to survive. This is why Matt Damon did so well on Mars ;)
I also knew that my Idealshake products use a proprietary blend to help control hunger called Slendesta, which is made from a "potato protein extract". Potatoes are known to help with hunger.
I decided first, to challenge Patrick to eat nothing but potatoes (free of butter, sour cream, cheese, and whatever else yummy things you would normally put on potatoes) for a whole week. He accepted the challenge because he loves potatoes. Or, does he just love yummy potatoes?
Things that were allowed: Salt, pepper, all spices and herbs, and just the barest amount of oil. The last one was my add in, and not a part of the official diet, because potatoes have most everything sans protein and fat. Fat is crucial in any diet, your body needs it and it helps digest food (I mean, so is protein, but having a small spritz of olive oil spray on a potato to help it cook won't hurt much).
After the 7 days, which was more difficult than he anticipated, he lost 7 lbs. That's a crazy amount. So now I was really excited to try it myself.
Generally, I think of potatoes as the enemy and avoid them at all costs. Carbs do nothing but make me feel tired and lethargic it seems. Every time I try to add carbs to my plate it doesn't seem to help reduce my hunger and only adds calories to my meal. And now, I would be eating nothing but potatoes for an entire week.
I decided to make things simple. I love to batch prepare my foods, so I did this: I made a huge batch of chicken stock ahead of time so that I could use it to boil the 10 potatoes I would use to make mash for my lunch every day. And I decided for breakfast that I would cube a bunch of
potatoes and make "jo-jos" using spices like paprika and garlic. For dinner, I generally just made baked potatoes. We both cheated slightly by using nutritional yeast on our baked potatoes for a little extra flavor, but we avoided anything with sugar. (believe it or not, a lot of commercialized "spice blends" have sugar in them).
I started the process on a Saturday, and all weekend I was horribly tired and lethargic. I thought maybe it was the potatoes, but it turns out that if you're addicted to caffeine, one of the side-effects of not having any is horrible lethargy. I decided that I had to add caffeine to the diet because I couldn't afford to be like this at work. But, I kept it simple by using Stevia instead of splenda, and only 4 tsp of non-dairy creamer. (I usually add collagen to my coffee for a protein boost, but not this week!)
By Monday I was doing much better. I found it pretty easy at first to keep my calories around 1500 (which for me is my cut off for weight gain) but because each russett is roughly 350-400, that meant only eating 5 or so a day. I ended up increasing that amount by the end of the week in order to stave off the hunger, and I was basically eating 2 potatoes a meal.
In the end, I lost 4.5 lbs without changing anything else (including being sedentary). Now even though 6 potatoes equals roughly 2400 calories, and even though I was retaining water like a b*tch (I mean, damn. Those carbs were holding onto every ounce I drank, I swear), I still ended up losing weight, which is crazy.
This was more of an experiment than anything else. It's definitely not a sustainable thing to do, and you will get tired of plain potatoes pretty quickly, but it was nice to know that my body doesn't completely reject all form of carbs and maybe I shouldn't be so stringent about not adding them as a healthy side dish to a meal. Eating them plain is certainly not a deal breaker for me. Pros are that it's definitely cheap, and super easy when you ask "whats for dinner? oh yeah, potatoes." Takes the stress right out of that decision! lol
[Oh and one other thing: I urge everybody to try making mashed potatoes using chicken stock. It is actually quiet delicious even without adding milk, cream, or mayonnaise to the final product]
What do you guys think? Would you ever try this diet?1 Let me know in the comments!
