Who else is still in, and how's it going?
I am torn about my experience. On the one hand my results are undeniable; I started the week at 187 lbs on Monday morning, dropped to 183.9 lbs on Tuesday morning (but I attributed most of that loss to a high salt, high carb, high alcohol night last Sunday which inflated my Monday morning weigh in, on Sunday morning I also weighed in at 183.9 lbs). On Wednesday I had dropped only 0.5 lbs to 183.5 (confirming my belief about the Tuesday morning weigh in) but then this morning after 72 hours on nothing but potatoes, a little salt and a half cup of bone broth (tried to make the gravy recipe from the book and it sucked) I weighed in at 179.7 this morning.
I view this a a legitimate 4 lb weight loss because I think the Monday weigh in was skewed. Still, it's impressive.
What is more interesting to me about this is that I was mostly sedentary during this past 72 hours. From April 15-July 31 I averaged 9879 steps/day (according to my Mio Fuse, great product btw, and yes I am the geek who keeps a spreadsheet of my daily steps). For the last three days on the potato hack I averaged 4416 steps, so an increase in activity is definitely not the explanation for
That is positive, no doubt. My working theory on this diet is that it works for three main reasons. 1) I believe that the massive dose of resistant starch definitely helps feed your good gut bacteria and boosts your biome and probably metabolism as a result. 2) I believe that the potassium:sodium ratio, which is something like 50:1, provided by a potato only diet is so far removed from even the healthiest eating habits which typically sees an American eat 2-5:1 sodium
otassium somehow helps boost your metabolism (too tired to dig into the weeds on this one so I'll hope Maurile jumps in with the sciency stuff) and 3) It is so ### #### difficult to overeat on a diet of nothing but potatoes that you naturally create a significant caloric deficit. I really tried to push this last one by forcing myself to try and get to the upper end of Steele's recommended range of 2-5lbs potatoes/day just to try and offset that aspect of his claims but it's really, really ####### hard to stuff 5 lbs of potatoes into your body in any given day.
However I truly feel like I am going to punch the next Irishman I see straight in the ####. ####### potatoes. I have not felt great for the last two days. Tuesday night I felt nauseous, but that was probably because I had tried to stuff 5 lbs of potatoes into my face that day. The feeling carried over, although less severe, into Wednesday night. My focus at work has not suffered but when I am not task oriented I have felt mentally distant and tired. And eating nothing but potatoes is just not easy, even for a guy like me who has demonstrated the ability to accomplish some pretty extreme, and unhealthy, eating/dieting feats.
Overall I have to say that it has been a net positive but certainly something that is not sustainable in my lifestyle. Maybe something to do once every 1-2 months.