Posted on 10/09/2017 1:19:30 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Praise the power of potatoes. This man says he ate only potatoes for a year and lost 110lb as a result. Whoa.
We’ll be honest – we were more than a little skeptical when, back in the heady, carb-loving days of 2016, Andrew Flinders Taylor announced the launch of the Spud Fit project, which would see him eating only potatoes for a full year.
He originally announced the mission by explaining he wanted to take control of his eating.
‘I wanted to change the way I thought about food so that it’s not really controlling my life,’ Andrew said at the time. ‘Food is fuel kinda thing.
‘The last couple of years I’ve not been anywhere near as fit and active as I’d like to be…I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been, which is 151.7kg (23 st, 8lbs)… So I’m not happy about that.’
Andrew stated that he would eat three kilograms of potatoes daily, choosing both sweet potatoes and regular potatoes to get in all his necessary iron and vitamins, and would not be using any oils to cook his food.
99% of his calories came from potatoes, with the remaining bits just seasoning and low-fat sauces. When Andrew announced his plans, dietitians were concerned. Chloe Miles a dietitian from for the British Dietetic Association told Metro.co.uk: ‘By just eating potatoes for a year he is very unlikely to be getting all of the vitamins and minerals he needs. ‘He is likely to miss out on iron, which will potentially lead to tiredness and, also, not consume enough calcium which will have an impact on his bone health. ‘It is, also, going to have an impact on his social life as this is a very restrictive diet. This sort of restriction could lead to disordered eating. I would strongly recommend other people don’t follow this diet.’
But amazingly, one year later, Andrew hasn’t just survived a potato-only diet – he’s lost 110lbs, just from his potato diet and around an hour each day spent cycling. According to regular checks from his GP, Andrew’s health is perfectly fine, too, thanks to making sure he got in his fibre from eating potato skins, using calcium-fortified soy milk to mash his potatoes, and throwing in sweet potatoes to get the recommended daily dose of vitamin A and E. ‘My health just continues to improve,’ he told news.com.au. ‘I had high cholesterol but now it’s low, my blood pressure has dropped and my sugar level has dropped. ‘Every time I get a new blood test, it just gets better. ‘Eating only potatoes has improved my life in more ways than I could ever imagine.’ Before you head to Sainsbury’s and stock up on potatoes, though, it’s important to bear a few things in mind.
First off, every body is different, and while the diet worked for Andrew, there’s no guarantee it’d have similar results for anyone else.
It’s also worth noting that the weight loss Andrew saw was not necessarily down to the magical power of potatoes, but simply an easy-to-follow diet that helped him to cut out sugary, high-fat treats. The cycling probably helped, too. Andrew spoke to dietitians and his doctor before he began the Spud Fit project, and checked in with his GP regularly throughout the process – and we’d recommend that anyone keen to follow this diet, or ANY diet for that matter, does the same. But Andrew’s story does teach us one lesson that we can apply universally: Stop demonising potatoes just because they’re carbs. Potatoes are great. We have, of course, reached out to Andrew to find out more about what it’s like to only eat potatoes (how does such a diet affect your poos?), and will update this story if we hear back.
Read more: http://metro.co.uk/2017/09/26/a-man-ate-only-potatoes-for-a-year-and-lost-110lb-6957611/?ito=cbshare Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/
Mr. Potatohead — If you are what you eat .....
“and around an hour each day spent cycling”.....Uh, I suspect this had as much to do with it as the diet.
Are you going to chip at his self esteem?
It all comes down to calorie intake versus calories burned, you could eat only chocolate cake every meal for a year and lose weight as long as you were eating reasonable portions and burning more calories than you were consuming, (at the end of that year you might be suffering from Type II diabetes and several nutritional deficiencies, but still you would have lost weight).
The Scurvy diet. Let’s see his teeth.
Penn Gillette jump-started his 100+ lb weight loss by eating only potatoes for a month or two, I think.
Can’t be good for diabetics, though, right? Those potatoes will turn into sugar in the system, right?
Potatoes were a main staple of the Irish diet for many years. It was lack of them that brought many of them over here.
Recipe book in the works?
3 kilograms is 6.67 pounds.
That seems like plenty.
Was he Irish?
Potatoes are from over here. Peru to be exact.
Potatoes, sweet potatoes and carrots are all starches. Turn to glucose in your system just like eating processed carbs.
I think the true effectiveness of the “eat only one thing” diet is boredom. I mean there’s a lot you can do with potatoes, but even something that versatile you’re running out of stuff inside a week. In pretty short order you’re hating mealtime and eating a lot less.
That’s what I thought. This kind of strategy is terrible for diabetics.
exactly, people still don’t get it. They’re looking for some magical formula or trick. It’s all about calories. Energy in vs energy out.
Sure eating foods that are highly processed and loaded with sugar and salt will cause, in the long run as you age, all kind of health problems. However, if you eat within a targeted calorie range and try to get some exercise a few times a week outwardly you’ll look good.
But you still should try to get as much clean eating in a day as possible. It’s not all or nothing. As long as you eat 80% good clean food (fresh prepared not processed) it’s okay to eat naughty 20% of the time and maintain a good weight and be healthy on the inside as well.
““and around an hour each day spent cycling”.....Uh, I suspect this had as much to do with it as the diet.”
3Kg of potatoes is about 2300 calories.
Cycling for an hour probably burns about 400 calories.
The human body, just to function (i.e. you lay there and do nothing while awake), needs about 2,000 calories.
Overall, he did exactly what you need to do to lose weight ... burn more calories than you consume. It isn’t rocket science and I’m sure morons like FoodBabe would tell him those potatoes have all sorts of disease ridden non-organic filth if she hadn’t endorsed them.
Weight loss scams make me sick. There are *always* exceptions to a rule when it comes to people, but a vast majority of people will lose weight if they burn more calories than they consume.
https://potatohack.com/2016/03/13/potato-hacking-for-weight-loss-or-maintenance/
Weight Loss
The potato hack can be used whether you need to lose 200 pounds or 2 pounds. Many people like to do a round or two of the potato hack in preparation for a class reunion, wedding, or photo-shoot. The fast acting potato hack is absolutely incomparable for losing a few pounds in short order.
If you have considerably more weight to lose, you will want to do subsequent rounds of the potato hack until your goal weight is reached. Here we’ll explore several different ways to pull off these repeated hacks. If your diet is horrendous, ie. you constantly overeat and traditionally make poor food choices, the potato hack can help get these cravings under control. However, no amount of potato hacking in the world will overcome bad eating habits, but it may help you see the folly in your ways.
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