Thoughts on the potato diet(dynomight.net) |
Thoughts on the potato diet(dynomight.net) |
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/british-teenager-went-blind-fro...
And while butter contains b12, you'd probably have to be eating a few bars of it a day to get enough long-term.
The spudfit guy did only potatoes and a B12 supplement for a year. His claim was that he was getting everything else he needed from the potatoes.
I've always been curious whether many of these diets lacking appropriate B vitamin requirements might have a compounding effect w.r.t. people's interest & willingness to continue trying such diets...
1 - If you want your meal to be healthy you'll have to avoid many (most?) tasty toppings.
2 - The diet is incredibly monotonous and boring.
Hats off to people who can stomach it for an extended period of time, but I would be willing to wager that the vast majority of people who try it won't be able to stick with it for long.
Most vegetables, fruit, beans, legumes, and grains have lots of great flavor and are low in calories. Fermented foods have tons of flavor and extra health benefits. There's a gigantic range of herbs, spices, extracts. It would take a million years before you exhaust all the possible combinations.
Imagine any non-animal flavor and it's probably not unhealthy. If all you can think of is meat or oil, you just need to expose yourself to new cuisines.
1. Use a fad diet (e.g. potato) to get down to 80 kg.
2. Weigh yourself every morning
3. If your average weight over a week ever exceeds 81 kg, spend the next week on the potato diet.
4. Repeat forever.Now I wonder what is the minimum N such that switching diets every N days ad libitum would work.
I also think the best long term strategy is to focus first on eating plenty of nutrient dense, minimally processed foods which will naturally tend to crowd out the junk. Junk being anything consisting mostly of the cheap subsidized ingredients like wheat, corn, and soy.
Weightloss stopped when I decided to start doing shopping again and bought higher variety if food including sweets.
Wegovy (semaglutide) and Mounjaro (tirzepatide) have set a new bar in weight loss drugs.
15-20% body weight loss over the course of a year.
Diets only work if you can stay on them without being miserable, and I know if all I could eat was potatoes I would be pretty miserable about that.
Also, any diet that requires supplements(Vitamin B12, probably some other vitamins that are fairly low in potatoes, and whatever essential amino acids are missing from potato protein. That's just off the top of my head) to be complete is a bad diet in my book.
That is exactly the point. Dieting should be boring: Figure out what your nutrition your body needs and move on with your life to spend time thinking about other things.
It's perfectly possible to diet on enjoyable food if you do some research. And it will be much easier to stick to it.
"One food" is a little silly, but "one meal" is something I've always been trying to achieve on a low carb / keto diet.
My latest thing: chicken wings. They're something I can buy in small quantities for fairly cheap, and they taste great completely unseasoned, which makes limiting my sodium intake far easier.
The thing that sucked, was the amount of work. Buying, cleaning, juicing, cleaning again… crap ton of work. Ah, it is also expensive.
If only fruits and veggies were as cheap as milk, eggs, chicken… life would be much better
But to eat 2500kcals of potatoes a day is so hard. No wonder they loose weight. That's so much potatoes!
With 70-80 kcals per 100 grams an adult would need between 3-4 kilos. Every day
That's a mountain of potatoes twice the size of your stomach.
Some bake it with fat or oils I've read which makes it somewhat more manageable volume wise.
> How to explain this? Well, what does everything have in common? Every diet restricts food choices.
Or some variant of the Hawthorne effect, and the change has nothing to do with the specific change and everything to do with your conciseness about there being a change and it being for the purpose of weight loss.
that being said, this approach didn't work long term for me (hence multiple times doing it). I'd transition back to the way I was eating before and put the weight back on.
currently I'm working with a nutritionist and trying to eat towards specific macros, and counting everything in my fitness pal. the weight loss is more subtle (1-2 lbs per week tops), and I'm lifting weights which distorts the actual loss on the scale. not seeing the scale go down dramatically is hard, but eating the way I am now is totally sustainable and I've been doing it for almost 3 months now.
I don't think 2 weeks would work though. It has worked for me, I kept the weight off and it reset my appetite/satiety feedback (I get full sooner). That said, the "I want to keep eating even though I am not hungry" has come roaring back after being totally eliminated by the fourth week of potato.
Actually I heard from the local potato lobby organisation in my country, that the potato is the only food in existance which you can eat exclusive forever and you can't get any bad sideeffects, because a potato contains all nutritions needed...
Is this not true? :D Is there any real science on that?
It was boring and awful 3 weeks in, but it totally worked. Happy to share my data if you are curious.
https://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor...
For me, two weeks of plain potatoes, a little oil, and one piccolo per day was to reset my unhealthy relationship with food. I avoided common toppings (sour cream, bacon, cheese) and anything to flavour them up (salt, rosemary, thyme).
After a couple of weeks, I found I was no longer desperately craving the flavours I previously did. I attribute this solely to the blandness of the food - potatoes being the delivery method is just incidental.
Dairy doesn't contain enough B12 to supplement you on it's own, which is why the study recommends against and instead suggests taking an actual B12 supplement (Puritan's Pride lozenges)
4 weeks shouldn't be enough time to develop a serious B12 deficiency but doing this for longer could impair you cognitively.
So it doesnt really matter they are eating potatoes. Unless they want to do it cheap then it makes sense. Which is good but there's so much more variety in the keto approach then boring potatoes.
The finding was that giving people unlimited boring nutrient sludge on tap, they consumed way fewer calories while still reporting satiety (not feeling hungry).
The basic idea being if you restrict yourself to boring food, then your appetite is lower. And the inverse; if you eat at a buffet and can have any number of diverse flavors, then your appetite (and “fullness threshold”) is higher.
Any diet where you just eat one thing is therefore going to equilibrate at a lower caloric intake than a diet where you are allowed to eat multiple flavors.
I’m a bit skeptical about glycemic load (I had potatoes down as by far the worst vegetable of them all) but perhaps that isn’t the current understanding of things. Any diet of one-thing is going to have strong appetite suppressing effects. I suspect there are more nutritious options, like “only eat salad with no dressing” which might be boring enough to suppress appetite, while also being nutritious enough to sustain longer-term. You don’t want to be the first case of scurvy in your town this century.
1: https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/25/book-review-the-hungry...
I highly recommend Layne Norton's book Fat loss forever, and his free content on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3ePbeZJzYA .
Important tldr from his content:
* protein and resistance training are key if you want to lose fat (and not muscle), not just "weight"
* All restriction diets work when adhered to, the key is to find the one you will actually adhere to. This includes low carb, keto, intermittent fasting of various protocols (OMAD, 16:8, others), low fat, eat only soup, etc etc. They all work by causing a restriction on eating time or foods eaten. They all only work if there is a caloric deficit (net of cost of digestion for protein + fiber, or equal if equated for protein+fiber) .
* Calories in - calories out ("CICO") is absolutely backed by science when the researchers are smart enough to actually account for known things like caloric cost of digestion (changes the "CO" part)
Go DYOR on his content if you want the sources.
What you eat is very important.
Fat stores aren’t the first thing your body will turn to. After the carbs, your body will turn to breaking down muscle tissue which is not what you usually want.
Energy is the least of one's problem on a super restrictive diet like this one, but having the building blocks for muscles and cells and hormones is the literally vital.
There are trace amounts of fats and proteins in potatoes, not enough to sustain life long term. Enjoy having boundless energy, unable to build mass thus wasting and no libido whatsoever.
Are you saying that views on carbs might change like it did for fat? Keto is pretty much the best supported thing we've got, plus diabetes being so prevalent, so the argument against carbs is pretty solid.
what is this. Can we just come out and say, the recent increase in price of food is too damn high instead of hiding it behind a veneer of clever diets that choose lesser costing food?
So out of desperation and pain I did something I thought I never would or could resort to. Carnivore. It hasn't fixed all of my problems, but it has done more to stabilize my weight at a much lower level than anything else. It has controlled my cravings, making it uniquely sustainable.
My new theory is that obesity is about appetite control is about ... malnutrition. The secret for me was simply to find the fuel mixture that my body demands. Appetite responds immediately. No fancy behavioral techniques need be applied. I'm pretty sure carnivory isn't the right fuel mixture for everyone. But I think finding what is, is a lot more important than other weight control strategies.
Specifically I think The Hungry Brain gets it backwards. I spent decades trying to "outsmart the instincts that make us overeat" and failed horribly. I succeeded by following those instincts.
I did not start from a standard american diet this time, but from a clean keto diet, so yes carnivore was an elimination diet for me, but what I eliminated was vegetables, fruits, cheese, etc. For me those eliminations seem to be providing an advantage.
I don't believe this is true. On keto for example, I lost weight when eating an excess of calories.
> Calories in - calories out ("CICO") is absolutely backed by science when the researchers are smart enough to actually account for known things like caloric cost of digestion (changes the "CO" part)
Not exactly. If you eat fewer calories than you burn, you'll obviously lose weight. But the reverse is not necessarily true. For that to be the case, your body would have to always store all excess calories. This is probably pretty close to what happens on a high-carb diet, though, because insulin is a fat storage hormone.
You're just misunderstanding your TDEE then. It's basic thermodynamics that is very accurate in human digestion too, save for extremes like bulemia, gastric distress (you shit out undigested food), or pills that simulate it w/ carb/fat blockers.
The most pedantic detail is CICO is actually on digested calories, not swallowed calories.
Your anecdata is likely accounted by:
1. Protein takes more calories to digest (many people unintentionally eat more protein on keto, though keto is actually about fat intake and protein can break ketosis through gluconeogensis)
2. Up regulation in things like thermogenesis (ie you lose more calories to the ambient air)
3. Inaccuracy in food tracking
4. Higher NEAT
5. Loss of water weight due to lower food mass in digestive tract, and lower glycogen(+bound water) weight.
There is a persistent myth that the obese person lacks some spiritual strength or willpower. I think your comment implies this.
And yet they do have the willpower to lose weight? And something happened in 1980 which turned 30% of adults into weak-willed moral degenerates, and more and more every year? Is that actually plausible in an era with unsurpassed interest in healthy eating, where people voluntarily exercise more than they ever have, with better quality food than we have ever had?
The original researchers who suggested a mass trial of the potato diet over social media aptly said "the study of obesity is the study of mysteries". They're investigating some high-risk hypotheses that chemical contaminants are the cause of skyrocketing obesity. Worth a read.
> People in the 1800s did have diets that were very different from ours. But by conventional wisdom, their diets were worse, not better. They ate more bread and almost four times more butter than we do today. They also consumed more cream, milk, and lard. This seems closely related to observations like the French Paradox — the French eat a lot of fatty cheese and butter, so why aren’t they fatter and sicker?
https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p...
...actually when you put it like that it sounds pretty plausible. Ronald Regan was elected in 1980, officially beginning the Reign of the Boomers.
For example, I put on about 20lbs early in the pandemic just from being around the house and being able to snack all the time, plus having ice cream a lot in the evenings before bed (I don't think I was particularly "stress eating", but maybe more like... boredom eating?). And yes, if a dietician or trainer had had me keep a food log, this would have clearly shown up and it would have been obvious what needed to change.
What actually worked for me, though, was not just cutting out the snacking but also shifting my mindset back to a place where I'm okay with being slightly hungry some of the time. Like, it's okay to feel peckish in the afternoon— it's not a problem that needs to be solved by having a snack, it's just a sign that I'm going to be good and hungry come dinner time. Same in the evening: I don't need to go to bed stuffed, I can just make sure to eat a solid dinner, and then plan on eating well at breakfast in the morning. That plus some protein shakes and getting more cardio (swimming, cycling), and I've been steadily shedding about a pound a week; I'm now below my pre-pandemic weight.
* You can't sell a book with just 6 words in it
* People will pay you a lot of money if you can convince them they don't have to do that
Unless you have a way of motivating most people to follow this advice, day in and day out, it will not be a solution.
All you need is an InBody machine. Many gyms and trainers have them.
I'm pretty sure this is a myth, unless you're eating such a small amount of fat that you can't get energy anywhere but though gluconeogensis. Your body uses gluconeogensis to create glucose for the cells that need it. It's not an efficient way to produce energy for cells that can just use ketones.
> Your anecdata is likely accounted by:
I suspect it's mostly that I didn't store all of the excess calories I ate. E.g. I've seen excess fat in my stool.
When people say CICO doesn't work, they don't mean thermodynamics doesn't work. They mean that not all calories consumed (i.e. eaten) get burned or stored. If you limit "Calories In" only the calories that get burned or stored, then sure, tautologically, CICO is correct.
People lose a lot of weight this way. Insulin sensitivity increases. Insulin-lowering medicines can be reduced or stopped. Bad cholesterol drops to the floor.
If you go beyond monomeals of potatoes and add in tasty vegetables (like you do in keto) and limit the fat you add to the meal, you will have all the benefits of the potato diet without the mind-numbing boredom.
Variety in the keto approach? There are only so many ways to dress up chicken/beef/pork and cheese.
Doesn't get much more varied than that for a 'diet'.
...With the election of a GI president? Boomers didn't take over until Clinton.
No libido? I'd like to see the source of that claim.
The western world has become "addicted" to protein and the claims on how much is necessary and recommended are extremely exaggerated.
If you are eating Yukon gold potatoes, and you ate 5 pounds of them, and according to my calculations you are looking at approximately 2100 kcal of which a little less than 1900 of those calories comes from carbohydrates.
We advise people not to go below 50 g of fat per day and according to the macros for Yukon Gold you wouldn’t even be getting a 10th of that amount.
Additionally, you’re only getting about 50 g of protein. We normally coach people to eat 1 g of protein per pound of lean muscle mass. So for 150 pound person that would be 150 g of protein per day or approximately 600 cal from protein.
"Lean muscle mass" excludes the fat on the body, right? A 150lb person should have less than 150lb of lean muscle mass.
USDA recommends 54g using their calculator. Don't forget the 38 grams of fiber! :)
Basically they're the most filling food per calorie. So if you subscribe to the idea that losing weight is mainly about how many calories you consume, a potato heavy diet should be effective.
And an all potato diet, while monomaniacal, even more effective.
Eggs and fish are also very high on the satiety index. If you threw in pretty much any vegetables and spices of your choosing and just stuck to those along with potatoes, even with a cheat day or three you'd have a very healthy diet which I bet most people would lose weight on.
I have reactive hypoglycemia, and can say that potatoes spike my blood glucose levels more than table sugar - they have a really high glycemic index, and anyone with blood sugar issues should totally avoid them IMO.
And the thing about foods with a high glycemic index is that they cause you to feel hungry when your blood sugar rapidly drops back to baseline.
I find protein and fat way more satiating than, well, anything else. For example, eat 2 eggs for breakfast and I guarantee you won't even think a out food again until lunch time, if not dinner time.
But zero crashes, monitored by finger stick blood glucose. Crazy stuff, for someone who has them all the time.
I don't understand the motivation to make such a guarantee. It's as though you assume there are many people on HN who have never tried eating two eggs in the same meal. Do you maybe live in a place where eggs are rare (or not commonly eaten)?
(For what it's worth, my personal experience matches that of others here: two eggs would be a comically small breakfast.)
What a patently absurd claim. Your anecdata is not evidence.
That's not what satiety means (at least in this context), right?
I'm reading OP's definition as "you'll eat less [calories] per sitting because you'll feel satiated more quickly", rather than your "your feeling of non-hunger will last longer".
The two seem pretty orthogonal definitions to me.
I usually eat 3 scrambled eggs when I have them for breakfast. Lunch can't come soon enough afterwards. I think my record is 7 scrambled eggs. I'm sure I had normal lunch that day.
Makes sense that this diet wouldn't work for you - but I think using this argument is sort of like arguing that peanuts are unhealthy because some people are allergic to them.
Fun Fact: You can let your potatoes cool down, and then re-heat them, to significantly lower the glycemic impact.
Tried that. Two eggs and a piece of toast will get me easily to lunch. Four eggs will get me an hour or so, despite having more calories.
My observation was simply that research exists which substantiates this counterintuitive idea (quite a bit of it I believe, the satiety index has been around since 1995).
I'm sure it would spark an interesting discussion if someone had time to dive into the research and the studies.
http://www.mendosa.com/satiety.htm gives an overview and mentions a few of the studies.
As an aside, this potato diet supposedly allows salt and oil - which is all you need to make french fries. French fries did not score well on the satiety index.
Boiled potatoes did.
The problem with potatoes and with all similar starchy food, like cereals, bananas, sweet potatoes etc., is that their ratio between energy content and protein content is much too high.
If you eat enough potatoes to also eat enough proteins, you would also gain weight and it would be difficult to do that, because you will be very satiated long before eating enough proteins.
If you eat only enough potatoes to be satiated, you will not get enough proteins and a large part of the weight loss will be from muscular mass, not only from fat reserves.
After one month of potato diet, unless you had been a very muscular person previously it is likely that symptoms of protein deficiency will already be visible, e.g. swellings of the feet due to insufficient albumin in the blood.
A much more effective single-item diet would be to eat some high-protein legume, e.g. lentils with olive oil and iodized salt instead of potatoes with (unspecified) oil and (unspecified) salt, which would provide enough proteins.
Such a diet would be almost complete, except that it does not have enough of some substances required in very small quantities, i.e. sulfur amino-acids, long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, choline, vitamin B12, vitamin D, calcium.
After that, it changes to figuring out how many net carbs you need. I've found that this amount changes and is not a hard and fast rule. When I started keto, I aimed for 20g total (I don't recommend that low). Now, it is more like 50-100g. There's also the mental shift: carbs are not bad, they're just a tool.
The thing that feels most unfair is once your body gets to a lower weight, you're accustomed to eating less, and you've 'reset' things, I found I had a lot of leeway in what I could get away with, diet-wise.
Apparently yes: https://drdavisinfinitehealth.com/2018/02/fermented-raw-pota...
(One of several results on search. I've no idea on merits / validity here.)
> Again the diet seemed to be plausible except for calling for the consumption of 200 bullion cubes per day.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160411141356/https://dl.dropbo...
I was surprised just how satisfying a plate of it as a meal, and thought exactly the same thing: I'm pretty sure you could live on that stuff indefinitely and be in great shape.
Peeled Russet potatoes boiled, then strained and let steam some moisture off for a bit.
Kale blanched in water for a few seconds (no more than 30). Then allow it to steam off some moisture. Chop to desired size, pat dry.
Add butter and kale to potatoes. Salt and pepper to taste.
We found that controlling the moisture has a huge impact on flavor and the kale maintaining some texture.
Also I wonder the comparison between potatoes and protein champions like hard-boiled eggs or fish. Maybe we could have a nice American eating competition to compare. Or just a detailed study where people eat short-term diets of each and measure their satiety and other vitals.
Way, way, way more filling. Regular vegetables have basically no fill value at all. Just a fancy form of water & vitamins. Potatoes are quite good at filling.
Never heard of this before, but I was surprised by the number of potatoes this person ate. I can eat like, 1.5 large potatoes max. Then I’m good. But this guy was quoting 18 med potatoes everyday!?!?
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/18/dining/the-minimalist-tak...
White flour pancakes ALWAYS give me a blood sugar crash, and often cause a mild to moderate hypoglycemic episode; but I can eat whole grain pancakes without too much trouble.
If you're not carrying a large amount of excess weight, it might be worth trying the potato diet for a short time period, with a LOT of caveats. The problem is, as always, what happens when you go off the diet.
In my experience nothing beats the feeling of fullness after eating food with high fat content. It may not be the quickest to kick in, eg. you eat salad with lots of olive oil and cheese, you might feel light in the following hour or so. But then the fat digestion really starts, and you won't even want to think about food for the next 6-8 hours.
This is why keto works so well, especially when combined with fasting / intermittent fasting. If you eat a lot of fat, IF is a breeze - it's not that you have to manage your hunger (and eat various snacks every 2-3 hours), but that you don't have hunger at all, in fact, you feel full all the time. If you hadn't tried it you cannot even imagine how good this feeling is...
> Lowfat yogurt
I've never been satiated eating lowfat yogurt. I actually recently started buying high fat yogurt (10g+ of fat) and it is super satiating. Given I can eat 3x the amount of lowfat yogurt and still not be full, I'm not buying it.
> Watermelon
Maybe due to bloating from water?
> Bean sprouts
I challenge anyone to get full eating just bean sprouts. Again, they are more akin to drinking (crunchy) water than eating food. It is maybe a mechanical sense of fullness, it is not satiated as is normally thought of.
> Fish, broiled
I get bored eating fish long before I get full from eating fish.
> Sirloin steak, broiled
Yes, this works. Steak is super satiating.
> Popcorn
Has anyone in the history of humanity ever been satiated eating popcorn? To be fair I know a few people who go to the movies and eat only a small bit, but most people I know can easily down an entire large bag and it'll have no impact on their appetite soon after.
> Oranges
Eh, this also falls into the category of "hungry a little bit later."
I met someone on a Potatoes + Curd/Butter diet and he said something that stuck with me - "You need to eat the skins too".
So you can't just eat fries or mashed potatoes, but more like baked potatoes in skin with sour cream.
Seems a bit crazy, but it seemed to make him happy & felt like he was discovering something unique rather than being forced by someone else.
> even with a cheat day
Cheat days are under-explained, they're not for fun.
If you keep up a calorie deficit long-term, then your metabolism tanks and the easiest way to convince your body that it doesn't need to cut costs is to take a day of extra calories intermixed with the fasting.
If you don't do them, you will feel tired all the time when fasting.
This causes resistant starches to develop in the potato which is good for you in a handful of ways.
You can keep the skin for both of these though, especially fries, it's delicious, for mashed potatoes it's a bit weird but if you're lazy it works
That doesn’t seem like it’s high in the satiety index.
When I eat a portion of mashed potatoes (I cook them with very little butter), it feels like I've eaten a very dense soup.
They certainly didn't calculate this index by weight, because per gram eggs are far more filling than potatoes
[1] http://www.ernaehrungsdenkwerkstatt.de/fileadmin/user_upload...
Oddly, I love calamari and sushi.
So there was sound science behind my all-scrambled-eggs-and-hashbrowns diet in college.
Obviously sprinting burns a lot of calories at once, but making milk happens all day, and you don't have to breathe those calories out.
In short, while the variety and satiety explanations make a lot of sense subjectively for an individual on this diet, they don't match up with the empirical data on weight gain since 1980. Here are a few phenomena that are not explained by this hypothesis:
* The inflection point at right around 1980. There's no specific change that occurred in 1980 that anyone can point to that indicates a major change in variety of food in the average diet.
* The correllation of weight gain with location in watersheds: high altitude locales where surface water has not moved very far (e.g. Colorado) exhibit the weight gain phenomena much less than locales deeper down in the watershed (e.g. Mississippi and Louisiana)
I'm not interested in fad diets or disordered eating because they have a track record of bad long term outcomes, but I am interested in the potato diet as a blunt tool for taking action on this hypothesis, which looks pretty compelling to me. And if it doesn't work out, that's fine, too!
Also it's ridiculously cheap and way easier to cook potatoes in bulk than practically any other food. At least with the Yukon golds I just rinse them, stab them with a knife and drop them into an instant pot with about a cup of water and a trivet. When done I transfer them into a big bowl in the fridge to cool and when I want to reheat them I reheat the whole bowl to accumulate resistant starch.
It's not a silver bullet but it's a really useful tool if you haven't been successful with other diets.
Even if you're not working out, your body still craves proteins. Neglecting this is dangerous
Some other thoughts:
Obesity is not a disease of over-eating, it is a disease of managing hunger.
"Losing weight" is a terrible goal. "Changing Body Composition" is a much better goal. Specifically change the proportion of fat to muscle.
----
If your immediate answer is "Those are the same thing but with different words!!!" then here are some questions to get you thinking:
* Can you measure someone else's hunger and compare it to your own?
* What parts of hunger come from perceptions and what parts come from psychological conditioning?
* Can you survive being hungry? Can you survive starvation? How does your body know the difference?
* How does food energy relate to hunger? For CICO a Calorie is always a Calorie; is that also true for hunger?
* How do you measure progress towards a goal and how does it feel when you can't perceive progress?
* Excess body weight can put stress on your joints, but doesn't generally have any other negative effects. Excess body fat has many negative effects. A scale is cheap and consistent. Body fat monitors and measurement isn't always cheap or consistent (or accurate).
The body gets very conditioned to eating patterns. Something to ease into.
I'm not sure the average person can succeed on a diet predicated on greatly limiting the variety of foods you eat. It's an interesting idea though!
He's also autistic and has food texture issues.
Somehow he's good with potatoes (generally baked "fries") and milk with some infant formula mixed in. He's the only young (<5 YO) patient they've personally had that has gained weight during treatment, and the attribute it to his "milk and potato" diet. To be clear, he's continued growing, if not normally, something approximating normal, during his chemo. That's highly unusual.
Anecdotal, but it's my experience.
Best I have ever felt. Ended six months of whole body agony.
I try and follow AIP these days. (Potatoes aren't allowed, but Sweet Potatoes are.)
Sweet potatoes didn't bother me at all, and kept me full.
After a month I slowly started adding things back in to see how I reacted. Made it easy to tell what foods were an issue.
But like the potato diet, it's extremely easy to stay full and lose weight. Unlike the potato diet, there's a ton of variety. It also seems to have completely reversed a decline in health I'd been experiencing for over 5 years and I suspect the potato diet wouldn't have had the same effect, haha.
Ah, yeah – I have a very small one. I've been thinking about upgrading for years to a chest freezer. It's probably time to just do it.
Buying an instant pot & a box of those 2-cup pyrex storage bowls was the best series of personal health choices I've ever made. Granted, not all food works out with a round trip through the freezer, but most things do.
I still do eat things that cannot be frozen (well), such as eggs+bacon+toast, but the core of my nutritional needs are available in my freezer at all times (with approximately 1-2 weeks of buffer). Having a small buffer keeps me absolutely calm regarding my next meal source. I do not wait until all my frozen food is gone before I prepare the next batch. If I didn't have the buffer, my cycle would probably break and I'd start eating Burger King and other related trash for lunch again.
My favorite meals are often thrown together in 20 minutes with zero planning, and certainly no recipe. Knowing a few fundamentals (see Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat) gets you a long way.
"Every diet restricts food choices."
This is incorrect. Good diets do not restrict food choices. They usually limit overall intake. You can eat whatever you want. You only have a certain number of calories you can eat per day without gaining some weight. I'm defining "good diets" as a diet that helps you maintain a healthy weight.
Basically, a diet is what you eat. If you eat junk food, your diet is junk food. When you go on a "diet" to lose weight, you generally change what you eat and how much. So, the most successful diets are ones that replace your old unhealthy diet. This means learning to eat a good diet as a habit.
It also means realizing a diet doesn't end just because you eat way more than you should one day. The mental strength needed to realize you didn't fail your diet, but simple changed your diet for one day, is quite high. You didn't fail. You didn't fall off the wagon. There is no wagon to fall off of. This is probably the biggest mental shift for me. Accept that I will eat unhealthy some times, and I don't need to feel guilty for it. I just go back to normal next time I eat.
And that all revolves around changing your normal diet, or what you eat normally. All of that also means I know I can eat anything, but only so much.
Note: This is mostly me rambling, so I apologize for any confusion. This is also my overall look and what's worked for me long-term. This isn't something that might apply to you, but it's how I see things, and helped me. Maybe it will help others.
There is another way to think about it that has helped me. It's not necessarily a good way, but.. I got to thinking, what can you do if you struggle to adjust the diet domain? Adjust the time domain!
So eat the same food, but just space it out more. I've found this a great way to start and while I am more gradually improving the food, it has been less psychologically jarring to adjust the timing of my existing food as a way to get going.
It's expensive without insurance, but it helped me go from 25 lbs of weight loss to 55.
And it works slightly better than semaglutide.
I don’t know I expected it to do anything other than drop a few pounds and reset my palate, and it seems to do that. I wasn’t hungry but it was hard to handle the lack of variety as I felt a lot of compulsions despite my lack of hunger.
But, I would make sure to give all my body needs immediately after the exercise.
The Colbert jokes are spot-on, though. We really did eat a buttload of potatoes. It was the primary survival vegetable.
I'm exaggerating, but not by much. I grew up on tasteless boiled potatoes, at least 6 times per week. Supplemented with veggies boiled to pulp. Very fatty meat. And lots of milk.
It's laughed at in relation to the highly creative and tasty mediterranean cuisine, but I respect our bland food for other reasons. It's creative for being a nutrition/cost hack born out of necessity.
Potatoes are a nutritional super food but also cheap and you can store them for months even without refrigeration. Even the skin isn't wasted, it has several uses.
The veggies are boiled to pulp because unlike potatoes, those do go bad when stored longer. In modern times a needless precaution but the paranoia to eat rotten veggies has stuck around for a while in people's habits.
Milk, not part of an adult's normal diet, but a cheap source for protein regardless, so let's use it.
Altogether, it's a physical worker's ultra cheap yet highly nutritional meal. In that sense it's very creative. It's creative where it counts, not just for optics.
I'm not saying it's not true, but I'm skeptical of the numbers.
Another infamous glycoalkoloid is nicotine from the tobacco nightshade. Nicotine is a stimulant that decreases hunger. Stimulants also increase body temperature, which is something that happens on this diet too. Nicotine is also a depressant, which is why your probably still able to sleep on this diet. It's also one reason why smokers tend to be skinnier than the normal population.
English doesn't have a specific names for this, but in Khmer there is a related word: "tralowahn". It means the feeling of being full of whatever you are currently eating. Usually used to describe the feeling after eating creamy/buttery western food. Cambodian people use it all the time, and being aware of that feeling seems to go a long way to prevent overeating.
I stopped after two weeks mostly because the stomach became rather bloated. There was no weight change.
Then I tried a similar rice diet. Basically one eats rice (both white and brown are OK) with few fruits or fruit juices. To my surprise I lost about 5 kg in 25 days and then the weight loss stopped during the last weak. There were no apparent strength loss judging by weigh lifting results or uphill jogging. There were no other side effects. Now I recommend this, not potato diet.
Definitely the 5 bacon cheeseburgers. That's one for breakfast, two for lunch, and two for dinner. I could definitely eat like that.
The picture OP shows looks like a typical fast food joint burger. And if we look at McDonald's own self-reporting of calorie content, they list a bacon cheeseburger as 330 calories. So the math of "5 bacon cheeseburgers = ~1750 calories" checks out.
The problem is, I think McDonald's is lying. 1800 calories is about my break-even rate. I don't lose or gain weight at 1800. But--though I'm a little ashamed to admit--I have eaten 5 such cheeseburgers a day (and really just the cheeseburgers, no fries and soda, I actually find them gross), and I gained weight rapidly.
That suggests to me that each of those cheeseburgers is much more than 330 calories. I'd not be surprised if--without bacon--they were actually 500 calories. 2500 calories a day, minus 1800 basal metabolic rate equals 4900 extra calories a week. If we go with the received wisdom of 3600 calories per pound of weight, that's gaining 5 pounds every 3 weeks.
And that tracks with my experience. My slovenly experience of eating nothing but McDonald's cheeseburgers for two months straight.
If you want to avoid acrylamide when cooking potatoes, you must cook them below 250F (pressure cooking or steaming, I think)?
[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18320571/
[2] https://www.fda.gov/food/chemical-contaminants-food/acrylami....
I.e. "I eat lots of vegetables! I had french fries on Tuesday, mashed potato on Wednesday, ..."
Reminds me of the classic regulatory decision (which I actually looked up to make sure that it wasn't an urban myth, that's how crazy it sounds) that the tomato paste on top of pizza is classified as a vegetable for school lunches [0].
Also, it sounds like water content is a significant contributor to their capacity to satiate, so things like potato chips probably fail miserably under this lense. Many processed foods made from potatoes have far less water in them than home cooked versions (french fries, hash browns).
Same with fish, I cannot get full eating fish in any quantity. Shrimp, sure, but not fish.
Nuts, same deal. I'll eat 500+ calories of nuts, does nothing for me.
The only way to be exceptionally healthy and thin is to ignore the urge to overeat, and this urge is extremely dynamic on a per human basis. As a result, some people out there will eat a case of potatoes and still feel very hungry and unsatisfied.
Yeah, just not according to science.
E.g. there's ghrelin, cholecystokinin and other "satiety signals".
Except if you mean "satiefy is a mental construct" the same way pain is a mental construct. In which case, in a Kantian way, everything is, including space and time.
>What your brain tells you to put in your stomach is almost entirely divorced from nutritional requirements for thriving and surviving.
(a) You'd be surprised.
(b) It only appears that way because we have diverged in a exteremely small span of time (evolutionary speaking) into completely different circumstances and food availability.
Otherwise, what the brain tells us is very much based on nutritional requirements for thriving and surviving.
It's just that in 2022 we have an endless supply of food we can just order or walk into a supermarket and buy, as opposed to food scarcity where we don't know if we will be able to find something to hunt tomorrow - like the last 100,000 of thousands of years before historical times (and millions of years considering our primate ancestors)...
Are you implying that there aren't physical manifestations that cause hunger? In other words, I could inject you with a suprahuman amount of ghrelin and you wouldn't feel hungry?
However, it is true that your hunger urges are not solely based on thriving and surviving, but also significantly on the current state of your gut bacteria, which is highly influenced by diet and stress. They say the gut is a second brain for good reason.
I was disappointed that they then misunderstood this as an inflection point exactly in 1980 when that was merely the last point in a graph that inappropriately bashed several surveys together. They ask over and over "So what changed in 1980?" but the data doesn't support that year specifically. They seemed to start out from a fundamental misunderstanding and then used that to discount other data through the rest of their posts.
Results for me:
- it was not as easy as i thought it would be
- i lost weight
- my appetite and satiety feedback systems were reset. After the diet was over I ate less and got full sooner.
- after the diet, I noticed that I wanted to eat more even after i was mechanically full. This was weird, since it didn't happen on the potato diet (I did overeat potatoes a few times because I tried to fill a pizza shaped hole with potato). It feels like an addiction. I know I am full. I feel full. I am not hungry. I want to eat more anyway.
- So far the weight is staying off (~2 months).I'm not completely sold on the lithium hypothesis, either. But I find their arguments for some kind of environmental contaminant compelling, especially for the ways in which they refute some of the other major hypotheses for the increase in body weights (e.g. food variety, processed food, etc)
Note that the SMTM folks recently published an article responding to the TDS data referred to by "It's Probably Not Lithium": https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2022/07/05/total-diet-studies-...
Or how about the Great Lakes? I doubt Lake Superior has the same stuff in it as Lake Erie, should be easy enough to poke with a stick.
There could certainly be some subtle underlying factor, but the food supply has grown continuously for like 80 years at this point, maybe it's just marketing and availability.
Indeed it is, and the solution to managing hunger (i.e. returning your whole insulin and leptin system to a more optimal baseline) is NOT going for a 90% carbohydrate diet.
That's exactly why we have a bloody obesity epidemic. It's a fun thought experiment, but reading the comments in here people actually think this is genius and sustainable.
Ratio of fiber to carbohydrate and how that carbohydrate is processed by the body is also important as well.
Hence, french fries are not good, they have added sugar, the skin is removed, and they have a lot of added fats from the fried oils. That strikes me as a world of difference compared to a whole baked potato consumed with a sauteed broccolli with a side salad (plenty of fiber).
Unrelated, and unsolicited 2 cents, IMO it's all about eating as many fibrous and leafy greens as possible. At that point, a moderate side of lean meat, potato, carb, practially whatever - does not matter so long as the fibrous and leafy greens are the majority source of calories.
Leptin system returns to a more optimal baseline with weight loss.
Insulin returns to a more optimal baseline by increasing insulin sensitivity. Exercise does this most effectively, loosing weight also does this. Low carb diets don't do this directly, only through weight loss.
Managing hunger is managing your dopamine response. Eating nothing but one food, will make you very bored of your food. You won't be looking for food as entertainment, stress relief, or a cure for boredom(dopamine). You will only eat for true hunger(lack of dopamine can feel similar).
The "high carb meals" at McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut... are all also (and more per calorie) high in fat.
Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil to your mixed-green salad? That has turned into a high fat salad. Most people cannot avoid cheese or nuts on salad, either.
Eating the potato diet with sour cream/butter/cheese: High fat.
That seems to contradict the Harvard School of Public Health's article[0] that says:
> The results showed that participants with BMI of 22.5-<25 kg/m2 (considered a healthy weight range) had the lowest mortality risk during the time they were followed. The risk of mortality increased significantly throughout the overweight range: a BMI of 25-<27.5 kg/m2 was associated with a 7% higher risk of mortality; a BMI of 27.5-<30 kg/m2 was associated with a 20% higher risk; a BMI of 30.0-<35.0 kg/m2 was associated with a 45% higher risk; a BMI of 35.0-<40.0 kg/m2 was associated with a 94% higher risk; and a BMI of 40.0-<60.0 kg/m2 was associated with a nearly three-fold risk. Every 5 units higher BMI above 25 kg/m2 was associated with about 31% higher risk of premature death. Participants who were underweight also had a higher mortality risk.
These findings don't seem to discriminate on the source of the BMI, only on its existence.
[0] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/overweight-...
If the findings don't discriminate on the source of the BMI, then you just don't know. It's not evidence.
> "They looked at participants’ body mass index (BMI)—an indicator of body fat calculated by dividing a person’s weight in kilograms by their height in meters squared (kg/m2)."
BMI is the WORST indicator of body fat precisely because it does not account for muscle mass. BMI is only suitable for population level studies, it is not suitable for individual health decisions.
Put another way - if I go to the gym religiously, I could gain a few pounds but also lose a few percent of body fat. What will my medical tests show in general? Will my clothes fit better? Will I be able to climb stairs more easily? BMI shows none of that.
If that is so, why is obesity so much worse in some countries than in others? Are Italians really so much better at managing hunger than Americans?
It seems far more plausible to me that the differences in obesity between countries are caused by simple cultural habits than by some complex psychological task called managing hunger, which seems less likely to be cultural.
I don't see a clear point here. Culture has a HUGE impact on psychology.
Also, managing hunger is Psychological AND Physiological.
400lb of muscles or fat is probably not healthy either way...
[EDIT], Folks, obesity is a result of metabolic disease. Obesity is an epidemic, and the science is abundant on this. This isn't a grammatic nuance, it's the essence of the global obesity epidemic that results from diet and eating habits. It's literally the foundation of the growing understanding amongst medical professionals of why low-carb diets and fasting work dramatically on this.
Do you have a good source to support the idea that there is a "growing understanding" that "low-card diets and fasting work"?
I'm fairly well-read on this subject (though a complete layman), but my general understanding of today's scientific consensus is that there is nothing, or almost nothing special about low-card diets or fasting. Most of the people who are purporting that these diets are somehow better (for various meanings of better) are stating heteredox views.
They might still be right! (Though I doubt it.) But I'm specifically pushing back on the narrative that this is a growing consensus.
The difficulty with disentangling "what is obesity" is that the body is full of feedback and feed-forward mechanisms. You can look at any part of the machinery and say "here is the problem". There are a significant number of systems that deal with adiposity, hunger, and energy management and allocation.
Once we find something to blame for a problem we often stop looking. Processed carbs are not compatible with a sedentary lifestyle, that is true. But our ancestors ate carbs for generations. Many modern cultures eat carbs and don't have a big problem with obesity.
curious, how young do you mean? Human metabolism doesn't really change during adulthood until old age:
> Fat-free mass–adjusted expenditure [...] remains stable in adulthood (20 to 60 years), even during pregnancy; then declines in older adults.
I'm not going into my life story, but I've had fast that have lasted for more than 2 weeks and have had loved ones ask me to stop. Fasting is not an eating disorder, but it can be a path to one if you are not careful. Sounds like you are. I hope others, who may not be, know this.
Cheers.
I feel like I'd be prone to cramps if I tried push myself after having eaten much.
now regarding about high carb intake, people go overboard on their minds when thinking about diet based on blogs and news websites... eating fruits and vegetables all day is completely different than eating refined flour stuff and regarding getting into a fast (ketogenesis) state, you can get into, easily by eating a low-PROTEIN diet too (but this one i do not remember the keywords of the papers i read but if you are interested in nutrition, worth taking a look)
here is a sample of human population which have the lowest index of mental disease, diet consisted of 64% carbs, 21% protein, and 15% fat | https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/108/6/1183/5153293
One of my not-well-backed suspicions is that this is closest to the truth of any of the various attempts to explain this.
Someone would write like this if they don't know anything about instrumental analysis and are just guessing as a result.
As an example, they don't seem to even understand that wet and dry weights are substantivel different measures, and speak as though Magalhães et al. (1990) is measuring wet weight; it is measuring dry weight.
I'm supportive of autodidactic study and outsider research, but this is, frankly, a mess. They should unweight their priors considerably and bring in some chemists.
That SMTM post only addresses 5 of the ~17 studies about food lithium concentration that I mentioned in my post. It ignores several studies that did not use ICP-MS to measure lithium and found very low concentrations of it in food.
Moreover, as samatman mentioned, the post doesn't seem to understand that wet and dry weights are substantively different measures, and cites Magalhães et al. (1990) and Hullin, Kapel, and Drinkall (1969) as if they were reporting wet weight measurements of lithium, when they're reporting dry weight measurements. This makes a huge difference, because watercress (measured in Magalhães et al. (1990)) and lettuce (measured in Hullin, Kapel, and Drinkall (1969)) are both over 90% water by weight.
So that post is largely just based on cherry-picking and misrepresentation of studies.
Moreover, as far as I could tell, only *two* of their sources *actually attempt to estimate dietary lithium intake*, whereas almost all of my ~17 sources do. This is important because the SMTM post references a lot of studies that are not available on the internet, so we don't know whether they reported lithium concentration in dry or wet weight of food. Moreover, one of those sources based its estimation on hair lithium concentration rather than actual food measurements, using a regression model whose accuracy at low levels of dietary intake is unknown.
The vast majority of studies that actually attempt to estimate dietary lithium intake based on lithium concentration in food estimate it to be lower than 100 mcg/day, regardless of methodology. The only exceptions I am aware of are two studies from Manfred Anke.
(As an aside: we’ve also learned that proteins produced by certain gut bacteria have a similar effect on the same pathway, so it’s not crazy to imagine that gut dysbiosis could have an effect on weight gain. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-021-00880-5)
They're hormone disruptors that cause a lot of side effects like decrease of intelligence, weight gain, early/late puberty and it is impossible to escape them completely since even though they're no longer manufactured (at least not in the USA legally) they take a long time to break down in the environment.
I actually have relatives in a third world country that however poor they were they'd have a diet of mostly starches but including decent protein, even if it's just fish, literal bugs, small rodents and other subpar meat.
They'd laugh you out the village if you'd tell them they can live on yams and tapioca alone.
Staple doesn't mean one food diet.
For me personally, it feels like you're having a panic attack, you get ravenously hungry and eat anything in sight, tremors and heart palpitations, confusion, irritability, dizziness. No fun at all. Thankfully not life threatening though, at least the "normal" kind.
I also drink highly fermented potatoes, that's called Vodka!
I'll take this one. I actually 100% agree that list is useless, but an entire bag of microwave popcorn is extremely satiating to me. It's the perfect midnight snack IME because it is only 400ish Calories and yet takes up a large volume of space and takes a significant amount of time to eat.
I was more just linking it to highlight the 1995 study. Potatoes were by far the most satiating food found and far exceeding what NutritionData's modeling predicts it would be. (And FWIW, yoghurt was found to be much less satiating than the numbers would suggest.)
All the time. I make it from kernels so I'm not sure on how much is in a bag. I will make between 4 and 6 cups worth and that will do me in. For a real challenge, eat it with chopsticks and hard to go through half as much
Loads of studies about tumeric and inflammation, arthritis. Also capsaicin, piperine, etc. The list is extensive.
Remember: Herbs and spices are where medicinal remedies originated.
What spices are NOT allowed on AIP? Allspice Anise Seed Annatto Seed Black Caraway Black Cumin Black Pepper Caraway Cardamom Capsicums Cayenne Celery Seed Chili Pepper Flakes Chili Powder Chinese Five-Spice Chipotle Chili Powder Coriander Seed Cumin Seed Curry Powder (typically contains nightshades) Dill Seed Fennel Seed Fenugreek Seed Garam Masala Juniper Mustard Nutmeg Paprika Pepper (from black, green, pink, or white peppercorns) Poppy Seed Poultry Seasoning Red Pepper Russian Caraway Star Anise Steak Seasoning Sumac Taco Seasonin
I'm unsure if that "support" for my argument exists.
sorry, dont care
I was just stating my own experience without exposing too much personal history. For me, mild intermittent fasting led to deep intermittent fasting, multi day fasting, then week, then half a month. At that point it was anorexia not fasting.
I meant no disrespect to him at all nor the implication he was suggesting it - just wanted to throw a caution out. For some, it could lead to unhealthy excess.
So not skipping breakfast might be the healthier, more effective protocol.
Unfortunately I cannot provide the sources right now, but I guess a web search will help the interested.
What am I missing?
More interesting to me is why someone would phrase it as a guarantee even if it were true. It suggests that the reader likely hasn't tried it, and would be surprised to discover the result.
Yeah no one likes your humble brags about how little you eat and feel JUST GREAT. You're probably worse for it.
I'm 5'11", ~170 lbs and rather lazy right now, running ~15 miles a week and a couple light lifting sessions because I'm busy. I eat 2500 calories a day and maintain just fine.
I just ate 1200 calories at dinner, no problem, so I'm going to try real hard not to feel judged by you!
I just wonder do any of these people actually move? Apologies if you're less-than-abled but good lord, if you're not and you're surviving on so few calories, I just wonder if you're moving enough to actually be healthy?? Thin !== healthy, necessarily.
Thanks!
How is that different from any other cuisine? Rice, noodles, potatoes, beans, cabbage, fish, meat, chicken all get mixed with spices in almost every cuisine
As a Dutch person where salt & pepper are considered excessive in some places, quite a contrast. Let's just say I know what unseasoned vegetables and potatoes taste like after they've been boiled to death. Not great.
Also sorry to hear that - boiled vegetables taste amazing to me. Cabbage, onions, broccoli, etc have amazing flavors when you learn to appreciate them. I can enjoy food drowned in spices and sauces, but in my experience "blandness" is often an indication of desensitization rather than an actual lack of flavor, like how people who excessively consume sugar may have trouble appreciating the sweetness in fruits.
And see the resistant starch link as well.
Insulin sensitive women on the high carb diet lost nearly double the weight as insulin sensitive women on the low-carb diet.
Similarly, insulin resistant women lost twice the weight on the low-carb diet as on the high carb diet.
https://bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/insulin-sensitivity-a...
> It is entirely possible to be obese without insulin resistance and to be skinny with insulin resistance.
This is what I said
>> Exercise does this most effectively, loosing weight also does this. Low carb diets don't do this directly, only through weight loss.
A more precise way: A caloric deficit can also increase insulin sensitivity.
Curious, does it depend on the type of exercise and, if so, do we know what mechanisms cause some types to have a disproportionate impact?
https://scholar.google.se/scholar_url?url=https://www.resear...
Also, that parent comment was saying that you should trade fat for muscles, so my comment still stands.
Great -- you win by technicality! For the vast majority of people, the parent made a very reasonable statement, so comments like this are not helpful.
Maybe you think my comment was not helpful, but his comment was ignoring many variables.
Eat less if you are fat and do cardio no matter what.
That's definitely below what most people need as a healthy minimum (RDA is 0.8g per kg of bodyweight), let alone if you want to build muscle while dieting which is a good idea for improving health. At the very least you want to maintain muscle mass, which requires protein if you're exercising.
If I was going to try this diet I would definitely supplement some protein shakes.
Should be good until 2-3 in the afternoon, at least in my experience.
Overnight oats are great.
EDIT: Wait... uncooked!?
If your usual breakfast is pretty big and you tried to switch then you'd definitely start to get pangs of hunger earlier than you usually would. But after a while, your body would adjust and you'd be fine for longer and longer (really until whenever you usually ate your next meal). It's the reason why intermittent fasting or "one-meal-a-day" sucks the first couple of weeks you try it.
I'm not recommending one way or the other. Personally, I wouldn't eat just 2 eggs for breakfast because it sounds like a boring breakfast (at least throw it on some toast with some hot sauce). But it's certainly plausible that 2 eggs for breakfast would satiate most folks after they got through the initial growing pains.
When I go out for breakfast I will often have two eggs...and a couple of big pieces of toast, mushrooms, hash browns, spinach etc. I have great difficulty believing that two eggs alone would be sufficient.
Fast forward to today and while I would agree that just two eggs would be boring, add in two slices of bacon to cook the eggs in as well as some nice cheese, scramble it all and there's the lunch I'll have after not having had any breakfast at all and having had that, I probably won't be hungry again until way past previous dinner times.
This is after getting my gut back in order, away from craving sugary meal after sugary meal after carb/sugary meal to not having more than 20g of carbs per day (i.e. what they call "Keto diet"). I totally eat carbs again nowadays but usually eat no breakfast and eat way less carbs than I used to. One thing I noticed is that having a "low fat meal" for breakfast (e.g. white toast w/ just jam) means I am usually hungry again before lunch already. What helped on Keto was basically just eating whenever I was "hungry" but just not eating anything with carbs. I used cheese for it. Whenever I "got an appetite", eat some slices of cheese. No counting of calories. Feel "hungry"? Eat cheese! Lost lots of weight after a short period of time on that. The cravings just went away. It's amazing how little calories you actually get from all that fat and protein but it fills you right up. Of course this only works well if you have some fat to burn (my totally non-scientific reasoning is that your body just figures out that it doesn't have to make you find food and can just use the stores. Which means you better have those fat stores on you and please do make sure to eat enough veggies and nuts for your vitamins and minerals - you get the 20g of carbs just incidentally from the veggies, so definitely nothing with flour will go in you) I don't do Keto any longer and I can now maintain weight instead of loosing it :)
I pretty much never get hungry.
I eat because I’d die and I can only enjoy food having consumed massive doses of thc.
I wish Soylent was more trustworthy or the jetsons pill was real.
It means I can lose weight very easily but combined with severe adhd before I was married I was often in trouble and hospitalized a couple times. Now my wife keeps an eye on me to make sure I eat at least dinner, and Apple Watch reminds me to eat and drink during the work day.
Largely: Salads and roasted veggies like sweet potatoes, broccoli, radishes, carrots, squash. Fruits like apples, grapes, blueberries, strawberries.
The low calorie density foods helped make it so I really wasn't hungry.
For example, I've done the fast mimicking diet twice in the past couple of months - a little bit ineptly at points (always plan properly!) - which left me feeling very hungry. Certainly, by the last day of each, I was planning what I'd eat the next day in great detail and anticipation.
The lasting feeling it left (aside from the obvious health benefits) was to be reminded of what real hunger is like, not the semi-boredom, semi-distracting-itch kind that makes me nip to the fridge for a snack. That is very tolerable to me now.
The big breakfast is called a farmers mreakfat for a reason.
You can eat 500 calories of butter and not feel even slightly full, but 500 calories of raw potato would have you full to bursting.
You don’t have to consume a certain number of calories to be full. You just need a large enough volume. Competitive eaters eat a huge amount of lettuce to feel “full” but it has almost no calories.
https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p...
E.G. it’s examples of the Maasai and Inuit eating higher calories make a lot of sense when you consider their exposure to temp extremes and additional cal burn coming from thermoregulation (along with probably elevated levels of daily activity).
Most of the nuance I’ve seen around CICO that holds isn’t that CICO isn’t true, it’s that the intake and output are hard to calculate when you look at nutrient absorption and lifestyle
Different people use different amounts of calories to do the same things (including sitting around), and different people extract different amount of calories from the input. Some people can extract calories from PF Chang or Buca di Beppo, but not me. Weight control by eating foods that go straight through sounds terrible though.
You can run an additional control loop mentally but what purpose does that serve? Reducing caloric intake while your body screams increase caloric intake is very difficult. You should instead use the control loop you already have.
sorry, I don't care
No.
https://gurmeet.net/Images/food/calorie_density/CalorieDensi...
Boiled potatoes are 870 kcal per kilogram.
1 kilogram of potatoes is a lot.
By your standards, Coca-Cola is actually less calorie dense than boiled potato, but I don't think anyone would recommend a Coca-Cola diet.
Calorie density is also not the only metric for recommendation. Everyone agrees that liquid calories are not "felt" by the body in the same way as solid foods.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutrient_density [1] https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/calorie-density
I would agree with that in general, but hunger seems like such an incredibly old issue to deal with from evolutionary perspective. Managing hunger is something "we" have been doing for millions of years and it has always been at the very center of our survival as a species.
The idea that a cultural group could lose its ability to deal with such a key psychological and biological necessity in a short period of time just seems far less likely to me than a change in habits brought about by far more recent industrial and socioeconomic circumstances.
Take that from yet another pseudonymous internet autodidact ;-)
But those industrial and socio-economic circumstances also had a huge impact on culture! It's super complicated!
I am not strongly anti-capitalist, but consider the impact of capitalism on food:
Take low cost ingredients. Put them together in an appealing way. Sell the product at a relatively low price (higher than the ingredients, but not much). Advertise the product widely in such a way to condition people to desire your product.
I am describing junk food of course. Walk into a convenience store or look at the checkout lines of a grocery store. Look at all the food you are conditioned to desire.
edit: I am not blaming capitalism as the single cause of obesity. There is much more to it than that.
If something like what you're describing is going on then our psychological ability to manage hunger hasn't changed at all. Other things have changed, which is my whole point.
It works for the people who need it most.
Sure you might just be some 5% body-fat tren cycling bodybuilder with an "obese" BMI... but in reality for most people the higher up you go, the more urgent of an indicator it is that someone should lose weight for their health.
I’m very familiar with the “BMI is not good!” argument, but if it’s good enough for Harvard’s School of Public Health, it’s good enough for me.
If you had a magic wand and changed all of an obese person's fat mass into muscle mass, that would not produce a healthy person. But that doesn't happen in the real world.
Here's what happens in the real world - when you start a workout program you gain a little weight. That small weight gain is not bad, but it can be demotivating if your goal is "lose weight". It can stop people from exercising, which is good for long term health.
Weight fluctuations are also confounding to the goal of "Lose Weight". I've often heard that a good goal is to lose 2 pounds a week. I have several problems with that. I can lose up to 4 pounds on a long walk. I can gain up to 5 pounds overnight. Neither of those reflect body fat loss (the walk may represent a few ounces). You may say "That's just water weight!" - Ok. How does my scale know that?
Being specific is very important in the personal experience of weight loss ahem change of body composition.
> Just a fancy form of water & vitamins
No.
1. https://optimisingnutrition.com/calculating-satiety/
2. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/p_QyR5ImpQSJ_QODYl-tKxeKfj...
It specifically mentions the potato phenomenon:
> It’s worth noting here that the star performer in the satiety study was the plain boiled potato. People found it filling and hard to eat much at the buffet three hours later. This could be due to the low palatability of plain potatoes or the effects of resistant starch which forms when we cook and cool potatoes before eating.
> You may have heard of the Potato Hack Diet where people eat nothing but potatoes and lose weight. Unfortunately, while satiating, plain potato is not the most nutrient-dense and may not provide enough protein to maintain high levels of lean muscle mass during weight loss. You would also need to eat it without added fat (e.g. butter, oil, etc.). Otherwise, it’s extremely easy to overeat (e.g. chips).
That's why I speculated that a diet of potatoes, a lean protein source or two, and no added fats could make for a diet that's nutritious and promotes weight loss.
I'll probably break all of these rules and have fish and chips tonight!
I physically can't eat any more than 3 eggs because I'd feel completely full.
Maybe I'm twenty kilos heavier than you, exercise more than you, have a bigger appetite than you. Maybe a tape-worm ;) My post, along with many others that have replied to you seem to have done so to challenge your guarantee.
https://www.pcrm.org/news/health-nutrition/egg-consumption-i...
"The authors note results from a recent meta-analysis and data from the Physicians' Health Study and Women’s Health Study showed an increased risk for diabetes of up to 77% with seven or more eggs consumed per week."
"When egg prices rose in the spring of 1966 and Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman told him that not much could be done, Johnson had the Surgeon General issue alerts as to the hazards of cholesterol in eggs."
There's actually no healthier food than eggs
"Compared with group 1 (30·7 %, low baseline intake and slight increase), both group 2 (62·2 %, medium baseline intake and increase) and group 3 (7·1 %, high baseline intake and decrease) were associated with an increased OR for diabetes. The results suggested that higher egg consumption was positively associated with the risk of diabetes in Chinese adults."
Here's the publication: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33028452/
You also seem to think that the prevailig theory at some era is intechangable with arbitrary personal opinions about how things are.
Burning 400 calories an hour for 12 hours would be about 5000 calories.
Anecdotally, I know a retired guy who's been constructing a gymnasium sized $150K play tube structure for the past month, and he's lost like 25lb.
Most likely, they'll say hmmm, that's strange and you probably should try to avoid eating so much peanut butter in one sitting. Maybe they'll give you an invasive test that's probably not conclusive or inexepensive.
> See a doctor.
Doctors know next to nothing about gut biome stuff.
"I don't get full eating an entire jar of peanut butter" is going to result in the doctor telling me to not eat a jar of peanut butter.
Heck plenty of people don't get full eating entire tubs of ice cream. The answer is to avoid downing tubs of ice cream.
If you eat a meal with a small steak and a baked potato, how many pounds of salad would you need to consume to get the majority of your calories from eating those leaves?
I was a bit curious about the actual answer here. 1 oz steak has about 70 calories, 1 cup broccoli has about 30 calories. Seemingly you then need about a 3:1 ratio of servings veg to steak to hit that majority threshold.
A whole potato has about 110 calories (about 150g), and broccoli by the same weight has about 50 calories, so about 2:1.
Lettuce is known for having almost no calories in it, similar to tomatoes and cucumbers... There are lots of veg's out there, so don't just compare lettuce calories to the steak calories. "fibrous" greens include asparagus, brussel sprouts, bok choy, peppers, etc.. etc..
So.. to get that majority calories, two servings asparagus, one serving broccoli, a large salad, a small potato, and a tiny steak every third day or so or even less often would do it. There are also beans, lentils, whole-grains, plenty of sources so it's not just meat-potatos and leaves alone.
On another front, that majority calories from veg means you are getting a ton of nutrients and are actually eating quite a lot.
The idea of 'low calorie density' comes from this video by "Dylan Thomas" a professional cyclist and coach that produces a lot of data-based videos (and in the video, he goes into the studies and the science): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPVHGt3Nf9U (minute 9:00 is where he talks about having a majority veg diet)
This is nutritional science 101.
Slow-digesting carbohydrates like big-flake oats are really good.
Fast-digesting things like sugars, processed foods, fast food and meat products are bad as they create spikes in the glycemic index.
Speaking to this, the body makes different choices on whether a food passes through you, is absorbed and used, or whether it is stored. It makes different choices in where and how to store that energy, all in all which makes me think that not all carbohydrates (or calories, or foods) are equal when actually consumed. That is not even getting started with on gut fauna and the effects of different foods on the microbial environments in our guts.
if only they tasted that way!
Are you saying meat products cause spikes in glycaemic index? Seriously?
Not discounting people's experiences, but trying to suss out the science here. If you were, for example, to inject sugar directly into someone's blood stream would the result be fatigue every time?
It seems to me that there's more involved in this. In my experience (more anecdata!) I'm able to eat anything in the morning. Giant bolus of carbs and sugar, and I feel great. That same meal in the afternoon will give me such a fatigue that I need to lay down.
Clearly there's some other factor at play for me in the function whos result is fatigue.
FATIGUE_LEVEL = CARB_GRAMS * (HOUR_OF_DAY / 24)
For many people, it may not be, I can only speak for myself. There's another thing, called 'idiopathic postprandial syndrome' which is essentially the symptoms above, but without actual low blood sugar (<60mg/dl), which some people think is another form of insulin resistance, where your blood sugar is normal but your body "wants" more sugar in the blood.
Talking with endocrinologist, they say that the insulin sensitivity for most people is much higher in the AM and daytime than at night, so it makes sense that you might have more problems in the afternoon, but you should probably talk to a doctor rather than taking my word for it!
It's often difficult (in the US at least) to get primary care and endocrinologists to take you seriously if you are not actually dying of diabetes or passing out from low blood sugar - this is where dipping into the realm of concierge medicine can be helpful, or at least, it has been for me. They are often much more willing to investigate thoroughly.
Missed this the first time around. They do this, for research, it's called a glucose clamp test.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glucose_clamp_technique
Unfortunately it's almost impossible to find someone willing to administer it to you. It's an outpatient hospital procedure lasting a number of hours, and almost no insurance would cover it, as far as I am aware.
Responses are by readers, so take with a pinch of salt
What? That is quite a boring and obvious observation because your insulin sensitivity is much higher in the morning.
I know 2 T1 diabetics, and both never touch potatoes because of the GI.
Can I ask how you deal with your reactive hypoglycemia? I switched to keto a long time ago, which took me from having hypos multiple times a day to never. But often in late afternoon I start feeling some mild hypo symptoms, even though my blood glucose is stable.
The flavor is similar to that of French fries and they are an excellent substitute (I say this as someone who when asked what would be his last meal would answer: french fries).
Not only did you boil the potato, but you pre-chewed it too. Mashed potato is about as close as you can get to refined potato (potato flour). What you've created is easily digestable amylopectin - pre-chewed, already gelatinized and suspension with water. The amylase in your saliva can mix extremely well with mashed potatoes, and within minutes that amylopectin will be available as glucose. Maybe you mix in a little fat with butter or oil, but probably not much.
Vs. more or less any other potato cooking method. Even though the starch will have gelatinized with the water present in the potatoe, the potato's structure is more intact than boiling & mashing. Even after chewing the starch is not as well mixed with water, and this will take longer to digest.
We don't eat much mash in our house.
But really we are talking about two different things: GI and satiety. Yes potatoes are high GI. It would follow that they will spike your blood sugar. No claims have been made to the contrary.
Satiety is about how full you will feel per calorie eaten of that food. Multiple factors contribute to satiety. Specifically boiled potatoes score super high on the satiety index.
Not mashed potatoes. Not french fries, potatoes gratin, etc.
The topic is only tangentially related to GI.
Don't mean to be cranky here but I was hoping people would talk about the article, the underlying concept (satiety), and the research, instead of going off on lengthy discussions about quasi-related personal anecdotes.
I tried keto but it was difficult to get the variety, especially (as you say) when you're intensely craving sugar. It obviously solved the problem but was really challenging to continue, so I only lasted a couple weeks.
substitute yogurt instead of milk for big increase in protein!
Full != (Sated OR Satisfied)
Legumes or sprouts are not an adequate source of B12 and neither are other plant sources.
Your assertion that Nori has B12 is downright wrong. B12 is only synthesized by microorganisms.
There are plenty of vegetarian options, but if you are vegan, you have to rely on fortified products and supplements. This has nothing do to with where you happen to live.
You can check recommendations from physicians, researchers and most importantly Vegan associations all across the globe to the see this is true.
“The Vegetarian Resource Group (VRG) suggests that vegans need to have reliable sources of vitamin B12 in their diets. (1) The Vegetarian Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group (VNDPG) of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics says that all vegetarians (including vegans) should include a reliable B12 source in their diets, such as fortified foods or supplements. (2) And The Vegan Society goes so far as to state, “What every vegan should know about B12: the only reliable sources of B12 are foods fortified with B12 and supplements.” (3)“
I have seen people get sick ignoring these issues in a vegan diet.
“According to vegan expert and co-author of Vegan for Life, Jack Norris, RD, there are no reliable sources of B12 in plants, contrary to many rumors about sources, such as tempeh, seaweeds, and organic produce. Plants have no B12 requirement, therefore they do not have any active mechanisms to make or store it. When you find B12 in plants, it is due to contamination, which is not a reliable source. Many seaweeds have B12 analogues, through their symbiotic relationship with cobalamin-producing bacteria, however the evidence is not clear that this form is active B12 in humans. And fermented foods, such as tempeh, are not fermented through B12-producing bacteria, thus they are not a source of B12. Rumors about bacteria on the surface of organic produce producing B12 have not been verified. “Chlorella may improve B12 status, but it’s by such a small amount that I wouldn’t rely on chlorella for B12,” adds Norris. Norris stresses that, unless a food obtained from multiple regions consistently improves B12 status, it should not be relied upon as a source of B12.“
A vegan diet can be a healthy and sensible choice for people living in a modern society with access to supplements and fortified foods as well as the care and knowledge to use them. Otherwise it is not an appropriate diet for humans, especially not outside of the modern Western organic supermarket and supplement infrastructure.
https://veganhealth.org/vitamin-b12/vitamin-b12-plant-foods/
I appreciate your input, but this level of categorical statement seems to fly in the face of historic and current diets which are vegan or vegan-like and have not relied on supplements, or at least not the type we are talking about here.
At any rate I'd review other dietitians/scientists as well; while it's been a long time since I read the literature on this (when a family member went vegan) your quote certainly wasn't consensus view at that time.
Absolutely agree if you were to eat such a restrictive diet, you have to pay attention to vitamin sources, or you can get sick. B12 particularly problematic because you don't need much at all and can go months/years in a deficit situation before showing any symptoms, which can make it hard to pin down.
(To be clear, when said family member did do this for a while, I suggested supplementing but the nutritional science types I was reading weren't nearly as categorical as your above quote)
I provided a source that systemically goes through available evidence (including anecdotal points about vegan cultures).
I think that is fair and it does not imply any value statements about a vegan diet.
None of this is discussion is intended to dissuade a persons' choice to eat vegan, but to ensure they have the tools to do it safely :)
FWIW Salmon drenched in butter and lemon does the trick, but that kind of feels like cheating.
Maybe fish sticks would fill me up? Heck if I know.
Peanut butter is another one, plenty of people can eat crap tons of peanut butter and not get full. Other people get full from peanut butter easily.
Same goes for nuts, and a ton of snacking foods. That is why they are called snacking foods
I once had a coworker who could honest to goodness get filled up from an ice cream cone. Calorically, that is correct, but the vast majority of people's bodies will completely ignore calorie math when consuming ice cream (see: Common jokes about a separate desert stomach).
> See a specialist rather than quibbling over the definition of doctor.
"Hi doctor, yeah, I have a normal BMI and I am in above average health and I work out multiple times per week but some guy online says I should see you because I don't get full eating peanut butter."
You do realize that there are literally not specialists for this stuff? If medical science understood why some people never get full eating certain foods, we wouldn't have so much obesity.
On the flip side, food scientists understand that fat + sugar = never satiated. That is why donuts are even a thing. Realistically a donut and a sweetened coffee are "enough calories" but they aren't satiating at all.
And then there is the nastiness of the human body mostly ignoring liquid calories all together[1], outside of mechanical fullness of the stomach. That is why starbucks can get away with selling drinks that have almost an entire day's worth of calories in them.
[1] Protein shakes are a notable exception to this.
I have a technique that works well 80% of the time: just pull the spine upwards and hope none of the smaller bones break off — and that's a nice, mostly deboned fish!
I've literally got a science experiment in my own body that shows reducing calories in, without reducing the actual design of my meals, reduces my body mass.
I'm willing to accept that there are some minor irregularities and difficulties that make "Calories in == Calories out" not 100% accurate, but I'm betting the effect size is closer to +-10%, and therefore easily discarded for approximations, even though they are scientifically significant and could create a more accurate model.
There's already a lot of uncertainty when most people measure their calories (very few people actually weigh their food) and this just adds another layer of uncertainty. I have a feeling those all combine to make it inaccurate enough in practice for some people to claim the CICO model doesn't work.
By not being hungry and unsatisfied you'll then stop overeating (surprise!).
"My diet is OK, I just eat too much" is all wrong: there is a complex relation between caloric intake, which foods are eaten, hunger, satisfaction, energy, mood etc.
Many fad diets "work" even if they are not grounded in any scientific fact and are even unhealthy in the long term (low fat, low carb, keto, gluten-free, all-meat).
They artificially restrict the variety of food one person can eat and this indirectly encourages people to eat less. And when people stop overeating they feel better and believe the fad diet is sound.
There were even a diet where you can only eat foods in a given meal from the same group... by color. Same trick.
Bracing for all the downvotes...
Just above you said a diet needs to be nutritionally complete. Low carb, keto, gluten free, hell even low fat can be nutritionally complete and satisfying, though the latter one will not feel really good in the long term.
consider this: each of those meals at McD's, BK, or Pizza hut come with a 1-2 liter soda, loaded with calories and sugar. yes, the fats are there, but they are _always_ paired with loads of sugar.
Fats though that stay solid at body temperature arguably should be completely avoided. Hence the big-mac with a 1-2 liter soda, loads of unhealthy fat paired with loads of sugar, all with very minimal fiber..
Fat that stays solid at room temperature is generally high in saturated fat (except for margarin, but let's keep it out). Fat that stays liquid is generally vegetable oil (e.g.: canola).
I don't think there is strong evidence that vegetable oil is good for you whereas saturated fat is not. If so, I'd really like to read about it.
It's significantly harder to be fat eating nothing but broccoli, but I could continuously gain weight eating only 250g of vegetable oil per day.
Sugar is bad for exactly the same reason IMO
When we gain weight, we understand we need to eat less to lose weight. But that obviously does not work for many many people.
I'm carrying excess fat right now. Abolishing capitalism or taxing soda (or whatever other social, political, or cultural changes you would make) won't get rid of that fat. It is commendable to work on the social causes of obesity. I frame it as an individual psychological issue because it is an individual experience. If it was a matter of finding "the right foods to eat and avoid" or any particular set of facts that could convey how to actually lose weight, then the problem would be solved.
In other words, you can't tell someone to be hungry. Or at least, that doesn't sell any books or diet plans.
I'm not even sure what those conditions are. Capitalism is easy to blame for everything because it creates choices, both good and bad ones. But some capitalist countries have an obesity problem and others far less so. Socialist Cuba is a lot more obese than most European countries.
So I don't know what causes it on an epidemiological level and I have no solutions to offer. I'm merely questioning a particlar diagnosis. Framing the problem in a way that helps you personally is fine of course, but it's not the same thing as finding the truth about what causes the obesity epidemic.
There are 1000's of things that can cause weight gain, but there is an obvious solution - CICO. But that obvious solution doesn't work for many people.
----
I think the scientific study of obesity is full of meta-scientific problems that affect our reasoning on the subject.
- BMI is easy to measure, and predictive at a population level; but it is not as strongly predictive at an individual level when you control for things like activity level and body fat percentage.
- It is very hard for individuals to measure calories consumed and expended. It is also difficult to do this in scientific studies - it can be done, and it has been done well, but it took many years to take this problem seriously.
- Hunger is not one thing. Hunger is hard to measure. Hunger is hard to break into components. Hunger is hard to communicate about.
- - Hunger has multiple physical and psychological components - how would you even teach this in school? With physical sensations like smell and taste, or with emotional sensations like anger?
- - Hunger is a sensation generated deep within the body and the brain. There are no scientific units associated with hunger. You can't get a "hunger level" lab done at your endocrinologist.
----
Occam's Razor is a powerful tool. It feels good to find a "simple" answer. People want to find "the" cause of the obesity epidemic, but there is not one single cause. I will repeat my recommendation for "The Hungry Brain" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LXT28ZE/ and add a recommendation for "Burn" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08D8JYQD6/ .
There are many factors in the obesity epidemic and they all work on different people in different ways. Some of them tend to increase the calories in and some of them tend to decrease the calories out.
CI factors - affluence, advertisement, psychological conditioning, "You can have it all" attitude, more junk food (list not exhaustive)
CO factors - less walking in daily life, more people living in areas where it is hard to go outside in the daytime, more sedentary lifestyle overall (list not exhaustive)
----
Your body does have a voice that says "you have enough fat", but it is a little voice, and modern foods are highly desirable and calorie dense. There is some evidence that processed sugar has a strong effect on your hunger setpoint as well. There is strong evidence that having access to a wide variety of highly desirable foods leads to overeating (The Cafeteria Diet)
And that's where GI comes in - high GI foods cause blood sugar spikes, and the crash will make you feel hungry again.
Pasta is a good example - it feels very satiating at the time, but the feeling doesn't last long.
Maybe 4 or 5 good spoonfuls.
I'm willing to bet that almost any healthy adult could down 4 spoons of peanut butter w/o issue, and that most people would end up being way over their calorie limit for the day as their body wouldn't go "yup that was lunch and half of dinner! All good now!"
4 spoon fulls of peanut butter may or may not register. That many calories in a very short time frame often does not.
If you want someone to gain weight, do the same calc, tell 'em to eat 100 more calories. Not gaining? 200. Really not gaining? Wow, fast metabolism, shock 'em with 500 extra. Anecdata, but the only time I saw someone not slowly gain on 200 extra, there ended up being a lot of walking we weren't accounting for in our maintenance cal calculation. Our O in CICO was off. For reference, 200 cals is like a 16 oz of coke, or 2-3 apples. Decently precise.
The variance between a fast and slow metabolizer isn't 20% of daily calorie burn, maybe 10% on the high end. Guesstimation, probably more like 5%. Well within the tolerances that are used for weight modulation (up or down).
If it weren't the case, why are so many body builders (natty or enhanced) able to run repeated bulking and cutting cycles? Are they genetic outliers?
Can you calculate it 100%? Nope -- so many variables, probably tons we don't even know about yet. But it's accurate enough to be very effective, and very simple to implement.
I'm sort of with you, but it sounds more to me like: start eating less, and you'll lose weight; eat more, and you'll gain weight. There's just too many variables here that change how food is metabolized and digested; including the microbiome which CICO ignores.
the other answers here are more detailed, I just wanted to state it simply.
Again, the digestion point seems to reinforce CICO. If you gain weight because your digestion is slower (let’s grant the point), it’s not because your body some how treats calories differently, it’s that you’re getting more calories from your food. Your calories in are higher.
Not to mention that diet products have existed to game your digestive system to absorb less calories from your food. With the rationale being… less CI in CICO. See also: folks abusing laxatives for this purpose
Overall, I don't know of a lot of good science regarding which fats are better for you and which are actually bad. After all it was not until recently that it was admitted that the relationship between cholesterol in the blood and cholesterol is uncorrelated and not at all understood. Similarly even for calories, just because a food has X calories, does not mean you actually absorb all of those calories, let alone how the body uses them.
For the rule of thumb, I have no specific references and it is general knowledge I've picked up reading on nutrition. It could very well be wrong. I believe there is something to it, for example, coconut oil is relatively good for a person and has a low melt point, where-as bacon grease and steak gristle are pretty certainly terrible for a person.
Trying to find some references, I was not able to find the original reading where I stumbled upon that idea. This was a decent read though that I just came across: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/healthy-vs-unhealthy-fa... (YMMV)
Throwing information out like this (w/o source and at best poorly replicated), that CICO is useless because of digestion rate, is incredibly dangerous because it falsely legitimizes that hopelessness. It traps people. And it maybe only applies in <1% of cases, where you have not just obesity but also compounding, very specific digestive issues. The opposite is also true — you don’t just drink coffee to knock off enough cal absorption to make a diff — you take laxatives you don’t need and have extremely abnormal, frequent BMs.
Anyone and everyone can lose the weight. It’s just CICO. You gotta figure out your input and output to account for the minor individual variances, and lock in a lifestyle to do it. But it’s just CICO at the end of the day.
Some lessons I got from using it for 2 months (these are personal, some should apply to most people):
- Plantains cause a BIG glucose spike (I thought they didnt; in my case even more than pasta or rice)
- Walking ~10min after a meal removes the glucose spike of even pretty large meals
- Intense exercise before (duh) removes the glucose spike of any meal, even with big desert/ice cream
- Eating veggies (or taking fiber pills) before a meal removes the glucose spike of most meals
Some of these things I had read about online, but seeing the impact live on my own blood glucose made the lessons stick.
There are certain foods that my body seems to process poorly. My blood glucose spikes as much from crackers and rice as it does from more traditional sweets. My heuristics for other foods that I assumed were sweet (often fatty foods with mild sweetener) were also wrong. And I’m not weighing everything, counting calories, etc. I just tap my phone onto the device a few times a day.
Other things have also been surprising. I smoke hookah fairly regularly and found that it raises my fasting blood glucose by almost ten points (80 -> 90).
I find it’s an easy North Star metric with a single exception being intense physical activity which releases glycogen stores.
There are other factions within the community that believe that blood glucose spikes are responsible for things like abdominal fat storage and you’ll see that they continually try to game the number with things like nut consumption and drinking vinegar. This seems less useful to me.
To tell people to avoid these healthy foods is not backed by the science. And so what if it raises your levels temporarily? Running raises my heart rate and blood pressure. Does that mean I'm about to die?
Related topic: Glycogen storage in the liver and muscles and glycogen depletion
If your doctor is telling you that prolonged periods of high blood sugar sustained over time are good for you, I would suggest that they review a bit of the literature.
I imagine he would say, "So you aren't having any health issues and bought this $100 device anyway?"
People who get pre-diabetes or diabetes (type 2), well, it's usually because they are overweight or obese. There's just not a lot of people getting diabetes in a mysterious way.
Also, saturated fat is linked to diabetes. And cutting that out improves heart health anyway.
People who don't have diabetes or pre-diabetes spike. But I hardly see a body of work that suggests that everyone is at risk of diabetes.
> If plantains cause a large spike in a person, I would say that person should probably not eat them every day all the time.
People from South America eat them every day and they aren't linked to diabetes as far as I know.
The problem is consistently exceeding a certain level of blood sugar for extended periods of time. I think this is how you develop insulin resistance.
> People from South America eat them every day and they aren't linked to diabetes as far as I know.
I am from Panama, where we eat a lot of plantains. That's why I decided to test because it's a staple and I would have never put it in the same category as other carbs (bc I thought they had enough fiber to counter).
Definitely the foods that make it rise the fastest are starchy vegetables like potatoes and grains. Fat plays a major role in absorption - a potato by itself causes a quick spike, while if I add cheese, it takes about twice as long to fully digest. Protein and fiber slow things down, too. Generally sugar causes a spike that goes down quickly compared to other carb sources.
Many people with t1 find that aerobic exercise like a brisk walk lowers glucose in the short term, and it even has an effect for a day or two. Often people report that intense anaerobic exercise like weightlifting raises glucose levels.
Insulin definitely plays a role in fat storage (that’s one of the major things it does as a hormone).
I noticed the effect with salads and figured the fiber could help in a similar way.
Which CGM are you using? I have a Dexcom, which has configurable alarm thresholds. I have type 1 diabetes. Generally I try to avoid being over 140 for very long, and over 200 is considered dangerous. My Tandem insulin pump used a non-configurable setting of 110 as the level it tries to maintain by increasing or decreasing insulin dosages.
Levels just puts a nice UI on top of Librelink, like scoring meals and days, finding associations between meals and giving you tips.
I stopped using these because they are expensive (at least 100 per month if I only used Librelink, think it depends on country as my moms buys hers in Colombia not the US) and I was just looking to learn about certain meals/timing/etc.
