Potato Diet Riff Trial: Sign Up Now, Lol(slimemoldtimemold.com)
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Potato Diet Riff Trial: Sign Up Now, Lol
https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2023/11/03/potato-diet-riff-trial-sign-up-now-lol/
117 comments
I found A Chemical Hunger interesting when I first read it, but later people pointed out a whole bunch of severe mistakes (eg. [1] [2] [3]).
I don't know, I'm not a nutritionist, but the inaccuracies plus all the potato-conspiracy stuff made me doubtful of SMTM. My main takeaway was that no one, not even people in the field, really knows how food works.
[1] https://nothinginthewater.substack.com/p/contra-smtm-on-obes...
[2] https://basedprof.substack.com/p/smtm-mysteries
[3] https://someflow.substack.com/p/criticisms-of-a-chemical-hun...
I don't know, I'm not a nutritionist, but the inaccuracies plus all the potato-conspiracy stuff made me doubtful of SMTM. My main takeaway was that no one, not even people in the field, really knows how food works.
[1] https://nothinginthewater.substack.com/p/contra-smtm-on-obes...
[2] https://basedprof.substack.com/p/smtm-mysteries
[3] https://someflow.substack.com/p/criticisms-of-a-chemical-hun...
There are also these posts, pointing out many inaccuracies:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ/on-not-get... https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-proba...
SMTM have never responded to it, and they have lost my confidence for that reason.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ/on-not-get... https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-proba...
SMTM have never responded to it, and they have lost my confidence for that reason.
> I really enjoyed SMTM's "A Chemical Hunger" series[1]. But recently they've gone into weird fad-diet territory with their potato obsession.
I wanted to enjoy that series because exploring alternate factors in obesity is interesting, but the series similarly went into a weird obsession with lithium as an explanation for everything. He almost immediately started ignoring evidence that didn’t fit his theory and obsessively focused on cherry-picked evidence that was favorable to the story he wanted to tell.
Others have posted links to various debunking articles of the series, but the part that made me lose interest was even earlier: He has a section where he acknowledged that caloric intake was up over the same period of increased body weight, but then tried to dismiss this as irrelevant. I can’t take anyone’s writings on obesity seriously if they don’t believe increased caloric intake is correlated with increased obesity.
The series is written in a rationalist style that appeals to many people, but the content and logic within were not very scientific or even representative of the sources he cited at times. It’s a good example of how the right prose can be very convincing.
I wanted to enjoy that series because exploring alternate factors in obesity is interesting, but the series similarly went into a weird obsession with lithium as an explanation for everything. He almost immediately started ignoring evidence that didn’t fit his theory and obsessively focused on cherry-picked evidence that was favorable to the story he wanted to tell.
Others have posted links to various debunking articles of the series, but the part that made me lose interest was even earlier: He has a section where he acknowledged that caloric intake was up over the same period of increased body weight, but then tried to dismiss this as irrelevant. I can’t take anyone’s writings on obesity seriously if they don’t believe increased caloric intake is correlated with increased obesity.
The series is written in a rationalist style that appeals to many people, but the content and logic within were not very scientific or even representative of the sources he cited at times. It’s a good example of how the right prose can be very convincing.
> But their own numbers show that people regain the weight after they start eating other foods again: "On average, people gained back most of the weight they lost."[2]
Every single diet suffers from that, because you don't need a diet, you need a life style and as the name implies it, it has to be sustained for your whole life
Every single diet suffers from that, because you don't need a diet, you need a life style and as the name implies it, it has to be sustained for your whole life
The difference is that fad diets are unsustainable from the start. Technically someone could try to continue a diet like this indefinitely if it had sufficient nutrients, but most people will get sick of a fad diet after a while and revert to their prior eating habits.
The difference between a fad diet and a good diet is that a good diet is designed to be sustainable from the start. The goal of a good diet is to reset your eating habits into a healthier set of foods that you can still enjoy and continue eating regularly indefinitely.
The difference between a fad diet and a good diet is that a good diet is designed to be sustainable from the start. The goal of a good diet is to reset your eating habits into a healthier set of foods that you can still enjoy and continue eating regularly indefinitely.
A potato lifestyle
It's important to recognise that even with "lifestyle" changes, weight loss is often not sustainable. Here's a quote from a review of the literature undertaken in 2018[0]:
> In a meta-analysis of 29 long-term weight loss studies, more than half of the lost weight was regained within two years, and by five years more than 80% of lost weight was regained
Or, to offer some anecdata, I lost 60 pounds in early 2012. I started working out. In 2015, I hiked every weekend, totaling more than 400 miles of distance covered, and more than 20 miles of elevation gain. And in 2016, while training for a trek in Peru, I injured myself and was unable to exercise for quite a while. I gained about 20 pounds back, but then stabilised -- until COVID, when high stress and a forced change in dietary habits (I couldn't go to the grocery store easily, and many foods were routinely out of stock) means I ultimately gained back the remainder of my weight, some eight and a half years after losing it. In particularly extreme examples,
Generally speaking, weight loss as a goal is destined to fail. Even when significant habitual changes are effected, the reality is that people's metabolism is hugely impacted by their early life. Furthermore, weight loss has often been found to increase levels of hunger[1], which makes it incredibly difficult to sustain. And in extreme cases -- such as the Minnesota Starvation Experiment[2] -- low-calorie diets (in this case, actually about 1600 calories a day) can cause persistent decreases in both basal metabolic rate and satiety, which means those who have lost weight will not only find it harder to maintain the weight due to a decreased caloric requirement, but also because of increased hunger.
The tl;dr here is that sustained weight loss may be possible, but the best bet is probably weight loss which occurs over a period of a decade or more, because any faster and you start to risk some paradoxical outcomes which will make it increasingly difficult to maintain.
0. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5764193/ 1. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/weight-loss-le... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experimen...
> In a meta-analysis of 29 long-term weight loss studies, more than half of the lost weight was regained within two years, and by five years more than 80% of lost weight was regained
Or, to offer some anecdata, I lost 60 pounds in early 2012. I started working out. In 2015, I hiked every weekend, totaling more than 400 miles of distance covered, and more than 20 miles of elevation gain. And in 2016, while training for a trek in Peru, I injured myself and was unable to exercise for quite a while. I gained about 20 pounds back, but then stabilised -- until COVID, when high stress and a forced change in dietary habits (I couldn't go to the grocery store easily, and many foods were routinely out of stock) means I ultimately gained back the remainder of my weight, some eight and a half years after losing it. In particularly extreme examples,
Generally speaking, weight loss as a goal is destined to fail. Even when significant habitual changes are effected, the reality is that people's metabolism is hugely impacted by their early life. Furthermore, weight loss has often been found to increase levels of hunger[1], which makes it incredibly difficult to sustain. And in extreme cases -- such as the Minnesota Starvation Experiment[2] -- low-calorie diets (in this case, actually about 1600 calories a day) can cause persistent decreases in both basal metabolic rate and satiety, which means those who have lost weight will not only find it harder to maintain the weight due to a decreased caloric requirement, but also because of increased hunger.
The tl;dr here is that sustained weight loss may be possible, but the best bet is probably weight loss which occurs over a period of a decade or more, because any faster and you start to risk some paradoxical outcomes which will make it increasingly difficult to maintain.
0. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5764193/ 1. https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/weight-loss-le... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnesota_Starvation_Experimen...
> But their own numbers show
This is part that keeps this potato diet stuff interesting to me is that they've been extremely open with the numbers, from the very beginning. Most fad diets you have no idea how many people participated or the particulars of their habits during the participation period and there was no follow-up at all beyond the participation period.
I don't think SMTM has "cracked" anything with the potato diet yet and I don't expect to see useful "answers" from SMTM, but they've been good so far at some of the raw bits of science: finding ways to ask interesting questions and recording as much data as possible about it, publishing that data, and then finding interesting new questions from that.
Sometimes I feel rather cynical that we'll not see any answers in my lifetime, but I appreciate a blog asking interesting questions and then trying to data science what they can around them to find more useful questions.
This is part that keeps this potato diet stuff interesting to me is that they've been extremely open with the numbers, from the very beginning. Most fad diets you have no idea how many people participated or the particulars of their habits during the participation period and there was no follow-up at all beyond the participation period.
I don't think SMTM has "cracked" anything with the potato diet yet and I don't expect to see useful "answers" from SMTM, but they've been good so far at some of the raw bits of science: finding ways to ask interesting questions and recording as much data as possible about it, publishing that data, and then finding interesting new questions from that.
Sometimes I feel rather cynical that we'll not see any answers in my lifetime, but I appreciate a blog asking interesting questions and then trying to data science what they can around them to find more useful questions.
I think it's worth pointing out that they've also said multiple false things in their blog posts, and have refused to address or fix them despite repeated requests over a period of more than one year. I think people should be careful before believing in things they read in SMTM's blog. See e.g. https://manifold.markets/Natalia/how-many-of-these-falsemisl...
i don't understand what you're trying to say here, of course anybody who loses weight by changing their diet will gain the weight back if they go back to eating the way they were before, isn't that just common sense?
Well, I guess I'm saying a "good" diet is one that can be sustained indefinitely. The fact that an extreme diet produces good results in the short term isn't surprising or interesting, because virtually nobody can (or should) follow an extreme diet for the rest of their life.
A diet that you can follow forever is called a lifestyle. For many diets and many people, it's really hard to convert into a lifestyle, because the of the restrictions and predictable cravings.
Side note, there's a thing called the Potato Hack [0] that proposes 3-5 day potato-only diets for short term fixes. A "potato fast" if you will.
[0] https://potatohack.com/
Side note, there's a thing called the Potato Hack [0] that proposes 3-5 day potato-only diets for short term fixes. A "potato fast" if you will.
[0] https://potatohack.com/
A lifestyle involves all sorts of non-diet things.
It is a bit odd, though, that we use “going on a diet” to describe a short term change.
But I think the most accurate phrase would be that you’ve “changed your diet,” (implicitly, permanently).
It is a bit odd, though, that we use “going on a diet” to describe a short term change.
But I think the most accurate phrase would be that you’ve “changed your diet,” (implicitly, permanently).
Sometimes, though, an extreme diet to lose weight can allow you to make some lifestyle changes (such as exercising regularly) that do have lasting impacts. Being significantly overweight can really make physical activity difficult and demoralizing.
I agree that it they often aren't sustainable and need to transition into a more sensible long-term diet.
I agree that it they often aren't sustainable and need to transition into a more sensible long-term diet.
We really need multiple words for diet.
It means at least two different things:
It can refer to specific planned period of eating a certain way to achieve a certain end.
e.g. Atkins diet(please look up how he died before considering this), fodmap diet , low GI diet, potato diet
It can also refer to the normal way a particular person at particular place and time in history eats.
e.g The Roman diet, Celtic diet, American Diet, French diet, Pandas diet, Neanderthal diet ,Vegan/Vegetarian diets, Kosher/Halal diets
It means at least two different things:
It can refer to specific planned period of eating a certain way to achieve a certain end.
e.g. Atkins diet(please look up how he died before considering this), fodmap diet , low GI diet, potato diet
It can also refer to the normal way a particular person at particular place and time in history eats.
e.g The Roman diet, Celtic diet, American Diet, French diet, Pandas diet, Neanderthal diet ,Vegan/Vegetarian diets, Kosher/Halal diets
Atkins died of a head injury when he slipped on some ice, FYI
He also had congestive heart failure and his arteries were 30-40% blocked a year before his death. After he fell, he died during surgery to remove a blood clot in his brain. It's hard to say conclusively what caused his fall and ultimately his death, but we do know for a fact that he had heart problems.
I don't believe this matters either way, though. You shouldn't be basing your understanding of what a healthy diet looks like on the outcome for one individual. Experts in the field of human health do not believe that Atkins' diet was healthy, and that should suffice (though of course there are plenty of other unhealthy diets, some of which have problems that Atkins avoids).
I don't believe this matters either way, though. You shouldn't be basing your understanding of what a healthy diet looks like on the outcome for one individual. Experts in the field of human health do not believe that Atkins' diet was healthy, and that should suffice (though of course there are plenty of other unhealthy diets, some of which have problems that Atkins avoids).
I'm merely pointing out that internet rumors about his death are false.
I have no idea if he followed his own diet or if his diet is healthy or not, but if you have references to studies this thread is sorely lacking.
I have no idea if he followed his own diet or if his diet is healthy or not, but if you have references to studies this thread is sorely lacking.
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I would imagine extreme diets are for viable for those that require extreme weight lose. Someone looking to lose 100+lbs would be able to use it to lose enough weight to become active again and start to make lifestyle changes that will support long term weight management. People looking to drop 10lbs though are very likely to gain it back once they start eating like a normal human again.
I don't think SMTM is proposing the potato diet as a permanent weight loss dilution, but think that there is something weird going on here that might result in a permanent dietary recommendation if understood. For example, we might find that the potassium is causing the weight loss and supplementing high doses of potassium could be something you do permanently.
There've been multiple studies that gave people potassium supplements and measured their body weight. (Primarily because potassium helps lower blood pressure). They haven't found that potassium causes weight loss. See my meta-analysis here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sR1T2Kb1X1fCLYeEE-U3Rwei...
That was just an example. They are doing this weird riff model because right now there are too many variables
He's saying that this is a well established fact regarding every fad diet. Usually in the sciences, a new method measures itself against a "control", which might be a placebo or non-treatment, but might be another well established treatment, such as a drug for the same disease. For a fad diet, a sensible "control", or "null hypothesis" would be another fad diet, not involving potatoes. One would only have grounds to say that this fad diet worked if it worked better than the best alternative fad diet.
I'd argue it's a well established fact of any diet, regardless of how it is lost. Changing your body's natural weight long term is very difficult no matter what you eat.
You'd think there would be some long term benefit to fad diets around the lines of hunger suppression or helping folks better recognize when they're "full".
IMO, there's a psychosomatic angle for restrictive diets that is similar to a placebo.
IMO, there's a psychosomatic angle for restrictive diets that is similar to a placebo.
Do you think Wegovy/Ozempic/Mounjaro also work due to placebo effect? It seems that over the past decade or two we’ve discovered (some elements of) the sophisticated physiological mechanism by which we regulate appetite, and it involves the production of various hormones within our lower intestinal tract. When some fad diet produces sharp appetite reduction, my general question is: what’s more reasonable? To assume placebo or disruption of this mechanism?
At very least I think it’s useful to reinterpret these extreme fad diet weight loss results in light of this knowledge, rather than defaulting to the (now obsolete) understanding that appetite is primarily determined by psychological effects.
At very least I think it’s useful to reinterpret these extreme fad diet weight loss results in light of this knowledge, rather than defaulting to the (now obsolete) understanding that appetite is primarily determined by psychological effects.
At least for the 70s fad diets, there wasn't any sort of long-term benefit like that. When they stopped, people would return to their original weight, or maybe even a little more. Then they would freak out and go back to the diet again -- the infamous "yo-yo dieting."
But I do think it's true that there are two different sensations: hunger, versus wanting food because it's yummy. Maybe some future diet will pair a restrictive diet with some sort of guided meditation helping you discern the different signals your stomach can send you.
Or maybe Mounjaro and friends will make the whole point moot ;-)
But I do think it's true that there are two different sensations: hunger, versus wanting food because it's yummy. Maybe some future diet will pair a restrictive diet with some sort of guided meditation helping you discern the different signals your stomach can send you.
Or maybe Mounjaro and friends will make the whole point moot ;-)
"A Chemical Hunger" has multiple inaccuracies that have never been addressed or corrected. For example, they made up the "fact" that wild animals have been getting fatter out of thin air. See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ/on-not-get...
The way I see it, the point of the very article you're replying to is to find a friendlier version of the potato diet that might be more fun or sustainable.
Maybe they'll find that people who replace one of their daily meals with french fries end up losing weight over time. Who knows. I think it's good to be positive.
Maybe they'll find that people who replace one of their daily meals with french fries end up losing weight over time. Who knows. I think it's good to be positive.
Oh, totally -- I was interested in their "half-tato" idea, because it seemed more sustainable than the all-potato version. But the results were "underwhelming," in their own words. Ditto their potassium-salt idea.
Once you find a diet that is healthy and works, I don't think you're supposed to ever get off of it. It's kind of a tautology that the people getting off their diets gained back their original weight.
[deleted]
Beautiful. We are in a golden era of citizen science, where access to knowledge, tools to connect, tools to process data, and the ability to communicate this is at an all time high. The kind of stuff you see on Youtube is amazing: people like AppliedScience achieving incredibly things in the garage, or recently NileRed took a nature paper [0] 1 step further and published it on youtube [1]).
From a chemist/material scientist perspective: Whether the results of the Riff trial may ever have a p value suitable for nature/science, likely not. When it comes to the human body and our biology, a mass trial like this may even be more useful than traditional studies, where pre-existing biases in data collection may weed out the most useful 'Riff'. Better than that, the information collected by mold_time is regularly released and discussed, in the open, on twitter/x [2].
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CglNRNrMFGM
[2] https://twitter.com/mold_time
From a chemist/material scientist perspective: Whether the results of the Riff trial may ever have a p value suitable for nature/science, likely not. When it comes to the human body and our biology, a mass trial like this may even be more useful than traditional studies, where pre-existing biases in data collection may weed out the most useful 'Riff'. Better than that, the information collected by mold_time is regularly released and discussed, in the open, on twitter/x [2].
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25476
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CglNRNrMFGM
[2] https://twitter.com/mold_time
>Whether the results of the Riff trial may ever have a p value suitable for nature/science, likely not. When it comes to the human body and our biology, a mass trial like this may even be more useful than traditional studies
Can you explain this further? I'm curious about it, because at face value it seems like it is somewhat contradictory. On one hand, you're saying it won't likely be demonstrably significant enough to generalize, but then you say it will be more valuable. Are you saying it's value is in it's non-generalizability? I.e., each person finds what 'riff' works for them? I thought the point of publishing results was, in part, to separate the wheat from the chaff so we don't all have to run a ton of self-experiments.
Can you explain this further? I'm curious about it, because at face value it seems like it is somewhat contradictory. On one hand, you're saying it won't likely be demonstrably significant enough to generalize, but then you say it will be more valuable. Are you saying it's value is in it's non-generalizability? I.e., each person finds what 'riff' works for them? I thought the point of publishing results was, in part, to separate the wheat from the chaff so we don't all have to run a ton of self-experiments.
p values are meant to relate whether or not 'some' hypothesis is statistically relevant versus a control study. For something like biology, human nature, dieting, weight loss, in a world where you can't really control how stressed someone is, how far they walk to work, among 100 other things... if you're trying to find out how 'the potato' works, safe citizen science (a Riff trial) may be far more effective than 'traditional' proofs to get to the bottom of something that works, and then someone can do a controlled study.
>if you're trying to find out how 'the potato' works, safe citizen science (a Riff trial) may be far more effective than 'traditional' proofs to get to the bottom of something that works
I don't know that I agree. Because the world has an infinite number of variants to "the potato" but an individual has a finite amount of time to try them. So while I agree that there are a lot of confounding factors in biology, we still need some way to triage our efforts. Analyzing the results of controlled studies seems like the best way to do so, even if it's not guaranteed to work for a specific individual.
What I suspect will happen is that people will end up wasting too much time on endless "potato" variants that don't work, and they would have had better results on focusing on those controlled studies that show promise.* For every person that finds a diamond in the 'riff', there's probably countless people that found nothing (or worse, detrimental effects). We also have other tools, like meta-analysis, to help. That seems more effective that "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks".
* you can see this in the supplement space. There are people who are constantly spending money searching for the secret new supplement hack when they'd be better off focusing on the things that science has shown to consistently work. They end up majoring in the minors, as it were
I don't know that I agree. Because the world has an infinite number of variants to "the potato" but an individual has a finite amount of time to try them. So while I agree that there are a lot of confounding factors in biology, we still need some way to triage our efforts. Analyzing the results of controlled studies seems like the best way to do so, even if it's not guaranteed to work for a specific individual.
What I suspect will happen is that people will end up wasting too much time on endless "potato" variants that don't work, and they would have had better results on focusing on those controlled studies that show promise.* For every person that finds a diamond in the 'riff', there's probably countless people that found nothing (or worse, detrimental effects). We also have other tools, like meta-analysis, to help. That seems more effective that "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks".
* you can see this in the supplement space. There are people who are constantly spending money searching for the secret new supplement hack when they'd be better off focusing on the things that science has shown to consistently work. They end up majoring in the minors, as it were
You're correct on all accounts, save for my optimism. Maybe the Riff can only work for something of this style when data feedback losing 10 lbs is large, compared to supplements, and the confines of the experiment are relatively limited (30 days). In hindsight, my comment was supposed to be 'its exciting that random people can get together and try to figure something out', and less about the difficulties of biology in science.
I don't think mold_time is a good example of citizen science done right. They have said multiple false things and refused to address or correct their statements when other people pointed them out. See https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NRrbJJWnaSorrqvtZ/on-not-get... and https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-proba...
It's been more than a year since I alerted them of the multiple falsehoods in A Chemical Hunger, repeatedly, and they haven't done anything about them.
It's been more than a year since I alerted them of the multiple falsehoods in A Chemical Hunger, repeatedly, and they haven't done anything about them.
I think this is a more compelling idea than people in the comments are giving it credit for
> The problem is that you can easily come up with 100 different hypotheses for what’s going on. Ok, so you run 100 different studies to test each one. But studies take a long time to run — let’s say 6 months per study. Congratulations, you’ve just locked yourself into 50 years
This is a major problem with science whenever you have less of a theoretical foundation. Compared to physics or chemistry, we know very little about nutrition or sports science. Because of this, the search space is very large. One could argue that given the number of surprising results (and difficulty reproducing those results), medicine and psychology also fall into this category.
> A riff trial takes advantage of the power of parallel search. Some riffs will work better than others (or at least differently), and parallel search helps you find these differences faster, especially if the differences are big.
What if we did more to encourage people to track and report their personal experiments? If even 10% of everyone on a diet (any diet) just tracked what they ate, what exercise they did, and how much weight they lost, and reported it to a centralized database, scientists could then look for patterns in that data and do formal studies based on suspected patterns.
We could do similar things with longevity/happiness. Look at the "Harvard Study of Adult Development" but imagine it was spread out over 10s of thousands of diverse people instead of just 300 upper-class American men? The data quality wouldn't matter much if all you are doing is searching for patterns to do follow-up studies.
> The problem is that you can easily come up with 100 different hypotheses for what’s going on. Ok, so you run 100 different studies to test each one. But studies take a long time to run — let’s say 6 months per study. Congratulations, you’ve just locked yourself into 50 years
This is a major problem with science whenever you have less of a theoretical foundation. Compared to physics or chemistry, we know very little about nutrition or sports science. Because of this, the search space is very large. One could argue that given the number of surprising results (and difficulty reproducing those results), medicine and psychology also fall into this category.
> A riff trial takes advantage of the power of parallel search. Some riffs will work better than others (or at least differently), and parallel search helps you find these differences faster, especially if the differences are big.
What if we did more to encourage people to track and report their personal experiments? If even 10% of everyone on a diet (any diet) just tracked what they ate, what exercise they did, and how much weight they lost, and reported it to a centralized database, scientists could then look for patterns in that data and do formal studies based on suspected patterns.
We could do similar things with longevity/happiness. Look at the "Harvard Study of Adult Development" but imagine it was spread out over 10s of thousands of diverse people instead of just 300 upper-class American men? The data quality wouldn't matter much if all you are doing is searching for patterns to do follow-up studies.
The main issue with this riff trial is that it doesn't test the most likely reason the potato diet works: that it's a very restrictive diet. Testing several different hypotheses barely helps at all if you don't test the overwhelmingly most likely one.
I remember Kevin Smith talking about his first stab at dieting, following the instructions of the "guru" that got Penn Jillette lean: basically, he ate nothing but potatoes for something like 3 months.
The point wasn't that potatoes were particularly good for you, but to "reset" one's attitude towards food, eating only when hungry rather than for pleasure or to deal with stress - because after a few weeks, one is so tired of potatoes that they'll forego unnecessary eating.
In this sense, the potato diet is probably useless in itself, but might work in that "reset" role.
The point wasn't that potatoes were particularly good for you, but to "reset" one's attitude towards food, eating only when hungry rather than for pleasure or to deal with stress - because after a few weeks, one is so tired of potatoes that they'll forego unnecessary eating.
In this sense, the potato diet is probably useless in itself, but might work in that "reset" role.
> I remember Kevin Smith talking about his first stab at dieting, following the instructions of the "guru" that got Penn Jillette lean
Penn's a very good writer and hacker (this is a temporary diet hack, after all), and if you're interested you can read more about this here: Presto!: How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales: https://www.amazon.com/Presto-Pounds-Disappear-Other-Magical...
Penn credits Ray Cronise for literally saving his life. You can read his 2014 paper The "Metabolic Winter" Hypothesis: A Cause of the Current Epidemics of Obesity and Cardiometabolic Disease, here: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/met.2014.0027
Penn's a very good writer and hacker (this is a temporary diet hack, after all), and if you're interested you can read more about this here: Presto!: How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales: https://www.amazon.com/Presto-Pounds-Disappear-Other-Magical...
Penn credits Ray Cronise for literally saving his life. You can read his 2014 paper The "Metabolic Winter" Hypothesis: A Cause of the Current Epidemics of Obesity and Cardiometabolic Disease, here: https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/met.2014.0027
This is the reason I do a potato month once a year. It's like a tolerance break from food, except you're not actually starving yourself.
I don’t understand how people could feel anything but love for potatoes, they are so perfect. Especially with a little salt and rosemary. And they have the perfect mouth-feel.
If I remember correctly you were allowed potatoes with no seasoning. So no butter, salt, pepper etc. The point was for it to basically be boring so that when you eventually have a bit of lettuce or a tomato you can’t help but love it. You no longer need sugar etc to really trigger your senses.
The link says:
- Seasonings are ok. Do what you can to keep yourself from getting bored. - Oil is ok.
Which sounds really strange - I can easily eat a pound of potatoes mashed with a fork with olive oil and salt for example, maybe more.
- Seasonings are ok. Do what you can to keep yourself from getting bored. - Oil is ok.
Which sounds really strange - I can easily eat a pound of potatoes mashed with a fork with olive oil and salt for example, maybe more.
> I can easily eat a pound of potatoes mashed with a fork with olive oil and salt for example
1 pound of white potatoes + 2 Tbsp olive oil is only about 550 calories, and about half that is the olive oil. You've got a long way to go for the day if you're not on a starvation diet.
1 pound of white potatoes + 2 Tbsp olive oil is only about 550 calories, and about half that is the olive oil. You've got a long way to go for the day if you're not on a starvation diet.
Interesting (as you can tell I didn't read the article). I think the 'originator' of this diet was Penn Jilette (I listened to his podcast at the time), and when he did it I'm certain it was potatoes and nothing else.
Does anyone remember a meta study that showed ANY even slightly reasonable restrictive diet works because they almost by definition dramatically reduced sugar and HFCS in the diet, and if you just controlled for that, the individual types of restriction didn't matter?
I can't find it on PubMed or in my bookmarks.
If memory serves - high/low fat, high/low carb, high/low protein, etc - didn't matter as long as the restriction is stopping sugar/HFCS.
And it also explained the rebound effect - e.g. after the extreme restriction, the participants start re-introducing sugar and HFCS back into the diet, and since that's the real culprit, weight goes back up.
No taking away from this super cool citizen science - deep kudos on testing things like this out! I'm tempted to participate in something like this. Self-experimentation is a lost art.
I can't find it on PubMed or in my bookmarks.
If memory serves - high/low fat, high/low carb, high/low protein, etc - didn't matter as long as the restriction is stopping sugar/HFCS.
And it also explained the rebound effect - e.g. after the extreme restriction, the participants start re-introducing sugar and HFCS back into the diet, and since that's the real culprit, weight goes back up.
No taking away from this super cool citizen science - deep kudos on testing things like this out! I'm tempted to participate in something like this. Self-experimentation is a lost art.
The thing that fully convinced me over a decade ago that all effective methods for weight loss are just "calories in, calories out" underneath was the dude that lost 27lbs in 2 and a half months on a diet of mostly twinkies with occasional other junk food for variety. https://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor...
Yes, there are other variables like hormone levels (thyroid adjacent ones particularly), genetics (defines base metabolic rate), drugs/chemicals (some effect metabolism), and dietary macros (too much sugar causing diabetes) which factor in to weight loss or gain, but its pretty clear at the end of the day all they are doing is modifying the numbers each individual needs to use in the same old calorie calculations, and very often not to a high degree.
I get its fun to play with theories and edge cases, but I don't understand why so many people find this simple, well established explanation unsatisfying and hard to accept.
Yes, there are other variables like hormone levels (thyroid adjacent ones particularly), genetics (defines base metabolic rate), drugs/chemicals (some effect metabolism), and dietary macros (too much sugar causing diabetes) which factor in to weight loss or gain, but its pretty clear at the end of the day all they are doing is modifying the numbers each individual needs to use in the same old calorie calculations, and very often not to a high degree.
I get its fun to play with theories and edge cases, but I don't understand why so many people find this simple, well established explanation unsatisfying and hard to accept.
> I don't understand why so many people find this simple, well established explanation unsatisfying and hard to accept.
Because when people try to put it into practice in a form that's not dangerous they struggle, and when humans struggle at something they feel compelled to theorize the struggle. "There must be a reason this isn't working for me," they say, "one that doesn't ultimately reflect on my morally culpable lack of capacity to exert my will." [To be clear, I don't think people are to blame for lacking willpower, I'm just identifying the logic here.]
Looking around, they observe that some people have more success on a diet where they restrict some particular type of food X. This success comes from playing a trick on the brain, making it think that it is not in a position of deciding to eat less every day, but is being forced to eat less. Some restrictions manage to play this trick on the brain successfully for some people some of the time. People promoting diets that are not just "calories in, calories out" are hoping to take advantage of this effect. When these diets become popular, it's because the logic I identified allows people to say "it's not that I failed to force myself to eat less, it's that I didn't stop eating carbs" - or what have you.
One reason it's hard to eat less that you didn't bring up is that the body reacts to you eating less by reducing your metabolism. I don't mean this in a magical fashion where the body has a high efficiency mode or that you can somehow gain weight while eating fewer calories than you consume, but in the simple ordinary sense that people dieting tend to be tired and more lazy. Your body does not want to stay at the same level of activity while dieting, and so you lose less weight than you'd expect with a simple metabolic rate calculation. You can allow for this of course, but it means you have to cut even more.
So I don't know that many people reject the basic physics of calories in, calories out per se. Most reasonable people talking about this are more interested in why attempting a pure "eat less food" diet tends to fail, and what tricks can be employed to achieve appetite reduction. The various individualized factors can be overwhelming, especially when you consider that many people don't have access to adequate nutrition and healthcare.
Because when people try to put it into practice in a form that's not dangerous they struggle, and when humans struggle at something they feel compelled to theorize the struggle. "There must be a reason this isn't working for me," they say, "one that doesn't ultimately reflect on my morally culpable lack of capacity to exert my will." [To be clear, I don't think people are to blame for lacking willpower, I'm just identifying the logic here.]
Looking around, they observe that some people have more success on a diet where they restrict some particular type of food X. This success comes from playing a trick on the brain, making it think that it is not in a position of deciding to eat less every day, but is being forced to eat less. Some restrictions manage to play this trick on the brain successfully for some people some of the time. People promoting diets that are not just "calories in, calories out" are hoping to take advantage of this effect. When these diets become popular, it's because the logic I identified allows people to say "it's not that I failed to force myself to eat less, it's that I didn't stop eating carbs" - or what have you.
One reason it's hard to eat less that you didn't bring up is that the body reacts to you eating less by reducing your metabolism. I don't mean this in a magical fashion where the body has a high efficiency mode or that you can somehow gain weight while eating fewer calories than you consume, but in the simple ordinary sense that people dieting tend to be tired and more lazy. Your body does not want to stay at the same level of activity while dieting, and so you lose less weight than you'd expect with a simple metabolic rate calculation. You can allow for this of course, but it means you have to cut even more.
So I don't know that many people reject the basic physics of calories in, calories out per se. Most reasonable people talking about this are more interested in why attempting a pure "eat less food" diet tends to fail, and what tricks can be employed to achieve appetite reduction. The various individualized factors can be overwhelming, especially when you consider that many people don't have access to adequate nutrition and healthcare.
Yes, there was at least one meta-analysis several years ago that compared different diets to each each other and to exercise. I think there were actually two meta-analyses that came out about the same time, with slightly different foci, and came to similar conclusions.
What I remember was that diets didn't differ from one another in efficacy once you controlled for caloric restriction, and that dieting was more effective than exercise, although exercise did have a small but quantifiable effect.
I also think one of the meta-analyses compared atkins-style diets to others and concluded that there was some slight evidence for their superiority (in terms of weight loss) in the short term but that after a few weeks they didn't differ from the others.
I've worked in bariatric surgery units and my personal sense from that and reading some of the literature is that a lot of what works best is highly individual-specific due to all sorts of reasons, including personal food preferences, genetics, microbiome, etc etc etc. The standard explanation for diet working better than exercise is that the extra caloric expenditure of exercise gets washed out by excess intake; I think this is undoubtedly true but after having worked clinically in obesity settings, I also think it's really astonishing how little exercise some people get. That is, again, I think some people who start adding a modicum of exercise are likely to see huge gains from it simply because their caloric expenditure is starting so low; conversely, most people who take up exercise probably exercise within a certain range, so it doesn't say a lot about the expectable weight loss of someone who is really exercising intensely.
What I remember was that diets didn't differ from one another in efficacy once you controlled for caloric restriction, and that dieting was more effective than exercise, although exercise did have a small but quantifiable effect.
I also think one of the meta-analyses compared atkins-style diets to others and concluded that there was some slight evidence for their superiority (in terms of weight loss) in the short term but that after a few weeks they didn't differ from the others.
I've worked in bariatric surgery units and my personal sense from that and reading some of the literature is that a lot of what works best is highly individual-specific due to all sorts of reasons, including personal food preferences, genetics, microbiome, etc etc etc. The standard explanation for diet working better than exercise is that the extra caloric expenditure of exercise gets washed out by excess intake; I think this is undoubtedly true but after having worked clinically in obesity settings, I also think it's really astonishing how little exercise some people get. That is, again, I think some people who start adding a modicum of exercise are likely to see huge gains from it simply because their caloric expenditure is starting so low; conversely, most people who take up exercise probably exercise within a certain range, so it doesn't say a lot about the expectable weight loss of someone who is really exercising intensely.
They work by definition because you eat less calories
It's the calories. People have lost weight by eating nothing but McDonalds (and strictly counting the calories of course)
Diets seriously need to be considered through the lens of Occam's razor.
First, radical dietary changes cause rapid fluctuations in weight regularly. Not fat, weight.
Second, if you eat only one thing or are generally restrictive... You will probably lose a lot of appetite.
It's no good going off on some theory about pottasium. Occam's razor suggests that this also works for the been soup diet, fruit diet, etc.
It is, potentially, useful to do these kinds of things as an isolation diet (gradually add back foods and pay attention to effects). It's also useful to just break bad habits by doing weird stuff sometimes.
I'm Irish. I love potatoes. They do not have magic dietary powers. The potato doesn't explain anything. You can get similar results with toast, bacon or bananas. The results do not mean anything specific for longer term fat loss, health, etc.
It just proves that bodyweight fluctuates in response to radical diet change. That is known.
Same for a lot of the "water tricks" that thankfully have started to die down. They use bodybuilder tricks to eventually dehydrate themselves for a perfect look on stage day. It's sold as a weight loss trick.
First, radical dietary changes cause rapid fluctuations in weight regularly. Not fat, weight.
Second, if you eat only one thing or are generally restrictive... You will probably lose a lot of appetite.
It's no good going off on some theory about pottasium. Occam's razor suggests that this also works for the been soup diet, fruit diet, etc.
It is, potentially, useful to do these kinds of things as an isolation diet (gradually add back foods and pay attention to effects). It's also useful to just break bad habits by doing weird stuff sometimes.
I'm Irish. I love potatoes. They do not have magic dietary powers. The potato doesn't explain anything. You can get similar results with toast, bacon or bananas. The results do not mean anything specific for longer term fat loss, health, etc.
It just proves that bodyweight fluctuates in response to radical diet change. That is known.
Same for a lot of the "water tricks" that thankfully have started to die down. They use bodybuilder tricks to eventually dehydrate themselves for a perfect look on stage day. It's sold as a weight loss trick.
> They do not have magic dietary powers.
Depends on what diet you compare them to. If you could demonstrate people could live healthy lives on just potatoes compared to a normal Western diet, that seems like a significant finding. I don't think toast or bacon would give you the array of vitamins/nutritional value. What other foods would beat out potatoes? Beets maybe? I have also heard some dietitians questioning the "eat the rainbow" recommendation, and that having less food diversity is actually better. I am not suggesting limiting yourself to one food is ideal, but maybe limiting to just a few types foods is, depending on your genetics.
Depends on what diet you compare them to. If you could demonstrate people could live healthy lives on just potatoes compared to a normal Western diet, that seems like a significant finding. I don't think toast or bacon would give you the array of vitamins/nutritional value. What other foods would beat out potatoes? Beets maybe? I have also heard some dietitians questioning the "eat the rainbow" recommendation, and that having less food diversity is actually better. I am not suggesting limiting yourself to one food is ideal, but maybe limiting to just a few types foods is, depending on your genetics.
>Depends on what diet you compare them to. If you could demonstrate people could live healthy lives on just potatoes compared to a normal Western diet.
People (academic even) "demonstrate" this all the time. All meat diet. Vegan diet. Raw diet. One meal per day. The potatoes and lemons diet. Etc.
Feed most overweight western adults a restrictive diet, their health is likely to improve dramatically. That's because it's restrictive. Not because of what it is restricted to.
If you have >15kg of excess fat, you are probably reslient to undernourishment. The fat loss, lower blood sugar and such will improve your health.
Btw, in 19th century ireland, poorhouses published guidelines for the all potato diet. Their clients were undernourished. Their guidelines based on observing individuals who would deteriorate quickly if the diet was insufficient.
Their dietary minimum was 3-4kg of potatoes + 1 pint of milk or one portion of sardines or mackerel. You need to eat a lot of potatoes to make this diet sustainable.
A modern Irish man is much heavier, and much, much fatter than our great grandfathers. We also do less physical work. In that context, we can survive just fine on a lot of insufficient diets for a very long time.
People (academic even) "demonstrate" this all the time. All meat diet. Vegan diet. Raw diet. One meal per day. The potatoes and lemons diet. Etc.
Feed most overweight western adults a restrictive diet, their health is likely to improve dramatically. That's because it's restrictive. Not because of what it is restricted to.
If you have >15kg of excess fat, you are probably reslient to undernourishment. The fat loss, lower blood sugar and such will improve your health.
Btw, in 19th century ireland, poorhouses published guidelines for the all potato diet. Their clients were undernourished. Their guidelines based on observing individuals who would deteriorate quickly if the diet was insufficient.
Their dietary minimum was 3-4kg of potatoes + 1 pint of milk or one portion of sardines or mackerel. You need to eat a lot of potatoes to make this diet sustainable.
A modern Irish man is much heavier, and much, much fatter than our great grandfathers. We also do less physical work. In that context, we can survive just fine on a lot of insufficient diets for a very long time.
> You will probably lose a lot of appetite
This, probably almost any natural food that is not too sweet will work.
Overeating manufactured "food" devoid of nutrition, pumped full of sugar and refined carbs has become the default in the western diet... That a potato-only diet is an improvement highlights just how bad it has become.
This, probably almost any natural food that is not too sweet will work.
Overeating manufactured "food" devoid of nutrition, pumped full of sugar and refined carbs has become the default in the western diet... That a potato-only diet is an improvement highlights just how bad it has become.
Even ice cream or French fries have a decent shot at working.
Over a decade ago a dude proved you can lose weight eating mostly twinkies if the calorie math works. I don't think theres any food it wouldn't work with.
https://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor...
I'm so disappointed by SMTM's trajectory. One of their key initial insights was that you don't need control groups for diet trials because essentially no one loses more than 10-20 lbs on a diet. You can just run the treatment group and, if you get lots of people losing more than that, you know you've got something.
The flip side, of course, is that losing 10-20 lbs from a diet shouldn't be taken as proof that the diet does anything special. People can do that with almost any diet.
SMTM's potato diet study found exactly that - 10 to 20 lbs of weight loss for most participants. This should be strong evidence that it's not a silver bullet. SMTM is pretending otherwise.
The flip side, of course, is that losing 10-20 lbs from a diet shouldn't be taken as proof that the diet does anything special. People can do that with almost any diet.
SMTM's potato diet study found exactly that - 10 to 20 lbs of weight loss for most participants. This should be strong evidence that it's not a silver bullet. SMTM is pretending otherwise.
The difference is that people report that the potato diet is /easy/. No cravings, no endless hunger & having to force yourself to calorie count and stop eating when you hit your target. Eat as much as you like, when you like.
That’s radically different from other diets.
That’s radically different from other diets.
I guess it's easy on the hunger/cravings side of things but it eliminates your ability to enjoy food and enjoy the social aspect of dining. I achieved similar by swapping out white bread for whole wheat and mostly eliminating dessert from my diet. I also have no hunger/cravings/calorie counting but I still enjoy all my meals. I don't mean to say that any one diet is the answer, just that if your goals are modest you have many options that will work, and most will be more pleasant than the potato diet.
Eliminating deserts doesn't make cravings go away for me. I feel hungry (or a weird similar feeling) until I eat something sweet, no matter how much I eat of a main course.
But I tried the potato diet and my cravings were gone. For two weeks it was trivial to keep, but then social aspects intervened and I gave it up.
But I tried the potato diet and my cravings were gone. For two weeks it was trivial to keep, but then social aspects intervened and I gave it up.
That sounds really challenging. I guess people vary a lot in their experiences of hunger, which is probably why different diets work/don't work for different people
The attrition rate was very high. The claim that it's easy was based on a few anecdotes, which aren't representative of the trial participants.
The problem is SMTM seems obsessed with finding some explanation for why the diet works other than it being an easy method to reduce calories and generally appears convinced theres a non-CICO explanation for obesity and weight loss/gain that these potato diet experiments will be able to discover.
“An easy method to reduce calories” is fairly revolutionary in the academic diet world. Consistently losing weight is something that people find hard to stick to. A diet that is safe & makes it easy is in and of itself something very interesting.
HN types tend to take the “just eat less, lol” attitude, but in the real world that just doesn’t work very well for the majority of people. There’s no point arguing that people “should” be better at it: they aren’t, for sound biological reasons. Forcing them to behave otherwise & then blaming them when it doesn’t work is simply cruel. Hence the idea that a diet that lets obese people steadily lose weight without any other interventions is a bigger deal than you’d otherwise expect.
HN types tend to take the “just eat less, lol” attitude, but in the real world that just doesn’t work very well for the majority of people. There’s no point arguing that people “should” be better at it: they aren’t, for sound biological reasons. Forcing them to behave otherwise & then blaming them when it doesn’t work is simply cruel. Hence the idea that a diet that lets obese people steadily lose weight without any other interventions is a bigger deal than you’d otherwise expect.
I feel like the only reason people are losing weight is because eating 20 potatoes in a day is insane and no one on this diet is hitting their BMR. Of course they will lose weight and they will with any variation that keeps them under their BMR.
Ever since food inflation has gotten so crazy, I've been buying bags of potatoes and nuking 3 at a time for a meal/snack. Like 3 potatoes leaves me feeling stuffed, but is only maybe 300 calories. So not only am I healthier, but I feel full longer, and am almost back to my college wrestling weight.
For people saying any diet works, I think the interest here is the rules of "eat as many potatoes as you want" are very easy to follow, it's unambiguous if you followed it properly, simple to buy the ingredients anywhere and when eating out, it's cheap, is meant to work fast, and you aren't going to feel hungry which helps a lot. Most fad diets don't tick as many boxes.
Feels obvious to me that it works via “calories in, calories out” though. 2kg of potatoes a day is about 1500kcal so it's hard to overeat.
For the participants it didn't work on, surely the most likely cause that should be controlled for is how many potatoes they ate or how much oil/butter (some of the most calorific ingredients we use) they had on top?
And not if participants avoided tomatoes ("Tomatoes are our top bet, but other possible blockers might be: wheat, bread, grains more generally, maybe meat.")?
Feels obvious to me that it works via “calories in, calories out” though. 2kg of potatoes a day is about 1500kcal so it's hard to overeat.
For the participants it didn't work on, surely the most likely cause that should be controlled for is how many potatoes they ate or how much oil/butter (some of the most calorific ingredients we use) they had on top?
And not if participants avoided tomatoes ("Tomatoes are our top bet, but other possible blockers might be: wheat, bread, grains more generally, maybe meat.")?
What’s interesting about the diet isn’t the mechanism for weight loss (you’re right, you don’t eat enough calories, that part is simple enough.) The interesting part is the intense appetite suppression that the diet produces. From my brief experience, it’s like after a couple of days you lose interest in eating - even when your body is sending you signals that indicate you’re likely starving. It’d be really interesting to figure out what causes this and then (preferably) reproduce it in a form that doesn’t require potatoes or injections.
Is this not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satiety_value which has already been studied?
"Satiety value is the degree at which food gives a human the sense of food gratification, the exact contrast feeling of hunger ... Foods with the most satiation per calorie are often:high in certain proteinase inhibitors that suppress appetite - eg potatoes"
Potatoes are well known to be the most satiating food by a wide margin.
> you don’t eat enough calories, that part is simple enough.
The articles doesn't seem to agree though? They seem focused on things like how tomatoes might significantly block the weight loss of potatoes.
"Satiety value is the degree at which food gives a human the sense of food gratification, the exact contrast feeling of hunger ... Foods with the most satiation per calorie are often:high in certain proteinase inhibitors that suppress appetite - eg potatoes"
Potatoes are well known to be the most satiating food by a wide margin.
> you don’t eat enough calories, that part is simple enough.
The articles doesn't seem to agree though? They seem focused on things like how tomatoes might significantly block the weight loss of potatoes.
The only way to explain the effect of the diet to someone is for them to try it. The effect is not like “I just ate potatoes and they quickly made me feel full.” It’s more like “I am taking a drug that disrupts the GLP-1 cycle in my body and makes me lose interest in eating food at all, even when I haven’t recently eaten many potatoes.” Obviously N=1 and no, I don’t think it’s very healthy to do this for long.
> It’s more like “I am taking a drug that disrupts the GLP-1 cycle in my body and makes me lose interest in eating food at all, even when I haven’t recently eaten many potatoes."
Are there any results that say most participants experienced that and to what degree? I spoke to a few people that followed similar diets and they didn't report (obviously anecdotal too) anything about really strange levels of appetite suppression, just that they were happy they could eat as much as they wanted when they felt like it. It likely depends a lot on what you're used to eating as well.
Are there any results that say most participants experienced that and to what degree? I spoke to a few people that followed similar diets and they didn't report (obviously anecdotal too) anything about really strange levels of appetite suppression, just that they were happy they could eat as much as they wanted when they felt like it. It likely depends a lot on what you're used to eating as well.
I think many people report things like “I get bored with eating potatoes and thus don’t eat enough calories,” even though in principle they could eat as many potatoes as they want, spread over as many small meals as possible, and they’re clearly in a huge calorie deficit. I’m not sure how you would use these anecdotal reports to scientifically distinguish appetite suppression from “satiety” from psychological effects here. All I can tell you is that it was an unusual feeling for my appetite to go away while I was very clearly starving.
PS I’m not sure if we’re even disagreeing here. People who take GLP-1 agonists report that they’re less interested in snacks and get “full” much more quickly when they do eat, which tracks my experience on this diet. The difference is that we have a slightly better understanding of what’s happening chemically there, whereas the potato diet we’re like “maybe potatoes just make you feel really full for some unknown reason, could be placebo, shrug emoji.”
PS I’m not sure if we’re even disagreeing here. People who take GLP-1 agonists report that they’re less interested in snacks and get “full” much more quickly when they do eat, which tracks my experience on this diet. The difference is that we have a slightly better understanding of what’s happening chemically there, whereas the potato diet we’re like “maybe potatoes just make you feel really full for some unknown reason, could be placebo, shrug emoji.”
Isn't that basically the premise behind Ozempic?
So people lost weight and these people have “no idea why?”
Well, ok, it’s calories, but why even bother to have any sort of study about this?
Of course people who don’t know about calories would think they invented a whole new idea and methodology on scientific research
Well, ok, it’s calories, but why even bother to have any sort of study about this?
Of course people who don’t know about calories would think they invented a whole new idea and methodology on scientific research
All weight loss is because of a calorie deficit; that isn't (or shouldn't be) controversial.
The interesting questions are why a diet produces a caloric deficit, and how difficult that deficit is to maintain.
The "don't eat anything and drink nothing but water" diet produces a caloric deficit through a very obvious mechanism, but it isn't something people can adhere to long-term.
Semaglutide produces a caloric deficit by turning off the mechanisms that make people want to eat, and appears to be sustainable long-term (assuming you can financially afford it).
With the potato diet, the question isn't exactly "why did they lose weight?" but more "why did participants reduce their calories?" Were they so sick of goddamned potatoes that they couldn't bare to shove another one down their throat? If so, that indicates that the diet is unsustainable. On the other hand, if people were enjoying the diet and reduced their calories because the potatoes left them feeling fuller, longer, that's a mark in the protocol' favor.
Weight loss studies aren't about finding ways to reduce calories, they're about finding ways to reduce calories that people will comply with. And based on how often diets fail, and how often people regain all (or more) of the weight lost once they stop dieting, I would argue that we actually haven't figured out the answer to this yet.
The interesting questions are why a diet produces a caloric deficit, and how difficult that deficit is to maintain.
The "don't eat anything and drink nothing but water" diet produces a caloric deficit through a very obvious mechanism, but it isn't something people can adhere to long-term.
Semaglutide produces a caloric deficit by turning off the mechanisms that make people want to eat, and appears to be sustainable long-term (assuming you can financially afford it).
With the potato diet, the question isn't exactly "why did they lose weight?" but more "why did participants reduce their calories?" Were they so sick of goddamned potatoes that they couldn't bare to shove another one down their throat? If so, that indicates that the diet is unsustainable. On the other hand, if people were enjoying the diet and reduced their calories because the potatoes left them feeling fuller, longer, that's a mark in the protocol' favor.
Weight loss studies aren't about finding ways to reduce calories, they're about finding ways to reduce calories that people will comply with. And based on how often diets fail, and how often people regain all (or more) of the weight lost once they stop dieting, I would argue that we actually haven't figured out the answer to this yet.
> All weight loss is because of a calorie deficit; that isn't (or shouldn't be) controversial.
It's very controversial, which is part of why the SMTM blog exists in the first place. If running a calorie deficit were sufficient then any diet in the world should work, and we have so much evidence of obese people struggling with quality of life even living on extreme calorie deficit diets. It's not willpower, not all calories are equal, and there's a lot of questions about how useful calories are as a metric in general.
(I'm of the opinion food calories are the last bastion of Phlogiston Theory in any of the sciences. The Standard Calorie Model was invented at the bizarre Sanitarium at Battle Creek by vegetable-hating vegetarians who religiously thought grains were the one true food from God, and were designed to sell more cereals [Dr. Kellogg and his brother that founded the Kellogg Company], crackers, and even cookies [Dr. Graham who helped found Nabisco]. Food Calories are a poor metric of chemical content. Exercise Calories are worse metric of human energy output: The human body is not an ideal spherical furnace and the moments of highest heat output are dangerous conditions better known as "fevers" and "strokes". The Standard Calorie Model is "replicated science", but most of the replication studies were done by German scientists in the 1930s and 1940s and any replication crisis that involves possible war crimes makes other sciences' p-hacking crises look positively quaint. There is a lot of unsolved controversy around Food Calories.)
It's very controversial, which is part of why the SMTM blog exists in the first place. If running a calorie deficit were sufficient then any diet in the world should work, and we have so much evidence of obese people struggling with quality of life even living on extreme calorie deficit diets. It's not willpower, not all calories are equal, and there's a lot of questions about how useful calories are as a metric in general.
(I'm of the opinion food calories are the last bastion of Phlogiston Theory in any of the sciences. The Standard Calorie Model was invented at the bizarre Sanitarium at Battle Creek by vegetable-hating vegetarians who religiously thought grains were the one true food from God, and were designed to sell more cereals [Dr. Kellogg and his brother that founded the Kellogg Company], crackers, and even cookies [Dr. Graham who helped found Nabisco]. Food Calories are a poor metric of chemical content. Exercise Calories are worse metric of human energy output: The human body is not an ideal spherical furnace and the moments of highest heat output are dangerous conditions better known as "fevers" and "strokes". The Standard Calorie Model is "replicated science", but most of the replication studies were done by German scientists in the 1930s and 1940s and any replication crisis that involves possible war crimes makes other sciences' p-hacking crises look positively quaint. There is a lot of unsolved controversy around Food Calories.)
This post is really confusing. The "Standard Calorie Model" is not a thing. Are you using the term as a shorthand? If so, other people aren't going to know what it means. Regardless, nothing related to the use of calories to quantify energy intake from food or energy burned from exercise comes from Nazi Germany or Dr Kellogg.
Despite other ridiculous beliefs Kellogg was a big fan of vegetables which were a big part of his diets. The only study semi-related to food and Germany in the 30s/40s I can think of is the Warsaw Ghetto Hunger Study, but that was on the physical and psychological effects of starvation not how calories are calculated and was done by Jewish doctors in Poland not Germany.
The use of calorie to refer to energy in food and the first method for measuring the amount came from Atwater in the late 1890s and the first studies on the amount of calories people burned were done in the 1910s resulting in the Harris-Benedict equation, a modified version of which is still in use today for calculating metabolic rates.
Like yes theres still a lot of challenges in how calories in food and calories burned are calculated and a lot of values can end up being wrong on both sides, but thats only a problem of the equation having incorrect numbers and doesn't disprove CICO itself.
I'm seriously confused where you got the ideas you're putting forward here.
Despite other ridiculous beliefs Kellogg was a big fan of vegetables which were a big part of his diets. The only study semi-related to food and Germany in the 30s/40s I can think of is the Warsaw Ghetto Hunger Study, but that was on the physical and psychological effects of starvation not how calories are calculated and was done by Jewish doctors in Poland not Germany.
The use of calorie to refer to energy in food and the first method for measuring the amount came from Atwater in the late 1890s and the first studies on the amount of calories people burned were done in the 1910s resulting in the Harris-Benedict equation, a modified version of which is still in use today for calculating metabolic rates.
Like yes theres still a lot of challenges in how calories in food and calories burned are calculated and a lot of values can end up being wrong on both sides, but thats only a problem of the equation having incorrect numbers and doesn't disprove CICO itself.
I'm seriously confused where you got the ideas you're putting forward here.
Sorry, I suppose that I do have some things mixed up and have listened to too many conspiracy theories. In re-researching now I may have earlier confused a journal with an author and a few other things when researching where some specific exercise calorie numbers come from. I'll retract most of my statements about the "Standard Calorie Model" as bad syncretism and review again further later.
> how calories in food and calories burned
Right or wrong on the specifics of the history of such things, this phrasing continues to bother me that every discussion about calories is still entirely in the vocabulary of Phlogistion. Calories are treated as particles somehow "in" food, and all we care about is how well calories "burn". The metabolism doesn't work as a fire. This just seems to me like a fundamentally bad assumption for how energy works in the metabolism. How is heat energy in food or heat energy during exercise good measurements or metrics for food or for human activity?
It's too over-simplifying as a model. It favors a heat-centric view of energy that both chemistry and physics have since rejected as critically flawed (including all the many times they rejected Phlogiston Theory). Physics has an easy and direct formula for the energy density of mass (E=mc^2) but we'd all have a good laugh if someone proposed we model human food consumption as an ideal fusion or fission reaction. Why is it not equally laughable when we talk about the energy in food based solely on how much heat it creates when food is set on fire or the energy costs of exercise based mostly on how much people exercising raise the temperatures of the rooms around them?
I think that's a bit more strange than just "incorrect numbers". I know that's a rare opinion in general, and I offer my opinions not to "disprove CICO" but to encourage people to explore the controversies themselves more deeply whether they end up agreeing with me after the exploration or not.
I think CICO is somewhat fine first-order approximation. Over-simplifying models are useful sometimes, and a broken clock can be right at least twice a day, especially if your error sensitivity is only plus or minus 10 hours. There are too many anomalies in the current obesity crises that CICO doesn't explain well. I think far too many people assume the over-simplified CICO map is the entirety of the complex territory of human dieting, and have a near religious fervor that too many people in the world simply love eating Phlogiston particles too much and don't have the "willpower" to cut the Phlogiston in their diet nor to exercise their Phlogiston away.
Plus there's a lot of interesting Goodhart's Law controversy in modern food that when a metric becomes the target it ceases being a good metric: have you explored the "zero-calorie" sections of your local grocery store lately? What do you think is the macronutrient benefit of some of those beverages and snacks? Do they actually seem healthier to you than things with plenty of food calories? Those foods certainly seem free enough of Phlogiston, so far as I can tell. But they certainly don't seem free from interactions with the human digestive system to me.
Maybe these aren't controversies that are worth talking about? I'm feeling sorry I brought it up. I'm definitely sorry I mixed up some facts that distracted from the actual points I was making. The obsession with heat energy/fire output as the one metric to rule them all and that can explain "all of food and exercise" is fascinating to me. It seems bad organic chemistry and it seems bad physics to me. CICO is right just often enough (as a high error rate, first order approximation) that it probably isn't worth the effort disproving, but that doesn't mean it is free from controversy.
> how calories in food and calories burned
Right or wrong on the specifics of the history of such things, this phrasing continues to bother me that every discussion about calories is still entirely in the vocabulary of Phlogistion. Calories are treated as particles somehow "in" food, and all we care about is how well calories "burn". The metabolism doesn't work as a fire. This just seems to me like a fundamentally bad assumption for how energy works in the metabolism. How is heat energy in food or heat energy during exercise good measurements or metrics for food or for human activity?
It's too over-simplifying as a model. It favors a heat-centric view of energy that both chemistry and physics have since rejected as critically flawed (including all the many times they rejected Phlogiston Theory). Physics has an easy and direct formula for the energy density of mass (E=mc^2) but we'd all have a good laugh if someone proposed we model human food consumption as an ideal fusion or fission reaction. Why is it not equally laughable when we talk about the energy in food based solely on how much heat it creates when food is set on fire or the energy costs of exercise based mostly on how much people exercising raise the temperatures of the rooms around them?
I think that's a bit more strange than just "incorrect numbers". I know that's a rare opinion in general, and I offer my opinions not to "disprove CICO" but to encourage people to explore the controversies themselves more deeply whether they end up agreeing with me after the exploration or not.
I think CICO is somewhat fine first-order approximation. Over-simplifying models are useful sometimes, and a broken clock can be right at least twice a day, especially if your error sensitivity is only plus or minus 10 hours. There are too many anomalies in the current obesity crises that CICO doesn't explain well. I think far too many people assume the over-simplified CICO map is the entirety of the complex territory of human dieting, and have a near religious fervor that too many people in the world simply love eating Phlogiston particles too much and don't have the "willpower" to cut the Phlogiston in their diet nor to exercise their Phlogiston away.
Plus there's a lot of interesting Goodhart's Law controversy in modern food that when a metric becomes the target it ceases being a good metric: have you explored the "zero-calorie" sections of your local grocery store lately? What do you think is the macronutrient benefit of some of those beverages and snacks? Do they actually seem healthier to you than things with plenty of food calories? Those foods certainly seem free enough of Phlogiston, so far as I can tell. But they certainly don't seem free from interactions with the human digestive system to me.
Maybe these aren't controversies that are worth talking about? I'm feeling sorry I brought it up. I'm definitely sorry I mixed up some facts that distracted from the actual points I was making. The obsession with heat energy/fire output as the one metric to rule them all and that can explain "all of food and exercise" is fascinating to me. It seems bad organic chemistry and it seems bad physics to me. CICO is right just often enough (as a high error rate, first order approximation) that it probably isn't worth the effort disproving, but that doesn't mean it is free from controversy.
The SMTM theory is that obesity is not directly about counting calories, but more like a contagious disease due to a contaminant that causes people to be hungrier and eat more calories. Many people will dismiss this outright, but consider these things:
1. 40% of US adults are obese, which is insanely high for a willpower issue (gambling addiction is 1-2% for example)
2. The vast majority of weight loss attempts fail miserably long term, with success rates somewhere between 5-20%
3. There is precedent for this type of idea with stomach ulcers. We thought they were a psychological cause but the main cause turned out to be H Pylori bacteria
The problem is that even if they are right, it is very difficult to detect a difference between directly eating less calories and not eating a contaminant that makes you hungry so you indirectly eat less calories.
1. 40% of US adults are obese, which is insanely high for a willpower issue (gambling addiction is 1-2% for example)
2. The vast majority of weight loss attempts fail miserably long term, with success rates somewhere between 5-20%
3. There is precedent for this type of idea with stomach ulcers. We thought they were a psychological cause but the main cause turned out to be H Pylori bacteria
The problem is that even if they are right, it is very difficult to detect a difference between directly eating less calories and not eating a contaminant that makes you hungry so you indirectly eat less calories.
I just read thousands of words about a potato-based diet on that website. Didn't think my Tuesday was gonna start that way, but here we are. HN is amazing.
One possible riff: cook, chill and reheat all the potatoes. That is known to increase resistant starch.
This concept of a Riff Trial is new to me. Sounds like it would serve as a great pre-trial method to hone in on designs for more serious trials, one with controls and blinding. Is this already the case? Or are riff trials generally only performed in citizen research?
I love the half-mad, half-hilarious, Ben Franklinesque quality of this enterprise: “Some people think the potato diet causes weight loss because it is bland. We think this is wrong too. First of all, potatoes are delicious. Second of all, this doesn’t make any sense. Why would that happen.”
I'd participate if I hadn't already tried the potato diet before.
My guess is that it probably works, at least to an extent. The reason I used the word "probably" is I didn't stick with it long enough to lose over 10 lbs. This is because it's probably the least pleasant weight loss technique I've tried. No joke, I'd rather eat nothing the whole time. Eating potatoes seems awesome at first, but I began to really hate the taste and texture after just a few days. This is of course my opinion. Some people have had great results on it. It's just not for me. I know the author of this article doesn't agree on this at all, but I beg to differ. Almost every other technique is more comfortable for me. Though I'm sure it'd be fine if I added lots of fat and ketchup. I just wasn't going to do that and risk gaining a bunch of fat.
Off the top of my head, here are all the possible ways that a monodiet of potatoes can result in weight loss:
- Potatoes are a highly-satiating food, one of the highest in satiety
- Potatoes get boring without lots of added fat, salt, and spices.
- Potatoes may contain some "resistant" starch, though I've seen a few people self-experiment with resistant starch and conclude that it's no different than consuming glucose.
- A potato diet mostly engages the metabolism of glucose and not so much with fat (unless you're adding a ton of fat), so the Randle cycle is engaged much less, hypothetically. Though this is supposedly contradicted by people eating potatoes with heavy cream.
- Potatoes only cause a small increase of uric acid in the blood in contrast with other foods, uric acid having a correlation with fat mass. Then again, there are people who eat diets that cause a higher increase in uric acid and remain lean and muscular (carnivore diet is an example).
- Sarcopenia from a lack of dietary protein can cause some net weight loss.
Most other ideas I've seen are pure hypotheses that either aren't that plausible, or are untested, or are mechanisms only demonstrated in vitro.
Some things I'd like to note about this crowd study and what I'm reading in this proposal:
- Allowing participants to choose their own adventure is a poor design. There's definitely value in testing different combinations of adjunct foods along with the potato diet, but this should be controlled based on how many participants sign up. The cohort might otherwise become lopsided towards a certain preparation, adding sour cream, etc. Instead, candidates should be assigned an adjunct and be allowed to accept or reject the challenge.
- The part about "If you can’t get potatoes, eat something else rather than go hungry, and pick up the potatoes again when you can" really reduces the potential value of this experiment. This may add too much noise. It's already bad enough that people are bad at self-reporting, but now you're giving people permission to just do whatever.
- Participants should record their physical activity. This will of course be full of statistical noise, but it might as well be recorded in case it's helpful. Have them record their activity for at least a month prior to the trial and record it during the trial. The reason I think this is a good idea is that, when dieting, people may have a tendency to put themselves into an "I'm getting healthy" mindset which encourages them to also get exercise, which is a confounding factor here.
- Day-by-day body weight data is mostly worthless. I would explicitly encourage participants to not record their weight at all except at the beginning and end of the trial. Daily weight checks can have a psychological effect that may encourage the participant to perform actions that confound the trial, such as walking more or eating less than they otherwise would in order to make sure they get the intended result. This can happen unconsciously.
Otherwise, I think this idea is awesome and that more crowd "riff trials" should be done.
Does anyone know of a site dedicated to riff trials? If there isn't one, it should definitely exist.
My guess is that it probably works, at least to an extent. The reason I used the word "probably" is I didn't stick with it long enough to lose over 10 lbs. This is because it's probably the least pleasant weight loss technique I've tried. No joke, I'd rather eat nothing the whole time. Eating potatoes seems awesome at first, but I began to really hate the taste and texture after just a few days. This is of course my opinion. Some people have had great results on it. It's just not for me. I know the author of this article doesn't agree on this at all, but I beg to differ. Almost every other technique is more comfortable for me. Though I'm sure it'd be fine if I added lots of fat and ketchup. I just wasn't going to do that and risk gaining a bunch of fat.
Off the top of my head, here are all the possible ways that a monodiet of potatoes can result in weight loss:
- Potatoes are a highly-satiating food, one of the highest in satiety
- Potatoes get boring without lots of added fat, salt, and spices.
- Potatoes may contain some "resistant" starch, though I've seen a few people self-experiment with resistant starch and conclude that it's no different than consuming glucose.
- A potato diet mostly engages the metabolism of glucose and not so much with fat (unless you're adding a ton of fat), so the Randle cycle is engaged much less, hypothetically. Though this is supposedly contradicted by people eating potatoes with heavy cream.
- Potatoes only cause a small increase of uric acid in the blood in contrast with other foods, uric acid having a correlation with fat mass. Then again, there are people who eat diets that cause a higher increase in uric acid and remain lean and muscular (carnivore diet is an example).
- Sarcopenia from a lack of dietary protein can cause some net weight loss.
Most other ideas I've seen are pure hypotheses that either aren't that plausible, or are untested, or are mechanisms only demonstrated in vitro.
Some things I'd like to note about this crowd study and what I'm reading in this proposal:
- Allowing participants to choose their own adventure is a poor design. There's definitely value in testing different combinations of adjunct foods along with the potato diet, but this should be controlled based on how many participants sign up. The cohort might otherwise become lopsided towards a certain preparation, adding sour cream, etc. Instead, candidates should be assigned an adjunct and be allowed to accept or reject the challenge.
- The part about "If you can’t get potatoes, eat something else rather than go hungry, and pick up the potatoes again when you can" really reduces the potential value of this experiment. This may add too much noise. It's already bad enough that people are bad at self-reporting, but now you're giving people permission to just do whatever.
- Participants should record their physical activity. This will of course be full of statistical noise, but it might as well be recorded in case it's helpful. Have them record their activity for at least a month prior to the trial and record it during the trial. The reason I think this is a good idea is that, when dieting, people may have a tendency to put themselves into an "I'm getting healthy" mindset which encourages them to also get exercise, which is a confounding factor here.
- Day-by-day body weight data is mostly worthless. I would explicitly encourage participants to not record their weight at all except at the beginning and end of the trial. Daily weight checks can have a psychological effect that may encourage the participant to perform actions that confound the trial, such as walking more or eating less than they otherwise would in order to make sure they get the intended result. This can happen unconsciously.
Otherwise, I think this idea is awesome and that more crowd "riff trials" should be done.
Does anyone know of a site dedicated to riff trials? If there isn't one, it should definitely exist.
Let's try potato + semaglutide.
I love this idea.
Does anyone know of a similar riff trial related to irritable bowel syndrome and gut health?
Does anyone know of a similar riff trial related to irritable bowel syndrome and gut health?
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I imagine anyone who is researching diets this heavily and is willing to sign up for a weird one may have lost weight regardless of if they used the potato diet or not - they committed to serious lifestyle changes that caused them to lose weight. Maybe it’s potatoes, maybes it’s everything the person changed in their and potatoes didn’t offset those.
And also, they're not eating out. This is a 100% vegetarian home cooked diet. At least for most Americans, even if there's literally no other mechanism in play, that's an absolutely massive change.
That could be a riff you contribute to this study. Only potatoes at home, but eating out. Probably would be similar to their half-potatoe diet though
I agree, restriction-based diets (restricting food choice, amount, or timing) virtually always yield positive results initially. If that phenomenon is a given, then digging deeper into the variations could help us understand why that is the case.
One suggestion: give participants an "IDGAF LOL" option where the experimenters tell them what protocol to follow, and randomly assign some leading contenders.
That way people can do what they want, but we might also get some well-identified estimates :)
That way people can do what they want, but we might also get some well-identified estimates :)
I like how they are really going to hash this all out in one go.
Keeping my eyes peeled on this. Really fascinating.
Just be careful not to let the excitement sprout too quickly—stay grounded.
Make sure you have some skin in the game.
> The diet worked — people lost 10.6 lbs on average over only four weeks — and we had basically no idea why
I do fasting a lot. Doing diet for weight loss is a huge red flag. Human body gains and loses water very easily. Change of 10 lbs (in any direction) is rounding error, after changing a diet.
Major reason to do potato diet are health benefits. It decreases inflammation, and gives your gut chance to heal. It may improve sugar digestion, liver and so on. Basically any junk and toxins you eat normally, go away on potato only diet.
AFTER you become healthy, you may try to lose weight.
I do fasting a lot. Doing diet for weight loss is a huge red flag. Human body gains and loses water very easily. Change of 10 lbs (in any direction) is rounding error, after changing a diet.
Major reason to do potato diet are health benefits. It decreases inflammation, and gives your gut chance to heal. It may improve sugar digestion, liver and so on. Basically any junk and toxins you eat normally, go away on potato only diet.
AFTER you become healthy, you may try to lose weight.
>It decreases inflammation, and gives your gut chance to heal. It may improve sugar digestion, liver and so on.
Are there clinical trials that show these outcomes in patients? (To clarify, I don't mean studies that show potatoes have potential chemicals/mechanisms related to those outcomes, but actual trials with patients that saw a scientifically meaningful difference in those outcomes after a potato diet.
Are there clinical trials that show these outcomes in patients? (To clarify, I don't mean studies that show potatoes have potential chemicals/mechanisms related to those outcomes, but actual trials with patients that saw a scientifically meaningful difference in those outcomes after a potato diet.
I do not read studies, but this pops from google [1]
Potato diet is a baseline in fasting community. Before you do long water fast, you need to go on detox. Doing potato diet for couple of weeks is strongly recommended.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6928682/
Potato diet is a baseline in fasting community. Before you do long water fast, you need to go on detox. Doing potato diet for couple of weeks is strongly recommended.
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6928682/
Like, they crow that the potato mono-diet "works," in that the people who successfully followed it lost weight. Well, sure -- all of those 70s fad diets "worked" in that sense! Grapefruit and popcorn? Sure, you can lose weight on that!
But their own numbers show that people regain the weight after they start eating other foods again: "On average, people gained back most of the weight they lost."[2]
People who successfully follow very restrictive diets will lose weight... as long as they follow it. And these "riffs" in the OP where it's potatoes and bacon, or potatoes and gummi worms, or whatever, won't change that basic observation.
[1]: http://achemicalhunger.com/
[2]: https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2023/01/26/smtm-potato-diet-co...