I was in such disbelief when I weighed in on the same Balance Beam Scale I weighed in on Sunday at the gym that I stepped on and off it, checking everything three times, and made sure it balanced at 0.
Yep, indeed. Thirteen pounds since this time Sunday, four days ago. Never have I dropped that much so rapidly—not even LCHF with topped off glycogen…not even close—and not even with the rather uncomfortable 30-hr fasts twice per week I used to do, which usually netted 1-2 pounds weekly in my 2008-2009 endeavor from 245 to 175.
It was so much work and often, brutally painful. …Which is at least part of why I’ve bounced around about 195 +/- on average for a good while, now. But anyway, on Sunday I was a solid 203, probably 203.x. Today, I’m 190, four days later. And it was so damn easy. Not uncomfortable in the slightest, absolutely zero gnawing hunger, no untoward cravings, and often feeling pretty stuffed.
For sure way most of it is water weight, but it had zero whatsoever to do with low carb, ketogenic, high fat, or calorie counting. It was completely ad libitum eating like LCHF is touted, but this is actually more effective, far easier, less craving and no hunger if you don’t want it.
The complete unabridged story and how-to in the next post, coming up later today, more likely in the morning hours of tomorrow.
Until then, then.
Update: The Potato Diet Day 10 Update: Weigh-In, Meals, Workouts, and Blood Glucose Measures
Brian 
Alex 
Leah 
Potatoes? ?
Yes, but with significant twists and tuns.
Fascinating.
I’ve be considering trying the potato hack.
I’m curious to hear how much water weight regain you experience.
Is 4 days the limit, or can you go longer and experience even more dramatic results, without risking some kind of malnutrition
No limit so far as I know. Populations have lived for years on nearly nothing but potatoes.
I’m riding this bus all the way to about 165 steady.
But it has convinced me that potatoes will fill a very sunstantial part of my diet from now on.
Add non potato items regularly like dairy, fish, nuts, fruits. No crazy amounts, just enough to kill the boredom a few times a week. You can live like this for quite some time with a very tight food budget. But make sure your spuds are organic at least. Better still, grow them yourself.
Give me a hint. I wanna start tomorrow…you tease
You had my curiosity sir, but now you have my attention.
Potato starch + probiotics + ??
Ok folks, just wait for the post. Sometime tomorrow.
Now you can see why my 26 pound weight loss in 30 days (even with 6 days mixed in of eating whatever I wanted) is VERY doable.
As you’ve experienced – potatoes (and oatmeal) are very good at dropping inflammation in a HURRY. Thus the ‘water weight’ loss. BUT, so what if the first few days are mostly water weight……..the water weight has to come off too (first)!
Keep at it….165, here you come! This is actually kind of fun!!
And a very nice side benefit to this style of eating: my grocery bill from ‘Whole Paycheck’ (WF) has dropped by at least 50%.
How are you doing the beans? I tried some kidney beans, pressure cooked til soft, then ran them through the meat grinder, then put them in the mixer to blend them in with the mash potatoes. I felt really full, but can’t say I lost weight just from that two days batch. The beans and potatoes were about equal by weight. How are you doing the ratios of beans/potatoes?
I always make my beans in a crock pot, on low,throughout the day. I mix with a pint of organic salsa (plus water) and season to taste – then I put them in the refer.
The last time, I mixed some oven fries (cooled in the refer) in with my beans. I just heat the whole mixed mess up in the microwave…TASTY!
I prob used a pound of potatoes and no set amount of beans (a bunch).
Your mashed taters sound tasty.
The batch of beans I made yesterday, I just dumped 21/2 pounds of quartered taters in with my usual bean mix in the crock pot. They are in the refer – I’ll see how that tastes at my next ‘beans and taters night’.
It’s way fun. So easy, effortless, to run a yuge caloric deficit without hunger and without compromising on nutrition.
To think of all those years squanderd on LCish stuff, 50%+ fat intake, shooting myself in the foot….
I was in the same boat with the LC B.S. But without it, we wouldn’t be here where we are! It’s ALL a learning experience. And the combined input from FTA is what created it all.
I am VERY THANKFUL to all.
@Richard
Not to mention the ever elusive quest to find the best low carb bread recipe … fat bombs would be a better name if you asked me :D But it’s always fun to toy around new recipes in the kitchen … funny how all those experiments are now behind! I have not baked a low carb something for like 3 years or so! My food budget has been under tight control since!
sassysquatch: thank you.
Recipe as follows: 5 pounds of potatoes, half litre of beans. Beans are 10 years old, had to pressure cook them for an hour to make them soft. Adding a tablespoon of baking soda helped too. Set up the meat grinder on the Kitchen Aid, ground the beans into a paste. Peeled the boiled potatoes using my fingertips and fingernails, then put the mixing paddle on the Kitchen Aid and blended potatoes and bleans together into a paste. After reading what Richard wrote about moving the milk from oatmeal day to potato day, I put parmesan cheese into the mix, about 100 calories worth. Then melted a slice of havarti cheese over top afterward.
Today I did a radical experiment; I stopped trying to spice up the potatoes. I did just potatoes (5 pounds, pressure cooked then peeled) with salt (4 teaspoons) and thyme (1 teaspoon) and paprika (1 teaspoon) and 1 cup of water. Mashed it up with the mashing paddle in the Kitchen Aid mixer. Finally, mashed potatoes I could enjoy. I actually couldn’t tell the difference from when I used to douse it in large quantities of olive oil. It was tasty just as it was. I know it was tasty, because my son tasted it, then went and grabbed a bowl and helped himself to a whole bowl.
I have a tooth abscess. Since going on the potatoes last week, the abscess has subsided. No pain. It is still there, but it is much better.
I use a kitchen scale for everything, one for kilos and one for tenths of a gram. When you say “quantities” of beans, do you mind measuring? How many pounds of beans, how many pints of tomato sauce, etc. Rough ballpark numbers are fine.
Tomorrow I’ll start putting tiny quantities of borax into the potatoes. (1/3 of a gram) A quick experiment today shows that borax acts as a sweetener when combined with potatoes. I was surprised.
Lipo?
Unlikely. If I was going to pay for that procedure, I’d have had them suck the whole 30.
I may have missed the latest thinking on water weight. Is it a sign of adequate glycogen stores (good?) or a sign of inflammation (bad)?
I was wondering the same thing.
If you are an American, living in America – you can bet your ass it’s probably inflammation. But, whatever, it is unwanted excess.
Yep – so I did a 4 day hack just before christmas.
Did not weigh myself but suit coat went from uncomfortably tight when buttoned to loose. I went pretty traditional- potatoes only with small amounts of ketchup, mustard, or vinegar. Always salt. I thought baked Yukons were the best. Always cooked cooled and reheated.
The weight loss I expected but the hunger suppression is truly remarkable. I am a bigger guy who likes to eat and I simply was not hungry. Never happened like that before. I will do another hack in the next few weeks.
I worked in a gym during college. Watching the legit body builders shred for contests usually only showed them eating 2 things: chicken breast and cold baked potatoes plain-straight out of the refrigerator. The amount of weight they would drop in no time was shocking.
Clarence Bass – a 78 year old former Body Builder and Olympic lifter, that used to write for Muscle and Fitness magazine – has eaten a diet of mainly beans, whole grains, milk, eggs, nuts, veggies and fruit for the last 40 years. The man is still R-I-P-P-E-D at 78. Probably carries 8% or less body fat. You can check him out at cbass.com
But the bulk of his diet is CARBS (plants), much like what we are talking about here.
I exchanged emails with Clarence the other day and we talked about adding potatoes to his (and everyone’s) diet. He agreed with me that they are a great food.
I truly believe you can get shredded with a high starch diet. I can see improvements in my physique, daily. And I’m also an old fart (61).
One guy would take two extra large cold baked potatoes and smash them semi-flat with the palm of his hand, salt them, and then put a baked chicken breast in between and eat it like sandwich. I had forgotten about the amount of cold potatoes they would eat–probably too many years of reading low-carb dogma. I am thankful for the reminder from Richard, Tater Tot and everyone else on this website for the reminder that starch is not evil. Rice and potatoes have made me feel so much better after years of LCHF.
Thanks for the Bass reference. Have been on his site for hours now.
I think he’s right about the full fat dairy. I had positive results going from skim/2% dairy to organic full fat. (Mostly whole milk and yogurt)
Leah – I have been thinking about the bodybuilders eating just chicken and rice or chicken as potatoes, as you observed. A couple things: These are whole foods, nothing processed and no additives. These are very simple diets which lead to an explosion of gut bacteria diversity.
Perfect time for motivating me to try this again. I’ve slowly put on 40 lbs after starting paleo 4 yrs ago and slowly falling back into the SAD. I just started the beginners stronglifts 5×5 program so this will be good time for me to add it in. In the past I’ve done the potato only hack and it semi worked until getting bored of it. Looking forward to your method of keeping it interesting.
My first thought was you took a 10 pound toilet break with a little water loss thrown in but of course, it must be potatoes.
How about potatoes and the odd bit of beef liver thrown in? That would prolong the length of the fast with the added nutritional profile would it not?
Was anything mentioned about fasting?
Just wondered why you mentioned it?
I think it was mentioned just for comparison. After I started with paleo, fasting came up the next best thing so I gave it a shot with 24-36 fasts and only lost weight temporarily.
Sorry. Let me connect the dots for you. If you’re not eating, you’re fasting. So unless you’re eating non-stop, you’re fasting between meals (dot 1).
If you’re nutritionally satisfied, you’ll naturally fast longer unless you’re going to force feed yourself (dot 2).
Thanks for the dots.
Instead of IF, we can call it AF – always fasting, unless you are eating non-stop.
Glad I could help. I aim to please.
Always fasting (AF as you call it) is the same as never eating though. If you did that you would die much sooner than normal.
Always fasting unless you’re eating is a logical fallacy. The same as being a virgin unless you’re having sex.
Eat once and you’re no longer #always fasting. Have sex once and you’re no longer a virgin. See how it works??
The words dinner and breakfast both have their original meaning as “to break fast”. Look here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_breakfast
Sassy, you have been owned like a pair of Kanye’s Yeezey sneakers brother. Time for you to pay the piper boy.
Whao! Sassy. When a brother be paying $1,500 for a pair of Kanye Yeezys then trust me: he been owned!
Where can I buy a meal planner for the potato hack diet?
Day 1: potatoes + salt;
Day 2: potatoes + vinegar;
Day 3: potatoes smoked in apple wood (date night);
Day 4: sweet potatoes + cinnamon (cheat day!)
Day 5: boiled potatoes (bowel cleanse)…
haha, love it!
You talk about potatoes being so filling. I’m a 37 year old female. I dabbled with potato-ing a couple years ago, 5 days at a time. It worked well and I want to get back to it. But the reason I keep failing this year – the potatoes are filling while I eat them, but literally an hour later I feel STARVING (it was just as bad the other year). That annoying, won’t go away hunger that you can’t stop thinking about (so then I eat dark chocolate). I always eat cooked, cooled, then reheated to just warm (just salt and pepper). A bowl full, almost a pound worth. Just wondering if you have an idea why I get hungry so fast? (Im not diabetic either). Could it be just whacked out lady hormones from eating shit the past year (taco bell, etc). Do you think the hunger will improve? I would appreciate your input. I’d like to stick with it this time (without feeling hungry all day).
Midgy,
I have the same problem. Frustrating, isn’t it? I hope you get some responses, cause I am interested in hearing what others have to say. I wish one thing would universally work for everyone. But the individual differences in us make that impossible. That is what gets so discouraging at times – the quest to find what will work for me (when everything I try works for others, but I don’t get the same result.)
Midgy and Fay:
OK, new post is up.
https://freetheanimal.com/2016/02/the-potato-diet-practicalities-dropping-big-weight-fast-with-high-energy-and-without-hunger.html
See in particular the section on “your stupid dog brains,” which I added to the final draft this morning just for you too. No offense. We all have them.
I would suggest not reheating the potatoes. Set them out in the morning. Eat them at room temp and if that doesn’t whip your dumb dog brains into submission, then eat them cold, straight out of the fridge plain, no salt, seasoning, or anything.
Best wishes.
Mycroft Jones- you said something about adding borax to your potatoes. Isn’t that soap and aren’t you afraid of farting out bubbles like a Lawrence welk show?
Baking soda and table salt are also “soap”.
http://www.health-science-spirit.com/borax.htm
Countries with high boron content in the soil, have low arthritis levels. Boron deficient countries have high arthritis.
I tried to get several arthritis sufferers to try borax. Finally, an archaeologist friend gave it a try, 1/8 teaspoon of borax per day. Just like the article said, after a week, he noticed the pain considerably diminished. Then he stopped, and over the course of a week the pain came back.
Typical American gets 4mg boron per day; in France apparently it is 40mg. When I did my personal experiments with borax, I had some behavior changes consistent with an increase in testosterone. The French reputation for being oversexed, maybe there is a boron connection?
1/3 of a gram of borax gets you 40mg of boron. Pocket scale (aka “dealer scale”) costs $10, and measures things in tenths of a gram, so it is easy to get the right measurement for this. Richard is welcome to drop an Amazon affiliate link in at this point, to a product like the American Weigh Scales ACP-200 Digital Pocket Scale, 200 by 0.01 G
Here is a snippet from the link I just gave. I think the boron connection ties in with the iron and magnesium research Richard and the Duck Dodgers have been posting; all part of a bigger picture of inter-related pieces. Boron is also an anti-inflammatory and fungal.
The Arthritis Cure of Rex Newnham
In the 1960’s Rex Newnham, Ph.D., D.O., N.D, developed arthritis. At that time he was a soil and plant scientist in Perth, Western Australia. Conventional drugs did not help, so he looked for the cause into the chemistry of plants. He realized that plants in that area were rather mineral deficient. Knowing that boron aids calcium metabolism in plants he decided to try it. He started taking 30 mg of borax a day, and in three weeks all pain, swelling and stiffness had disappeared.
He told public health and medical school authorities about his discovery but they were not interested. However, some people with arthritis were delighted as they improved. Others were scared to take something with a poison label on the container and meant to kill cockroaches and ants. Eventually he had tablets made with a safe and effective quantity of borax.
Within five years and only by word of mouth he sold 10,000 bottles a month. He could no longer cope and asked a drug company to market it. That was a major mistake. They indicated that this would replace more expensive drugs and reduce their profits. It so happened that they had representatives on government health committees and arranged that in 1981 Australia instituted a regulation that declared boron and its compounds to be poisons in any concentration. He was fined $1000 for selling a poison, and this successfully stopped his arthritis cure from spreading in Australia. (2)
Subsequently he published several scientific papers on borax and arthritis. One was a double-blind trial in the mid 1980’s at the Royal Melbourne Hospital which showed that 70% of those who completed the trial were greatly improved. Only 12% improved when on placebo. There were no negative side-effects, but some reported that their heart ailment had also improved, and there was better general health and less tiredness. (3)
Most of his later research was devoted to the relationship between soil boron levels and arthritis. He found, for instance that the traditional sugarcane islands, due to long-term heavy use of fertilizers, have very low soil-boron levels. Jamaica has the lowest level and arthritis rates are about 70%. He noted that even most dogs were limping. Next comes Mauritius with very low boron levels and 50% arthritis. The daily boron intake in these countries is less than 1 mg/day. An interesting comparison is between Indian and native Fijians. The Indians are estimated to have an arthritis rate of about 40% and eat much rice grown with fertilizer while the native Fijians with an estimated arthritis rate of 10% eat mainly starchy root vegetables grown privately without fertilizer.
The US, England, Australia and New Zealand generally have average soil-boron levels with an estimated intake of 1 to 2 mg of boron and arthritis rates of about 20%. But Carnarvon in Western Australia has high boron levels in soil and water, and the arthritis rate is only 1%. It is similar in a place called Ngawha Springs in New Zealand with very high boron levels in the spa water which is curative for arthritis. Actually all spas reputedly curing arthritis have very high boron levels. These are also high in Israel with an estimated daily boron intake of 5 to 8 mg and only 0.5 – 1% arthritis.
Bone analysis showed that arthritic joints and nearby bones had only half the boron content of healthy joints. Equally, synovial fluid that lubricates joints and provides nutrients to the cartilage is boron deficient in arthritic joints. After boron supplementation bones were much harder than normal and surgeons found them more difficult to saw through. With additional boron bone fractures heal in about half the normal time in both man and animal. Horses and dogs with broken legs, or even a broken pelvis, have fully recovered.
Borax is also effective with other forms of arthritis, such as Rheumatoid Arthritis, Juvenile Arthritis, and Lupus (Systemic Lupus Erythematosus). For instance Dr Newnham saw a young girl aged 9 months with juvenile arthritis. He was able to cure her in 2 weeks.
He wrote that commonly people can get rid of their pain, swelling and stiffness in about 1 to 3 months. Then they can reduce treatment from 3 to 1 boron tablet (each 3 mg) per day as a maintenance dose so that they can avoid any future arthritis. He also stated that patients with rheumatoid arthritis commonly experienced a Herxheimer reaction and that this is always a good prognostic sign. They must persevere and in another 2 or 3 weeks the pain, swelling and stiffness will be gone. (4,5)
I found this statement not only interesting but also surprising. The Herxheimer reaction is an early aggravation of symptoms with increased pain. It is commonly due to toxins released by killed Candida and mycoplasma. This is very common with antimicrobial therapy, and borax definitely is an exceptionally good and strong fungicide. What surprises me, however, is that this fungicidal effect is already present at this rather low dose of 75 to 90 mg of borax. Equally surprising is the finding that also up to 30% of those with osteoarthritis experienced a Herxheimer reaction, suggesting that the border between osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis is rather fluid.
@Mycroft Jones
I’m all ears concerning your personal experience with boron.
Here my collection (example of papers):
– implicated as “prebiotic” element for the formation of RNA (stability of ribose)
– protects plant meristems (source of plant stem cells)
– protects human stem cells
– protects membrane glycoproteins, a role in organogenesis
– kills / inhibits cancer cells
– kills / inhibits fungi
– dissolves kidney stones
In short, Nothing Boring About Boron (2014)
So, I only had time to skim this, but if I read it right, the only reason to use Borax rather than a traditional supplement, is cost? I am tempted to try and get my wife to try it, she has bad arthritis, but I think just using the supplement alone might be a hard enough sell (she is a natural skeptic, I love to jump on band wagons, but will get off them just as quick!) but I think getting her to take Borax may be a much harder sell. If it seems to help, then maybe I can get her to give it a try, she loves to cut costs where she can. If not, my gun collection would be much nicer.