Can you lose weight if you eat only a high-carb food, specifically only potatoes? Yes you can. In fact many people have successfully tried this trick.
Here’s one example, Andrew Taylor, 36 years old and Australian. He ate nothing but potatoes for six months (!) and dropped a whopping 94 lbs (43 kg).
He feels that the diet has helped him control his food addiction, in addition to losing weight.
Video report after 6 months of eating only potatoes
Losing weight on high carb?
So how is it possible to lose weight on a high-carb diet? And does this not invalidate the simplified carbs -> insulin -> obesity theory behind low-carb diets? Some opponents have claimed that.
I think all this shows is something that should be obvious: there is more than one way to lose weight. Eating a low-carb and high-fat diet is clearly not the only way lose weight, just a very effective and often pleasurable way to do it.
Sensory-specific satiety
The potato trick I believe uses another phenomenon to lose weight. It’s an extremely monotonous diet, resulting in something called sensory-specific satiety, mening that the monotony results in wanting to eat less food.
After months of eating only potatoes the urge to snack on some more potatoes is quite low, so people end up eating ONLY when truly hungry (an effective way to lose weight).
This is probably extra effective when starting out with a lot of excess weight due to food addiction and processed high-carb foods, like Andrew Taylor apparently did.
If potatoes do not trigger his food addiction and he keeps eating only potatoes, that means he’s getting his food addiction under control, resulting in way less food intake, clearly resulting in weight loss.
How about insulin?
How about insulin? My bet is that if someone would measure Andrew Taylor’s insulin levels before and during the potato eating, they’d be way down, due to simply eating way less food. And if so there’s no problem for the “insulin hypothesis”.
Eating an extremely monotonous diet, resulting in strong sensory-specific satiety, resulting in eating way less, is just another way of lowering insulin levels.
You could do this trick on a low-carb high-fat diet too, and it will probably lead to even lower insulin levels and even faster weight loss. How? Eat only eggs, nothing else.
It’s a nice trick. But it’s probably not very enjoyable for most people long term to eat only one single thing ever, for the rest of their life. So I believe there are better ways to lose weight.
More
Food addiction
Insulin
Crazy ways to lose weight
Insane Dieting: The Bulimia Device
“I Fooled Millions Into Thinking Chocolate Helps Weight Loss”
The Biggest Loser: “Everything That’s Wrong With Weight Loss in America”
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