Background

Just over a year ago we launched the Potato Diet Riff Trial, the first of its kind.

The riff trial is a new type of study design. In most studies, all participants sign up for the same protocol, or for a small number of similar conditions. But in a riff trial, you start with a base protocol, and every participant follows their own variation. Everyone tests a different version of the original protocol, and you see what happens.

As the first test of this new design, we decided to riff on one of our previous studies: the potato diet. For many people, eating a diet of nothing but potatoes (or almost nothing but potatoes) causes quick, effortless weight loss, 10.6 lbs on average. It’s not a matter of white-knuckling through a boring diet — people eat as much (potato) as they want, and at the end of a month of spuds, they say things like, “I was quite surprised that I didn’t get tired of potatoes. I still love them, maybe even more so than usual?!”

Why the hell does this happen? Well, there are many theories. The hope was that running a riff trial would help get a sense of which theories are plausible, try to find some boundary conditions, or just more randomly explore the diet-space. We thought it might also help us figure out if there are factors that slow, stop, or perhaps even accelerate the rate of weight loss we saw on the full potato diet.

In the first two months after launching the riff trial, we heard back from ten riffs. Those results are described in the First Potato Riffs Report. Generally speaking, we learned that Potatoes + Dairy seems to work just fine, at least for some people, and we saw more evidence against the idea that the potato diet works because you are eating only one thing (people still lost weight eating more than one thing), or because the diet is very bland (it isn’t).

Between January 5th and March 18th, 2024, we heard back from an additional seventeen riffs. Those results are described in the Second Potato Riffs Report. Generally speaking, we learned that Potatoes + Dairy still seems to work just fine. Adding other vegetables may have slowed progress, and the protein results were mixed. However, the Potatoes + Skittles riff was an enormous success. 

Between March 18th and October 9th, 2024, we heard back from an additional eleven riffs. Those results are described in the Third Potato Riffs Report. Generally speaking, we saw continued support for Potatoes + Dairy.

The trial is closed, but since the last report, we’ve heard back from an additional two riffs, which we will report in a moment. This gives us a total of 40 riffs in this riff trial. Note that this is not the same as 40 participants, since some people reported multiple riffs, and a few riffs were pairs of participants.

Raw data are available on the OSF.

Last-Minute Entrants

Participant 87259648 did a Fried Potatoes riff, specifically, “mostly fried in a mix of coconut oil and tallow or lard” and continuing her “normal daily coffees with raw whole milk, heavy cream, honey and white sugar.”

Despite consuming only “around 30 percent potato on average”, she lost a small amount of weight and “found [the] diet to be easy and enjoyable, I never felt sick of potato although I did have a hard time getting myself to eat MORE potato each day.”

Participant 80826704 was formerly participant 41470698, but asked for a new number to do a new kind of riff. In Riff Trial Report Two, he had done Potatoes + Eggs as participant 41470698 and lost almost no weight. This time, he did a full potato diet and lost a lot of weight, more than 13 lbs: 

This definitely fits with our suspicion that eggs may be related to weight gain, and the observation that eggs often contain high concentrations of lithium.

Summary

Let’s recap all the riffs. Here’s a handy table:  

Mean weight change was 6.4 lbs lost, with the most gained being 5.2 lbs and the most lost being two people who both lost 19.8 lbs. One person gained weight, one person saw no change, one person reported no data, and the rest lost weight. One person also gained 6.3 lbs on “Whole Foods” + Chocolate, but this was not a potato diet (only about 10% of her diet was potatoes). 

Here are all the completed riffs, plotted by the amount of weight change and sorted into very rough riff categories: 

There are also a large number of people who signed up, but never reported closing their riff. We’re not going to analyze them at this point, but all signup data is available on the OSF if you want to take a look at the demographics. 

Things we Learned about the Potato Diet

The potato diet continues to be really robust. You can eat potatoes and ketchup, protein powder, or even skittles, and still lose more than 10 lbs in four weeks. 

The main thing we learned is that Potatoes + Dairy works almost as well as the normal potato diet. There were many variations, but looking at the 10 cases that did exclusively potatoes and dairy, the average weight lost on these riffs was 9.2 lbs. This is pretty comparable to the 10.6 lbs lost on the standard potato diet, suggesting that Potatoes + Dairy is almost as good as potatoes by themselves (though probably not better). 

We didn’t see much evidence that there might be a protocol more effective than the potato diet. This is sad, because it would have been really funny if Potatoes + Skittles turned out to be super effective. 

That said, three riffs did do unusually well, and it’s still possible that there is some super-potato-diet that causes more weight loss than potatoes on their own, or that’s better in some other way. 

There’s some evidence that meat, oil, vegetables, and especially eggs make the potato diet less effective. But with such a small sample, it’s hard to know for sure. This could be a productive direction for future research. You could organize it as an RCT, and compare a Just-Potato condition to a Potato + Other Thing condition. Or an individual could test this by first doing a potato diet with one of these extra ingredients for a few weeks, then removing the extra ingredient and doing a standard potato diet for a few weeks as comparison.

The strongest evidence is against eggs, because participant 41470698 / 80826704 did exactly that. First he did a Potatoes + Eggs riff and lost only 1.8 lbs. Then he did a standard potato diet and lost 13.2 lbs. That’s not proof positive, but it’s a pretty stark comparison. If that happens in general, it would be hard not to conclude that eggs stop potatoes from working their weight-loss wonders.  

Current Potato Recommendation

If you want to try the potato diet for weight loss, our current recommendation is this funnel:

1. Start by getting about 50% of your diet from potatoes and see how well that works.
2. If you want to be more aggressive, switch to Potatoes + Dairy. Try to get at least 95% of your diet each day from potatoes and dairy products, but don’t worry about small amounts of cheating.
3. If you want to be more aggressive, switch to the original potato diet. Try to get at least 95% of your diet each day from potatoes, but don’t worry about small amounts of cheating.
4. If you want to be more aggressive, switch to a strict potato diet. Try to get almost 100% of your calories each day from potatoes, allowing for a small amount of cooking oil or butter, salt, hot sauce, spices, and no-calorie foods like coffee.

If dairy doesn’t work for you for some reason (like you’re a vegan, or you just hate milk), consider replacing Step 2 with a different riff that showed good results, like Potatoes + Lentils or Potatoes + Skittles.

Remember to get vitamin A. Mixing in some sweet potatoes is a good idea for this reason.

Remember to get plenty of water. Thirst can feel different on the potato diet, you will need to drink more water than you expect.

Remember to eat! In potato mode, hunger signals often feel different. But if you don’t eat you will start to feel terrible, even if you don’t feel hungry. If anything, eating a good amount of potatoes each day may make you lose weight faster than you would skipping meals. 

If the potato diet makes you miserable, try the three steps above. If you try those three steps and you’re still miserable, stop the diet. 

Things we Learned about Doing Riff Trials

This is the first-ever riff trial. But it won’t be the last. So for the next time someone does one of these, here’s what we’ve learned about how to do them right.

#1: It Works

We hoped that riff trials would use the power of parallel search to quickly explore the boundary conditions of the base protocol, and discover what might make it work better or worse. 

This works. We had suspected that dairy might stop the potato effect, but we quickly learned that we were wrong. We saw that the potato effect is also sometimes robust to lots of other foods, like skittles. And we saw that other foods, like eggs and meat, seem like they might interfere with the weight-loss effect.

#2: You May Have to Encourage Diversity

That said, there was not as much diversity in the riffs as we might have hoped. 

Most people signed up for some version of Potatoes + Dairy. This was great because it provided a lot of evidence that Potatoes + Dairy works, and works pretty damn well. But it was not great for the riff trial’s ability to explore the greater space of possible riffs. 

In future riff trials, the organizers should think about what they can do to encourage people to sign up for different kinds of riffs. If you don’t, there’s a good chance you’ll find that most of your scouting parties went off in the same direction, and that’s not ideal if you want to really explore the landscape.

One way to do this would be to run a riff trial with multiple rounds. First, you have a small number of people sign up and complete their riffs. Then, you take some of the most interesting riffs from the first round and encourage people to sign up to riff off of those. You could even do three or four rounds. 

In fact, this is kind of what we did. Since we reported the results in waves, and had rolling signups, some people were definitely inspired to try things like Potatoes + Dairy or Potatoes + Lentils because of what they saw from completed riffs. But we could have done this even more explicitly, and that might be a good idea in the future.

#3: Riff Trials Harness Cultural Evolution

There’s no formal skincare riff trial. But it does kind of exist anyway. People get interested in skincare, and go look at other people’s routines. They copy the routines they like, but usually with some modifications. This is all it takes for skincare protocols to mutate, combine, and spread through the population, getting better and better over time.

The same is true of any protocol floating out there in the culture, including the potato diet itself. Even if we hadn’t run the riff trial, people would have experimented with potato diets for the next 10 or 20 years, trying new variations and learning new things about the diet-space. But this process would have been slow, and it would have been hard to tell what we were learning, because the results would have been spread out over time and space.

The fact that we planted our flag and ran this as a riff trial didn’t change the nature of this exploration. But making it one study, clearly marking out its existence, definitely sped things up, and helps make all the riffs easier to compare and interpret. 

---

87259648 – Fried Potatoes

Riff 

Potatoes, mostly fried in a mix of coconut oil and tallow or lard. I will continue with my normal daily coffees with raw whole milk, heavy cream, honey and white sugar. Maybe occasional fruit on cheat days but mostly just potatoes, dairy, coconut oil, tallow, coffee and honey/sugar. 28 days. My reasoning for choosing this is that fried potatoes are delicious, i really don’t want to give up my coffee routine, or waste the raw milk that i get through a cow share, and anecdotally, coconut oil and stearic acid have both been reported to help with weight loss.

Report

So I didn’t lose a lot of weight, but I definitely lost somewhere between 3 – 6.5 lbs (hard to tell due to fluctuations in water weight) and an inch off my waist despite doing a pretty relaxed version of the diet. 

What I ended up doing was a diet of around 30 percent potato on average (even though I only ate potatoes for dinner and “grazed” on smallish things throughout the rest of the day, it was hard for me to get past around 30 percent potato calorie-wise). The rest of my diet was mostly dairy (raw milk, heavy cream, sour cream, butter, cheese and occasional ice cream), fruit, sugar (and sugary drinks), honey, chocolate and saturated fats (coconut oil and beef tallow).

I rarely boiled the potatoes so the potato portion of the diet was mainly peeled yellow or red potatoes pan-fried in a mixture of tallow and coconut oil, baked russet potatoes with the skins, or roasted red and yellow baby potatoes with the skins.

I occasionally supplemented extra potassium, as well as other supplements. Around day 5 I started drinking coconut water in order to get extra potassium.

I found this diet to be easy and enjoyable, I never felt sick of potato although I did have a hard time getting myself to eat MORE potato each day. The skins didn’t seem to bother me. Something about the diet definitely seemed to have an appetite lowering effect, although my appetite did fluctuate from day to day. I never intentionally cut calories or deprived myself of anything I really wanted. So even on the very low calorie days I ate as much as I felt like eating that day. (i am used to doing extended fasts so this is not super unusual for me, but I DO think that the extra potassium or something DID result in more days than usual where I didn’t feel like eating as much).

I didn’t exercise any more or less than I usually do.

My husband and another male family member did even less strict versions of the diet along with me (potatoes for dinner, whatever else they wanted the rest of the day) and they both seemed to lose more weight than I did, but they didn’t keep track of any data. I’m a 49 year old female, the other two men are 49 and 66. In the last couple years it has gotten much harder for me to lose weight, and I have been pretty fatigued in general. I didn’t notice any extra energy on this diet, but appetite did often seem suppressed.

I didn’t observe any noteworthy reduction in pulse or body temperature over the course of the diet. Three weeks after finishing the diet I have not been able to keep the weight off and am back up to 190.

I kept track of everything in the Cronometer app, so if you have any questions I can access some data that’s even more specific from there, let me know!

80826704 – Only Potatoes

Riff 

Formerly participant 41470698, who asked for a new number: “I would like to try the full potato diet at some point during 2024. Could you prepare a new Google Sheet for me for this purpose?”

Report

I completed the potato only version in August, but neglected to send you a report. Happy to report that I’ve completed it and filled the 4 week sheet.

In terms of feeling it was very similar to my riff experiment. In terms of results this has been completely different. One thing I am now throughly convinced about is the “ad libitum” part. I am hungry, I eat. It’s so simple it’s scandalous, but it’s been buried under years of well meant status quo advice.

From that point it simply matters which food types I eat. Even if the lithium hypothesis turns out wrong, this part I am thoroughly convinced about now.

Difficulty

In a way this was easier than potatoes + eggs. One reason I remember for this was the forced pre-planning. Because I knew I was going to eat only potatoes I generally tried to peel way more potatoes than I was hungry for. Because of this, for the next meal I would have potatoes already lying around. I could then eat those as-is, or more tasty, (re-)baking them in a frying pan.

Somehow I had less inclination to cheat.

I’ve also gone to McDonalds like 6 times, ordering only fries without sauce. And a lot of fries from a Snackbar (https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snackbar). It’s super convenient when going by train to just order a big portion of fries without sauce.

Fun stuff

Potatoes are fucking delicious by the way. I’ve taken to eating them without sauce, because now it just feels like potatoes with sauce taste like sauce. And then I’m missing the potato flavor. Maillard reaction for the win.

With a group of friends I did a “potato tasting”. I bought 8 breeds of potatoes and cooked them with the oven or boiled. So we tasted 16 different kinds. People were truly surprised by the amount of variation.

My surprise was mostly about how difficult the different breeds were to peel. Some potatoes are truly monsters.

For many people, eating a diet of nothing but potatoes (or almost nothing but potatoes) causes quick, effortless weight loss. It’s not a matter of white-knuckling through a boring diet — people eat as much (potato) as they want, and at the end of a month of spuds they say things like, “I was quite surprised that I didn’t get tired of potatoes. I still love them, maybe even more so than usual?!” And some people lose a similar amount even when eating only 50% potato.

Why the hell does this happen? Well, there are many theories. To help get a sense of which theories are plausible, try to find some boundary conditions, or just more randomly explore the diet-space, we decided to run a Potato Diet Riff Trial. 

In this study, people volunteer to try different variations on the potato diet for at least one month and let us know how it goes. For example, they might eat nothing but potatoes and always cook their potatoes in olive oil. Or they might eat nothing but potatoes and leafy greens. Or they might eat nothing but potatoes but always eat their potatoes with ketchup. 

The hope is that this will help us figure out if there are other factors that slow, stop, or perhaps even accelerate the rate of weight loss we saw on the full potato diet. This will get us closer to figuring out why potatoes cause weight loss in the first place, and might get us closer to curing obesity. We might also discover a new version of the diet that is easier to stick to, or causes more weight loss, or both. 

In the first two months after launching the riff trial, we heard back from ten riffs. Those results are described in the First Potato Riffs Report. Generally speaking, we learned that Potatoes + Dairy seems to work just fine, at least for some people, and we saw more evidence against the mono-diet and palatability hypotheses. 

Between January 5th and March 18th, 2024, we heard back from an additional seventeen riffs. Those results are described in the Second Potato Riffs Report. Generally speaking, we learned that Potatoes + Dairy still seems to work just fine. Adding other vegetables may have slowed progress, and the protein results were mixed. However, the Potatoes + Skittles riff was an enormous success. 

Since then, we’ve heard back from 11 new riffs. (Specifically, these are the riffs we heard back from between March 18th and October 9th, 2024.)

A few riffs are ongoing, but signups have slowed to a crawl. So while there may be a few more riff trial results in your future, signups are now closed. We may do more potato diet studies in the future, perhaps even another riff trial, but we are going to wrap this one up for now. Expect a final riffs retrospective around January 2025. 

But let’s see what we’ve learned so far. First we’ll review the overall results, and talk about our interpretation. Then, at the end we’ve included the actual riff proposals and reports from all 11 participants in an appendix, if you want to read about them in more detail.

Unless otherwise indicated, weight loss numbers are over a period of about 28 days, comparable to the original Potato Diet Community Trial. 

Potatoes + Dairy

Participant 07566174 ate “Potato plus a bit of dairy, ice cream for a treat”. At the end they said, “overall very successful despite rampant cheating!” and you know what, that’s entirely right: 

In this case, cheating wasn’t “take a day-long break from eating potatoes”, instead it meant more like “ate less than 100% potato”. For example, one cheat day entry said: “Had some cake, and a couple chocolates. Otherwise, potato. Plus a beer instead of ice cream.”

This participant actually gave us six weeks of data, here is the longer chart: 

Participant 28818306 took to the true spirit of the riffs trials, “trying to combine what looks like working riffs (potatoes + dairy + lentils)” along with adding “some lettuce to the mix to see if it keeps working”. 

This worked ok. “It went well in the first 2 weeks,” 28818306 reported, “the other 2 were kind of slow, and harder to follow.”

Participant 92679541 did a riff of potatoes + oil + dairy (mainly cream and butter), with a more casual protocol and cheating most days, but had to stop the diet early. Despite all this, he lost a couple of pounds:

Participant 97027526 did a riff starting with potatoes plus butter, ghee and spices, and added raclette cheese after a few days. 

Chalk another one up for the potato diet making people fall even deeper in love with potatoes: “I discovered I LOVE baked potatoes (first cooked in the microwave then finished off in the oven to crispen them up) and over 70% of my potatoes were cooked like that. … I am surprised that after four weeks I still really like potatoes! I’m going to continue with the potatoes for a while”. 

She lost exactly 10 pounds over 28 days:

We then later received an update, where she said, “I am almost at the end of 8 weeks and still going strong. … My diet now exclusively consists of baked potatoes, butter, salt (a few pinches once a day), pepper and sometimes garam masala. … I’m not nearly as hungry as I used to be.”

Between Day 1 and Day 53, she lost a total of 15.9 pounds: 

Potatoes + Meats

Several people tried riffs that aimed for the most classic meat & potatoes.

50108266 and 20953986 are a husband and wife team who started with the plain potato diet then added organ-based meat. Their full protocol was a bit complicated, see the appendix for more detail.

The results: Two weeks of just potatoes, “lost weight, but hated it”. Two weeks of potatoes + organ meat, “lost less weight, enjoyed much more. We will keep going.” It’s interesting that such a small change could so strongly affect their perceived enjoyment of the diet, especially while not strongly affecting how quickly they lost weight.

54084282 said, “I feel a diet that I could stick to for 30 days would be potato, bacon, black coffee, and Guinness. The bacon would help supplement fat and protein missing from the potatoes and reduce the need for extra seasonings. The coffee and Guinness are mostly for personal preference.”

Thirty days later, we got this update: “I have modified from my original riff! I’d characterize my current plan as fermented food/drinks + potatoes, along with a serving or two of protein daily. It is resulting in steady weight loss while alleviating the bloating and unpleasant constipation feeling that I experienced initially. I have lost about 5 pounds this month while feeling generally satisfied and still surprisingly not tired of potatoes. Only real remaining issue is eating out. I just cannot bring myself to order only French fries for a meal (especially around the kids). I just cheat in those situations but still manage to steadily drop weight, lol.”

Checking the data now, we see that 54084282 kept recording data up to day 58, and continued the trend of losing weight: 

83842317 says, “potato + meat (chicken, beef, pork, fish)”. Then after the diet, “The convenience of eating tater tots, hash browns, chips, fries, and meat has been very easy and I’ll be sticking to it”.

There was no weight entry for Day 29, so here’s 83842317’s data up to the last weight entry on Day 34:

Participant 22179922 did a riff she came to call “potatoes and cows”, starting with potatoes and ramping up to first include dairy and then include other animal products (see appendix for full details). 

Chocolate-Style Riffs

Two people did riffs that sort of involved chocolate.

59960254 did something like “Potatoes with Fire in a Bottle Characteristics”, meaning potatoes and a small amount of fat from sources like butter, tallow, coconut, cacao, etc. and also including fruit, honey, dates, and dark chocolate. This lead to a weight loss of exactly 10 lbs by Day 29:

We actually have 12 weeks of data from this participant, here is the longer version. The fluctuations in the middle are a sad story that have little to do with the diet itself; his cat got sick around the three week mark.

95078099 followed a riff of “potato + soy products + chocolate”. Note that he started off quite lean, with a BMI of around 20, but that “this is the result of a long, hard calorie restriction. My personal aim is not to lose weight, but to keep the weight down. If I stay at the same weight, and not drift up by a few pounds, I’d consider that a success!” So in this case the question is not really whether 95078099 can lose weight on the potato diet, but whether he can maintain weight on the potato diet without calorie restriction.

Ultimately, 95078099 lost 1.5 lbs between the first and the last measurement over four weeks. But based on the moving average, he concludes, “for myself, and for the purpose of keeping my weight down, I’d consider my potato riff ineffective.” See the appendix for a lot more detail, including additional charts with several years of data.

Skittles Update

Previously, participant 22293376 tried a Potatoes + Skittles riff, and was “astonished at just how well it went.” Here are those original results: 

This was in January 2024. By July, he had started gaining weight and decided to do a second run of the riff, with some minor changes. This time it was potatoes plus: butter, oil, sweet potatoes, “low-calorie vegetables (onions, peppers, broccoli, green chile, etc.)”, and “skittles (in moderation)”. And for this second round, the results look like this: 

22293376 says, “I generally didn’t eat more than 20-30 skittles a day, and sometimes none. I don’t really recommend eating skittles-only meals but you do you!” Also check out the appendix for more detail on this riff. 

Interpretation

As before, Potatoes + Dairy seems to work for many people, and it seems quite resistant to cheating. Every Potatoes + Dairy riff in this roundup lost some weight, and some lost as much as 10 lbs.

People lost some weight on different versions of Potatoes + Meats, but this seems to be inconsistent. It’s possible that the kind of meat, or its origin, could make a difference. 

“Potatoes with Fire in a Bottle Characteristics” worked quite well. While the sample size is only one, it’s a nice proof of concept. These various fats and sweets don’t seem to interfere at all with the potato effect, at least not for this participant. 

It’s also wonderful to have a skittles replication. The results are still from the same person, which means we can’t be sure if it will work equally well for other people, but it’s nice to see that this can happen twice. And it’s certainly more evidence against the idea that the potato effect is purely the result of cutting out processed foods and sweets. If sweets were always a potato-effect-killer, they would have stopped the effect here. They didn’t, so they aren’t.  

Of course, we’d love to see replications from other people too. So if you’ve been on the fence, consider trying potatoes + skittles.

If so, please let us know how it goes! But it will have to be your own self-experiment, because as mentioned above, signups for the riff trial are closed. Expect a final report and a retrospective some time around January 2025.

---

07566174 – Potato + Dairy (ice cream)

Riff 

Potato plus a bit of dairy, ice cream for a treat

Report

Hello,

I’m emailing to share results after 6 ish weeks of potato diet. Overall very successful despite rampant cheating! I’ll be continuing for a few weeks more.

28818306 – Potatoes + Dairy + Lentils + Lettuce

Riff 

I’m trying to combine what looks like working riffs (potatoes + dairy + lentils) and add some lettuce to the mix to see if it keeps working and makes it “healthier” (at least according to my wife :-))

Report

Hi just wanted to let you know that I ended the 4 week of the potato riff trial.

It went well in the first 2 weeks, the other 2 were kind of slow, and harder to follow.

My diet consisted of a lentils burrito for breakfast (lentils flat bread + cooked lentils as filling + cheese). A mix of baked potatoes + cheese during the rest of the day. I tried to keep it mostly potatoes and use cheese for variety or as a snack.

I usually cooked 2 big batches of potatoes every week and I reheated them on a pan with a bit of olive oil.

I happened to take a blood test at the end of the diet and notice a drop in a few markers.

I’ve attached 2 pdfs. One is the most recent and another was 6 months before for comparison.

You can use them in your posts if you anonymize them.

They were translated by AI but look ok

Cheers

92679541 – Potatoes + Oil + Dairy

Riff 

My plan is potatoes + oil + dairy (mainly cream and butter)

Report

I’m stopping the diet early (after two weeks). I ended up doing a *very* loose protocol – basically potatoes + anything that would be fine on Keto (i.e. potatoes intended to be basically my only carb). As you can see from my entries, I cheated most days, typically with sweets, for which I experienced really wild cravings. I am down ~ a couple of pounds from my first weigh in.

97027526 – Potatoes plus butter, ghee, cheese, and spices

Riff 

Not 100% decided yet! Perhaps potato + butter/ghee + spices or potato + butter/ghee + cheese + spices. Planning to do this with another person in my household. We intend to do this just for 4 weeks but if it is going really well and I don’t find it difficult I may continue for another few weeks

Report

Dear Slimemold Timemold team,

August:

I’ve just found the below updates in my drafts from months ago. Not sure if it’s still interesting, but I did eat the potatoes! I ended up going back to my normal diet and I am almost back to my starting weight now. Thinking of giving it another go in September.

February:

I saw your latest potato riffs article today and when I didn’t see my own results there I realised I forgot to send you the following email almost a month ago when I completed the four weeks… So here it is:

Note from the end of the first four weeks

I have completed the four weeks!

I initially planned to do potatoes plus butter, ghee and spices but ended up adding cheese after a few days. This added a bit of interest and I think made me more likely to comply with the diet. I am exclusively eating raclette cheese (a Swiss cheese normally eaten with potatoes). The first two or three days were a bit tough, but after that I had no problems. I discovered I LOVE baked potatoes (first cooked in the microwave then finished off in the oven to crispen them up) and over 70% of my potatoes were cooked like that. After reading about the increased resistant starch in cooled potatoes I decided to cook potatoes the day before. I only managed this sometimes so about 40%-50% of potatoes were pre-cooled. At the start of the diet I ate lots of spices on my potatoes (home ground garam masala and chili flakes) but as time goes on I find myself satisfied with butter and sometimes salt as flavourings.

I am surprised that after four weeks I still really like potatoes! I’m going to continue with the potatoes for a while (probably another 2 weeks maybe another 4) and will keep using the spreadsheet in case that’s useful.

Update from 21/03/2024

I am almost at the end of 8 weeks and still going strong. I have removed the cheese because I suspected it was behind some bowl complaints. No complaints since I stopped the cheese. My diet now exclusively consists of baked potatoes, butter, salt (a few pinches once a day), pepper and sometimes garam masala. Potatoes are about 60% pre-cooled 40% freshly cooked. I’m not nearly as hungry as I used to be. 

Thanks for organising!

50108266 and 20953986 (Potatoes + Organ meat)

Riff 

Hi! 

We are planning to participate in a trial with my husband / wife. So, there will be two very similar applications. [SMTM’s note: as indeed there were!]

We want to start with the plain potato diet and then add organ-based meat to it.

Reasoning includes personal preferences and curiosity about BCAA and PUFA theories. 

Our current diet is 70% “Steak and Salad,” “Fish and Salad,” or “Plain Yogurt, Steak and Salad.” Some days, we binge on processed sugary sweets, then do steak and salad again. Our main dietary sacrifice is starch. And despite most of the time having a “colorful and diverse plate,” straight from the dietary recommendations brochure cover, we both consistently gain weight. So now we want to try to revert our diet.

We both search for dopamine in food and have difficulties fighting cravings, so as a second ingredient, we need something we will be very interested in. We had two main candidates – something sweet or something meaty. 

The results of the Potatoes + Beef riff were not good, and we already know that eating lots of beef doesn’t work for us either. So we had to find meat we like, but don’t eat often. In our case, it’s the organ-based meat. It is common in our home cultures but is absolutely not popular in the country where we live now. So, we did not eat organs and bones for a long time, but we used to eat them when we were thinner. And we really miss it, so it makes us excited. 

Regarding the PUFA theory: to be consistent, we had to decide which type of fat to use for frying the potatoes. We decided to go with butter and leave seed oils aside.

The plan is the following:

1. We start with the 2 weeks plain potato diet

    – We eat potatoes of all available types and in all forms, ad libitum

    – We season the potatoes to make them tasty. It includes adding salt, garlic, different peppers, fresh dill. If the potatoes stop being tasty, we try to add something else in controlled amounts – parsley, soy sauce etc.

    – We fry with butter, preferably ghee. We don’t cook with seed oils during the diet.

   –  We may eat restaurant fries, which probably will be cooked with seed oils, but we don’t make it the main part of our diet

    – We may eat store-bought chips, but we don’t make it the main part of our diet

2. We drink our usual amounts of water, tea, Coke Zero, and coffee, but we don’t add milk to our coffee anymore.

3. We do our cheat meals on weekend breakfasts. Usually, it’s some kind of “balanced European breakfast” – avocado, egg, toast with butter and cheese, smoked salmon, croissant, orange juice

4. We keep taking the supplements we are used to take, which are 

Wife’s case

Lion’s mane – 2500 mg

Vitamin B complex (includes 50 mcg B12)

CoQ10 – 200 mg

Liposomal vitamin C – 500 mg

Saw Palmetto – 500 mg

Myo-inositol – 1000 mg

Husband’s case

Lion’s mane – 2500 mg

Vitamin B complex (includes 50 mcg B12)

CoQ10 – 200 mg

Liposomal vitamin C – 500 mg

5. We stop taking

Omega 369 – 500 mg – Because it’s seed-oil based

Kalium-Magnesium Citraat – 270 mg – Because we increase potassium intake with the potatoes

6. We keep taking prescribed medications 

Wife: I don’t have any

Husband: Fluoxetine

7. We follow the second 2 weeks by adding the protein but trying to keep it on the low-BCAA side. It will be beef and chicken:

   – Bone broth

   – Tongue

   – Liver

   – Heart

   – Stomach

   – Intestine

   – Kidney

   – Other organs we may find in the shop

   – But not the muscle meat

8. We also intend to try to add the third component to the diet or change the component after 4 weeks, depending on the results of the first weeks.

Report

We, 50108266 and 20953986, did it. Here is our report!

TLDR

2 weeks potatoes – lost weight, but hated it

2 weeks potatoes + organs meat – lost less weight, enjoyed much more. We will keep going.

Report

We live in the Netherlands, another country of lean people (16% obesity rate) whose diet contains a significant share of bread and potatoes. The potato part of the diet was easy to organize, as there are tons of potato options in the supermarket, and french fries are available in any restaurant.  For the first week, we bought as many options as possible – different brands of potatoes sliced for fries, more starchy and less starchy potatoes for baking and boiling, and potatoes sliced and mixed with various spices. 

We ended up with a pretty stable diet. For breakfast, we ate air-fried fries. For lunch, we baked potatoes in the oven with their shells and seasoned them with salt, garlic, dill, and butter. For dinner, we baked potatoes again or boiled potatoes with the same seasoning. Usually, after dinner, we had one more snack with store-bought chips.

The first week was especially difficult, as we were constantly bloated, constipated, dehydrated, and hungry. We were eating smaller volumes than we were used to, feeling satiated by the meal’s end but also hungry shortly after. Because of our diet mood, on the first days, we were hesitant to eat more; also, despite our hunger, potatoes were not attractive enough to get up and cook some. Some nights, I was struggling to fall asleep because of growling hunger mixed with a heavy feeling of being bloated. Some nights, we were binge-eating a big pack of chips per person.

We both felt we were not losing enough weight for such a struggle. We both have experienced losing significant amounts of weight with calorie-restricted low-carb diets, and we both felt that “at that time we were losing more weight and faster.” However, I have weight records for myself for those times, and actually, weight-loss speed in absolute amounts was the same. 

The second week was easier as we found preferred options and ate more boiled potatoes. In the middle of the second week, 20953986 started to add a little bit of mayonnaise “for the taste.”  It’s an interesting choice, as he usually is a hot sauce person. Maybe mayonnaise was easier to reach, or perhaps he was attracted to protein in it. For me, 50108266, the smell of eggs in mayonnaise was extremely tempting, and I spent the whole 12th evening thinking about eggs obsessively. On the 13th day, I also accidentally felt sick at night, like I had food poisoning or a stomach bug; both are not common to me. 

On the morning of the 15th day, 20953986 almost cried over his morning potatoes because he was hungry and disgusted at the same time. 

I learned that I could not predict how much weight I was losing. I could not explain my weight fluctuations with bowel movements, water loss, water intake, or menstrual period. I also could not correlate how swollen I was with my weight. However, 20953986 sees the correlation between his bowel movements and weight. I also tried to find a correlation between weight loss and hunger and weight loss and eating processed foods. I was expecting to lose more weight after sleeping hungry, and less weight after eating a full pack of chips, but neither I nor 20953986 found such correlations for ourselves.

In the third week, we started with organs. Organ meat is not typical in Dutch culture but quite common in Turkish and Russian, so we love it and know how to cook it. We added pork liver sausage to our air-fried fries breakfast. For lunch, we usually had boiled beef tongue with boiled or baked potatoes. For dinner, we had either soup with chicken hearts, potatoes, and bone broth or fried beef liver with fries. The grilled liver was also relatively easy to find in Greek and Turkish restaurants, so we had quite a lot of it. We also tried kidneys and thymus, but we did not like them.

In the third week, our weight fluctuated in an unusual way. On the 15th day, the first day of the organ diet, I developed symptoms of an ear infection (even more unusual to me than a stomach bug) that lasted until the 17th day. On the 16th morning, I got +1 kg (2.2 lbs); on the 17th morning, my weight was the same, and after the infection symptoms were gone, my weight rapidly dropped. But the resulting weight loss in the third week was still a pitiful 0,7 kg (1.43 lbs). I assume the reason for the weight gain was an infection, but it could also be a change in the diet or a change in our cheating routine. On that day, we had our planned cheat moment, but because of how depressed 20953986 was, instead of cheat breakfast, we had cheat lunch, which, in my case, contained grilled chicken breast, bread, and yogurt mixed with spices. 

20953986 also did not lose much weight that week, but he gained weight not at the beginning of the week, like me, but on the weekend. He also had a sick moment, but it was a chronic muscular pain problem that most possibly had nothing to do with the diet and weight. 

On his rolling average graph, we see that there is no actual change in the weight loss velocity. 

The fourth week was easy and enjoyable. We never felt too hungry, did not suffer from digestion problems, and got our second-best weight loss results in the four weeks. 

The only thing that we noticed was a craving for vegetables and greens.

At the end of the report, I want to mention the cheat days. We were cheating on weekend breakfasts, as it is an important ritual for both of us. We went (except for one time that I mentioned) to the regular places where we go for breakfast; we always had several latte macchiatos and some kind of an assorted breakfast platter with greens, eggs, savory sandwiches, and pastry (you can imagine continental breakfast or Turkish breakfast). I noticed several things for myself that, however, did not work for 20953986:

1. I was less attracted to bread and pastry. Last time, I did not touch my bread at all. This also means that I ate less for breakfast than usual. 
2. We had two breakfasts in a row, and every Sunday, despite the cheating, I had a weight decrease, but after the second breakfast on Monday or one time on Tuesday, I had a weight increase. This pattern included even the first Monday of a diet. We started our diet on Sunday; we ate a cheat breakfast, then ate only potatoes, and my weight increased the next day.
   I wonder whether it is a coincidence, whether something I eat stimulates some weight increase, or whether it is about waking up later on the weekend. When we had a holiday during the third week, I also had a weight decrease followed by an increase, although we did not cheat that day. But the third week was a mess anyway.

Because of this observation, we want to try some experiments around it. Considering that we are limited with our habits and working week, we can’t change much, but our current intention is to keep the same diet and try different times of the day on weekends for the cheat meals, which will also lead to different cheat foods. I am open to suggestions.

54084282 – Potato, Bacon, Black Coffee, and Guinness

Riff 

I’ve recently been experimenting with potato dishes in anticipation of trying a potato diet to lose some weight I’ve gained in the past few years. I feel a diet that I could stick to for 30 days would be potato, bacon, black coffee, and Guinness. The bacon would help supplement fat and protein missing from the potatoes and reduce the need for extra seasonings. The coffee and Guinness are mostly for personal preference but also helps supplement nutrition. I plan to also use a variety of potatoes, including sweet and red with peel on.

Report

It’s now 30 days, just checking in but I plan to continue on my potato riff. I still hope to make it down to 135 lbs 🙂

I have modified from my original riff! I’d characterize my current plan as fermented food/drinks + potatoes, along with a serving or two of protein daily. It is resulting in steady weight loss while alleviating the bloating and unpleasant constipation feeling that I experienced initially.

I have lost about 5 pounds this month while feeling generally satisfied and still surprisingly not tired of potatoes. Only real remaining issue is eating out. I just cannot bring myself to order only French fries for a meal (especially around the kids). I just cheat in those situations but still manage to steadily drop weight, lol. Thanks for bringing this diet to my attention, it’s been good to me!

83842317 – Potato + Meat

Riff 

potato + meat (chicken, beef, pork, fish). I had energy on the last round, but lacked the energy to continue heavy strength training and had to give up lifting the last two weeks. I’d like to see if having meat occasionally can help with recovery and keep my strength and training regimen up while losing weight.

Report

Done.

• This was much easier. Strength and endurance workouts were fine and I never lacked for energy. I was lifting for maintenance and ramping up endurance for a marathon in October and never had to quit a workout for lack of energy.
• There was a tracked 38h:32m:25s, 72.53 mi, 18856 kcal of workouts across hiking, walking, running, swimming, and various cardio machines during this period.
• I had several trips throughout the period, so sticking to it was a challenge. I made do with bags of potato chips and cans of fish from grocery stores, but not always having access to an air fryer was tricky.
• I took cream or half-and-half when available in my 1-3 coffees per weekday when in an office (maybe maybe 12 of the total days)
• I caught a nasty cold on the 13th that kept me bedridden and alternating between eating and sleeping for days
• Between all the travel, it was difficult to get access to a scale, so I wound up weighing myself on five different scales when I could find one.

The convenience of eating tater tots, hash browns, chips, fries, and meat has been very easy and I’ll be sticking to it out of mostly convenience. I’ll add in vegetables for other nutrients, but psychologically I haven’t craved variety in my diet for several years, and the convenience is unbeatable. All I need is a reliable option when traveling.

22179922 – Potatoes and Cows

Riff 

I am primarily interested in learning more about how keto interacts with potatoes.  

History: About a decade ago I lost weight, and kept it off, with keto (note: a sort of meat and veg keto, elements of paleo and Mediterranean, more butter and animal fats than vegetable oils, and lots of intermittent fasting).  I felt great, and it removed the constant hunger that I didn’t even know I had (a commenter on your blog called it the Hunger).  I then gained quite a bit of weight due to a high stress situation in 2020, and for various reasons (pregnancy, breast-feeding, loss of gall-bladder) have been unwilling to go back to that diet until now.  Also my ancestors would have eaten a lot of potatoes and dairy, and it seemed to work for them.

Current situation: I need to lose 10-20 kg.  I am still breastfeeding, and thus need more nutrients (particularly protein) than average.  I also am often low on iron.  There may be another pregnancy in my future, so I would like to lose this weight fast.

Riff: I will start with potatoes, dairy, salt, and spices at libitum for two weeks (to see whether potatoes works for me, and to put the diet most likely to work up front).  I will then add in some animal products (especially fat, stock, and liver from beef, pork, lamb) for another two weeks.

After the four weeks are up, I would like to try alternating two weeks keto (as described above) with two weeks potato (potatoes + dairy + animal products) for as long as I need to (possibly two months).

If I become pregnant again, I would like to try keto + potatoes (at the same time, rather than alternating).  I’m wary of doing any extreme diet during pregnancy in case hormones/epigenetics/etc affect the baby.  However putting these two extreme diets together makes a diet that doesn’t seem extreme at all.  

Reports

First Interim Email

Hello SMTM,

Participant number: 22179922

Riff: potatoes and cows (I think I called it something else when I first

pitched it, but this name is better).

I have finished the first four weeks of my riff.  I intend to keep

going, but I’m sending you my interim report now.  I’m not sure whether

you want to publish it now, or when I finish for good, or both, or

neither, but I’m at least sending you the interim report now since I

intend to keep going for the foreseeable future.  It’s in txt format so

it’s easier for you to turn into whatever format you need, with whatever

formatting is required.

I’ve included some information in the report about my dieting history,

for context.  I’ve also included my conclusions about obesity and weight

loss in general to get a better idea of how I felt over the course of

this diet and how it shaped my opinions. Should you prefer, you may

publish my report without those sections, but I’ve included them for

context; and as a reader I’d like to read similar things from others.

First Interim Report

Participant number: 22179922

Riff: Potatoes and cows

*The Riff*

I like dairy, so wanted to do potatoes + dairy.  Aiming for potatoes garnished with dairy, rather than 50-50.  But I am currently breastfeed and thus may need more protein than usual, as well as other micronutrients, so I decided to add in animal products too.  I’ve heard rumours about too much protein, so I decided to focus on things like stock, fat, liver, and only eat flesh if I felt a craving for it.  I’ve also been reading about seed oils recently, so I decided to focus on beef and lamb (yes, I know lamb is not from a cow) rather than chicken and pork (I rarely eat pork anyway).  Since I’m allowed both butter and animal fat, there’s no point using any other sort of cooking oil.

But I also wanted to see whether potatoes would work for me at all, so I decided to start with two weeks of just potatoes and dairy, followed by two weeks of potatoes and cows.  I did not end up following this to the letter, but I decided to split this diet up into multiple levels and record each day which level I did.

0 – Potatoes only (salt and butter allowed begrudgingly)

1 – Potatoes and dairy

2 – Potatoes and non-flesh animal products (i.e. fat, stock, organ meat)

3 – Potatoes and animal products

4 – Potatoes, animal products, and fruit and vegetables.

I never reached level 4 in the first month (unless you count cheat days), but I put it in because for the next few months I want to experiment with alternating between potatoes, keto, and keto+potatoes in two week blocks.

Some Q&A about this riff:

Why now?  Baby is getting most calories from food rather than breastmilk, and I just came across the potato thing a few days ago, and I want to have another baby soon, so now’s my chance.

Why potatoes?  Preliminary results seem pretty promising.  Also I love potatoes.  Also my ancestors ate lots of potatoes so they might work well with my genome.

Why dairy?  Preliminary results seem pretty promising.  Also I love dairy.  Also my ancestors.  But also, I’ve heard good things about butter in particular as a source of fat, and I love eating potatoes with cheese and/or butter.  

Why add animal products? I need iron.  Also frying potatoes in tallow.  Also other animal nutrients.

Why not meat?  I might add meat if I feel particularly protein hungry, but preliminary results for meat seemed not great, and I mainly wanted to test potatoes, rather than “meat and potatoes”.  But someone (possibly me) should test “meat and potatoes” in the future.  Or even “meat and potatoes and veg”/”meat and 3 veg”.

Why not chicken?  Preliminary results for eggs seem bad, and also their high in lithium.  I’ve heard rumours that chicken fat inherits its omega3/6 etc from its diet, and chicken diets are probably bad, so I think chicken might be a confounder that is worth testing separately.  I’d like to test free-range vs feed lot chicken though.

Doesn’t pork have the same problems as chicken?  Yes, but I rarely eat pork as I don’t particularly like it, and I especially avoid pork fat, so I’m not particularly fussed about it.

What about fish?  I might add some fish as “meat” if I feel particularly protein hungry.  But I don’t really eat fish stock, or want to fry potatoes in fish fat, etc.

*About me*

 – I am female.  Ever since puberty I’ve needed both red meat and iron supplements to stay ahead of deficiency.  

 – I’ve always been a bit on the chubby side, with my BMI hovering at the overweight border of normal all throughout childhood.  I love food.  Food makes me feel better and I stress eat and emotional eat and eat for enjoyment and very rarely forget a meal.  (I suspect genetics makes some people feel this way about food more than others, and therefore people like me will overeat more than undereat, and thus will tend towards the overweight side of the spectrum, and will be more likely to be overweight/obese when there is an environmental issue.  Whereas my husband often forgets to eat, so that probably counteracts whatever is in our environment)

 – I need strict rules.  I don’t do well with moderation.

 – I need extrinsic motivation.  I love food and don’t particularly care about appearance, and don’t really play sport.  Being part of a study is particularly good for this.  

 – Related to the above, I am Catholic and find that I am able to “diet” during Lent in ways that I don’t have the willpower for during the rest of the year.  I’ve recently been experimenting with trying to use this to help with both moderation and motivation, e.g. only having sugar on “Feast days”.

*My weight and dieting history*

Childhood: My normal/starting adult weight is 75kg.  Both my parents have always been overweight.  We would often flip flop between lots of take-away, and a strict wholefoods/mediterranean diet.  My mother tried to be mostly low-carb, and used olive oil rather than canola/vegetable oil.  We rarely ate wheat or junk food due to a coelic in the family.  I never felt true satiety, but could feel physically full, and would also use social cues to determine when to eat or stop.  I noticed a commenter on SMTM refered to “the Hunger”, and that’s exactly what I have. Eating Chinese take-away was an occasion for bingeing.

Anecdote about “the Hunger”: As and adult, I went to the USA with my family.  I felt the Hunger stronger than ever before.  At one point we’d just finished eating lunch and my (stick-thin) sister saw an interesting restaurant and decided to get a second lunch.  I thought “Of course we could all eat a second lunch, but it’s not socially acceptable to admit that, and even less so to actually do it”.  I now understand that not everyone feels this Hunger.

First weight gain: in my third year of uni I looked in the mirror and realised I’d gained a lot of weight.  I was now 85kg.  At the time, I attributed it to following my now-husband’s diet patterns (lots of carbs, we’d often share some hot chips together for lunch, very little meat or protein) rather than my mother’s (too many carbs are bad, eat some protein with every meal).  However, having read “A Chemical Hunger”, I now see it could be due to moving house, moving daytime environment (from school to uni), the preponderance of on campus food options (pfas, seed oils), or even the increase in my wheat (glyphosate) or non-freerange chicken (antibiotics?) intake.

First weight loss (keto): I did a combination of keto and intermittent fasting.  My keto diet was basically meat+veggies, with some dairy, as opposed to what I’ve heard called “Standard American Keto”.  I never measured my ketone levels, but I determined ketosis based on how I felt, and in my opinion this was reasonably accurate.  I would generally eat one meal a day, occasionally with one snack, occasional fast for the whole day, and every two weeks I would reintroduce carbs for two weeks.  I rarely ate take-away, at mostly animal fats.  I lost 20kg in 6 months and got down to my lowest adult weight (65kg).  I very quickly gained those last 10kg back (within two weeks), and was stable at my old set point of 75kg for the next 5 years.  For the first time in my life I no longer felt the Hunger.  And even when I reintroduced carbs, I found the Hunger was still gone for the next week or so.  I felt true satiety!  And when the Hunger returned in force, I was able to kill it off with a week of keto, or stave it off with one day of keto/fasting every one to two weeks.  

But this weight loss also co-incided with another change in environment, both moving house and moving workplace/school/uni.

Second weight gain (2020): I had a combination of a long term stressor, plus some acute stress, plus some physical influences, plus the covid lockdowns, all coalesce at once, and I gained about 15kg that year.  But, having read “A Chemical Hunger”, I notice this weight gain also coincided with moving house, and a change in living arrangements (I got married), and a change in eating behaviour (I was now a short walk away from a supermarket that liked to mark down their products, so I would often go for a morning walk through the supermarket to grab a bargain, and ended up eating a lot of packaged and processed food (pfas? seed oils? glyphosate in wheat? etc).

Pregnancy etc: I was now 93kg and creeping up and up, and I became pregnant.  Suddenly I couldn’t do keto (this is debatable, but I decided to be safe in case of hormones or epigenetics) or fast any more, so I could neither arrest this upward trend nor reverse it.  Also I needed a lot of extra protein and extra nutrients (from what I understand, this is mostly for the mother’s sake, as the baby will generally steal her nutrients regardless).  Morning sickness meant I could eat only carbs, fruit, and some dairy.  I had strong cravings the whole pregnancy for carbs+dairy, and this continued into breastfeeding.  

Gall bladder: a few months after giving birth, I went to hospital and needed my gall bladder removed.  I did some research and realised that I needed the following diet for the rest of my life:

 – high fibre (to slow down digestion and soak up gall that is produced)

 – steady fat intake, so lots of small meals is better than one

 – relatively stable diet.

 – at first I thought I had to eat breakfast, but with some experimentation it seems that I can skip it as long as I’m consistent.

 – I’ve heard rumours that different fats react differently (in particular, that coconut oil isn’t digested by gall, and that olive oil feels better the next day than fish and chips grease)

These rules are at odds with my previous success at keto and one meal a day.  I was pretty scared to try anything slightly away from general medical establishment food recommendations, hesitant to try keto again, and scared to go too long without a meal, even when not hungry.  I then gained another 10kgs, and ended up just over 100kg.  

Second weight loss: I knew something had to be done, so I decided to try keto again.  I kept starting and then cheating a day or two later, so I never made it to ketosis, but it did help me to feel comfortable with keto again, even without a gall bladder.  I finally managed to reasonably consistently do keto during Lent (cheating every Sunday though), and I lost around 5kgs (from 102kg to 97kg).  Then I discovered SMTM and the potato study a few months later.  And if I can make keto+potatoes work, I can continue that through pregnancy and breastfeeding in the future.  I lost about 2kg in a month with this riff.

*The month of potatoes*

I started off with just potatoes and dairy.  I very quickly found myself eating a lot more dairy than envisioned, as a piece of cheese or a glass of milk made a good snack.  I found myself always running out of potatoes at the beginning.  Very excited, as potatoes and dairy are both delicious.  At the beginning I would often find myself too hot, and fidgety, but as time went on I felt it a little less.

I started adding animal products earlier than envisioned, at day 5.  Surprisingly, I didn’t yet have any cravings for them, but my husband wanted to feel included so I made us some sweet potatoes fried in animal fat.  I also added meat earlier than expected, on day 8, due to wanting a bit more variety in my diet rather than a craving.

My typical meals were baked potato (usually microwaved, served with cheese and sour cream), soup (potato boiled in stock with cheese, often with lemon juice and pepper added, and usually with a potassium salt mix added too), fried potatoes (either fried in animal fat or ghee, sometimes steamed or microwaved before), and cepalinai (a lithuanian dish involving grated potato, wrapped around mince, boiled, then served with sour cream, onion, and bacon).  I’d never made cepalinai before, and never did succeed perfectly, but I had a lot of fun this month trying very slight variations in the mixture to try to get them to work.  Note that steaming, rather than boiling, is a great cheat’s way of cooking cepalinai without them falling apart.

I often had a bite of my child’s food when she wanted to share with me, but I didn’t count this as cheating.  On Fridays I would eat a few bites of salmon with my potatoes.  I would generally cheat when going out, which was mainly Saturday evening and Sunday brunch.  Some days I would have a square of dark chocolate after dinner.

Early on, I tried two meals that I knew would have lots of leftovers (roast potatoes – potatoes that had been previously boiled with butter, garlic, lemon juice (I had been given lemons the day before I started this diet), herbs; and scalloped potatoes with a cream and garlic sauce).  I gained 1.3kg, which is technically within uncertainty given how much my weight can vary day to day, but it was quite disheartening and I tried to troubleshoot.  Here’s my diary entry from that day: 

> Why am I gaining weight?  Eating too much?  Do I need less variety?  Am I eating too much cheese?  Does boiling reduce potassium too much?  … I can gain/lose by up to 3kg just because (e.g. bloating, mensturation, etc), so idk.  

From this point onwards I never boiled my potatoes unless I was going to eat the boiling water too.  And I never made large oven tray meals either, or meals with garlic, because I noticed I overate those two meals.  

From my fasting days, I had a jar containing a mix of potassium salt, sodium salt, and lemon-flavoured magnesium.  The label has rubbed off and I no longer remember the quantities.  I decided to try adding this to my food in case potassium made a difference.  But I also hate the metallic taste of potassium and the weird fake lemon flavour of the magnesium, so I could only add this in small quantities, and only if I was also adding lemon juice, and practically this meant I only added it to soup.

On some days, especially day 8, I felt extremely hot and fidgety, and it was an internal heat, as though my metabolism was on fire.  I started recording my daily morning temperature after that, but there was nothing out of the ordinary there.  And on some days I was extremely cold, as though I was eating at a calorie deficit, but it was hard to say how much of that was due to the cold winter weather on those days.

Got sick around halfway through, but kept eating potatoes.  Got very little sleep towards the end and probably overate.

While the Hunger never quite went away on this diet like it did during keto, I did get very attuned to noticing a certain variation on the Hunger, which I’ll call the Addiction.  As far as I could tell, the Addiction cropped up whenever I ate seed oil (usually take-away foods like hot chips and Chinese, or packaged foods), but this could easily be confounded by pfas or some other problem.  And when it cropped up, I felt a compulsion to eat that particular food, and never felt satiated by that food, and furthermore the Addiction seemed to hang around for about 12-24hrs.  

I’ve realised that the Hunger seems to come in at least two parts, and on days when the Addiction wasn’t there I found myself occasionally feeling semi-satiated and happy to put my half-finished food away for later.  If the seed oil blogs are right, I wonder if the Addiction is direct vegetable oil metabolic harm and the non-Addiction part of the Hunger is some sort of indirect metabolic harm from vegetable oil.  Or they could be from at least two different sources of contamination etc.

I never got sick of potatoes, and in fact found a new appreciation for them.  I particularly enjoyed feeling a connection with my european ancestors.  However, towards the end I did feel a strong yearning to include other foods like onions, eggs, or a touch of flour.  This was not a craving, but because I wanted to better emulate some of these ancestral recipes.  In future I may decide to be a little more lax with things like that.  On the other hand, I never managed to eat only potatoes (and salt).  I tried eating only potatoes twice: the first time I caved and added butter at dinner, the second time I had butter with every meal and caved and added cheese and milk at dinner.  I don’t think I could do a straight potatoes diet.

*My current theory*

I read “A Chemical Hunger”, and I generally agree that there is some sort of contamination in the modern world.  Probably multiple.  But I also think some things like seed oils and HFCS may be a problem too.  It seems like certain diets (e.g. keto) may be a bit of a work-around for a broken metabolism, but I love carbs so I’d like to get to the bottom of this so I can eat carbs freely some day.  

Mainly, I think that each of these issues probably causes obesity in some people, but none of them will be the cause of obesity in everyone.  And if we remove one thing (e.g. pfas), some people will get completely better, and others will get a little bit better, and still others (hopefully very few) will have been permanently broken.  For me personally, I think seed oils are one culprit, but I think there’s at least one other that I haven’t identified yet.

The fact that semaglutide has been found to work against addiction makes me wonder if one of it’s main pathways is preventing “the Addiction”, and thus that vegetable oil (or whatever similar thing in processed food (both ultra-processed packaged food and commercial restaurant/fast food)) is a culprit for many people.

*The future*

I’m going to have a few cheat days, maybe up to a week, and then try alternating between keto and potatoes+cow every two weeks.  I may allow a few extra things like onions and eggs during the potatoes+cow phase.  Next time I pregnant, I’d like to try some version of keto+potatoes, i.e. a sort of wholefoods diet that includes milk and excludes rice and wheat, so as to be sufficiently mainstream.  I’d like to avoid vegetable oil, but that’s extremely difficult at the best of times.  I’d also like to avoid packaged and ultra-processed food, and wheat.  

Things I’d like to experiment with in the future (or see someone else try):

 – Rice (I love rice and could eat it all day)

 – Better bread (many variations, e.g. made without soy, without vegetable oil, from european wheat, etc)

 – Free range vs. cage eggs (and chickens)

 – Chicken (esp free range) vs. red meat

 – Animal products vs. animal flesh

 – Meat+veg+potato(+dairy)

 – Alternating keto and potato, or keto and potato+keto

 – Modern Catholic diet: preplan what fast (i.e. some sort of food restriction) and feast days mean, and preplan which days of the year are which (mix of long and short periods), and then follow that

 – Medieval Catholic (or Orthodox) diet: as above, using medieval rules.

 – Medieval peasant diet: as above, but with very little meat except on Sundays and feasts.

Second Report

Hello SMTM,

Here’s my next (probably final) report.  This time there is less to say, so I’ll just say it here instead of attaching it:

————————————

Participant number: 22179922

After I completed 4 weeks of potato+cows, I decided to start alternating between 2 weeks “keto” and two weeks “potato”.  

During my two weeks of keto, I tried to do something similar to ex150 from ExFatLoss.  That is, one meal containing veggies + a limited amount of protein, and as much cream as I like the rest of the time.  But because I don’t have a gall bladder, I require more fibre with my fat so I decided to add veggies or berries to the ad-lib cream.  Overall, I don’t think this worked very well.  When I exclude the initial water loss, I think I even gained weight here.  And it took about a week for my gall-bladder to adjust, so I should have chosen a longer period.  And towards the end I was craving carbs and protein and I had to switch to potatoes early.

I then intended to do a further two weeks of potato+cows, but it turned out I was pregnant.  That probably caused the protein cravings, but I don’t think it caused the weight gain.  Because I was pregnant, I decided to follow potato+cows very loosely, indulging in any cravings that came up ad lib.  However, it turned out that most of my cravings were for meat, potatoes, and dairy anyway, so I actually followed my potato riff reasonably closely.  Three common additions during this time were onions, eggs (free range), and flour (Italian to avoid glyphosate), mostly so I could follow certain potato recipes.

Overall, I didn’t seem to lose much weight in the initial 4 weeks, and to the extent that I did lose it I seemed to gain it all back in the following 4 weeks.  I also felt very tired and hungry towards the end, but it’s unclear how much of that was due to a calorie deficit and how much was due to pregnancy.  I would not attribute the weight gain to pregnancy though.  It felt a lot closer to “weight loss by calorie deficit” rather than “weight loss by not feeling hungry”, both of which I have previous experience with.

I don’t think I’d try potatoes for weight loss in the future, but I did feel pretty good on them, discovered a few new satiety-related feelings, and I now have a new-found appreciation for potatoes.  I’ve also made a big effort to avoid fast food, take-away, and packaged food, along with Australian and American wheat, and obvious sources of PFAS.  And when I do buy pre-prepared food, I do my best to avoid fried food.  I’m sure it’s healthier, but I’m yet to see an effect on my weight yet.

I will continue eating this way for the foreseeable future, but I don’t think I’ll fill in the spreadsheet – I’ve already noticed I’m putting in a lot less information than in the first month.

And I still haven’t managed to properly make cepelinai.

59960254 – Potatoes with Fire in a Bottle Characteristics

Riff 

4 weeks. I am planning on incorporating the general idea/outlook of work like Fire in a bottle. So potatoes and a small amount of fat from sources that are not seed oils. Butter, tallow, coconut, cacao, etc.

Report

So my protocol was potato diet, low fat, low protein in the spirit of Brad Marshall’s “Fire in a Bottle” blog. So that meant the fat was generally saturated, and sources high in stearic acid. Fruit and honey were permissible, as well as dates for an evening sweet treat, or high cacao % dark chocolate. The one corner I cut on this was to frequently use this chili oil ( https://xiankits.com/products/xff-chili-oil-crisps-jar?Size=8oz ) to make the meals more palatable. In the spirit of FiaB this should be off limits because I’m sure the oil they’re using is some sort of seed oil but… can’t win them all.

For potatoes I tried a range of different styles, at first doing separate batches of regular and sweet, so that I had options. Eventually found I really enjoyed the yellow potatoes from Lidl and just make that. For prep/cooking I peel, boil, and mash all of them. At first I was weighing and tracking calories and titrating the amount of fat added to keep it below 10% of calories. After a week or 2 of this I got lazy and just eyeballed it. I experimented with all manner of combinations when eating. I found sweet potatoes often didn’t require the addition of anything beyond salt and pepper. Regular potatoes were eaten with various combinations of: butter, stearic enhanced butter (as Brad describes on his blog), chili oil, beef tallow, cacao butter, beef bone broth, honey, powdered glycine, and maybe something else I’m forgetting. 

I found the diet reasonably easy to stick to, since I wasn’t eating strictly potatoes and could vary what I put in them. One concept that Brad has talked about is the idea that saturated fat causes a feeling of satiety much quicker than PUFA and why, down to a mitochondrial level, that might be. I really buy that argument now after the last several months. The speed and intensity of satiety I get when using tallow or cacao butter is a lot. I found my perception of hunger changed whenver I had a good stretch of following the diet strictly. I wouldn’t really feel actaul hunger, I would just at some point realize I was daydreaming about how good an entire pizza would be, or a steak, or piece of cake, whatever, and know that meant I was hungry. 

Any time I’ve restarted the diet after a cheat day I find it takes at least a day to feel the effects kick in. Between potato diet and not drinking (which is still kinda a new thing for me) I find I wake up early and have good energy throughout the day. I’ve experimented with eating early in the morning to kickstart metabolism, another thing I believe I’ve heard Brad talk about, and at the other end of the spectrum waiting till at least noon or later to actually eat a substantial meal. The second option is more fun mentally because the morning fast allows me to log a lower weight for the day, and I’ll take any psychological trick that works. I found blood pressure improved pretty quickly with some weight loss and a few days into potato diet. Blood glucose was less quick to make changes, but perhaps I need to lose more weight.

I often cheated when going out to dinner with the wife, since in my mind eating fries in a restaurant is also a bad option due to the frying oil, so in those situations I just went with the flow and ordered what I wanted. I found between weight and waistline I could see some sort of progress near daily, however that progress would be quickly and temporarily undone by a cheat day or meal. Every cheat was reversed by getting back on the diet, but conversely, you could say as soon as I stopped the restrictive diet I immediately started reverting to the mean, which for me seems to be over 220. 

I only ended up losing 10# during the month in part because of cheat meals, with a few days of travel, and my favorite cat getting sick at the 3 week mark, which threw everything out of whack for the 2 weeks that he was ill before we had to put him down. Since completing the month I’ve tried to stay on the diet however it’s summer time and there’s tons of plans and it’s hard not to cheat when out and about.

My interpretation of Brad and others work is that the increased PUFA in diet throws off a variety of mechanisms that disable or alter the lipostat and cause weight gain. If Brad is right then this is in part because the body normally sees PUFA as a sign of scarcity and depresses metabolism as part of a survival mechanism. My understanding of all that is that in theory if I could purge the excess PUFA from body fat, which would likely also mean losing quite a bit more weight, that maybe then I wouldn’t so immediately start putting weight back on when I stop eating potato diet.

At time of writing I’m at 213, up from a low of 207 after a week and a few days of being off diet. Will be interesting to see how long it takes to get back to 207 and make a new low. I am having a hard time of breaking and staying under 210, and I have not weighed less than 200 in over a decade. My goal weight is still < 180, and I plan to evaluate how much further to go when I get to that point. And while this has not been as immediate a change as I’d like, I am still 20# lighter than my heaviest weight.

Also today I shared a different version of the potato diet chart/vitals with you. I don’t love the horizontal scroll to fill in the info. Will be continuing on with the V2 I shared. This was a kinda free form rambling recollection of the experience. I should have done it sooner after the completion of 1 month but ya know, was dealing with the cat and life in general. Please hit me up with any followups as needed.

95078099 – Potatoes + Soy + Plain Vegan Chocolate

Riff 

My riff is potato + soy products + chocolate! Sounds delicious, and will give me plenty of protein.

My main hypothesis for why the potato diet works is that it’s relatively bland, leading to less calorie intake. My chosen riff will hopefully not be very bland, though, and if it works, would make my hypothesis seem less likely to me.

Note that my starting weight is quite low, with a BMI of ~20. This is the result of a long, hard calorie restriction. My personal aim is not to lose weight, but to keep the weight down. If I stay at the same weight, and not drift up by a few pounds, I’d consider that a success!

I participated in the half-tato trial last year (participant ID 81471891), with a highly calorie-controlled approach, and I didn’t see a significant difference in weight loss speed between the baseline weeks and the potato weeks. This time, I plan to not count calories or track what I eat, but just to eat what I feel like, within the constraints of my riff.

Report

Hey SNTM 🙂

I finished my “potatos + soy products + plain vegan chocolate” riff! 

Found it pretty enjoyable! I stuck to my riff very consistently, and didn’t break the diet.

– Potatos: Most of the time, I microwaved them, which I found extremely convenient! But I also ate them baked, fried, mashed, and as soup. I also occasionally ate french fries, potato dumplings, and store-bought hash browns. Once, I tried making “potato cookies” from potato starch.

– Soy products: This included soy milk, soy yoghurt, soy-based cream, lots of tofu, fermented tofu, tempeh, some soy-based meat substitutes, soy flakes, and soy flour. I was really happy with the variety here!

– Chocolate: I restricted myself to plain, dark, vegan chocolate, so I wouldn’t over-indulge. But I didn’t hold back here, and ate as much chocolate as I wanted. In the end, I was a bit bored by plain supermarket chocolate. I also put cocoa powder into my soy milk sometimes.

– Oil: This was allowed per the base protocol. I mostly had canola oil, olive oil, coconut oil, and — of course — soybean oil.

– Spices: A per protocol I also added spices to my food: Salt and pepper, herbs, garlic and onion powder, chili and paprika powder.

– Sugar: On two days, I made caramelized potatos, and some of the soy milk and soy yoghurt I ate had sugar in it.

So, what were the outcomes? It is important to mention that, because of my already low starting weight, my goal was not weight loss, bug weight maintenance. Between the first and the last measurement over the course of the four weeks, I lost 0.7 kg (1.5 lbs). However, as weight measurements have a high degree of noise to them, looking at a moving average of the data seems more meaningful.

This becomes especially clear when zooming out. I have *a lot* of data on my weight, and attached some graphs: Of the last two months, of the last 1.5 years, and of all data I have (12 years). As you can see, I did a calorie restriction diet for most of 2023, where I ate 1200-1800 kcal per day. Now, I’m trying to stay inside the 64-67 kg range by resuming that restriction once I hit the upper boundary of that range, until I hit the lower boundary again.

I started the potato diet immediately after such a calorie restriction phase. This way, I could compare how effective it would be in keeping my weight down. Overall, in the moving average, it looks like I gained about 1 kg of weight during the month. This seems typical for a phase where I’m not counting calories. So, for myself, and for the purpose of keeping my weight down, I’d consider my potato riff ineffective.

Finally, here are some suggestions for how I think you could improve your approach:

– Ask people to track their weight for one additional week before and after the potato period, to be able to build better moving averages, and to see how starting/stopping eating potatoes affects the weight.

– Have participants fill out a survey at the end of the four weeks, asking for more data. Questions like “How many meals were deep-fried potatoes?”, “What total volume of oil did you consume?” or “What food did you miss most?”

– Do yearly follow-up surveys with all participants (of all previous trials)! Ask for current weight, their current potato consumption, and other dieting experiences. This would allow you to see the long-term effects of the potato intervention.

Thanks again for organizing!

UPDATE from 22293376 – Potatoes + Skittles

Previously 

Second Potato Riffs Report

Update

I have a followup with results from a second round to share – feel free to post it if you want to.

It’s me, Skittles guy* again. I’m back to report on my second round of the potato diet. After my successful first attempt in January, I decided to give it another go this summer.

Quick Recap of Round One (January):

– Duration: 4 weeks

– Weight loss: 12 pounds (187 to 175 lbs)

– Protocol: Potatoes, fats, and Skittles (consumed in moderation)

The Interim Period:

After the initial success, I maintained my weight without much effort. However, by June-July, I noticed the scale creeping above 175 lbs, accompanied by some compulsive eating behaviors. So, I broke out the potato peeler once again…

Round Two (July 22nd – August 17th):

– Starting weight: 176 lbs

– Ending weight: 166.4 lbs 

Modified Protocol:

This time, I allowed myself the following foods ad libitum:

– Butter and oil

– Sweet Potatoes

– Low-calorie vegetables (onions, peppers, broccoli, green chile, etc.)

– Skittles (in moderation)

Additional Factors:

– I’m in the midst of training for an Ultramarathon and averaged ~30 miles of running per week

– Allowed fresh fruit as a treat after runs of 2 hours or longer (4-5 times during the diet period)

– One cheat meal after a particularly long run

The Experience:

While not quite as enjoyable as the winter edition (hot potatoes are probably just less appealing in the summer?), the diet was still effective and compliance was relatively easy. Hash browns and mashed potatoes were my go-to meals, often with generous helpings of green chile. I had no particular difficulty running, and my estimated VO2Max (per Apple Watch) improved from 43.5 to 45.

Key Takeaways:

1. The potato diet once again proved effective, even at a lower starting weight.

2. Adding other vegetables was not incompatible with weight loss.

2. The diet is compatible with endurance training, supporting both weight loss and performance improvement.

The potato diet has been a game changer for me. It’s a real psychological comfort to know that I can drop weight (or even just reset my eating behaviors) with a simple protocol that doesn’t require a great deal of mental effort.

* I generally didn’t eat more than 20-30 skittles a day, and sometimes none. I don’t really recommend eating skittles-only meals but you do you!

Eating a diet of nothing but potatoes (or almost nothing but potatoes) causes quick, effortless weight loss for many people. It’s not a matter of white-knuckling through a boring diet — people eat as much (potato) as they want, and at the end of a month of spuds they say things like, “I was quite surprised that I didn’t get tired of potatoes. I still love them, maybe even more so than usual?!” (Actual quote from a participant!) And some people lose a similar amount even when eating only 50% potato.

Why the hell does this happen? Well, there are many theories. To help get a sense of which theories are plausible, try to find some boundary conditions, or just more randomly explore the diet-space, we decided to run a Potato Diet Riff Trial. In this study, people volunteer to try different variations on the potato diet for at least one month and let us know how it goes. For example, they might eat nothing but potatoes and always cook their potatoes in olive oil. Or they might eat nothing but potatoes and leafy greens. Or they might eat nothing but potatoes and always eat their potatoes with ketchup. 

The hope is that this will help us figure out if there are other factors that slow, stop, or perhaps accelerate the rate of weight loss we saw on the full potato diet. This will get us closer to figuring out why potatoes cause weight loss in the first place, and might get us closer to curing obesity. We might also discover a new version of the diet that is easier to stick to or causes even more weight loss, or both. 

In the first two months after launching the riff trial, we heard back from ten riffs. Those results are described in the First Potato Riffs Report. Generally speaking, we learned that Potatoes + Dairy seems to work just fine, at least for some people, and we saw more evidence against the mono-diet and palatability hypotheses. 

Since then, we’ve heard back from seventeen new riffs. (Specifically, these are the riffs we heard back from between January 5th and March 18th, 2024.) We will describe these findings in a minute.

More people have their riffs underway or are planning to start soon, so there are more riff trial results in your future. And signups are still open if you want to get involved. But let’s see what we’ve learned so far. 

First we’ll review the overall results, and talk about our interpretation. Then, at the end we’ve included the actual riff proposals and reports from all seventeen participants in an appendix, if you want to read about them in more detail.

Unless otherwise indicated, weight loss numbers are over a period of about 28 days, comparable to the original Potato Diet Community Trial. 

Potatoes + Dairy

Potatoes + Dairy continues to be the most popular riff. Let’s get right to it.

82546219 ate Potatoes + Milk, specifically “because I wanted to prove whoever said ‘no dairy’ wrong”, and lost 19.8 lbs. 

(As before, all these plots have a span of 24 lbs on the y-axis so they can be compared directly.)

32223622 ate Potatoes + Dairy, always potatoes but “dairy … perhaps not every meal but when the mood strikes me!” Results: “Though I struggled to keep a long stretch without cheat days I do not attribute this to the diet itself, rather my work-life balance went to crap and I hardly had the wherewithal to prepare food. This is not typical and was just unfortunate timing for it to happen during this study. In any case, I am happy with the resulting ~5 lbs lost.” This person’s partner also tried the riff and while she did not feel comfortable recording her data, experienced a somewhat stronger effect (see the many interesting details in appendix).

84290728 ate Potato + Dairy, “mainly butter, soured cream, cream; some yoghurt, milk) + ocassional wine”. However, they felt very ill and had to stop after a couple of weeks, and they were not able to record any data. This is an important reminder that some people can’t stand eating this many potatoes, and naturally the potato diet does not work at all for them, even with dairy.

79886833 ate Potatoes + Yoghurt. The verdict? “I really enjoyed it.” See plot:  

37809513 ate Potatoes + “Butter (lots of it)”. A few interesting details here. This participant had previously tried an all-potato diet and wasn’t able to stick with it, but was able to make it through on this riff, though still found it a bit unpleasant. He mostly ate his potatoes steamed, which is notable. In the end he lost 5.3 lbs. 

Potatoes + Dairy + Others

Some people also tried versions of Potatoes + Dairy plus some other stuff, usually vegetables. 

90594710 said, “I’m planning to do the (understandably popular) potato+dairy diet for the first two weeks, and then add in leafy greens for the following two weeks, crossover study style.” This participant had previous success on the potato diet, and notes that while they did lose weight, there was “clearly lost less weight in this riff trial than in my original trial.”

81281674 ate Potatoes + Carrots + Dairy + some other foods, see the appendix for full detail. But safe to say, it was mostly potatoes. They lost 6 lbs in total.

10455414 was an interesting one: Potatoes + Dairy + “Three Sisters”. This participant explains, “I’d like to do the pure potato+dairy for two weeks to see what happens.  One cheat day per week.  Then add in corn.  If that seems to work, I’ll add in the other two of the three sisters: squash and beans.  I’m a member of the Cherokee Nation and think that ‘New World’ grains and veggies are better for you, and that the European additions like beef, chicken, wheat, etc. have screwed up our digestive systems.” He did lose some weight, but he had to deviate from his plan (“I never added the corn. I had some digestive issues so added broccoli, carrots, green beans, and cauliflower.”) and overall this protocol didn’t seem to cause much weight loss:

Potatoes + Protein(s)

Many people have been interested in getting more protein, or concerned about its absence, so we were happy to see several riffs testing the inclusion of various kinds of protein. 

12582676 ate Potatoes + Chicken + White Wine according to a defined protocol (see appendix). He experienced some swings in overall weight but no consistent weight loss, and had problems with energy. “As much as I tried to like this approach, I felt pretty low energy and this is probably not sustainable for me long-term … I need to have energy during the day, and somehow I didn’t end up feeling like I could sustain the required energy level.”

04194992 ate Potato + Red Meat + Dairy. Unfortunately they had to stop after only two weeks, from running out of willpower. This may not reflect on the riff, as this participant is unusually hungry. “I haven’t felt satiety since puberty, e.g. I always want to eat more (I had normal satiety reaction as a child, but this was suddenly lost). … To be honest, I don’t think I would’ve done better with just potato and dairy, I’m too hungry by nature. The amounts of potato and dairy I could consume if allowed to do so ad libitum, are large.”

37791108 ate Potato + Vegan Protein, “either a protein shake or a protein bar with each potato meal… My preferred protein powder is pea protein.” She reports: “I would consider the potato + plant protein a success. I lost 10 lbs/month on full tato but I suspect that I lost muscle during this as well. On potato riff I lost 6 lbs at day 24 but I did not feel like I lost muscle.” She says she might continue this riff so maybe we will hear from her again in a few months! :‎) 

41470698 ate Potatoes + Eggs, though he says, “in hindsight I believe it’s more fair to say I ate three things: Potatoes, Eggs and Olive Oil.” While there was some movement, he generally maintained his starting weight. 

Esoteric Riffs / Other

Finally, there were a few riffs that are hard to categorize or are on a theme all their own.

In the announcement post for this riff trial, we said:

If the whole food hypothesis is correct, eating these processed foods should make the potato diet much less effective. But if you lose weight on potatoes + gummy worms, that’s evidence against the whole foods hypothesis.

22293376 took us up on this with the Potatoes + Skittles riff. “I intend to follow this for a month and see what happens,” he said at the start. “My reasoning is that I believe adherence will be easier when allowing occasional treats, and because I don’t think that refined sugar has a moral valence.” He was right. In fact, “I was astonished at just how well it went.” The last few cheat days here were simply a poorly-timed vacation, but as you can see it didn’t really matter. Check it out:

32602136 went back to that standard potato diet, “plain potato diet, salt, black pepper, nothing else.” As you can see, there were some breaks, but there was also mostly steady weight loss while on the diet: 

75452454 tried a “Whole Foods” + Chocolate diet. This is not really a potato diet, though she did say about 10% of her diet each day was potatoes. In her report she says, “To be honest that was pretty bad, I couldn’t stick to the diet I’d planned for the life of me and definitely gained some weight. If it’s all good I’m going to try a different tact and see how that goes.”

She then did another riff, under the ID 75462073. This was a complex riff, “potatoes + other vegetables + fruit + limited proteins (soy, eggs, fish) + limited dairy (butter)”. She did lose some weight but overall describes the experience as “middling results!”

98821299 ate a diet of fried potatoes supplemented with other foods (e.g. breadrolls, pasta, rice, gingerbread, mayo, soy skyr, toast, etc.). This was more like a half-tato diet as far as we can tell. On this protocol they gained weight pretty consistently: 

Interpretation

Potatoes + Dairy continues to work for many people. However, it doesn’t work for everyone. Adding other ingredients, even fruits and vegetables, seems like it may be enough to interfere, though this is based on just a few cases. 

So far we don’t see a big winner on adding protein, though vegan protein does seem to do better. The egg riff and the meat riffs didn’t work, at least not for these people. This is pretty interesting given that meat and eggs are probably both high in lithium, though in such a small sample size there are many complicating factors. It would be good to see more protein riffs, especially riffs where someone starts off on the all-potato diet (to show that it works for them) and then adds a protein halfway through. We’d also like to see someone else try lentils, since they are high in protein and there was a big Potatoes + Lentils success in the first round of riffs.  

Potatoes + Skittles has a proof of concept. It works just fine, at least for this one participant. More evidence against “mono” and “palatability” as well as “potatoes are a whole food” explanations. We’d love to see more processed sweets riffs, maybe even a Potatoes + 1 Cup Sugar/Day riff!

We’re not entirely sure what to make of the other riffs.

So far it looks like dairy is compatible with the potato diet, or at least some forms of dairy. Vegan protein and sweets, or at least skittles, may be compatible as well. 

Going forward, we are most interested in the following kinds of riffs.

The first is a riff where you add just one thing to the potato diet, and show that you still lose weight. This shows that the new ingredient can be compatible with the potato diet, and if we get a couple of riffs like that, like we have with dairy, it suggests that the new ingredient is broadly compatible. We’d love to do a random walk towards the efficient frontier of fat loss, and maybe there is some super version of the potato diet that has yet to be discovered. (Perhaps Potatoes + 1 Cup Sugar/Day 👀)

The second is a riff that clearly shows that some ingredient stops the potato diet. To do this convincingly, you need to first show that you lose weight on the potato diet (since some people simply don’t), and that you stop losing weight when you add this new ingredient. The most interesting riffs going forward might start with 1 or 2 weeks of the classic potato diet as baseline, so it’s clear that the original version works for you. Then you can add one or two ingredients and see if they stop the effect. 

However, ruling foods in or out isn’t our main interest. What we really want is to make theoretical progress towards the question, why does the potato diet work (and sometimes not work)? Similarly, we would love to know why the half-tato diet works great for a few people but has a tiny effect on average. Maybe it has to do with what you’re eating in the other half?

We feel that the riffs so far have ruled out explanations like “the potato diet is a mono diet (and those work for some reason)”, “the potato diet is low-palatability, ignore the people who say how delicious it is”, and “on the potato diet you are eating nothing but whole foods.” However, if you disagree and feel that you can make a coherent case for why, we’d love to hear from you. Same if you have other explanations that might be tested by some new riff(s).

Sign Up Now

Signups for the potato riff trial are still open, and will probably stay open for all of 2024. You can read the original blog post here and sign up at the bottom. Feel free to replicate one of the riffs described above, try an extension, or invent your own riff. It’s up to you!

We’ll be back in a couple months when we have a new batch of riff trials big enough to report. For now, enjoy the full riff reports below.‎ ‎:‎) 

---

82546219 – Potatoes + Milk

Riff 

I plan to eat only potatoes and drink one cup of milk per day. CuoreDiVetro mixed dark chocolate with 250ml of milk in their trial. While it’s highly possible the dark chocolate is the active ingredient, I want to isolate the milk as a variable. Milk also contains Stearic Acid so it will be interesting to see whether it’s enough on its own. Europeans have been drinking milk far longer than they’ve been eating chocolate so I’m also curious about that component. Also by drinking milk I won’t have to supplement as much b12.

Report

Thanks for this! I’ve been following you from the very early days. I watched the original potato diet with much fascination and so it was great fun to be involved in this round. 

Here’s my report as such, it’s more just a rambling account on how I went rather than anything resembling scientific rigour. I’m quite interested in the science of it all but content to be a data point this time around.

I’m a pretty stubborn person. These kinds of extreme diets seem to suit me as I’m largely incapable of moderation or calorie restriction but very good and really firm rules. I’m also the designated waste disposal unit at any dinner table. A feature which is used by every friend group I’m in. I’m always the residual consumer who finishes all the food at the table. Partly because I hate to see anything go to waste, partly because I like it, and partly because that is the role I’ve come to assume in these friendship groups.

I chose potato and milk because I wanted to prove whoever said “no dairy” wrong. It just didn’t make sense to me why dairy would negate any effect the potatoes had. I liked the various theories about stearic acid and given milk is a good source of it thought that would put it to the test. I didn’t know that pretty much all your other participants were going to try something similar. I also very much thought the Riff trials were about isolating a single particular item. So when the first batch of Riff trials were released a few days into my experiment I was shocked to see others had done dairy as an entire category, what I would have done for a little cheese.

In saying that the first few weeks of the potato and milk diet were enjoyable. In a weird way there was a freedom in knowing I couldn’t eat anything else. I actually love both milk and potatoes and eating them exclusively almost wasn’t a challenge. At least not for the first few weeks. Experimenting with different ways of doing potatoes was fun and knowing I could eat as much as I wanted didn’t make it a chore. I’m a reasonably active person and my biggest worry was that this would effect my energy levels or performance in training, fears that were largely misguided. Towards the end I had one day where I felt incredibly faint after exercise but this may be more likely down to dehydration. I definitely had a bit of trouble with dehydration early in the diet, my urine was incredibly dark, I assume that’s from a drop in water content from what I was eating. I just doubled the amount of water I was drinking until I felt I was back to my baseline level of hydration.

I got many incredulous looks when telling people I was only eating potatoes. Most people were excited to see how it would pan out, many however didn’t believe it was “possible”. I deliberately kept it from my immediate family because they would think it was stupid. This was borne out when they did find out at the end of the 4th week and told me as much. Once I got known as the potato guy things also got easier because people stopped pushing me to eat other things or putting me through the Spanish Inquisition.

Probably the hardest part of the diet was prepping enough potatoes to take to work and for after work events. I play trivia several times a week, go to a weekly dinner at a friend’s place, and do a couple of group exercise things at night. Not having anything prepped meant it would be fries or packets of chips for dinner, both I grew quite sick of. In saying that I treated myself to some KFC chips on 3 different occasions. Something I normally reserve for when the State of Origin and NRL Grand Final are on.

The routine I came up with was to roast about 8kg of potatoes on the Sunday evening and box them up to be reheated through the week. I also boiled some potatoes on Sunday and boxed them, they could then be cut into discs and fried (my favourite format) or just eaten whole in a pinch. On top of this I tried hasselbacks, mash, baked, chips, and rosti’s. You’d think I would have eaten a lot of mash given my milk allowance but I actually wanted to drink the milk separately. Partly because it was often the highlight of my day, partly because I wanted to keep the variables as low as possible, and partly because I only actually felt like mash a couple of times. I originally planned to drink exactly 250ml of milk but that proved too difficult to measure when not in my own kitchen. So some days I was having about a litre and some days a small cup. All the milk I drank was full cream, I find skim too watery.

In terms of how many potatoes I ended up eating I wish I’d been able to count each one and weigh them all. I’d say my biggest day I had around 5kg of potatoes and my smallest around 200g. One thing I definitely think happened for me is I actually just ate less calories. As I could no longer provide clean-up service at dinners with other people, particularly my partner, that was a massive drop in consumption. I also have a big sweet tooth and the removal of refined sugars probably could have made me lose weight on its own. I definitely felt full more easily from straight potatoes. I guess I was also in diet mode and therefore was watching my consumption quite closely.

Towards the end of the diet I was quite keen for it to end. Mainly because I was really starting to crave fresh fruit and vegetables. I couldn’t stop thinking about fresh granny smith apples. I was also craving citrus. My partner started joking I had scurvy given how much I was talking about grapefruit, limes, and lemons. I did notice in the last two weeks I started to develop mouth ulcers, something that I don’t normally experience. By the end they were quite bad. I was taking a B multivitamin and as one of my friend’s loved to say the potato is nearly nutritionally complete so I’m not completely sure what the cause of that could have been. I wondered if it was a change in the bacteria in my mouth. I often thought about my gut biome and the starving little guys who feasted on my usually very diverse diet having only potatoes to eat.

Overall I lost 19.8 Pounds or 9kg. The first 10 pounds were easy and I knew I’d plateau for a bit and then I tend to have a few weeks lag before my body realises it’s a new regime and then it starts responding. So I wasn’t surprised when I lost the rest of the weight in that final week. I’m really happy with that and it’s a great start to the year. I should mention that going into this I’d had a huge Christmas. Every year I put on around 5kg over the Christmas holidays. That weight always seems to come off quite rapidly regardless of the approach because it’s just freshly put on and my sort of resting bitch weight seems to be 110kg. I also decided to do the potato diet about two weeks out and basically gave myself a hall pass to eat however poorly I wanted to in the lead-in. My main task was trying to chop through all the chocolate I got for Christmas so it wasn’t in the house come potato time. This meant I rolled up to the start line at 115kg and I lost that 5kg in the first week alone.

It was tempting on day 29 to keep going but I need at least a week to reset. It’s certainly nice to poop properly again. The social component of it was actually the hardest part, going out to dinner or to friend’s places and only being able to eat potatoes is not easy after the novelty wears off. It is however a good diet trick to have up my sleeve given I’m getting married at the end of the year and I’ve still got a bit to lose before I get to a weight I’d be comfortable waiting at the end of the aisle with.

Regards, 

82546219

32223622 – Potatoes + Dairy

Riff 

I will be having dairy with my potatoes. Perhaps not every meal but when the mood strikes me! I am open to suggestions however. I want to do potatoes for 28 days regardless, figure I could collect some data along the way :‎) 

I would like to start as soon as possible so please let me know!

Report

Hello,

I am writing to inform you that I have completed 28 days of the potato diet (and a final weigh-in on day 29). Overall, this diet was a great experience and while I don’t think I will be as strict going forward, I will definitely continue to eat more potatoes than I used to. Though I struggled to keep a long stretch without cheat days I do not attribute this to the diet itself, rather my work-life balance went to crap and I hardly had the wherewithal to prepare food. This is not typical and was just unfortunate timing for it to happen during this study. In any case, I am happy with the resulting ~5 lbs lost.

As for going “potato mode” like previous subjects have described, I do think I experienced it a little bit. Days where I was not hungry at all but had to remind myself to eat were common, especially in the beginning. As much as I love(d) cheese and sour cream, these honestly weren’t that enticing on this diet, so personally the added dairy component of this riff didn’t do much for me. Aside from butter, still love butter! And I am so happy living in Canada where I can get poutine just about anywhere. Feels more like a “meal” than just a large order of fries.

My partner, who decided to tag along for this diet (but absolutely hates data collection and diets so did not want to record anything for this study haha), definitely experienced more of the “potato mode” than I did. Any comfort foods she ate, she says the flavour was enhanced by a thousand. Despite that, she still had trouble finishing these cheat meals. Interestingly, she does not like her favourite chocolates that much anymore, as now the chocolate tastes off, and the fillings are too heavy (O’ Henry’s with reese’s peanut butter). I had the same thought, and I enjoyed these chocolates previously as well! Note that she didn’t know about this “effect” of the diet until she experienced it and I told her about it. She is 5’0″ and started at 156 lbs and ended at 149.

What’s most shocking to me in all this is how my perception of food has changed. I would actively avoid potatoes at most fast food places, instead opting to get, for example a chicken sandwich and nuggets. Because “common sense” was that potatoes have too many carbs and carbs = bad and protein = good.

84290728 – Potato + Dairy

Riff 

30 days, potato + diary (any – but mainly butter, soured cream, cream; some yoghurt, milk)+ocassional wine. 

Thinking: satiety effect due to proteinase inhibitors, v high in potatoes. I have previously noticed high satiety when eating significant amounts of whole wheat (also high in proteinase inhibitors) + soured cream. Expect normal protein levels to moderate the effect – hence low protein. High fat diary is in there to make the carbs palatable. Wine to maintain social life whilst doing it. 

Would like to run 30 days, whole wheat + diary and  30 days oats + diary, on same principle. 

Report

Just an update – I am afraid after trying various things over the past two weeks or so I have given up on eating potato + diary .

Reason is feeling ill on it – eating anywhere over half kg potato per day would make me nauseous, extremely thirsty, mildly dizzy, within 2/3 hrs of eating. My digestion also went from perfect to diarrhea every couple of days and cramps. Looks like potatoes do not agree with me if eaten every day in substantial amounts. I don’t have any explanations for this – maybe my ancestors did not evolve to eat potato? 

I have tried having salty water & eating pickles as I thought electrolite imbalance may be the problem – this resulted in a slight improvement, but not substantial enough to make  it manageable. Peeling the potatoes did not help much either.

Have not put anything on spreadsheet as I basically ‘cheated’ every day due to potato ‘side effects’. On average I ate about 400-500g potato / day with some days of no potato due to feeling unwell. More than one meal of potato per day was not manageable for me.  When not eating potato, I have reverted to eating wholewheat. I have lost 2.6kg over 2 weeks, mostly within the first few days presumably water weight? My appetite was relatively low throughout, eating around 1600-1700kcal on average. 

What’s next? Probably doing this with wholewheat + diary instead of potato, as I know I can tolerate it?

79886833 – Potatoes + Yoghurt 

Riff

Potatos + cream/yoghurt / I think that’s a marvelous combination and I know I may not have enough of it thus it will help me to keep it up to the very end of the experiment.

Report

Hi!

I have finished my four weeks. My riff was only yoghurt eventually. I really enjoyed it. My sheet is ready for you.

I hope it will help you!

37809513 – Potatoes + Butter (lots of it)

Riff 

I’ll be doing potatoes + butter, for 4 weeks.

I’ve tried a potato diet before, and lasted about a week as I found pure potatoes too unpalatable, and too much work to peel all that everyday.

My rationale is that I’m pretty sold on the low PUFA + low BCAA idea, even though I didn’t lose weight on a rice-based high-carb low-fat low-protein supplemented with bone broth diet and all kind of pills before.

I wanted to do another trial, without supplement this time, just in case one of them sabotaged my weight loss, but I don’t feel comfortable doing that on mostly nutrient-devoid white rice. I also wanted to try high fat instead of low fat, as I experienced some increased inflammation during the low-fat diet, which I blame on the PUFA released from my body fat (the symptoms I experienced went away when I went PUFA-free, and made a come back on a low-fat diet).

Also, potatoes cooked in butter are delicious!

Report

Hi!

Just updating you about my potato riff trial! It went well! I lost 5.3 lbs, which isn’t as much as many others, but I’m still pretty happy with it given that I’ve tried and fail to lose weight with keto, the emergence diet and intermittent fasting this last year, without success.

So what did I do? My riff was potatoes + butter (lots of it).

My typical meal would be steamed potatoes, slathered with butter, seasoned with salt, pepper, and either dijon’s mustard or apple cider vinegar.

I tried other ways to cook potatoes for variety (over roasted, sauteed, …), but in the end the steamed ones were the ones that felt the most satisfying. I didn’t grow tired of them, and still found this meal delicious at the end of the trial. Mid-trial I started to add 15g of fire in a bottle’s stearic a day, melted in the butter, which I replaced with a couple squares of dark chocolate a day for the few last days. I also had some alcohol throughout the trial, mostly bailey’s and vodka mixers (technically, it’s dairyfat and potatoes, right?).

How did I feel? Honestly, not too great. I was a bit bloated at the beginning, but that faded quickly.  I tried eating baby potatoes with the skin once, which is a mistake I never did again as it gave me horrible bloating all night, and a bad aftertaste that’d come back anytime I thought about them. Mid-trial, I started to have some mild feeling of nausea and distaste for potatoes between meals, which weirdly disappeared completely once I started eating (potatoes…). I went from feeling like I was sick of potatoes while I had an empty stomach to loving them once the first bite was in my mouth. During the last week, I had a headache pretty much every day, and the thought of any protein-rich meal would be extremely appetizing, even things I don’t particularly like (like lentils). So when the 4 weeks were over, I broke the diet immediately.

In conclusion? There is definitely something magic about the potato diet, which isn’t impaired by butter. But based on my symptoms, and cravings on the last week, I think this version was too low in protein for me (after all, the butter is diluting the potatoes’ protein). Maybe in some other nutrients too. I might also be reactive to the solanine or other nightshade compound. I tried a full-potato diet before, and I lasted less than a week. The butter allowed me to do this one for the full 4 weeks.

I’m a bit tired of weird restrictive diets at this point, so I’m back on my usual one, but I’ll probably try other riffs in the future, this time focused on trying to reap the weight loss benefit while still feeling good.

Thanks a lot for organizing this, this was a lot of fun to do, and I love reading about people’s various attempts at solving the puzzle that is metabolic disease!

90594710 – Potato + Dairy, then Potato + Dairy + Greens

Riff 

I’m planning to do the (understandably popular) potato+dairy diet for the first two weeks, and then add in leafy greens for the following two weeks, crossover study style.

Report

My 4 weeks of data are in! Was, of course, fun as always. … I didn’t do any precise measurement for the leafy greens, but can weigh a sample of spinach and then back-estimate how much of that I ate during a given day with spinach indicated. I also have weight data for the 12 days before I started if that would be of any use. (Interesting note: I dropped more weight in this period, Jan 1st to Jan 13th, than I did during my actual trial, without doing anything special. Just holiday weight going away? Unsure.)  

For context, I did the original potato diet (though I allowed myself dairy during that time) and went from ~165lbs to ~158lbs–in other words, it worked pretty alright for me. (I’m on the taller side, so reminder, lower starting BMI -> lower expected % weight loss.) I’ve mostly fluctuated around the midpoint of that range since then. My starting weight for this riff trial was near the lower end of that, at ~159lbs.

Ok, with that out of the way, my riff was that dairy was once again fair game, but this time, I would also allow green leafy vegetables for the last two weeks. No particular reason for this, beyond that I had started craving them during my original trial–a bit of an odd craving, as I’m usually not as good about getting my greens as I should be, though I do also get that craving sometimes even when I’m not thinking about what I eat. Well, that and that leafy greens are “healthy”, so… something something, should make the diet work better, maybe? Turns out my answer to that is “Ehh, looks inconclusive to me.” I did lose weight overall during both the (potato+dairy) and the (potato+dairy+greens) periods: 1.1lbs and 0.4lbs, respectively. Losing less weight while eating greens doesn’t score a ton of points for that approach. However, those numbers can be a bit misleading, as they’re sensitive to local noise at the endpoints of the time periods. The slope of the trendline was more negative when I did have greens: -.0146 without greens vs -.0538 with them.

So I clearly lost less weight in this riff trial than in my original trial. Why? Well, it wasn’t the greens; even if I had lost 1.1lbs in the second half of my riff trial like I did in the first half, that still only gets me to about a third of what I lost in my original trial. One answer might lie in the types of potato preparation I did. In my original trial, my usual diet was hash browns for breakfast, and baked potatoes with a bit of cheese and/or sour cream for lunch and dinner. During my riff trial, I had way more of what people usually consider unhealthy potatoes: hash browns for breakfast, frozen -> oven-baked fries for lunch, and often milk-and-butter-heavy mashed potatoes for dinner; also, about one bowl (like, cereal bowl sized, not popcorn bowl sized) of potato chips a day. I also had way more dairy than in my original trial, snacking on cheese, putting cheese in my hash browns, putting whole milk in my coffee (which I always drank black during my original trial), and so forth. My deviations from these typical meals in the original diet were also fewer and less drastic; I’d occasionally have fries for dinner, but then be back to 2 meals a day of baked potato, whereas during my riff, the exceptions were more along the lines of “cook some potatoes and spinach in a boatload of heavy cream” and then that would be what I ate for the next couple days. Lastly, my vegetables when I had them were–while I did stick entirely to leafy greens–underwhelming from an “eating healthy veggies” perspective. I went through about a pound of spinach, a little over 4lbs of Brussels sprouts (some steamed, but mostly roasted with oil), and one 12oz bag of romaine lettuce. Not too terribly much healthy greenery for a 2-week span where greenery is one of the 3 types of food I can eat. I don’t think exercise was a factor; the only real exercise I did during either trial was go for the occasional walk, and I strongly suspect I got more walking in during my riff than my first trial.

Anyway, first and foremost, this was delicious and fun (and very easy). If you’re still thinking about doing a riff trial and don’t feel strongly about which one to do, I endorse this one as being enjoyable. (Probably less so than potatoes and chocolate, but hey.) If I were to do it again, the changes I would make are:

– Measure more stuff. In my original trial I tracked about a dozen variables and eventually found it a bit tedious. I overcorrected in my riff trial though, only really tracking my weight and a freeform notes field. I definitely wish I’d done more quantitative measurements, such as precise amounts of dairy and greens.

– Lean harder into the greens as a source of fresh, leafy joy rather than just yet another thing to be fried (I often threw spinach in the pan with my hash browns) or cooked with oil. I think I’d’ve had a more enjoyable time and gotten more interesting data if I’d cut out most of my roasted sprouts and instead gone through like 10 bags of romaine.

– Higher starting weight? Is that a thing I’m allowed to say I’d change? I don’t exactly have full control over it (I’ve never tried to gain weight and don’t know if I could intentionally do so–nor have I really tried to lose it outside of mad potato science) and it feels sort of dishonest to try to juice up your weight–either artificially or by waiting for a natural high point in your fluctuation–before starting a diet, even if you have a maybe-somewhat-valid reason to think it makes scientific sense to do so.

81281674 – Potatoes + Carrots + Dairy + Misc.

Riff 

Nearly all potatoes, carrots, some dairy. Allow ketchup, seasoning, and oil without restriction. However, I work somewhere that provides free lunch, so if they happen not to have potatoes, I’m going to just eat a light vegetarian+chicken lunch of whatever’s available. This time around my primary goal is to lose weight, so I’m going to be conservative and stick mostly to potatoes apart from the convenience of free lunches. After I reach my goal of -15 lbs, I may try adding bread to get more data into the hypothesis that bread halts weight loss from the potato diet.

Report

Hey, I finally got around to filling in the spreadsheet (I had been tracking in a weight app and personal notes until then) and noticed I’m already four weeks in, so here’s that email.

Things seem to be going well, and I’m going to continue until I get to my goal of 155 lb, then add bread and keep going, as planned.

Eyeballing my data, it looks like I was stagnant Feb 7-12, though I can’t think of a reason for that.

FYI I’ve been subtracting the weight of my poop every morning to reduce variance. Hope that doesn’t mess you up.

Let me know if you have any questions.

10455414 – Potatoes + Dairy + “Three Sisters”

Riff 

I’d like to do the pure potato+dairy for two weeks to see what happens.  One cheat day per week.  Then add in corn.  If that seems to work, I’ll add in the other two of the three sisters: squash and beans.  I’m a member of the Cherokee Nation and think that “New World” grains and veggies are better for you, and that the European additions like beef, chicken, wheat, etc. have screwed up our digestive systems.  

Report

I was initially planning on doing the potato diet for a few weeks, then adding corn, squash and beans.  This is a Native diet – it uses nothing from the “old world” but only what Native Americans ate before the Europeans arrived.

I never added the corn.  I had some digestive issues so added broccoli, carrots, green beans, and cauliflower.  I had a glass of wine most nights, and a cheat night every Friday.

Here’s what went wrong:  I REALLY like potatoes.  I wolfed down bag after bag of Cape Cod Kettle Cooked chips for two weeks, along with a few visits to Five Guys.  I was in heaven.  But I didn’t lose weight for the first two weeks.  What’s amazing is that I didn’t gain any!

When I cut back on the chips and fries, and substituted more baked potatoes, my weight started dropping.  I also started lifting weights, so my fat loss is probably greater than my weight loss.

The net is that I lost about 5 pounds in five weeks.  

Quitting now.  May go back on it later.

12582676 – Potatoes + Chicken + White Wine

Riff 

My riff (description I sent in the beginning): 

1. unlimited whole potato, maximum source of calories possible 
2. measured doses of chicken meat (probably 20-40g of extra protein/day) in addition to potatoes because i worry that potatoes don’t give me enough protein -> muscle loss (i need ~70g pure protein according to online calculators) – might substitute for ~30g of protein from canned sardines when out of chicken (easier) 
3. 3 bottles of white wine on the weekends (fri sat sun) 
4. likely to completely fast on Monday because it makes me feel better  

Cooking: 

• * simply pan-fried with a bit of olive oil, OR baked in oven, OR boiled in a chicken soup (for soup will eat all of it so no minerals/nutrients are wasted) 
• * when eating out with friends, may eat fries to keep company but nothing else. Also may eat frozen hash browns when in super-hurry at home, but still potatoes. 
• * regular dried spices (salt, pepper, dried dill weed, cumin, etc.) 
• * will do my best to take the potato skins off because you told me that lots of skins lead to indigestion, but that’s a lot of work, so sometimes just cut up whole 
• * no dairy, tomatoes, etc. – just maximum potatoes, supplemented with 20-40g of chicken protein, with measured wine on the weekends.

Report

just wanted to share some notes on my recently completed riff (12582676):

* I stuck to the rules as described in that doc pretty well, cheated only for two days or so during the holidays, as marked in there.

* There are pretty big day-to-day variations, at first because I weighed at different times, later not entirely sure why, but I diligently weighed multiple times each time and recorded everything as is.

* I can think of a few factors: some days I was too lazy to cook enough potatoes so didn’t get nearly enough calories, a few other days ate too much junk potatoes like frozen tater tots or french fries when eating out, maybe that contributed to ups/downs in the numbers

* Overall, as much as I tried to like this approach, I felt pretty low energy and this is probably not sustainable for me long-term. That’s probably the biggest problem for me, I can deal with routine and cooking, but I need to have energy during the day, and somehow I didn’t end up feeling like I could sustain the required energy level.

Fun experiment and I’m looking forward to more experiments in the future!

04194992 – Potato + Red Meat + Dairy

Riff 

Potato+fatty dairy+red meat. I have chronically lowish ferritin levels so I don’t want to skip meat; I like my coffee with milk/creme, so I won’t skip dairy. Therefore, this seems to be the only potato riff diet available to me.

I’ve kept myself at normal weight my whole life with great effort; I haven’t felt satiety since puberty, e.g. I always want to eat more (I had normal satiety reaction as a child, but this was suddenly lost). When eating moderately so that I keep stable normal weight my homeostasis mechanism figures there’s a famine and downregulates heat production and immune response etc, which is not healthy. A month ago I went through a 6-week “keto-diet” (in quotation marks because I ate so much keto-food that I never really reached ketosis) and slowly lost some weight without going into famine mode. However, keto diet is awfully expensive, especially when cooking for a family of four, and also I was badly craving for starchy foods. Yet the high amount of fat may have allowed me to lose weight without physiologically starving, for the first time in my life. So I’ll try potatoes (cheap) with fat (prevents starvation), maybe this works. 

I’ll try to eat meat regularly but not too much (in case high protein makes people fat*). I’ll use heavy cream in coffee, butter in food, and sometimes maybe eat peaces of pure butter from the fridge, in case I get too hungry. Potatoes either mushed, baked or fried. I’ll supplement iron, B12 (and some other Bs), C and D vitamin, that’s my usual.

Will start on 8th January, I’ll try to stay on the diet for 4 weeks, but there’s a high chance that I’ll stop earlier if it turns out to be unbearable. 

___

* It looks like the human diet science has made an almost full circle, starting with blaming fat intake, then sugar and starch, and now it has reached proteins at last. I’m waiting for the blame to fall on fats again, just to be sure it goes in circles. 

Report

Dear SMTM,

I’m reporting the results of my diet trial (number 04194992, potato+redmeat+dairy).

I quit my trial after two weeks, sorry. Mainly I just ran out of willpower and also I didn’t see any difference from a garden-variety calorie-counting diet. Which may be expected, as potatoes, red meat plus fatty dairy together are a diverse kind of diet, with all the usual macronutrients nicely present.

General information: I decided to keep meat consumption at around 100g a day, which is quite moderate, I thought. I also restricted dairy to reasonable amounts and ate potatoes by far the most. I started out counting calories every day just to know how much I eat and always stopped eating at around 2000 kcal. For context, online calculators tell me to consume 1800 kcal per day to stay at a constant weight. I wanted to eat much more, of course. So I never ate potatoes ad libitum. Should I eat potatoes ad libitum, I’d get very fat very soon. (I once tried to start the potato-only diet, but couldn’t last more than a week, cravings for other foods got too strong.)

This diet started with a nice clear water loss in 2-4 days, then a plateau, some more weight loss after I further reduced the intake of calories a week in (deliberately but against my will as usual). Then another plateau, an inevitable cheat day at my child’s birthday followed by weight gain, and soon after that I gave in. Started with BMI at 24.6 and ended up at 23.7.

I wasn’t horribly hungry or horribly cold, but I thought about food all the time and wanted to eat much more than I did. Also craved for fresh fruits.  

So I would call this diet not working. That supports the conclusions of previous trials by other people who combined potatoes with red meat. Maybe fatty dairy and any other fat would be okay but the protein in even a small amount of meat ruins everything? To be honest, I don’t think I would’ve done better with just potato and dairy, I’m too hungry by nature. The amounts of potato and dairy I could consume if allowed to do so ad libitum, are large.

I don’t know if this is any use but it’s still a non-zero amount of information.

Cheers,

T

37791108 – Potato + Vegan Protein

Riff 

I want to do potato with vegan protein. So either a protein shake or a protein bar with each potato meal. I estimate the breakdown would be 25% calories from protein, 5-10% oil or seasoning for potatoes and 65-70% potato. No restrictions on preparation of potato. My preferred protein powder is is pea protein. I also eat protein bars with peanut and soy and wheat gluten. My plan is to try it for January then re-assess.

Report

Hello Slime Molds,

I would consider the potato + plant protein a success. I lost 10 lbs/month on full tato but I suspect that I lost muscle during this as well. On potato riff I lost 6 lbs at day 24 but I did not feel like I lost muscle.

I actually screwed up the protocol on day 25 and 26 because I went on a vacation and ate like a pig. This was a really bad month for me to do this experiment. Earlier, I had 3 days where I was trapped at work and had to eat their non-potato catering. I had several social events where I ate things like birthday cake to be a part of the group. However, I did not find myself craving these “forbidden” foods so much as I wanted to participate in the gatherings.

Overall I am very happy and am going to continue the protocol, with breaks for social situations. I think even more than the weight loss, it is a huge quality of life boost to feel satiety. It sucks being hungry all the time. Even if I am not dieting, there is a constant gnawing hunger. 

With bread, pasta, rice, and even salad I can go from completely full to starving in 45-60 min. With potatoes I have a more lasting satiety that can go for 2-4 hours depending on various factors.

I seasoned my potatoes so boringness was not really a factor in my diet. Eating beans or tofu for protein did not really seem to effect my results vs a straight protein bar or shake. Ketchup did not seem to effect my results but I also use a no sugar added ketchup. I used some oils and margarine to cook with but tried to use them sparingly and keep it under 5% of my total daily caloric intake.

Also I found out that I have anemia and have probably had it for years. And that I have had shitty doctors who ignored my bloodwork that whole time. I started IV iron treatments for malabsorption in the middle of the potato riff diet. But the doctor said it would take 21-28 days for new blood cells to grow, so I wouldn’t see the results of the iron treatments yet.

41470698 – Potatoes + Eggs

Riff 

I want to try potato + eggs, both ad libitum. 

Reasoning: I’ve previously had great success with the slow carb diet from the book the “four hour body”. Eggs were a staple breakfast item there. Because I had success I believe potato plus eggs should also work. Furthermore eggs are super tasty and contain a ton of nutrients which seems good.

Report

Hello SMTM,

I have completed the potato riff trial 4 weeks. You can publish this text anonymously in any way you see fit.

I was planning to make a detailed description of my experience, but I’m unsure how to make coherent thoughts about this experience. So I have just written down some tidbits. Make of them what you will.

This was truly novel and weird. I have never done an experiment like this.

Beforehand I set myself to only eat Potatoes and Eggs. In hindsight I believe it’s more fair to say I ate three things: Potatoes, Eggs and Olive Oil. I’m a huge olive oil enjoyer and that’s also how I like my eggs. Adding to that the oven fried potatoes to that results in a good quantity of olive oil. So I think it would be fair to say I ate a lot of olive oil. I have stayed tot the protocol almost every day of the 4 weeks.

I think I marked 3 cheat days. Probably it’s like 4, as one evening I just wanted something different.

I probably ate more eggs than my bodies was telling me to eat. At certain points during the 4 weeks I didn’t really want to eat eggs, but I also didn’t want to peel & prepare potatoes. Sometimes I then did indeed make potatoes, but sometimes I still ate some eggs instead. I should probably have eaten potatoes instead, but I didn’t have the willpower. 

That was one thing that I was surprised by. The sheer amount of potatoes I had to peel. Finding the time in my schedule to do that was interesting. After a while I just started peeling 3 kilos of potatoes in one sitting. I feel like meal prep is very important for following any of these experiments. 

I started trying to mark different things on the sheet, but the effort of even doing the experiment won in the end.

Recipe discovery: Spanish omelets, It’s basically eggs, potato and olive oil, perfect! Hard to make well though, I had mixed results keeping the kitchen and the floor clean.

Tidbit about eggs: In “4 Hour Body” Tim Ferriss recommends eating eggs without yolks or organic eggs. Not sure if this matters, but perhaps there is some substantial difference between organic and non-organic eggs. I stuck to organic eggs for the whole experiment. For the Netherlands, this article lists the different between our “Scharreleieren”, “Vrije uitloopeieren” and “Biologische eieren”: https://www.bnnvara.nl/kassa/artikelen/scharrel-biologisch-of-vrije-uitloopei-wat-is-nou-het-verschil. I only ate “Biologische eieren”.

Bowel movements were truly weird for the first 4-5 days. I had some weird diarrhea, that’s different from the diarrhea I regularly get with heavily processed food. I usually have it the day after when I ordered a pizza for example. With this experiment it was weird though. After eating the sweet potatoes it seems like they just passed through me with no ‘processing’ by my body. It seems that my body adjusted afterward though, because I had no issues the rest of the time. Even though I also tried sweet potatoes again later, those were completely fine.

I felt fine other than the diarrhea. I find these things hard to compare over time, because my remembering self seems so different from my experiencing self. But it seems that I wasn’t feeling much better or worse during the trial.

As for conclusions, the only one I am drawing from this experience is: When I eat only potatoes and eggs ad libitum, I will generally maintain my current weight.

Which is a little disappointing because I was hoping to lose a little. But also it’s different from the status quo, because before the trial I was eating anything a libitum and was gaining weight. So it’s a change from the mean.

22293376 – Potatoes + Skittles

Riff 

Potatoes (fat and salt allowed) + skittles candies. I intend to follow this for a month and see what happens. My reasoning is that I believe adherence will be easier when allowing occasional treats, and because I don’t think that refined sugar has a moral valence. 

Report

Hi there,

My riff is now complete. I was astonished at just how well it went, thanks for doing all this work!

32602136 – Standard Potato Diet

Riff

Plain potato diet, salt, black pepper, nothing else. I have already prepared an assload of potatoes for the fridge (russet, salad, baby, baking)

Report

Hi, I have some weeks of data complete, but took a break over Christmas period and taking another break now. I hope it is useful.

UPDATE

Hi, I think I will take a semi-break and cease recording data for now – overall I’ve been really pleased with the results. Added some thoughts below:

I read about Penn Jillette’s potato diet and then found SMTM and thought it sounded too good to be true, so I figured it would be worth a shot to lose some excess weight. My potato riff was to include some pepperoni, salami, chorizo and other cured meats to see if they would help with any anticipated cravings for other food and to break up the monotony of only eating potatoes. This turned out to be unnecessary, to my surprise at no point did I become bored of or frustrated with potatoes. They were delicious to start with and remained satisfying the entire time.

I chose a mix of baking, baby, sweet, and red potatoes, always with the skin left on, mostly boiled or baked. I did not use oil or butter, and usually only salt and pepper as seasonings.

I enjoyed knowing that once I had prepared the next batch of potatoes there was no meal prep left to do and nothing to fuss about. The cost of preparing weekly meals was incredibly cheap. If I wanted a snack, the potatoes were ready, if I wanted a larger meal, I would just take more potatoes. I experienced no cravings for any other type of food the entire time and would’ve been just as content with solely potatoes.

The main downside I experienced throughout the last few weeks was taking the time to prepare all the potatoes – baking especially. It often felt like a chore. Storing the cooked potatoes in suitable containers meant that I only had around 2 days worth ready to eat at any time, and I felt a slight resentment that I had to prepare more when they were running low.

I chose to pause the diet over the Christmas period as it wouldn’t be feasible with family meals and such, though after it had ended my weight had not shot back up which was a pleasant surprise.

I saw an immediate drop in weight that leveled off but has stayed off (around 6 lbs) and seemed to fluctuate at random. My lowest weight was reached on the 19th of January despite not doing anything differently, not noticeably eating less or exercising more, and taking several breaks from the diet. Going forward I think I will incorporate far more potatoes into my daily diet, knowing that I can snack on something filling and pleasant that doesn’t seem to have any negative effect on my weight is great. I think if I had solely stuck to potatoes and had no breaks I would’ve lost maybe double the amount of weight, but even though it isn’t a huge amount I am still really impressed with the whole idea. I’ve recommended it to one of my friends and he has begun his own potato diet after reading the blog, so it is pretty convincing.

75452454 – “Whole Foods” + Chocolate

Riff

I’m gonna stick to whole foods and chocolate. I originally lost a lot of weight years ago eating basically cabbage and brussels sprouts every day but during covid I gained some of that back due to stress. I want to commit to a diet of primarily roasted or raw vegetables. I’ll allow mustard, hot sauce, almost no dairy, and only chocolate when necessary.

I should’ve tracked [potatoes] independently but looking back [they] worked out to about 10% of my diet each day.

Report 

Technically completed back in December but then the holidays happened and I forgot to finish the last days of the diary.

To be honest that was pretty bad, I couldn’t stick to the diet I’d planned for the life of me and definitely gained some weight. If it’s all good I’m going to try a different tact and see how that goes.

75462073 – Potatoes + Other Vegetables + Fruit + Limited Proteins (Soy, Eggs, Fish) + Limited Dairy (Butter)

Riff 

I had done one before focusing on “whole foods and chocolate” but I want to narrow that down. I’m doing potatoes + other vegetables + fruit + limited proteins (soy, eggs, fish) + limited dairy (butter). I’m also going to focus on incorporating exercise since I think that helps not with hitting specific caloric goals but creating a widen margin of error for hitting caloric goals. I also think exercise’s affect on mood helps with making better food choices and sticking to a stricter diet. I’m really angling to recreate previous success I’d had losing weight with a more varied diet than just potatoes and that had involved a lot of cole crops, tofu, and avoiding grains and sweets. I intend to submit results at 4 weeks and then continue if I’m having success.

Report

Hey besties,

I just wrapped week 4 of my potato riff to some, spoiler alert, middling results!

I’ll probably keep tracking for a week or two longer but we’ll see! I don’t think at any point did I feel like I was in the potato zone. I did make a little progress, I’m 7 lbs down from when I initially filled out the form but that’s still less than the 2/week industry standard and came with a lot of ups and downs.

98821299 – Fried Potatoes

Riff

I want to try a Fried potato riff. I think fries and such are delicious. As I’ve been eating rice and pasta for the last few weeks, it’s time for a change. 

I would also like to know if the amount of PUFA is more important than the amount of BCAA. 

This time last year I had lost about 10kg using a table that calculates real calorie consumption based on intake and weight loss. I’ve since gained it back again, but it was stable for quite a long time. It was only when I doubled my BCAA intake from around 10g to 20g that I became heavier. However, this could also be due to strength training or an increase in my vegan butter consumption. I wasn’t aware of the concept of BCAA restriction at the time and I didn’t have much success with PUFA avoidance before. 

I took part in the potassium experiment back then but didn’t stick with it. This stuff is pretty disgusting and after 1-2 weeks I lost all motivation. 

I hope I can hold out this time! 

• I want to know i the amount of PUFA or BCAA has a bigger impact on bodyweight. 
• There will be some Potatoes, but also other low BCAA foods like Rice.  
• “However, for now it wont limit the amount of PUFA. I will use a reasonabel amount of it to cook my food.  Not drink oil straigt from the jug.” 
• Calories aren´t counted to keep the data somewhat unbiased. 
• If there is something, it should work ad lib.  
• If BCAA´s are such important signal molecules it will be refelctet in the data. 
• If its neither BCAA or PUFA it shoud also show. 
• A multivitamin suplement is taken every day. 
• I´m Vegan, so if i write things like “Butter” or “Cheese” its always a Vegan version of it

Report

Hey There, i fucked around and found (something, maybe) out!

My goal with this messy riff was to find data on the relationship between BCAA, PUFA and body weight.

I recorded protein, BCAAs, fat, PUFAs, carbohydrates and fiber in addition to food eaten for 30 days. Unfortunately, it only occurred to me in the last few days that carbohydrates might also be important. I have therefore only been able to collect 2 data points from them so far. So I will continue my riff for another 30 days to get meaningful data.

I have started to analyze all the data. I may have damaged your summary. I am sorry.

Let’s start with calculated correlations of the individual macros and body data for my weight.

Protein – 0.009195770085

The amount of protein does not seem to be particularly important in my quantities. The trend line is also almost horizontal.

BCAA – 0.0171401008

The amount of BCAA per kg body weight seems to be a bit more important. In the diagram, however, the trend line is completely horizontal.

Fat – -0.5219424632

More fat made me quite reliably heavier the next day.

PUFA – -0.3515048417

The same goes for PUFA. Interestingly, the less fat and the higher the PUFA content, the less weight gain.

Steps – 0.4659220545

More weight = more energy = more exercise.

Calories – 0.3381898136

I’m not surprised either. I have to get rid of the energy somehow.

In the next step I compared the macros I ate the day before with the change in weight overnight.

As already mentioned, the amount of protein seems to have little or no relevance. Both trend lines are almost horizontal. Fats on the other hand seem to make me heavier. However, data on carbohydrates is missing for the comparison.

So what happens next?

I will also record carbohydrates and keep the amount of fat down. I may increase the amount of protein when I see results. I have put on 4 kg for science and I don’t like that.

Eating a diet of nothing but potatoes (or almost nothing but potatoes) causes quick, effortless weight loss for many people. It’s not a matter of white-knuckling through a boring diet — people eat as much (potato) as they want, and at the end of a month of spuds they say things like, “I was quite surprised that I didn’t get tired of potatoes. I still love them, maybe even more so than usual?!” And some people lose a similar amount even when eating only 50% potato.

Why the hell does this happen? Well, there are many theories. To help get a sense of which theories are plausible, try to find some boundary conditions, or just more randomly explore the diet-space, we decided to run a Potato Diet Riff Trial. In this study, people volunteer to try different variations on the potato diet for at least one month and let us know how it goes. For example, they might eat nothing but potatoes and always cook their potatoes in olive oil. Or they might eat nothing but potatoes and leafy greens. Or they might eat nothing but potatoes and always eat their potatoes with ketchup. 

The hope is that this will help us figure out if there are other factors that slow, stop, or perhaps accelerate the rate of weight loss we saw on the full potato diet. This will get us closer to figuring out why potatoes cause weight loss in the first place, and might get us closer to curing obesity. We might also discover a new version of the diet that is easier to stick to or causes even more weight loss, or both. 

In the two months since launching the riff trial we’ve heard back from ten riffs. More people have their riffs underway or are planning to start soon, so there are more riff trial results in your future. But let’s see what we’ve learned so far. 

First we’ll review the overall results, and talk about our interpretation. Then, at the end we’ve included the actual riff proposals and reports from all ten participants, if you want to read about them in more detail.

Unless otherwise indicated, weight loss numbers are over a period of about 28 days, comparable to the original Potato Diet Community Trial. 

Potatoes + Dairy

The most common riff to date has been one version or another of Potatoes + Dairy, five out of the ten reports so far. Let’s take a look!

72682326 ate Potatoes + Dairy Fat (butter, heavy cream, sour cream), plus a little chocolate, and lost 11.8 lbs. “This is a new low weight for me,” she adds, “I’d say going back 15 years.”

(All these plots have a span of 24 lbs on the y-axis so they can be compared directly.)

05035476 ate Potatoes + Dairy and lost 12.9 lbs. 

69159819 ate Potatoes + Dairy, mostly as mashed potatoes (prepared as “5 pounds of potatoes with 1-2 sticks of butter, plenty of milk and cream mixed in, and cheese on top”) or potatoes roasted in butter, and had coffee with lots of cream. He lost 9.7 lbs, and described the experience as “truly decadent”. This report is interesting because this participant had the lowest starting BMI (just 26.6) of all the reports so far, and because previous attempts at the full-potato diet didn’t work for him. 

38440610 ate Potatoes + Cheese. “My reasoning is that I thought it would be very funny if cheesy potato would work,” he explained in the signup form, “so I wanted to try.” He ate a wide variety of cheeses (feta, cheddar, parmesan, emmental, maasdamer, etc.) and lost 5.2 lbs. 

67475178 ate Potatoes + Dairy + Milk Chocolate, and lost no weight. Despite this, she reports being amazed that the scale didn’t move, given how much potatoes, butter, cheese, and chocolate she was eating. “I have lost an inch of my waist (maybe less bloated?),” she says, “despite eating copious amounts of milk chocolate daily.”

Obviously this is a small sample size, but so far it looks like Potatoes + Dairy works about as well as the original potato diet, where people lost an average of 10.6 lbs over a similar span of time. So tell your friends, “I need to eat more gratin de pommes à la dauphinoise, I’m trying to lose weight!”

Given this, it’s pretty ironic that our one strict rule in the original potato diet was “no dairy”. Oops!

Sustained Weight Loss

78175908 ate Potatoes + Ketchup + Protein Powder (“derived from milk”) and lost 9 kg (about 19.8 lbs) in the process. He does mention that he doesn’t like potatoes, but says that satiety and energy levels were good overall. 

87411834 ate Potatoes + Lentils in a “stew/soup” with butter, along with a few other minor interventions, like “two Gatorade Zeros each with an additional 1 teaspoon of Potassium Chloride per day” as inspired by Krinn. He lost 17.2 lbs over 29 days.

(PSA: Be careful adding more potassium when doing a potato diet because you are already getting a ton of potassium from the potatoes. At some point you will be getting too much, which is dangerous. How much is too much? It’s hard to tell! Again, be careful.)

In addition, here are two plots he provided of the same data: 

40711007 did a riff that can only be quoted: “Potato + Carrot (for vitamin A) + Fish (for B12 & protein) + Marmite (for B12) + salt (I hear it can be lacking if you just eat potato) + olive oil (…honestly it’s the fat source that I had lying around when I decided to commit to the bit) + various seasonings (it’s how I make soup taste of things) + Apples (I’m only about 90% that I’d be getting enough C from potatoes) + sugar-free fizzy drinks.” Despite this list of modifications, he lost 8.5 lbs, “and that was with four explicit cheat days, as well as at least two days with an unwise amount of deep frying even by the measure of ‘amounts of deep frying’.”

None of these riffs seemed to stop the potato effect. In fact, the first two might have accelerated it. Both of them outperformed the average weight loss in the original Potato Diet Community Trial (though they didn’t outperform the extremes; the greatest amount lost in the original study was 24.0 lbs). 

It’s irresponsible to speculate too much from just two examples, but both of them do include more protein. It’s possible that more protein improves the potato diet. It’s also possible that this is just noise. 

Flopped

13910399 ate Potatoes + Toast with Margarine, the toast being for breakfast and an afternoon snack. He lost only 2.4 lbs. It may be that this riff doesn’t work, but there are complicating factors — he had a cold at one point during the study, took a lot of cheat days, and all the potatoes he had were boiled. 

27482609 ate Potatoes + Beef, mostly grass-fed, and using butter as cooking oil. He lost only 2.0 lbs. 

Both of these participants lost weight, but neither of them lost very much. Again, we should be careful about speculating from just two examples, but this definitely makes us curious whether toast, margarine, or beef blocks the potato effect in general.

If you are interested in trying a potato riff (instructions to sign up are below), we’d be very interested to see riffs of Potato + Bread/Toast, Potato + Margarine, or Potato + Beef. 

Even better would be for someone to try 100% potato for 2-4 weeks, to confirm that they lose weight on the normal potato diet. Then they would add toast, margarine, or beef for another 2-4 weeks and see if they stop losing weight. If they do, they can do another 2-4 weeks of just potato and see if they start losing weight again. This could provide strong evidence that the added food somehow stops the potato diet from causing weight loss as normal. 

Interpretation

We’re interested in potatoes because we want to try to figure out the cause and cure for obesity. But you may be reading this because you’re looking for a way to lose weight. In a practical sense, if you’re trying to lose weight, you might want to start by trying Potatoes + Dairy. It seems to work about as well as the normal potato diet, and it’s probably easier to stick to. If it doesn’t work for you, you can always switch to original potato diet. 

Some people think the potato diet causes weight loss because it is a mono diet, a diet where you eat mostly or entirely one food. We already found this interpretation unlikely, and the riff trials provide even more data against it. Potatoes + Cheese isn’t a mono diet. Neither are Potatoes + Dairy, Potatoes + Lentils, Potatoes + Ketchup + Protein Powder, or Potatoes + Carrots + Fish + … + Sugar-Free Fizzy Drinks. Yet all of these diets caused weight loss, for at least one person who has tried them. If you still think another mono diet would work just as well, then please do a riff of your own and send us the results.

Some people think the potato diet causes weight loss because it is boring. This is often linked to Stephan Guyenet’s perspective that very palatable (read: delicious) foods lead to overeating and weight gain. From this perspective, the potato causes weight loss because it is high-satiety and low-palatability, i.e. filling yet bland. If this were true, adding delicious foods like butter and cheese to potatoes should stop or at least slow their weight-loss powers. Right? Fuckin’ wrong! 

Participant 72682326 ate potatoes, various dairy fats, and sometimes chocolate. She described the experience as “I feel like I’m stuffing myself with delicious carby potatoes”, and lost 11.8 lbs over 28 days. Participant 69159819 ate potatoes and dairy, lost 9.7 lbs, and described the experience as “truly decadent”. Participant 78175908 specifically added ketchup “for enhanced palatability” and still lost 19.8 lbs. Read the rest of the reports below to see similar details. Any kind of blandness/deliciousness/palatability hypothesis predicts the opposite: adding tasty foods to the potato diet should make it much less effective, and anyone who is having a decadent time shouldn’t lose weight. Busted.

Given this evidence, we find it hard to take the mono diet or palatability explanations very seriously. If there’s anyone out there who still defends either of these interpretations, we’d love to hear what you’re thinking.

Sign Up Now

Signups for the potato riff trial are still open! And they will probably stay open all year. If you want to help out, or just try it for yourself, you can read the original blog post here and sign up at the bottom. Feel free to replicate one of the riffs described above, try an extension, or invent your own riff. It’s up to you.

We’ll be back in a couple months when we have a new batch of riff trials big enough to report. For now, chill out and enjoy the full riff reports below.‎ ‎:) 

---

72682326 – Potato + Dairy Fat

Riff

Potato + dairy fat 

Report

Hi there – 

I almost can’t believe that 4 weeks have gone by already but here we are. I started at 216 and today I’m at 204.2… I had 6 substantial deviation days, 2 of which were in the past week (family funerals are rough on diet experiments!)

Before I comment on the last for week, I’ll offer a little history about me. I’ve been obese pretty much my whole adult life. I’m 48F, 5’5”, hourglass-ish (ie low-ish WHR), and with one exception when I was in my early 30s, never was able to get my weight reliably below 250. By early 2022, I was up to 270 and had been in that vicinity for at least a couple of years. Before the pandemic I had gotten down just below 250 but the pandemic showed up and I gained back everything I’d lost and maybe a little more. On Feb 22, 2022 (2/22/22, I’m a fan of palindromes) I decided to get serious and lose weight, no matter what. Over the course of 2022, I lost about 50 pounds using what I refer to as my change-up diet(when I get bored, I change it up, so I cycled through CICO, low fat, high fiber, keto, vegetarian, a very brief carni stint, etc etc.) Early in 2023, I came across r/SaturatedFat and r/StopEatingSeedOils on reddit and then was kind of off to the races on that whole thing.  I was having a hard time losing (and even maintaining) at that point and had some luck maintaining the weight loss on TCD. But I wanted to lose more. It was in April/May 2023 that I came across Exfatloss’s stuff and his ex150 experiment so I did that in May/June 2023, starting at 220 and ending at 206. I then had a ton of work travel and various other life events (aka summer in Wisconsin) that made it difficult to keep losing. I stayed under 210 for the most part until some work and personal stress in September/October when things started trending up again, leading to a bit of a freak out and my plan to do a potato spin off (saw someone comment somewhere on Reddit that potatoes + fat was working for them, so I figured what the heck, because I love potatoes and it’s one of the foods I’ve missed the most while doing a fair amount of low carb eating.) About a week in I told Exfatloss what I was up to and he told me about your potato riff and that’s when I messaged you. 

Sorry that was a lot but I just wanted to kind of lay that all out. Here are my thoughts on the last 4 weeks. 

My starting weight. The scale said 216, yes, but average wise my weight going in to this was more like 214, and it was a recent 214 from a previously lower average weight of 210ish. But I was definitely in a gaining trend that I wanted desperately to reverse. 

My ending weight. This is a new low weight for me, I’d say going back 15 years. Back then the low weight that I hit was a brief victory, I got there via keto and I probably stayed that weight for a couple of weeks, if that, then lost the keto battle and put the weight back on and then some. 

The food I ate: basically, I’d have coffee with heavy cream for breakfast and then potatoes and dairy fat (butter, heavy cream, sour cream) for lunch and dinner. I’d usually target eating about 200-250g of potatoes per meal depending on how hungry I was. I’d add enough fat to make it taste good. I’d also be liberal with salt and other seasonings. I would eat slowly so that if I started to feel full, I’d stop before I felt sick (I had a day where I was in a rush and ate too fast/too much and felt terrible the rest of the day.) If I felt like I needed something sweet, I’d have a square of dark chocolate or a Lindt 70% cacao truffle.  

The weight I lost. As I mentioned above, I previously got down to 206 on ex150 back in May/June. My weight loss efforts always take a couple of times to stick so I’m super excited about this weight loss, it makes me think that I can keep losing. I loved the food on ex150 but that way of eating was pretty difficult to incorporate into my life. I’d say that I love this way of eating about as much and it’s easier to make work for me. Easier to make work -> easier to stick with it. 

Speaking of keto. I mentioned it in my notes on the spreadsheet but there were days that I was in ketosis (my wife has a finely tuned nose for keto breath, for better and for worse.) I was really surprised by this. I know I’m not in major keto because I haven’t dropped all the water weight like I did on ex150. I feel like I’m stuffing myself with delicious carby potatoes, so how is that happening? I have a couple of thoughts on that. 

1) the lion’s share of the potatoes I’m eating are yellow or red potatoes that have been cooked/cooled/reheated, so are the carbs lower than I think because of resistant starch, and/or does resistant starch have some magical quality that we haven’t quite sussed out yet

2) is the high quantity of saturated fat and/or low quantity of protein making it easier to get in to ketosis. 

3) something else I’m not thinking of 

Couple of last thoughts: I’m so excited about these results and my plan is to continue to eat like this for the foreseeable future (holidays might be tricky, crossing that bridge when I get there, one meal at a time). A goal I had for this year was to get to onederland, but it was not happening and I decided not to make myself crazy over the holidays by trying to lose weight. I was just going to ride it out in that average 210-215 weight zone and then attack it again in 2024. Now I’m feeling like I could maybe get to that point yet this year. I’m elated at this prospect. 

That was a lot, hopefully not TMI. Is there anything else you’d like to know?

Thanks for doing this! I’m looking forward to seeing other people’s riffs.

05035476 – Potatoes + Dairy

Riff

potato plus dairy b/c i like those things and I read the ice cream hypothesis…would be very interesting if the combo helped wait loss b/c of all the negative pub on dairy in diets

Report

Hi There!

Finished my potato diet! Very happy with the results, some cheat days at the end that kept my weight a little bit up.  Think I have Stockholm Syndrome now and am keeping up with the taters. Best diet ever.

Hope my data can help.  Kept to potatoes plus dairy, didn’t go hard on the dairy, just supplemented my potato intake.  Tried to keep it low in BCAA, but some seed oil hash browns and fries included in there.

Mood and digestion was all great during the diet.  Only cranky one was my wife having to cook for herself ‎:)

69159819 – Potatoes + Dairy

Riff

My intent is to try potatoes + dairy. This riff is particularly interesting for a few reasons. From a lifestyle perspective, this seems like a relatively accessible way to do the potato diet. I love mashed potatoes (the most delicious way to eat potatoes), most of the toppings I put on baked potatoes are dairy foods, and I don’t see any reason I couldn’t roast potatoes with butter instead of oil. Additionally, the last time I tried the potato diet (as an unregistered personal experiment), I think the olive oil I relied on to roast my potatoes upset my stomach, so I’m interested if this approach eliminates that issue.

Potatoes + dairy is also interesting to me from an ancestral health perspective. My family comes almost exclusively from the British Isles, and I recently read a book (“Highland Folk Ways”) that provided a detailed description of the diet the Highland side of my family would have followed. The historic Highland diet was ridiculously high in both dairy and potatoes! If anyone is able to thrive on just potatoes and dairy, it should be me. If I don’t lose weight/feel good (especially if a future riff without dairy does work for me), that would be particularly valuable information for my personal health.

Beyond those more personal factors, dairy seems pretty controversial in health/fitness/nutrition circles, which makes it interesting. More than I decade ago, when I was first learning about nutrition, I remember reading the strength coach Mark Rippetoe talk about putting scrawny high school boys on the Gallon of Milk a Day (GOMAD) diet, and he proposed that milk was uniquely anabolic. (I seem to recall that the proposed mechanism was Insulin-Like Growth Factor (IGF-1), but further details elude me now.) When you’re trying to put muscles on a high school kid, anabolism is good, but not so much if you’re trying to lose weight. At the same time, dairy is a staple of plenty of non-obese cultures (most of Northern Europe, for example, which is where I am genetically from). Anyway, I’ve noticed that I’m confused about dairy, and that makes it exciting.

I intend to start the day after American Thanksgiving (November 24). Thanksgiving is a big potato holiday in my family, so I’ll have plenty of leftovers to get started with. I will continue up to December 24, the next major date that has food traditions associated with it. I intend to use a mixture of russet, gold, and red potatoes. My major foods will be mashed potatoes (made with lots of milk and butter), potatoes roasted in butter, and baked potatoes with dairy toppings (butter, sour cream, cheese, etc.). I will not restrict incidental dairy in my coffee (I often put a small amount of cream or milk, or have the occasional latte), but I do not intend to eat tons of supplementary dairy (e.g., no ExFatLoss-style whipped cream desserts).

Report

I just took my 4 week weight measurement for the potatoes + dairy riff.

Overall results were surprisingly good – almost 10 pounds of weight loss despite eating massive amounts of both potatoes and dairy. Even assuming that some of the initial weight loss was water, it was impressive. I’ve included some implementation details below to add some context, or in case others want to try to replicate the riff.

Mashed potatoes were the MVP meal – 5 pounds of potatoes with 1-2 sticks of butter, plenty of milk and cream mixed in, and cheese on top, generally lasting 4-5 meals. It was truly decadent. I suspect that I ate that for something like 35-40 total meals, with potatoes roasted in butter making up another 10-15 meals. I generally did coffee with lots of cream (2-4 mugs/day) for breakfast, then had potatoes for lunch and dinner at normal times (roughly 12 and 6, but I made no effort to manipulate the times I ate, I just ate when I was hungry). Rarely (something like 5 meals, each indicated on the sheet) I would eat french fries from a restaurant, mostly for social reasons.

Compared to my previous personal experiment with the potato diet, the dairy makes this so much more accessible for me. First of all, it means fewer overall potatoes, since I was getting quite a bit of satisfaction from the hefty amounts of dairy. While I’m very excited to eat non-potato food (my wife commented last night that I have begun to stare longingly at other people’s food), I’m actually not tired of potatoes. (I actually ate leftover potatoes for lunch, despite technically ending my diet yesterday.) Second, having the dairy also pushed me to prepare almost all of my potatoes from an unprocessed state, rather than trying to justify frozen potatoes, potato chips, and various forms of fried potatoes.

The original potato diet did not seem to work for me. Besides the presence of dairy, the other major confounding factor is the preparation method – in my previous attempt, I mostly ate roasted potatoes (probably 50% peeled, 50% unpeeled, roasted with olive oil). In the dairy riff, a majority of my meals were mashed potatoes, which started with peeling and boiling. During this iteration, I noticed that when I ate roasted potatoes, my weight plateaued or went up the next day (I actually started recording that in my notes part way through). I assumed that was just water retention (maybe I just salt roasted potatoes more heavily?), but it was a very consistent pattern. I’ll also note that this argues against the “boiling potatoes removes the potassium, so boiled potatoes won’t work as well” theory from the original riff intro post!

Let me know if you have any other questions, and thanks for organizing this whole thing! I’m excited to see the results of other riffs.

38440610 – Potatoes + Cheese

Riff

My riff is potatoes and cheese. My reasoning is that I thought it would be very funny if cheesy potato would work, so I wanted to try. My plan is to do the 4 weeks, I have no idea how I will feel afterwards so it’s hard for me to say if I will continue. I know from the past two years, in which I recorded my weight to track weight-loss, that I have a much harder time loosing weight in spring time (or even just holding my weight). If this works now, I will repeat it in the spring to see if it still works then. 

Side note: I just did a quick google search if it’s common to gain weight in spring and a quick search suggest the polar opposite. Might just be because I am lazy and not very social, while others are especially active during spring.

Anyhow there is one caveat for me in this: My goal is to loose weight so if this riff turns out horribly (I feel like a good cut-off point is if I gain 10 lbs total at any point relative to my starting weight) my plan is to abort this riff and transition to the traditional potato (pure-tato?) diet. I plan to document everything so hopefully it will still be useful fore someone. If the pure-tato diet also does not work for me, at least I will have suffered for science T^T

Report

thanks for organizing this riff trial. It was a great experience and a lot of fun.

I think generally potatoes + cheese works. I wasn’t very strict to begin with and when I cheated it reset my progress quite a bit.

After week two I started to get fed up with potatoes and also was pretty stressed in general. I think for me the resulting mental state was the biggest hurdle.

Even though I tended to get satiated more easily on the potato + cheese diet in general, in that time I ate more than ever and still felt hungry.

I’m stopping for now because it will be a pain during the holidays and I’m also planning to move flats in January which would make it increasingly difficult to adhere to the diet.

But I like the idea of continuing N=1 experiments after things settled down a bit.

Yours,
participant 38440610

67475178 – Potatoes + Dairy + Milk Chocolate

Riff

Potatoes + dairy + milk chocolate for at least four weeks. I have chosen dairy as I would enjoy the potatoes more with butter and cheese and I’m curious as to the weight loss effects if any. Chocolate because I’m curious about that as well. 

Report

Hi I have completed the four weeks off my riff! I have lost no weight, but I have lost an inch of my waist ( maybe less bloated?). Despite eating copious amounts of milk chocolate daily. My blood pressure has also gone down a bit from 138/95 to 137/87 I’m not sure if that’s of any significance. 

I was amazed I didn’t put any weight on! I ate a variation of potatoes for every meal with either butter and cheese or both. Followed by some milk chocolate or a yogurt mixed with cream. Usually the potatoes were microwaved in the skin. 

78175908 – Potatoes + Ketchup + Protein Powder

Riff 

+Ketchup +100g protein per day (150g powder, made from milk)

Personal Experience with the Potato Diet Riff (November 1st to 28th)

Introduction

• Diet Overview: Engaged in a modified version of the Potato Diet from November 1st to 28th, adding ketchup and protein powder.
• Purpose: To explore the effectiveness and adaptability of the Potato Diet while maintaining muscle mass and energy levels.

Riff Details

• Ketchup Addition: Included ketchup for enhanced palatability.
• Protein Supplementation: Consumed 150 grams of protein powder daily, providing an additional 100 grams of protein from 563 kcal. This was to prevent muscle loss, given the low protein content in potatoes. 
• 

Results

• Weight Loss: Achieved a significant reduction in weight, from 87 kg to 78 kg over 28 days, with a more rapid loss observed initially.
• Hunger and Convenience: Generally, hunger was not an issue; however, the diet’s convenience was sometimes challenging, particularly during busy periods.
• Potato Preparation: Utilized jarred potatoes (425 grams per jar), rinsed and microwaved for a minute, served with ketchup.
• Energy Levels: Maintained stable energy throughout the diet, contrasting previous diet experiences that involved reduced eating.

Observations

• Non-Palatability as a Factor: Personal dislike for potatoes and the unpleasant taste of the protein powder negatively impacted the diet experience.
• Beverage Consumption: Primarily drank water, with occasional sugar-free pop.

Conclusions

• Efficacy: The diet was effective for weight loss, even with the modifications.
• Muscle Maintenance: The high protein intake likely contributed to preserving muscle mass during the diet. No measurements were made.
• Satiety and Energy: Satiety was generally good, and energy levels remained stable.
• Private factor: For privacy reasons, I’ve omitted a factor that may be important. Please don’t update too strongly on my results.
• Palatability Challenges: The diet’s success might be hindered by the non-enjoyable nature of the foods consumed, suggesting a potential trade-off between effectiveness and enjoyment. 

87411834 – Potatoes + Lentils

Riff

“Potato Stoop” – basically a stew/soup of potatoes, onions, celery, red lentils and butter cooked in an Instant Pot (so I’m retaining the broth and hopefully the potassium). I’ll likely add in some supplementing with potassium chloride later when I receive it from Amazon. I’m hoping to stick with it for several weeks.

Rationale: lentils will add some protein and fiber (maybe a good thing?), and the rest is to help make it tasty and “not just potatoes”. I’ll also add salt, pepper, and various hot sauces to keep it from becoming too same-y and bland.

Report

Hey,

I’ve reached the four week mark and wanted to give an update on how things have been going and why I’ll continue with this for a while longer! It doesn’t feel like it’s been four weeks…

Background

I’m a 47 year old cishet white male with a sedentary lifestyle (IT consultant) living in Canada. Over the last few years I’ve gained “The Covid 19” and then some, so this was a good opportunity to try and lose weight for myself and For Science!

Protocol

First up, some details on what I’ve been eating. My eventual-standard recipe has been:

• Approx. 5 lbs yellow potatoes (i.e., eyeball half a 10 lb bag from the supermarket)
• 3 cups water
• 1 cup dry lentils – more on this shortly
• 1/4 cup butter

I cut the potatoes into pieces with a maximum dimension of around an inch; half go into an instant pot, then the water, then the lentils sprinkled on top, the other half of the potatoes (so now we have a half-submerged raw potato sandwich with dry lentil filling) and the butter on top. This cooks in the Instant Pot at high pressure for 11 minutes, preferably with natural release. I then “finish” things by using a wooden spoon to roughly mash the potatoes and combine in the lentils. Serve with hot sauce of choice. Do it all over again in a couple of days.

Aside Number One: Laziness aka “recipe optimization”

Originally I was also sauteing a finely diced onion and chopped celery first before doing the above steps – this added significantly to the prep time and didn’t add enough value to the experience, so I dropped it. I’ve also tried adding some herbs to the recipe but they didn’t do much for it either. Sometimes simpler truly is better. This recipe’s prep time is about five minutes.

Aside Number Two: Lentil options

At first I was using red lentils – they are a better aesthetic option as they dissolve into the cooking water and have little effect on the colour of the end product, maybe even brightening it a little. When I ran out of those I switched to green lentils – they also taste good but the colour of the result is not as inviting. Opinions will likely differ though, and it’s something I’ve adjusted to.

Aside Number Three: Potassium

I read Krinn’s experiences with Potassium supplements with great interest and decided to include this in my protocol. Starting in the middle of week two, I’ve been drinking two Gatorade Zeros each with an additional 1 teaspoon of Potassium Chloride per day. Sadly, the Costco multipack here in Canada doesn’t include “blue”.

Adherence

There have been two days when I’ve been “off” the diet. The first was an all-day industry conference, so I was eating the delicious catered food at the event. The second was after a very long day, I had an alcoholic beverage and then pigged out on the leftovers from my youngest (bagel, chicken fingers, etc…).

I’m allowing myself a “small” quantity of potato chips as part of the diet, as the meals don’t have any crunch to them and I miss that texture. I also will have things like fresh berries. All that said, I’m staying conscious of what I’m eating and staying away from what I would consider my “typical” diet.

In terms of mealtimes, I’ve sort of fallen into a 16-hour fasting period with an 8-hour feeding window. I typically have my first meal at around 11:30 in the morning, and the food day is over by 7:30PM. My potassium supplementation is generally aligned to these times as well.

This hasn’t been a hardship to adhere to because I’m giving myself some grace from being completely strict. Does that make this “riff-ish”? Perhaps, but I also feel that, outside a medical context, people are typically going to be mostly-good at sticking to a strict eating program. I would say I’m achieving the main goal, that the majority of my calories are coming from my riff. Maybe I’d have a different perspective if I was doing a more fun riff like “potatoes and Snickers bars” ‎:)

Results

I’ve been extremely pleased with how this has gone. This first graph shows progress so far (in kilograms, the native measure of my scales) – on the first day I lost almost 3kg, which I assume is water weight. The three bars are the daily weigh-in (blue), a three-day average (orange) and a seven-day average (gray). The smoothed curves show a pretty consistent weight reduction over time after the first day’s outlier reading.

I find the sawtooth peak/drop pattern intriguing in the raw data, but prefer the smoothed data for looking at overall progress.

I also found it useful / inspirational to pull a seven-day rate of change graph for these readings:

It’s a bit of a mess because the lines all overlap, but you can see from the smoothed curves that I’m typically down between 1 and 1.5 kg (i.e. two to three pounds) compared to the reading from a week before. There hasn’t yet been a sign of a decline in the rate of change.

Next Steps

As the graphs indicate, I plan on continuing this for a couple more weeks – at that point it’ll be the holiday season and I will be fully participating in seasonally appropriate food consumption! After that I will resume the diet; it’s working, I feel good doing it, and I don’t feel like I’m missing out.

Thanks for inspiring me to give this a shot!

40711007 – Misc.

Riff

Potato + Carrot (for vitamin A) + Fish (for B12 & protein) + Marmite (for B12) + salt (I hear it can be lacking if you just eat potato) + olive oil (…honestly it’s the fat source that I had lying around when I decided to commit to the bit) + various seasonings (it’s how I make soup taste of things) + Apples (I’m only about 90% that I’d be getting enough C from potatoes) + sugar-free fizzy drinks (realistically if I try to fully abstain from Treats(TM) I might indulge further than planned on other days).

Report

Hello Slime Mold Time Mold,

This morning was the 28th measurement. As I believe you can see from the data (I suppose I’m assuming you have at least read-access to the spreadsheet that you made and then gave me a copy of), in that time I shed a net total of about 8.5lb from my body mass, and that was with four explicit cheat days, as well as at least two days with an unwise amount of deep frying even by the measure of “amounts of deep frying”.

Among other things this is enough evidence for me that on the order of 2 litres a day of aspartame juice sugar free fizzy drinks is not enough on its own to thwart the potato diet. While I would by no means recommend that anyone, ever, rely on crisps (known as “chips” in America) as a main source of any nutrient, even salt – they were close to a logistical necessity during office days, and even with far more packs a day than I’d normally have used, they weren’t a consistent factor in weight gain days.

Going forwards, obviously I’m not going to be able to stick to the exact riff rigorously over Christmas, however “getting most of the calories from taters” seems to have worked pretty well as a medium to long term stratagem – at least until the trend line stops going down. Of course, I’m most certainly adding onions and swede to the list of explicitly allowed foods (can’t really make soup without onions; can’t make tatties and neeps without the neeps), and probably chicken too as it’s a cheaper protein source compared to even the cheapest tinned fish (certainly if you measure by just grams of protein per unit legal tender). Which is to say, I’ll still be taking data, but “had chicken” is no longer going to get a tick of “majorly broke diet”.

Looking forward to analysis of the data – here’s hoping something more useful was got at this stage, beyond “you can add dietary sources of A and B12 with different macro profiles to the potatoes without totally wrecking the diet” and “in a shock not seen since the Pope was confirmed to be Catholic, excessive consumption of deep fried food is correlated with weight gain”.

Kind regards
Mr Cavern

13910399 – Potatoes + Margarined Toast

Riff

My plan is to follow the potato diet but have toast with margarine for breakfast and afternoon snack. When I tried the potato diet for the first time, I had a lot of bread cravings, so it would be great if I could have it and still lose weight. I’m trying out the margarine to see if consuming seed oils hinders weight loss.

Additionally, I’ll also have mandarins and soy milk in small quantities, which are not part of the main plan, but I had them during my first attempt at the potato diet and still lost weight without any issues.

I will follow the diet for 4 weeks (unless I feel unwell or start gaining weight rapidly), and if I see that it works well, I will continue it for a longer period.

Report

I was very motivated at the start, but at the end I was cheating a lot. Also, I got a cold or something last week and I lost some weight due to that. The days I was sick have a note on the “Observations” row. And maybe relevant, all the potatoes I ate were boiled.

27482609 – Potatoes + Beef

Riff

Potato + Beef. My plan is to make potatoes the majority of my food intake, since my normal diet is very high in meat. It wouldn’t be much of a trial for me if I allowed no potato and unlimited beef. I’m not exactly sure how exactly what the restriction will be; perhaps a pound of steak and then as much potato as I want.

I will be using butter as a cooking oil, writing down how much I use per day, and I may also have beef liver on occasion.

I’d like to get back into my gym routine during the trial, and I’m not very much in the mood to experiment with a low protein diet. I also have a freezer full of grass-fed beef and I’d like to actually eat it.

Report

I’ve put my four weeks in, so I’m done. I’m sorry to say this will not be the most insightful or interesting trial you receive, but here it is. I’ve left my few thoughts and comments in the spreadsheet itself.

General notes from the spreadsheet:

I had intended to record mass of potato and steak, but I ended up messing that up enough that it wasn’t worth recording. As you can see, I was not perfect at measuring myself in the morning, either. Sorry about that.

I generally ended up eating equal parts beef and potato, sometimes large majority potato, very rarely large majority beef.

Common recipes include diced potatoes with beef, mashed potatoes with beef, sliced and fried potatoes with steak.

When we finished the Potato Diet Community Trial, we found ourselves in a pickle. The diet worked — people lost 10.6 lbs on average over only four weeks — and we had basically no idea why. No idea what parts of the protocol were essential, and what parts were optional. 

We had no idea what would make it work better. We had no idea what might make it work worse. And we had no idea of the boundary conditions. We told everyone to avoid dairy, but was that really necessary? Is the potato diet very strict, and you need to stick closely to the original protocol? Or is it very lax? When does it stop working, and why? 

Since then, we have investigated a few of these questions. We tested our main hypothesis about the mechanism (potatoes give you high doses of potassium) and the results provided some support for that hypothesis. We tried a 50% potato AKA half-tato diet based on some case studies, but the results were underwhelming. And we’ve encouraged people to do self-experiments that try to get at the same questions. One example is friend-of-the-blog Krinn, who tried higher doses of potassium and consistently lost weight.

We could keep going like this, running one study at a time. But honestly, that would take forever. 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 of studying nothing but iterations on the potato diet. There has to be a better way. 

So today we’re introducing a new kind of study we call the riff trial. Let’s see how it works!

Variations on a Meme

In a normal study, everyone follows pretty much the same protocol. In some kinds of studies, like randomized controlled trials, participants are randomly assigned to a small number of very similar protocols.

Instead of making protocols standard, the riff trial makes protocols different. In a riff trial, you start with a base protocol, and every participant follows a different variation. Everyone tests their own riff on the original protocol, and you see what happens. 

To give credit where credit is due, the blogger known as ExFatLoss did something like this first. He ran a study where 10 people signed up to try his ex150 protocol. In practice, however, most people tried minor riffs on the original protocol, like adding an “illegal” carrot salad, and they still generally lost weight. This is a better test of the robustness of his protocol, and it’s a more efficient way to explore the design space. 

Now it’s our turn. Today we are starting a Potato Riffs Trial, and we’re looking for people who want to try their own riff on the potato diet. 

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.

Or if you prefer, it uses the power of evolution. The original protocol goes out with mutations and we see how they do in the face of natural selection. If you want, you can even run a second riff trial on the most successful riff(s), to explore the space even further. In this way, the riff trial is the atomic gardening of study design.

Some riffs will be more compelling than others. If you do a riff and lose weight on that version of the potato diet, this suggests the potato diet is robust to that difference. If you do a riff and don’t lose weight, that’s tricker, because we know the potato diet doesn’t work for some people — maybe you are just one of those people. 

But even when individual riffs don’t prove much, together they can be suggestive. If ten people try potatoes + bacon and they all gain weight, that’s pretty strong evidence that bacon is the anti-potato. You could also account for this by doing a few weeks of the original potato diet to demonstrate that it works for you under normal conditions, and then starting the riff to see if anything changes.

A riff trial is scientific fun for friends and family. If a husband and wife living in the same house try different potato riffs, and have different results, we know the differences aren’t a result of their environment, since they live in the same house and sleep in the same bed and so on. If adult siblings living in different cities try the same potato riff and have different results, the differences are probably due to differences in their cities, since the siblings are closely related and are doing the same protocol.

This is also a way to put your money where your mouth is, so to speak. We love all y’all people on the internet, but some of you talk a lot and experiment very little. Science needs to be more competitive — not in the sense of arguing (bleh!) but in the sense of people actually doing studies to go after their disagreements rather than just theorizing about them. This is your chance to get your hands dirty.

And as always, this is a chance to PLAY with your ideas, to PLAY WITH SCIENCE, to JOIN the INTERNET HIVE MIND and MESS AROUND WITH YOUR FRIENDS. This can be your way to help welcome the 21st century scientific revolution you so desperately crave.

Tl;dr, we’re looking for people to volunteer to eat almost nothing but potatoes (depending on your riff) for at least four weeks, and to share their results. You can sign up below. For more detail, read on! 

Potato Riffs

As a reminder, here is our version of THE POTATO DIET (more detail can be found in the original post):

• Drink mostly water. You can also have other beverages like tea or coffee. Just don’t take them with cream or sugar and try not to get too many calories from your drinks. 
• Eat potatoes. Start with whole potatoes and cook them yourself when you can, but in a pinch you can eat potato chips or fries if you need to. You can calculate how many potatoes to eat (a potato is about 100 calories, so if you need 2000 kcal/day, eat about 20), but we think it’s better to eat the potatoes ad libitum — make a lot of potatoes and just eat as much as you want.
• Perfect adherence isn’t necessary. If you can’t get potatoes, eat something else rather than go hungry, and pick up the potatoes again when you can. 
• Seasonings are ok. Do what you can to keep yourself from getting bored.
• Oil is ok.
• Take a daily B12 supplement, since potatoes don’t contain any. We like this version but use whatever you like. Take vitamin A if you’re not eating sweet potatoes. A multivitamin would also be fine as long as it contains B12. 

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to try the potato diet plus some kind of variation of your choice for at least four weeks. You can try any riff you like, but for inspiration, here is a list of ideas:

• Whole foods
  • Potatoes + Avocado
  • Potatoes + Bananas
  • Potatoes + Cashews
  • Potatoes + Fruits
  • Potatoes + Leafy Greens
• Unwhole/Processed Foods
  • Potatoes + Snickers
  • Potatoes + Hot Dogs
  • Potatoes + Soda
  • Potatoes + 10% Ultra-Processed Foods
• Various Fats
  • Potatoes + Butter
  • Potatoes + Olive Oil
  • Potatoes + Sunflower Oil
• Grains
  • Potatoes + Bread
  • Potatoes + Rice
• Protein
  • Potatoes + Tofu
  • Potatoes + Chickpeas
  • Potatoes + Beans
  • Potatoes + Eggs
  • Potatoes + Ground Beef
  • Potatoes + Chicken
• Food Suspects
  • Potatoes + White Sugar
  • Potatoes + Honey
  • Potatoes + Chocolate
  • Potatoes + Cream
  • Potatoes + All Dairy
  • Potatoes + Ketchup
  • Potatoes + Tomato Sauce
• Preparation
  • Potatoes (baked only)
  • Potatoes (boiled only)
  • Potatoes (roasted only)
  • Potato Soup SOUP ONLY
• For Humor Only
  • Potatoes + Molasses

Before you sign up, let’s highlight some riffs we might be especially interested in:

Mono-Diet

Some people think the potato diet causes weight loss because it is a mono diet, a diet where you eat mostly one food. We think this is wrong! If it were true, 1) any other mono diet would also work, and 2) the half-tato diet wouldn’t work because you eat more than one thing. But the half-tato diet does seem to work, at least for some people. Also there was so much cheating in the original potato diet (by design!) that we’re not sure even most of those would could as a mono diet really:

So one very simple riff you can do is the potato diet plus some other food of your choice. Potatoes and apples. Potatoes and lettuce. Potatoes and carrots. If the mono-diet hypothesis is true, adding these other foods should stop the potato diet from working. If it keeps working, that’s a major problem for the mono-ness hypothesis. 

Deliciousness

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.

However, one riff you could do is potatoes plus one or two foods you think are especially delicious. This seems like a good deal. You get to eat potatoes and one or more of your favorite foods, as much as you want for a whole month, and you might lose weight for your trouble. If you do lose weight eating potatoes and a favorite food, that’s a major problem for the blandness hypothesis. Also it makes sense.

Potatoes + Whole Foods or Unwhole Foods

Some people think the potato diet causes weight loss because potatoes are whole foods — they are totally unprocessed, unadulterated, torn directly from the bosom of Mother Earth. This might be part of it, though it makes us wonder what it might be about “whole foods” that would make them cause weight loss. 

Anyways, one way to test this would be to try eating potatoes plus some other whole food, like almonds or bananas. If the whole food hypothesis is correct, this should cause as much weight loss as the normal potato diet, maybe more.

Or you could do the opposite, and try eating potatoes plus some highly-processed food, like snickers bars or Big Macs. If the whole food hypothesis is correct, eating these processed foods should make the potato diet much less effective. But if you lose weight on potatoes + gummy worms, that’s evidence against the whole foods hypothesis.

Potatoes + Cream

ExFatLoss has lost a lot of weight on a diet that is mostly heavy cream. When he recruited ten other people to try the same thing, most of them lost weight too. If potatoes cause weight loss, and cream causes weight loss, maybe potatoes and cream together will cause even more weight loss? 

Worth trying, at least, especially since in the original Potato Diet Community Trial, we asked people to avoid dairy. Maybe that was the wrong move. You could also do potatoes + light cream or potatoes + milk, to see if milkfat matters. Or just a general potatoes + dairy, where you eat both potatoes and any dairy products ad libitum. 

Potatoes + Various Fats

Some people think that seed oils are the cause of the obesity epidemic, and/or are bad for you in general. From this perspective, the reason the potato diet works is that it cuts all the seed oils out of your diet — you’re too busy eating potatoes. As we’ve previously argued, we don’t find this theory very convincing. But it’s easy enough to test. We wrote:

It would be easy to run a variation of the potato diet where half the participants are randomly assigned to eat their potatoes with butter, and the other half are randomly assigned to eat their potatoes with sunflower oil. (Or substitute these for whatever fats the seed oil theorists think are best and worst.) If the seed oil theory is correct, then the participants eating potatoes + butter should lose weight much faster than the participants eating potatoes + sunflower oil. If the seed oil theory is wrong, there should be basically no difference.

This would be a good subject for riff trials. If they want to, some people can sign up to eat olive oil with all their potatoes, some can sign up to eat butter with all their potatoes, some can sign up to eat canola oil, etc. Then we can see if there are big differences between people who choose different fats. 

If seed oil theorists are really confident in their theory, they should sign up and demonstrate that seed oils kill the potato weight loss effect, and other fats don’t.

Potatoes and Suspected Blockers

The potato diet may work by adding things to your diet, like huge doses of potassium. But it may also work by removing things from your diet. (It might also do both.) This suggests that there may be some foods that “block” the potato weight loss effect. You can test this in a riff by trying the potato diet plus one of these foods, to see if it keeps working or not.

One prime suspect is tomato and tomato products like ketchup. Ketchup came to our attention as a result of some anecdotes from the original Potato Diet Community Trial, stories where people felt that eating ketchup kept them from losing weight. As Jack Peterson noted, tomatoes blocking the effect “would explain why no one ever noticed [the weight loss properties of potatoes] prior to Chris Voigt’s stunt: because potatoes are usually eaten with ketchup”. And we were surprised to see that in the Half-Tato Diet Community Trial, weight loss was correlated with tomato consumption, r(36) = 0.37, p = .021 (also significant when removing the extreme outlier, r(35) = 0.36, p = .031). Plot here:  

So you could try a potato diet with ketchup in particular, or with tomato products in general. If you still lose weight, that would show that tomato isn’t necessarily a blocker. If you don’t lose weight, that’s pretty interesting. You could also try alternating weeks with and without tomatoes, to see if you can make the effect turn on and off at whim. Whee! 

Tomatoes are our top bet, but other possible blockers might be: wheat, bread, grains more generally, maybe meat. Carbs stand out because on the potato diet you are getting a lot of carbs. So even if you do take a cheat day, you probably won’t be cheating with bread, because you probably won’t crave that. Some people think sugar might be a blocker, so you could try potatoes + white sugar (but maybe not together, ew). Eggs or goji berries might also be blockers because they seem to be high in lithium. So one kind of riff would be trying potatoes and one of these foods and seeing how it goes. 

Potatoes + Chocolate

CuoreDiVetro recently published a self-experiment where they followed a very simple form of the potato diet, replacing one meal per day with a meal of just potatoes, supplemented by additional doses of potassium chloride (based off of a potassium:sodium ratio hypothesis that has been floating around). This worked very well for them at first — then they discovered that it appeared to work even better when they included chocolate, like so:

I bought dark baking chocolate (100% cacao) with a high concentration of potassium (just in case it was the potassium). I made my hot cacao by melting ~36g of dark chocolate (containing roughly 750 mg of K) in roughly one cup (250ml) of milk (containing roughly 350 mg of K) and sweetening it to taste. 

According to CuoreDiVetro, they lost weight four times faster when they were eating one hot chocolate per day in addition to their meal of potatoes.

This could be something about chocolate in particular. But it might also be yet another pointer to stearic acid, a waxy fat common in foods like tallow, lard, butterfat, and cocoa butter, which for some reason keeps showing up in weight loss research. If you’ve heard of this fat before, it’s likely from Fire in a Bottle (FIAB), a website/program/theory which argues that a diet high in stearic acid can cause weight loss. This is sometimes called The Croissant Diet (TCD), presumably in the hopes of confusing readers — you do not actually eat nothing but croissants. In fact, you don’t have to eat any croissants at all. But you do ideally eat lots of foods high in stearic acid, sometimes supplementing with additional stearic acid, and some people seem to lose weight when they do this.

There are other reasons to think that stearic acid might be involved. ExFatLoss and co must be getting a lot of stearic acid from the huge quantities of milkfat they’re consuming. And Outlier 17 from our Half-Tato Diet Community Trial, who lost way more weight than anyone else in the trial, often took straight stearic acid as a supplement. 

So you could supplement stearic acid on top of your potatoes and see what that does. Or you could try potato + chocolate, which seems more delicious. But to each their own. 

You could also try CuoreDiVetro’s riff exactly, or riff further off that riff. It appears to be 1) one meal per day as a meal of just potatoes, 2) potatoes are salted with 3.2 g KCl, 3) avoid adding NaCl (normal table salt) to potatoes, 4) at least one hot cacao per day, per the recipe above, and 5) otherwise eat as normal. This is really several riffs away from the main protocol and might not be as illuminating, but would give another similar data point for comparison. 

Preparation

We think the potato diet might cause weight loss because of the super high doses of potassium you get when you eat tons of potatoes. We also hear that boiling potatoes removes a lot of their potassium, because it drains out of the potato and into the boiling water. If this is the case, then eating nothing but boiled potatoes would probably cause much less weight loss than eating nothing but baked or roasted potatoes, which should still have all their potassium. Unless you boiled your potatoes as a soup and then drank all the broth.

Doing a riff where you only ate one kind of preparation, whether those be boiled, baked, fried, steamed, roasted, mashed, or souped potatoes, might illuminate this question. But it might be kind of boring.

Half-Tato Accelerator

Many people lose weight on the half-tato diet, like M, Nicky Case, Outlier 17, and CuoreDiVetro. We say “half-tato”, even though many of these people were getting less than 50% of their food from potatoes. But when we ran a community trial of the half-tato diet, most people barely lost any weight.

What gives? Maybe there’s some extra step required to make half-tato work. If we could figure out that extra step, people could lose weight with much less hassle. So if your riff seems to be working on full-tato, you could switch to half-tato and see if it keeps working just as well. Or you could try various riffs on half-tato and see if any of them serve as the switch. 

Get Confused

They say that the most exciting phrase to hear in science is not “Eureka!” but “That’s funny…” So the best thing that could happen would be if you find something really weird. For example, it would be very weird if people found that taking iron supplements makes the potato diet totally ineffective… unless you take iron supplements AND magnesium supplements, in which case it starts working again (we have no reason to think this would happen, just a wild hypothetical). If that happened and it were robust, it would be very surprising, and trying to puzzle it out would get us closer to an answer.

So if you have some other weird potato diet riff you want to try for some reason — we say, go for it!

Sign Up

Ok researchers, time to sign up.

The only prerequisites for signing up are: 

• You must be 18 or older;
• In generally good health, and specifically with no kidney problems;
• Willing to do some version of the potato diet, as described above, for at least four weeks, and;
• Willing to share your data with us — you can publish it as a philosophical transactions post on our blog if you like, or publish it somewhere else on your own.

As usual, you can sign up to lose weight, lower your blood pressure, get more energy, or see one of the other potential effects. But you can also sign up to help advance the state of medical science. This study will hopefully get us much closer to understanding why the potato diet causes weight loss. It might lead to a practical weight-loss intervention that’s much easier than the 100% potato diet, and it might lead to curing obesity for good.

And beyond that, running a study like this through volunteers on the internet is a small step towards making science faster, smarter, and more democratic. Imagine a future where every time we’re like, “why is no one doing this?”, every time we’re like, “dietary scientists, what the hell?”, we get together and WE do it, and we get an answer. And if we get a half-answer, we iterate on the design and get closer and closer every time. That seems like a future worth dreaming of. If you sign up, you get us closer to that future.

Eating this much potato may sound a little daunting, but people who have tried it say that it is much easier than they expected, and delicious to boot. Here’s our suggestion: If you are at all interested in trying a potato diet riff, go ahead and sign up and start collecting your data. Collect your baseline measurements for two weeks, then try the first day or two of the potato diet and see how it feels. If you hate it and have to stop, we would still love to have that data.

If at any point you get sick or begin having side-effects, stop the diet immediately. We can still use your data up to that point, and we don’t want anything to happen to you.

We are mostly interested in weight loss effects for people who are overweight (BMI 25+) or obese (BMI 30+), but if you are “normal weight” (BMI 20-25) you can also sign up. 

And for everyone, please consult with your doctor before trying this or any other weight loss regimen. 

We realize that anyone who starts a potato riff soon will overlap with Thanksgiving and/or Christmas. So you’re welcome to wait and sign up later, we will keep signups open at least through January, maybe longer. But also, it’s not a problem if you overlap with the holidays, and it might be a good way to see how robust your riff is. Someone doing an “I ate potatoes and whatever holiday treats I wanted” would honestly be an amazing study.

In general, signups will be open for a while, and it’s all rolling signups. Pick out a riff and join whenever.

If you were part of previous SMTM studies, please feel free to sign up for this study as well! Just mention it, and provide any previous subject numbers, when you’re signing up.

How do you decide what riff to choose? Here are three approaches to consider:

1. Follow what you like. Do you like steak a lot? Maybe that’s a sign that your body needs more steak. Even if not, you would probably enjoy it. So why not sign up for a steak and potatoes riff? You might lose weight, and even if you don’t, you’ll be making an important scientific contribution while eating delicious foods you enjoy. 
2. Put your money where your mouth is. This is a chance to test your theoretical bone to pick, whatever that might be. If you think the potato diet works because it is low sugar, then potatoes + sugar shouldn’t work. You can try that and test your idea. If you think the potato diet works because it is a seed oil elimination diet, then potatoes + sunflower oil shouldn’t work, while potatoes + coconut oil should work as normal. You can recruit three friends and test it. You might be surprised. 
3. You can choose “randomly”. What sounds funny? What is no one else doing? Go with that. 

Anyways, to sign up: 

1. Fill out this google form, where you give us your basic demographics and contact info. You will assign yourself a subject number, which will keep your data anonymous in the future. You will also tell us what riff(s) you’re interested in. 
2. We will clone a version of this google sheet and share the clone with you. This will be your personal spreadsheet for recording your data over the course of the diet.
3. On the first day, weigh yourself in the morning. If you’re a “morning pooper”, measure yourself “after your first void”; if not, don’t worry about it. We don’t care if you wear pajamas or whatever, just keep it consistent. Note down your weight and the other measures (mood, energy, etc.) on the google sheet.
4. Do your version of the potato diet for at least four weeks.
5. When you reach the end of the diet (whether you’re ending the diet early, reaching the end of 4 weeks, or reaching the end of a longer span), send us an email. Let us know if you want to publish your results yourself (in which case send us a link to your post) or if you want to publish your results on SMTM as a philosophical transactions post (in which case send us a detailed email about your protocol, results, and thoughts).
6. Remember that it is ok to end the study early if you need to, for example if you get sick. It’s also fine to reach the end of 4 weeks and keep going if you’re having a good time. Just make your intentions clear in the comments on your data sheet and send us an email whenever you decide to finish, we’d love to hear from you.

We plan for this to be somewhat more relaxed and more casual than our previous studies, so please understand if we take a few days to sign you up or get back to you about anything.

As always, if you think this is an interesting idea, please tell your friends!