I have recently developed interest in mono-food diets and the Potato Hack struck my interest. I am somewhat puzzled by the results some have had with it, quite impressive really. I have no results of my own to post yet but intend to give it a shot soon. Will start out with short period of 1.5 days to get a feel for eating a potato only diet.

There is no definitive explanation why it works IMO, but I have my theory just as others do. As I have issues with portion control a boring diet as such would limit my intake.

Feel free to share your tips, theories, and results, if you wish.

I played around with the potato diet last year. It really did change my view on things. Here are some musings I've had on the subject:

- Works better for men than women.
- Some women love it and swear by it, however.
- Works best for the stubborn 'last 10' than the first 50+.
- It's easy to do for 5 days, more than 7 gets difficult.
- Late summer/fall is the best time as freshest potatoes are available.
- Eat only potatoes seasoned with salt, pepper, vinegar, ketchup or mustard.
- Eat 2 big potato meals per day, one or two small cold potatoes as snacks.
- If you cheat, stop the diet, it won't work.
- A lot of it is mental--once you give in to other foods, it's over.
- Try for a minimum of 5 days to see results, 14 for big results.
- 5 days on/2 days off for a couple weeks works, too.
- Get prepared. Buy and wash 25 pounds of potatoes for a 7 day run.
- Boil 5 pounds of small potatoes right away--keep in a ziplock bag in fridge.
- Shoot for 3 pounds per day, max.
- Keep exercise/exertion to a minimum, think de-load week.
- Drink plenty of water/coffee/tea as usual.
- If you don't like it--don't force yourself. No shame in trying and stopping.

I find I can lose close to a pound a day eating just potatoes. I think the only 'magic' lies in a big calorie deficit, however, potatoes are very satiating eaten plainly. A calorie deficit without hunger is the panacea for weightloss, no?

Potatoes contain just enough of all essential proteins (amino acids) to keep your body in good repair and have a very good vitamin and mineral profile. People throughout history have survived on potatoes in time of war and famine without ill results. Eating just potatoes provides energy from carbohydrate and building blocks from protein, but no fat--any fat you need to maintain your metabolism comes from adipose tissue, and you NEED fat. The calorie deficit ensures that none of the carbs will be converted to fat, all fat metabolism will be 'one-way', ie. mobilized from body stores.

I personally used this trick to get down to my lowest adult body weight at age 47. I spent a full year trying various diets to lose my last 10 pounds, long-term dieting is not a fun place to be, especially when you are in a prolonged stall. It took me 2 weeks of potatoes to do what 12 months of keto/VLC/LC/CICO couldn't do.

Plans for the future involve a year-round bulk and cut cycle. I'm spending the warm long days from Mar-Sep eating lots of seasonal fruit, veggies, dairy, meat, fat, and other quality food sources while doing a combination of heavy bodyweight (pullups, dips, weighted squats) and slow movement (working/walking) exercises and getting as much sunlight as possible without fretting over weight. After September, I'll begin a six-month-long cutting/maintaining program starting out with the potato diet to lose some extra body fat I gained in summer and then implement a lower carb, lower calorie approach to winter maintenance while engaging more in low-intensity/steady-state exercise like treadmill walking, outdoor activities, and light bodyweight exercising like pushups and situps.

My goal for this is to break the cycle of winter weight gain, keeping my weight in a 5-7 pound band year round, and enjoy foods in season for their nutrition and mood-enhancing properties. Never again will I turn down a slice of fresh watermelon in August!

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Good post akman...

Just entered a meal into MyPlan. Looks like that little 5# bag will give me about 2 days worth at about 1000cals/day. I can see where cooking 5# at a time makes sense.

I like to use the 5 pounds of pre-cooked, cold potatoes for snacks and on-the-run meals. Preparing them ahead of time ensures a ready supply of potatoes. I also like to preboil a bunch of bigger potatoes for next day's meals. The pre-boiled ones cook up much faster, especially as in pan frying without oil in a non-stick pan.

For meals, I like to make shredded hash-browns drowned in salt and vinegar, cubed homefries, oven french fries, baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, or baked wedges.

If you have an old non-stick electric waffle maker (you know you have one!) get it out and use it to make hash browns. Foreman Grill works good, too.

I understand why this ended up in the war zone, this being a low-carb board.

But... at the same time I hope we can respect that this thread was intended as a support-style thread, and save the fighting for that other thread.

Sounds good to me, good call...
Not much of a skilled warrior here, don't often get into this zone, people could be shy about reporting their results or views here?
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Short term results weight down
Well tried it for 1 1/2 days for what that is worth. Did do some easy bike riding 26miles yesterday and a little less this morning, I would agree that it is a good idea to take it easy with the activity, not bad though just a concern I had. Still burning fat today per the keto sticks and could tell I was losing a lot of water today.
Was also concerned about the 2 or 3 big meals so I did several small ones and did not have an issue with that. May try it again soon for a longer period soon.
I see that over on Low Carb Friends the gals are using this as a DownDay for the JUDDD plan, hard too do it on an UpDay...

One other helpful tip on the Potato hack:

Do it only for fun. Do it for the novelty of trying something different.

Don't do it to prove it doesn't work.

Don't do it with HUGE expectations of HCG/Gastric Bypass-like weightloss.

If it works for you, don't abuse it--don't use it to yo-yo, but think of it more as a 'reset button' or a 'do-over'.

It's potential for abuse is very self-limiting. No one looks forward to doing the potato hack for a second or third time.

I like to think of it as a tool I keep in my junk drawer--I know it's there and with a bit of digging I can find it and use it, but I really don't want to.

Exactly so, akman. It's a tool to break a stall, like the Fat Fast.

I like to call it the Potato Reset, for that reason....

This sounds ALMOST like heaven to me since I LOVE potatoes and have a garden full of fresh new ones. But...looks like no butter can go on them?

I've tried the potato hack several times as JUDDD down days. It's easy to follow and the satiety is great. But, I'm a type 2 diabetic and if I do it more than one day in a row, my blood sugar soars. I can handle one day because that usually only ends up being 100-125 g carbs of potatoes, which is moderate carb and far less than the SAD.

If you are brave, try this: Mix 2TBS of potato starch into a glass of water. Drink it while eating a small, plain potato, and check your BG afterwards. The addition of raw potato starch gives the high GI potato a very low Glycemic Load.

This trick also works well just eating potatoes in general. I mix 2TBS of potato starch in with 2-4TBS of sour cream and mix into a potato. The only caveat is that the potato needs to be slightly cooled, cool enough to eat, not super hot like right out of the oven.

A plain potato will spike my pp BG to 160-200, eaten with potato starch it rarely hits 120, and returns to FBG level in about half (or third) the time.

The raw potato starch makes a cooked potato look like a raw potato to your pancreas. A raw potato will not spike blood sugar, either, but raw potatoes are not fun to eat.

In my case Futurama summed up how my body would react to a potato diet.

"You can eat like 8 of them and not gain any weight because of all the diarrhea"

LOL....my neighbor got braces, it hurt to eat--he lost 50 pounds. His wife was jealous, as soon as his braces were off--she got them. She lost 30 pounds.

Last night on 20/20 or one of those shows, they were sewing a velcro-like patch directly on people tongues so it would hurt when they ate, they all lost weight!

Amazing the lengths we will go...

This thread was started a while back yet not had any follow up posts lately , so I figured I would shake that up.

The Potato Hack seemed to have its big heyday here in 2013 but I'm late to the party as in 2013 I was too firmly committed to LCHF to give it much thought.

But since then I've been shaking things up more here and there ~ Perfect Health Diet, IF, Dr. Fung, fasting 2-3 days. Nothing helping too much though IF initially helped me drop the 20 pounds that had crept up on me in the last year. Then, of course, I stalled again.

This time I was more open to the PH after reading about it on Sagehill's journal. I did the PH for 6 days last week and found it amazingly easy and satisfying. I quickly dropped 10 pounds. Best of all my BG plummeted, something it did not do on IF or LCHF.

I was at a conference this weekend so ate "normally". Gained back 2 1/2 pounds and BG back up ~ though still lower than previously. I'm actually looking forward to potatoes again.

My daily intake runs to 650-700 calories ~ basically just pre-cooked cold potatoes diced and mixed with some Salt Balance (sodium and potassium in balanced ratio), malt or apple cider vinegar, and either some Dijon mustard or salsa. Sometimes garlic powder. So far so good, and I feel much better mentally too. More later.

Debbie, that is so exciting! I know you have tried so many things, and you must be thrilled to see one of them work