The potato diet reminds me of a brilliant professor, John PJ Pinel, who had a pet theory he could never publish.
He believed that the most effective diet was to limit yourself to no more than seven ingredients. You can pick any seven. It might be potatoes, eggs, beef, carrots, lettuce, blueberries and tomatoes. Any seven, and maybe a Vitamin C supplement if you don't pick a citrus. You become so tired of each ingredient that you eat substantially less calories.
The interesting part was the theory that a limited diet allows... (read more)
The most effective diet for weight loss? Seems plausible. The most effective diet for being healthy, that sounds extremely unlikely. Even if your seven foods are nutritionally complete you're not likely to be eating them in the right balances. Intuitive body regulation sounds good there but in general, our bodies are actually not so good at guessing that kind of thing.
3carrots
I came to a similar conclusion about limited diet causing weight loss. I moved to a small remote town in Europe a few months ago and lost my excess weight with no effort, after having lived in large North American cities all my life. I shop mostly at a local mini grocery store that has limited stock, so my diet tends to be boring and my appetite small. As soon as I stock up from a supermarket with a variety of yummy unusual foods, I start gaining weight.
I don't limit myself to 7 ingredients though. Rather, I eat the same thing for lunch everyday, and rotate through a handful of simple recipes for dinner. This also keeps my IBS-like symptoms under control, but I don't know if my GI is happy due to the ingredients themselves, the lower volume of food, or the fact that it isn't exposed to novel foods as often. Or a combination.
4AnthonyC
I can see how that might help me eat less, but unless you chose the seven very carefully to be potentially nutritionally complete, sustaining that seems like a path to the kinds of deficiencies that made the agricultural revolution cost humans half a foot of height for most of the last ten millennia.
The potato diet reminds me of a brilliant professor, John PJ Pinel, who had a pet theory he could never publish.
He believed that the most effective diet was to limit yourself to no more than seven ingredients. You can pick any seven. It might be potatoes, eggs, beef, carrots, lettuce, blueberries and tomatoes. Any seven, and maybe a Vitamin C supplement if you don't pick a citrus. You become so tired of each ingredient that you eat substantially less calories.
The interesting part was the theory that a limited diet allows... (read more)