What is the potato diet?

Photo by Sardar Faizan on Unsplash

The potato diet or potato hack is a very simple weight loss diet. You just eat potatoes, along with fat-free low or zero-calorie sauces, as much as you feel like. That's it. You can prepare them any way you would like, peel them, don't peel them, whatever. Just don't use oil/fat when you do. You can also use any kind of potato, red, russet, yukon, or whatever. You can't have sweet potatoes since they are a different kind of plant species.

It sounds pretty stupid, but it is an incredibly effective way to lose weight for the people it works for.  Many people have lost 10-15 pounds in a month using this simple diet. I've lost about 8 pounds on this diet in 2 weeks, and I’ve been on it for about 3 weeks and have gotten similar results in the past with the diet when I first tried it a couple of years ago.

What ends up happening is you get satiated fairly quickly and don't get cravings to eat more food. You typically end up at about 1600-2000 calories eaten a day naturally. When you try to eat other foods, they can often feel unappealing to eat after you've eaten potatoes. Your body temperature tends to go up. Your energy level might go down 10-20%, or not at all, which is not a big energy decrease for potentially having a 1000-1200 calorie deficit per day. Some people's moods get worse, probably due to the huge calorie deficit you sustain without feeling hungry. Large amounts of exercise might become more difficult also, such as a long hike due to the reduction in calories and thus a higher probability of “bonking” and electrolyte imbalances.

Prep tips to stay on the diet longer

The Peeler of the Gods, the Oxo Pro Swivel Peeler

Many people have a hard time continuing with the diet after a few weeks, and there are a few things that make staying on it longer work well:

1. Peeling all of your potatoes, gouging out brown spots and growth spots under the peel, and peeling anything that looks green in the flesh. The large amounts of solanine that are in the skin and green parts of the potatoes make people feel sick as it builds up in your body. The oxo pro swivel peeler is fairly popular with potato dieters and much nicer to work with vs. other cheap peelers.

2. Getting the largest potatoes you can find reduces your labor in preparing the potatoes. You get more potato flesh in volume but less potato surface to peel.

3. Storing your potatoes in a dark, dry bag reduces the amount of solanine buildup.

4. Cooking using baking in an air fryer or steaming in an instant pot or a general steamer. Boiling or microwaving the potatoes makes them taste far worse, and reduces their nutrition.

5. Using sauces such as soy sauce, maggi sauce, white vinegar, spices, and hot sauces significantly improves the taste and gives you the sodium missing in the potatoes.

Potato Riffs

Since it can be difficult to stay on the diet after a few weeks, probably due to a build-up of nutritional deficiencies from eating just potatoes, people have tested “potato riffs” to see how the diet can still work with fewer potatoes. 

Half-tato, tato by default, and many other variations have been tried.  What has been found is when you go away from the main potato-only diet, the likelihood of success is less.   Some people although get great success still by having a third of their calories come from potatoes, or just eating potatoes by default when they are at their house.  Others do not.   Overall the results have shown a higher likelihood of success the more of your diet consists of potatoes.

Of the potato riffs that I’ve seen, the ones that have the most long-term success tend to follow these rules:

1. Add a little bit of fat back, but make sure you're not frying your potatoes or using vegetable oil.  You probably need some fat for this diet to be successful. 

2. Some people are fine with vegetable oil and frying, but you have to make sure that the majority of your calories over the long term come from potatoes still, and frying potatoes can very easily make the meal 50% fat.

3. Add a small amount of other nutrient-rich foods, such as meat, liver, yogurt, cheese, etc. 

4. Add some chocolate to the diet, add other potassium-rich foods and even directly suppliment potassium.. 

Outlier 17 is one very successful potato riff to follow.   Another one had great success with having a hot cocoa drink of chocolate and milk every day and adding more potassium to the diet.     One of the original people who made this diet as a stunt to promote potatoes years ago lost 21lbs in 2 months, and only used a little bit of oil and spices to do it.  I am starting to experiment with adding butter to my potato diet, and will probably start incorporating the chocolate and other things that outlier 17 did.

Previously I tried a riff of potatoes and 500 calories of frozen blueberries, and it paused my weight loss for 4 days as I tried the riff. I stopped that test and went back to the original diet, and continued to lose weight the next day. Don’t be discouraged by such ‘dead ends’ since they are easy to recover from. Feel free to try your own riffs after you do a pure potato diet for a couple of weeks to see what works best for your body.  

Why does the potato diet work?

Nobody is sure, thus all the testing with potato riffs, potassium supplementation, ‘half-tato’ diet, and ‘tato-by-default’ diet.  I’ve written an article with my guesses as to why, based on all the appetite-suppressing substances inside potatoes itself. 

Another theory is when you eat a very low-protein diet, special mechanisms turn on to increase your metabolic rate significantly.  

Experimental Fat Loss

with his high fat, low protein keto diet has gotten great success by having a high fat, no carb, and a small amount of protein ketogenic diet alone, when nothing else really worked for him.  Thermobolic has gotten results with fat and carbs together, but low protein, and extra good results with coconut oil.   Others have lost weight on fire in a bottle’s emergence diet, but the common theme with all of them is a very low protein intake.

I tried

Experimental Fat Loss

high fat, low protein keto  diet myself for a month, and lost 10lbs. But my energy levels and fitness ability were far worse on it than the potato diet currently.

Experimental Fat Loss

although is able to eat 3000 calories on it and feel great. He also tried the potato diet and was not successful and felt bad on it, so what will work for one person, might not work for another.

I suggest just trying it for a couple of weeks. It’s very easy to do, and will help you save a bunch of money. If you get good results, you just found a powerful tool to lose weight for yourself.