I’ve been doing a potato fast for eight days now. That is, I have been eating only potatoes. White potatoes, sweet potatoes, red potatoes, russet potatoes, any kind of potato but nothing else. No butter no sour cream, no cinnamon sugar, Just potatoes. As many as I want. I lose weight without being hungry, on the order of five or ten pounds a week.
When I come off the potato fast, I am going to eat a low sugar, low salt, low fat, plant based diet. I’ve done this before. I lost from three hundred pounds down to two hundred and forty pounds. Then Thanksgiving and Christmas happened and I gained back to two hundred and seventy five pounds. I’ve tried exercise and several variations on the second stage diet, all with no luck. I was stuck on a plateau around two hundred and seventy five pounds.
In a week, I’ve lost around eight pounds. I expect the trend to continue. It worked once, This time I’ll be more diligent. I will be happy to get to the stage where I’m eating salads again though. I really like salads. I also like vinegar as a salad dressing. No oil, just vinegar. I’ve also had a lot of luck with salsa as salad dressing. I have to be careful about controlling portions of salsa. Most commercial salsas have too much salt in them.
I also avoid processed grains like white flour. That means I don’t eat sandwiches. More to the point, when I do eat sandwiches made from store bought bread, I end up gaining the weight back. I love bread, and eggs, and cheese. But when I eat them on any kind of regular basis, I am back in the holding pattern again.
I’ve also discovered that if I’m doing it right, I have this feeling that I used to think was hunger. It’s not really hunger though. I’m not sure what to call it but it accompanies weight loss. I find that exercise, although it is healthy, doesn’t seem to have much effect on weight loss one way or another. At least not as much exercise as I have been doing. I park a good way from my office so I get in some extra walking that way. I also work on the second floor and climb the stairs two or three times a day.
I drink a lot of water. I drink tea and coffee too. But everything I drink has no sugar and no sweetener. I think that sweetener interferes with your body’s ability to regulate it’s blood sugar. I admit to having cherry picked the research that I’ve based this diet on. I don’t recommend it to anyone else without consulting with their doctor and reading up on diet for themselves. That said, It seems to work for me and this time, I’m sticking to it.
Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the ones you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.