Sunday Support Group: Two Radical Obesity Interventions (OT)

"Change of mind is not inconsistency."

—Cicero

If you see an obviously obese person walking down the sidewalk clutching a jumbo container of soda, you are almost certainly looking at a food addict. It's possible to get addicted to food, especially sugar. The helpless person you're seeing can't even venture out and be ambulatory for a little while without infusions of sugar-water at the ready.

It's not entirely her fault. An industry with formidable resources has entrapped her. As with the tobacco, alcohol, and now (in some states) the marijuana cartels, 80% of their profit comes from 20% of their customers. They're highly motivated to get you hooked.

I seldom drink soda, and never have it in the house, but I'm a food addict myself...

Here are two radical interventions a helpless food addict might try. These are for people who are morbidly obese and terminally frustrated, for whom nothing seems to work. The first one involves a complete change to your regular diet; the second requires no change to your regular diet.

The Potato Hack: This one's for "tough guys" (of either sex!), but it's exceedingly simple: eat only potatoes. Duration: 14 to 30 days*.

You can have russet baking potatoes, yellow, red, white or purple potatoes, fingerling or petite potatoes, and yams or sweet potatoes. You can bake, boil, steam, mash or roast them. But no cooking in oil, which means no French fries ("chips" in the UK), hash browns, etc. Always start with whole potatoes or yams from the produce section or a farmer's market—no frozen or pre-prepared boxed supermarket foods made from potatoes, and absolutely no chips ("crisps" to Brits) of any kind. Do not use any kind of additives, toppings, or sauces at all: no butter, sour cream, yogurt, gravy, or milk or cream in your mashed potatoes, etc. Just potatoes. Salt (but don't go crazy), and dried spices are allowed, and you can add a small amount of nut milk to mashed potatoes. (I like hemp milk. Try to avoid sweetened nut milks such as "vanilla" almond milk.)

Do not restrict yourself. You can have all you want, any time you want. You will lose weight.

Be sure to record your weight and your girth (measure at the belly button with your stomach muscles relaxed) at the beginning of a potato hack, and it would be best if can have your blood work done before and after, too, as that will make it obvious to you later how much your numbers improve. You can stay on it as long as you like, but if you do it for longer than 30 days it's advisable to take a vitamin B-12 supplement once or twice a week. No other supplements are necessary. No, you will not get protein deficiency. And don't worry about glycemic index problems or insulin bounce or anything in that general category you might have read about—if you're obese, potatoes are almost certainly better in that regard than many of the things you've been eating, that the potatoes are replacing.

Oh, and also, oddly, you're unlikely to get sick of eating potatoes.

The Bread Trick: Without making any other deliberate changes to your diet, add 10–16 slices of bread per day. Duration: eight weeks. Find a wholesome bread such as a nine-grain bread that lists "whole wheat flour" as the first ingredient—fake "wheat bread" that's just white bread with tan coloring should be avoided.

Don't toast it. Just eat it plain. No toppings: do not spread the bread with butter, peanut butter, honey, Nutella, jams or jellies, hummus, or anything else. Just bread. Eat two slices first thing in the morning, and two or three about twenty minutes to half an hour before every meal, and the rest at any other time of the day. Any time you're jonesing for a snack and just can't hold out till your next meal, eat a slice of bread. (Based on personal experience, though, I'd say don't eat any bread after about seven or eight o'clock in the evening, unless you want indigestion just as you're trying to get to sleep.)

You don't need to make any other changes in your diet, and there's no need to restrict yourself using "willpower." Do try to be aware of when you just don't want to eat any food, and don't force yourself to eat if you're not hungry and don't want food. But if you begin scavenging or ravening, have a slice of bread.

Stick with the bread trick and you will lose weight.

Again, getting your blood work done before and after would be a good idea, only because it will demonstrate conclusively that the bread trick has been good for you.

Waddlepated
Getting back to those poor obese pedestrians clutching the oversized sodas, there's good news. Sugar is often a "triggering" food for food addicts, and consuming it even in small quantities makes you crave not only more sugar, but also more food of all kinds. It's not the sugar that's the problem: it's the cravings that are the problem. But sugar is a "weak" addiction when compared to things like alcohol, benzodiazepines, and crack cocaine. The cravings will subside substantially after only four days of no sugar, and, except for the "psychological overhang" in your mind, the cravings should be gone after only two weeks. 

To get this to happen, though, it's necessary to eat no sugar. That requires avoiding not just "overt" sugars (anything obviously sugary like a Coke, breakfast cereal, a piece of cake, or a granola bar) but also "covert" sugars (sugar hiding in what appear to be savory foods or condiments, like ketchup, barbeque sauce, canned soups, supermarket breads, many supermarket spaghetti sauces, and on and on). Up to three servings of fruit a day are exempted.

As well as a way to break the hold of food addiction, the potato hack, although a radical intervention and of course not desirable as a permanent diet, is also an effective way to kick sugar.

Mike

P.S. By the way, I know I said I wasn't going to write about food and nutrition any more, but what Cicero said.

*Actually you can do it for up to a year, but there's no reason not to start adding salads, vegetables, fruits and other plant foods into your diet after the potato hack breaks your food addiction.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Comments

[SteveW]

Good one.

While were at it, let's please get rid of the lottery, which is primarily funded by people in the lowest of income levels.

[Kenneth Tanaka]

"If you see an obviously obese person walking down the sidewalk..."

"It's not entirely her fault."

Obesity is far from a gender-biased matter. You must have had someone in mind?

"By the way, I know I said I wasn't going to write about food and nutrition any more, but what Cicero said."

I know I've said that this is your personal blog and you can, and do, write whatever you please and I wouldn't critize you. But I really think you're off the reservation with this topic, Mike. It's not a topic that's served well by amateurs.

[c.d.embrey]

The Online Pharmacy, purveyors of snake-oil, elixirs-of-life and other quackery ;-)

I'm a caffeine junky. I get my fix from Matcha tea (no honey), Monster Energy Zero, black coffee (no sugar), Diet Coke and Diet Dr Pepper. The BIG Gulp® I have in my hand is a diet soda, of one sort or another. BTW my Cardiologist has no problems with the amount of caffeine I consume.

In California, most of the legal marijuana is medical, prescribed by Medical Doctors.

From MY POV, the best way to loose weight is a simple exercise—pushing yourself back from the table. As always, YMMV.

[Michel H Vos]

I am not sure if you are joking or if you are serious but stuffing an overweight person with carbohydrates is a very bad idea. Keto and fasting seems to be a better approach. Under medical supervision of course.

[c.d.embrey]

D.A. (Donn Alan) Pennebaker died on Aug 1. 20019. https://variety.com/2019/film/news/d-a-pennebaker-dead-dies-dont-look-back-1203290823/

Pennebaker first directed the 1953 documentary short Daybreak Express, which followed a train around New York City and utilized the Duke Ellington song of the same name. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fZ0-T80YD8

I feel in debt to Ellington and instinctively to all musicians, Pennebaker would later tell Stop Smiling magazine. They taught me my art. The very nature of film is musical, because it uses time as a basis for its energy. It needs to go from here to there, whereas pictures and paintings are just there. With movies, you’re putting something together that’s not going to be totally comprehensible until the end. It’s the concept of the novel and the sonnet — you need to get to the end, to see if you like it and decide what it’s about. With stills, there’s always the same instant, frozen and beguiling, but lifeless. A single note. With film, the moment doesn’t hold — it rushes by, and you must deal with it like you do music and real life. DA Pennebaker

Motion pictures vs stills. ...whereas pictures and paintings are just there ...With stills, there’s always the same instant, frozen and beguiling, but lifeless.

[Benjamin Marks]

Mike: radical suggestions. Do your sources suggest _how_ these are actually working? I have to say, the potato thing is counter-intuitive . . .do you just get bored of eating all those spuds, or is something biochemical going on in your gut? And do you really have to quit everything else? Like, no greens? ???

You know my position on this: glad to see a food article now and again.

[Eric Onore]

Since you will not stick to your plan to not write about food and nutrition, I now have a plan not to read anything you write about food and nutrition.

[Fair enough. I don't do it very often so you won't have to skip much. --Mike]

[Sid]

I recall reading that all diets are alike in that they cause the dieter to lose interest in eating. Potatoes, bread, chocolate, whatever diet, they all work alike.

[Mike Ferron]

First I am glad food is possibly off the TOP banned list. I drink zero soda, eat very little sugar and ya I still could lose a few. (life at 64) Not sure I could, or need to do the all potato or all bread diet but the concept sounds interesting.

What I have done in the past is a low carb diet and that worked but I found it rather unstainable. For the last week I have been intermittent fasting. No food at all after say 9pm and I wont eat again till 10am or so. After 6 hours the body starts burning stored fat. That peeks at 10-12 hours and slows a bit afterward. This has been somewhat easy for me because I arise very early (4am) and it is not hard for me to live off a cup of black coffee or 2 until I get home. So far so good. Oh an additional perk to this is when you do eat? You want the good stuff. It seems the body tells you that.

[Tony Ayling]

I’m glad you reneged on your promise of no more diet posts Mike. I always enjoy them - well actually i enjoy most of your posts! The potato story always amazes me. I love potatoes and am always surprised at how many people think they are bad for you and avoid them completely.

[Herman Krieger]

Contemporary Packaging-

[Ben Bishop]

I'm a drunk. Actually, I'm an alcoholic, a drunk that goes to meetings. In my case I find that I fit in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I've seen many come in, beaten down and near the end of their rope. The challenge is taking responsibility and making a few gradual changes. Most people don't succeed. They want a magic prayer, they want someone to fix them, they want to stay the same person but stay sober. There are many good diets and you are very sincere, Mike, but most will fail because they want magic. They have a gym membership and they drink vitamin water and they don't lose weight. "It's not fair" makes a person sound four-years-old. Change means doing it for oneself, being an adult; it's simple but it isn't easy.

[PDLanum]

Why do you assume that the obese person is a "her".

Your assumptions shoe you bias, most of the obese people I see are not "her's".

Eating that much bread (carbohydrates) would send my blood sugar into hyperdrive. Leave the advice on diet to Sunday supplement's and YouTube®.

[MHMG]

For those of us who want to approach weight loss very analytically!

https://www.niddk.nih.gov/bwp

Just be prepared to count calories honestly, and decide on any given day what you are willing to give up in your current diet, what you are prepared NOT TO EAT OR DRINK each and every day! For me it has been the daily calories from alcoholic beverages I have learned to give up, a double win, IMHO!

cheers,
Mark

[John Krumm]

Judging from the comments, giving diet advice on a photography blog is like giving political advice on one. But one thing about the WFPB bandwagon, once you are on it, it's hard not to talk it up, so I understand. It's almost time for a berry smoothie with flax and a little ground chia. : )

[adamct]

FWIW, I assume that Mike used the pronoun "her" in the second paragraph not to imply that only women can be overweight, but because he has made a conscious decision not to always use male pronouns when referring to people in the generic sense. We can't have it both ways: we can't object to writers always using male pronouns for everything, but then also assume negative intent when a writer -- attempting to use male and female pronouns equally -- winds up occasionally using using female pronouns in a negative context.

Maybe I'm way off base, but I haven't seen a shred of gender bias from Mike in the past, and think it is irresponsible to jump to unwarranted conclusions based on the usage of a single pronoun in this post.

Best regards,
Adam

[adamct]

FWIW, I am always interested to hear what you are thinking when it comes to your diet and personal efforts to be "healthier", however you define it. But I think there is an important distinction between (a) reporting what you have read elsewhere, (b) reporting on your personal experiences, and (c) suggesting or advising others on their diet. The first two are legitimate exercises for a personal blog and ones that I welcome. I take both of them for what they are: a statement of your personal interests, to be taken with as much salt as I deem appropriate (if nothing else, I find it helpful to know what books you find interesting -- I can then go and read them myself to see if I find them as persuasive as you do).

But giving advice as radical as the suggestions above, and particularly without an explanation of the basis for the recommendation, strikes me as indeed being dangerous for a non-physician. I don't doubt your intentions at all, and it may well be that the advice you give is perfectly sound, but as far as I know, there is no consensus on what is a healthy diet even among doctors and scientists, and there is more to a healthy diet than just losing weight. If you are going to recommend something like this, I think you owe your readers an explanation of the inspiration our source of the recommendations, the mechanism by which you believe they will work, and a discussion of any risks to watch out for.

Best regards,
Adam

[These recommendations are specifically aimed at people who feel hopelessly food-addicted; they're not general diets.

But more generally, you are right. I have been distinctly off my game for the past five or six days. My thinking feels sludgey, my memory full of holes. I hope to be back to normal again soon. --Mike]

[robert e]

@Kenneth

Nutrition is a topic that has been served very poorly by professionals and officials, to put it mildly, at least in the US (e.g. the villainization of dietary fat, cholesterol, sodium, aluminum, the distorted "food pyramid", etc...). Given the abysmal track record of medical advice and government propaganda on this topic, why discourage "amateurs"?

Whatever her bona fides, all I ask is that the advisor be empirical. It's on me to bring the skepticism, whatever the source.

[Chad]

Just writing to point out that the use of "her" rather than the default "him" is probably a conscious attempt to avoid the default "him", which should not be the default.

Perhaps a neutral pronoun would have gone down better.

[Christian Timmerman]

I actually only read your off topic articles. Keep ‘em coming! Perhaps on a different blog site so everyone is happy?

[Thomas Paul McCann]

Forget about 'her ' or 'him' just use 'them'

I enjoy the diversity of you blog. I may not share your taste in everything but its always good to get out of the echo chamber and your writing style is top notch.

I think every one needs to get their own diet regime. What suits me may not suit you. (I don't eat all day but have a healthy dinner around 17.00.) My nemesis is between that and bed time and (european) biscuits. If I eat anything sweet at all that's me away on hack so I allow myself one sweet biscuit at bed time only.I do need a little sugar.

Anyway dieting makes you fat

[adamct]

Chad: I totally agree.

[Ulf]

Yes, as an academic, I will get chided if I refer to anyone in general as ”he” because it demonstrates that I have a bias to think the male is the default.