potato diet
How to get in shape with potatoes!
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The potato diet promises quick weight loss without starvation because we are allowed to eat a lot of potatoes. But is that healthy? And how does it work?
How does the potato diet work?
There are different variants of the potato diet. What they have in common is that we eat mainly low-fat potatoes during the diet. Depending on the variant, we eat about 600 to 1000 grams of potatoes a day, plus about 100 grams of low-fat quark or three eggs on the plate every day. The combination means that the body can absorb and utilize protein particularly well, which means that you stay full longer.
In its original form, this diet includes potatoes with every meal. But if you don’t have an appetite for the miracle tuber in the morning, you can have a portion of wholemeal oatmeal with some low-fat yoghurt and fresh fruit or two slices of wholemeal bread with cottage cheese for breakfast. A slightly less strict variant also allows fresh vegetables, lean meat or steamed fish as a side dish – which makes the diet not so monotonous anymore. However, since the potato diet is one of the mono diets, it should not be carried out for longer than a week.
How should I prepare the potatoes?
How we prepare the potatoes is up to us – cooked in the classic way or as baked potatoes or potato wedges. And: During the potato diet it is necessary to drink a lot – At least 2.5 to 3 liters of still water or herbal and fruit tea are ideal. Since the diet is primarily dehydrating, the first few pounds tumble off quickly. However, this is also a major disadvantage of the potato diet: it primarily flushes out water and does not go to the fat reserves. In addition, like all other mono-diets, it also carries a high risk of the yo-yo effect if you eat as before after the diet.
Why do potatoes help us lose weight?
It used to be thought that potatoes were real fattening foods – a mistake, as we know today. The delicious tubers have these advantages when losing weight:
- Potatoes belong to the group of alkaline foods and are therefore often used in alkaline fasting. The potassium makes them valuable for our acid-base balance. Also, it helps with dehydration.
- Potatoes are full of fiber and valuable carbohydrates. Together, this ensures a long feeling of satiety and the risk of food cravings is low.
- Our blood sugar level drops very slowly when we eat potatoes, which has a positive effect on our fat burning and also helps with weight loss.
- Vitamin C is just as good for our fat metabolism. And potatoes actually contain a lot of it: 100 grams of potatoes contain a total of 20 milligrams of vitamin C.
- The tubers are wonderful suppliers of protein – this is important for building muscle and stimulating our metabolism.
- Because they are almost 80 percent water, potatoes are very low in calories.
The potato diet in everyday life
The good thing about the potato diet: It is super easy to prepare and integrate into everyday life. The potato portions are cooked quickly and packed for the office even faster. When choosing potatoes during the potato diet, it is best to use waxy potatoes.
What are the benefits of the potato diet?
The potato diet can be worthwhile for the following reasons:
- Potatoes are generally healthy.
- You lose weight quickly.
- Since vegetables and steamed fish are allowed in the not too strict variant, the diet is not quite as monotonous.
Health: what are the disadvantages of the potato diet?
Of course, the diet also has disadvantages. These include:
- In its simplest form, the potato diet is one of the so-called mono diets, so you eat very one-sidedly. There is a risk of a nutrient deficiency: in combination with eggs and quark, we are supplied with protein, potassium and carbohydrates during the potato diet, but we are completely missing other important nutrients such as iron.
- You primarily lose water and not fat.
- The danger of the yo-yo effect after the end of the diet is high.
In addition, the composition of the diet deviates from the recommendations of the German Society for Nutrition (DGE): This advises, among other things, that the daily diet should consist of 30 percent fat and 55 percent carbohydrates. With the (strict) potato diet, we usually only eat two to three percent fat and between 80 and 85 percent carbohydrates.
Due to the many disadvantages, we cannot recommend the potato diet, if you want to lose weight sustainably and healthily. Instead of relying on diets that only have a short-term effect, it is better to change your diet in the long term and to incorporate more exercise into your everyday life.
Reading tips: You can find more weight loss tips here. We also explain the Glyx diet, the hormone diet and the DASH diet and reveal whether you can lose weight in the long term.
sources
Hajeck-Lang, B.: Handbook Diets, Urban and Fischer Verlag, 1st edition 2011
German Society for Nutrition: The potato – a valuable food