I’m going to try a version of this based on the post. If I remember I’ll let you know how it goes (feel free to remind me!). Here’s what I’m going to try:
replace breakfast with 2 bananas on days I eat breakfast
continue to skip breakfast on days that I fast until lunch
aim to drink 1 coconut water every day in place of a soda
pick foods with more potassium on the margin when possible (I eat most meals out or heat frozen things in the microwave)
I’m slightly tempted to try eating more bananas in place of other food. The Internet mildly recommends against this, but that’s mostly advice for people worried about too many carbs, and substituting bananas for other sorts of snacks is almost certainly an improvement. Undecided, but if it’s working I’ll probably try more bananas too see if it speeds things up.
(Why bananas? I like potatoes better, but bananas are more convenient. Potatoes require washing, cooking, a plate, etc. while bananas require only peeling and eating. I tried the potato diet briefly but it wasn’t convenient enough for me to stick to it. Bananas seem realistically doable.)
Ya coconout water is great. I just finished a week or so of going back to my pre-potato diet but substituting most of my drinks (usually water) for coconut water which gave me between 2800 mg and 6000 mg of K per day (so at least as much as one meal of potatoes).
A few questions:
Have you tried losing weight before and what was your experience then? (I ask because some people have legitimate doubt that this only works for people who haven’t really tried to lose weight before.)
Is your main goal in doing this to lose weight or to experiment? If you want to just test out K and are curious about the role of K for you, you’re intervention is perfect. If you mainly want to lose weight, then as Portia pointed out in some other comments here, there is another thing which is critical (as I will get to in future posts, I’m still finilizing some experiments) is a high volume/weight meal low in calories. Considering that you heat up stuff in the microwave, let me give you some good options which are also high in K * Canned or boxed tomatoe soup (as long as they don’t add too much Na in it) * Canned Red/Black kidney beans (add a bit of sour cream, hot sauce, herbs, to make tasty) * Really any type of canned beans or legumes (just look for low sodium content).
Yep, I’ve lost significant weight before through intermittent fasting (dropped from 230 to 170 lbs, 5′10″ tall). The lowest weight my body will tolerate without extreme effort seems to be 180. Right now I’m staying just shy of 200, and want to get back down to 180.
I can fast again, but it’s a lot of long, slow work and requires a lot of discipline. I lack the motivation right now for that, as at the time I wanted to become a bit more attractive to find a long-term partner. Now I’m married, so it’s less pressing, but don’t want to get above 200 for health and aesthetic reasons.
Also, thanks for the suggestions! I try to have the majority of my diet be plants and minimize animal products, and when I do eat animal products prioritize minimizing suffering on the margin (e.g. no seafood, careful on egg sourcing, dairy mostly okay other than some GI issues with it, etc.), so I’m quite used to eating food with low caloric density that fills my stomach, and that helps a lot with avoiding calorie dense snacks.
I love watermelon and appreciate the nudge to eat more of it. However, watermelon doesn’t always serve as its high water content makes it more like a drink than an alternative to what I would otherwise eat. But eating more watermelon on the margin seems like a good idea.
I’m going to try a version of this based on the post. If I remember I’ll let you know how it goes (feel free to remind me!). Here’s what I’m going to try:
replace breakfast with 2 bananas on days I eat breakfast
continue to skip breakfast on days that I fast until lunch
aim to drink 1 coconut water every day in place of a soda
pick foods with more potassium on the margin when possible (I eat most meals out or heat frozen things in the microwave)
I’m slightly tempted to try eating more bananas in place of other food. The Internet mildly recommends against this, but that’s mostly advice for people worried about too many carbs, and substituting bananas for other sorts of snacks is almost certainly an improvement. Undecided, but if it’s working I’ll probably try more bananas too see if it speeds things up.
(Why bananas? I like potatoes better, but bananas are more convenient. Potatoes require washing, cooking, a plate, etc. while bananas require only peeling and eating. I tried the potato diet briefly but it wasn’t convenient enough for me to stick to it. Bananas seem realistically doable.)
Ya coconout water is great. I just finished a week or so of going back to my pre-potato diet but substituting most of my drinks (usually water) for coconut water which gave me between 2800 mg and 6000 mg of K per day (so at least as much as one meal of potatoes).
A few questions:
Have you tried losing weight before and what was your experience then? (I ask because some people have legitimate doubt that this only works for people who haven’t really tried to lose weight before.)
Is your main goal in doing this to lose weight or to experiment?
If you want to just test out K and are curious about the role of K for you, you’re intervention is perfect.
If you mainly want to lose weight, then as Portia pointed out in some other comments here, there is another thing which is critical (as I will get to in future posts, I’m still finilizing some experiments) is a high volume/weight meal low in calories. Considering that you heat up stuff in the microwave, let me give you some good options which are also high in K
* Canned or boxed tomatoe soup (as long as they don’t add too much Na in it)
* Canned Red/Black kidney beans (add a bit of sour cream, hot sauce, herbs, to make tasty)
* Really any type of canned beans or legumes (just look for low sodium content).
Looking forward to hear about your experience.
Yep, I’ve lost significant weight before through intermittent fasting (dropped from 230 to 170 lbs, 5′10″ tall). The lowest weight my body will tolerate without extreme effort seems to be 180. Right now I’m staying just shy of 200, and want to get back down to 180.
I can fast again, but it’s a lot of long, slow work and requires a lot of discipline. I lack the motivation right now for that, as at the time I wanted to become a bit more attractive to find a long-term partner. Now I’m married, so it’s less pressing, but don’t want to get above 200 for health and aesthetic reasons.
Also, thanks for the suggestions! I try to have the majority of my diet be plants and minimize animal products, and when I do eat animal products prioritize minimizing suffering on the margin (e.g. no seafood, careful on egg sourcing, dairy mostly okay other than some GI issues with it, etc.), so I’m quite used to eating food with low caloric density that fills my stomach, and that helps a lot with avoiding calorie dense snacks.
have you considered watermelon?
I love watermelon and appreciate the nudge to eat more of it. However, watermelon doesn’t always serve as its high water content makes it more like a drink than an alternative to what I would otherwise eat. But eating more watermelon on the margin seems like a good idea.