We’ve heard of some odd diets in our lives, but eating nothing but potatoes for an entire year? That, uh, that doesn’t seem like a great idea.
But that isn’t stopping Andrew Flinders Taylor and his “Spud Fit” experiment which in 32 days has already helped him shed around 22 pounds.
“I am doing a potato only diet challenge. The bulk, 99% of my calories will come from potatoes and then I’ll just have seasoning and stuff on them. The last couple of years I’ve not been anywhere near as fit and active as I’d like to be. Today I weighed myself and as expected I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been, which is 151.7 kg, so I’m not happy about that,” says Taylor in his introductory video below.
Taylor has been posting videos updating his progress on YouTube and in his most recent one he talks about how eating only potatoes has stopped him from binge eating.
“I’m starting to change the way I think about food and what I’m eating,” says Taylor. “I changed more from seeing food as a way of getting comfort or a way of getting pleasure or of just spending time, but these days it’s more just about some good quality fuel in the tank.”
So why just potatoes?
“It came from the idea that I was a food addict,” Taylor told BuzzFeed News. “If you’re a drug addict or an alcoholic, you quit the drugs or alcohol. But you can’t quit food. So I just thought I should find one type of food and stick with it.”
Of course, as I mentioned above, eating only potatoes doesn’t seem like the greatest idea and Joseph Proietto, professor of medicine at Melbourne University, agrees, telling Buzzfeed, ““You have probably heard the term ‘a balanced diet. What that means is you need a little of this and a little of that because we have a range of vitamins and minerals found in different concentrations in different foods.”
“The problem with eating any single food is that you’re gonna definitely miss out on a whole lot of vitamins that are required.”
He also says the Taylor probably isn’t feeling any real negative effects from his diet because he hasn’t become deficient in essential vitamins and minerals yet, but that will probably happen after around three or four months.
It’ll be interesting to see how Taylro is feeling about his “Spud Fit” experiment come May or June. Stay tuned.