A very inspiring phrase that Andrew Flinders Taylor includes on a YouTube video he posted in December 2016 was “make your food boring and your life interesting.” In this video, he detailed everything he learned from the experience of eating potatoes for every single meal of every single day, for almost one year.
Just potatoes and nothing else for a whole year sounds ludicrous, But for Taylor, who then weighed 334 pounds when he started this diet, made perfect sense. After a year of dieting, the Australian native lost 117 pounds from what he coined as the “Spud Fit Challenge.”
You can be assured that Taylor no longer consumes potatoes, but that experience did help him become healthier, he said.
In an interview last November 2019, Taylor said that:
“My Spud Fit Challenge was only ever intended as a short term intervention to treat my own food addiction. My behavior with food mirrored that of an alcoholic with drinking so I decided to get as close as possible to treating it with the same abstinence model: I quit all food except potatoes.”
When that year ended, Taylor shared that he started a healthier diet. “I still include a lot of potatoes, but also plenty of other unprocessed plant foods such as fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes.” He also adds that all the physical benefits he gained during the Spud Fit Challenge remain. “I’ve maintained the weight loss and I’m still free of the daily grind of battling with food addiction. I had a check up a few weeks ago and my doctor was very happy with the state of my health.”
Before committing to his all-potato diet, Taylor admitted that he was anxious and clinically depressed, “which is no longer an issue for me. My mental health is much better these days,” he says.
While dropping 117 pounds in a year from a pretty straightforward diet, you may need some clarification: Is this diet safe? Is it practical? Where do you get protein? Are Taylor’s impressive results sustainable and realistic for everyone else?
Based on the answers seen on his FAQ page and the input of an obesity specialist, here is all the information you’ll need:
How effective is the all-potato diet?
During Taylor’s challenge, he was consuming all kinds of potatoes, even sweet potatoes. He allowed himself to sprinkle dried herbs and use fat-free sweet chili and barbecue sauce. When he had mashed potatoes, he would add oil-free soy milk. He never restricted himself with the amount that he ate. Taylor ate as much potatoes as he wanted, all the time. For the most part, he only drank water aside from an occasional beer once in a blue moon. Because his diet didn’t consist of any meat or protein, he supplemented it by taking B12 vitamins. During the first month, he didn’t work out, yet still lost 22 pounds. In the succeeding months, he included an exercise regimen for 90 minutes everyday.
Author of The Fat Loss Prescription, obesity specialist Spencer Nadolsku, D.O., says that ‘potatoes have a lot of nutritional content they were prepared properly. They’re a great source of healthy carbohydrates and fiber that gives you the feeling of being full, especially when they are boiled. Potatoes are rich in potassium and vitamin C, as well as vitamin A.’
What is it about potatoes that melt the points away? Nothing, really. Eating a bunch of potatoes isn’t the secret to a massive weight loss. It’s any diet that gives you a calorie deficit that will make you lose the pounds, says Dr. Nadolsky. So technically, consuming pizza, cakes and pies, or pretty much anything under the sun could make you lose weight, as long as you are burning more calories than ingesting them; but by no means is that lifestyle healthy.
Is eating potatoes for a whole year safe?
Just to be sure that Taylor was dieting safely, he regularly got check ups with a dietician and a doctor. As the months passed by, he noticed improvements not only with his health, but with the gradual weight loss too. “I had high cholesterol but now it’s low, my blood pressure has dropped and my sugar level has dropped,” he shared with The Independent.
This doesn’t come as a surprise as weight loss improves risk from heart disease. Dr. Nadolsky also added that nutrients found in potatoes could’ve helped in that area. Doing the potato diet for a short period of time won’t harm anybody, but this means that you are consuming minimal amounts of fat and protein which will be detrimental for long periods of time that will put you at risk for deficiency, the doctor advised.
According to the USDA, since potatoes have no protein, not eating enough of all nutrients could make your muscles eventually deteriorate. So, dropping a few pounds will go hand-in-hand to also losing definition, says Dr. Nadolsky.
Muscle is the most important thing for metabolic health. Especially as you age, your muscles aid you in carrying heavy things and walking up the stairs.
Is it a good idea to do the all-potato diet?
Dr. Nadolsky’s advice is:
“I personally would not recommend it. It’s very restrictive. A vegan diet is very restrictive and a ketogenic diet is very restrictive, but a potato diet is one of the most restrictive diets you could ever do.”
For Taylor though, it worked wonders.
“I feel amazing and incredible! I’m sleeping better, I no longer have joint pain from old football injuries, I’m full of energy, I have better mental clarity and focus,” he shared on his site.
This doesn’t escape that fact though that there are also negative side effects to this diet, such as fatigue and hunger.
Dr. Nadolsky instead recommends trying a diet filled with a variety of whole, nutrient-dense foods instead. If you want to lose weight, at least 30% of the food you consume should be from lean meat like chicken or fish. If you want to have potatoes as a carb, go right ahead, but you must also include different vegetables in every meal. Healthy fats that are found in avocado can make you full faster, and is also good for your heart, according to the American Heart Association.
“Make your food boring and your life interesting” seems quite easy to do, but for most people, “there does come a point where we all like to enjoy food, it’s a very social part of our lives,” shares Dr. Nadolsky.
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