As to the hypothesis you allude to of weightloss being either hard or easy for people, and that people who lose weight on the potato diet would have lost weight also if they tried something else:
If I understand @Elizabeth ’s post which I just randomly read a few minutes ago, at least in her case, the potatoes worked where other things didn’t. That’s just n=1, but it does indicate that a strong version of the hypothesis isn’t true.
It’s possible that there is a distribution of people: some who would lose weight under any diet, some who wouldn’t lose weight under most diets but yes with potatoes, and some who wouldn’t lose weight under any diet including potatoes. The question is then is then what proportion of people are in each bin (and it’s probably more a spectrum and discrete bins).
I have a pet hypothesis that weight loss intervention studies are done almost entirely on
people highly resistant to weight loss (because people try multiple interventions before signing up for science), and that’s why the are so many programs with great anecdotal support that fail in rcts.
note: now pretty sure watermelon was necessary for the weight loss, and unclear if potatoes contribute or not. There are more complications but I don’t think this changes your larger point
Oh wow!! Great data! Thanks for that. So my incomplete tests for the moment seem to indicate that if I take no potassium and no calorie-not-dense meal, then I gain weight. If I just take ~2500 mg K or more but no calorie-not-dense meal, I lose weight very slowly, if I just take one calorie-not-dense meal a day but no K I lose weight very slowly, but if I do both, then I lose weight visibly. Do you think something like that could be consistent with your experience?
Define consistent? It’s definitely consistent with my broader experience that very little in weight loss or food in general makes sense. I can come up with stories that the key in me was potassium delivered in a high fiber/low cal package, but I put that as less likely than fiber + water + slow release sugar.
As to the hypothesis you allude to of weightloss being either hard or easy for people, and that people who lose weight on the potato diet would have lost weight also if they tried something else:
If I understand @Elizabeth ’s post which I just randomly read a few minutes ago, at least in her case, the potatoes worked where other things didn’t. That’s just n=1, but it does indicate that a strong version of the hypothesis isn’t true.
It’s possible that there is a distribution of people: some who would lose weight under any diet, some who wouldn’t lose weight under most diets but yes with potatoes, and some who wouldn’t lose weight under any diet including potatoes. The question is then is then what proportion of people are in each bin (and it’s probably more a spectrum and discrete bins).
I have a pet hypothesis that weight loss intervention studies are done almost entirely on people highly resistant to weight loss (because people try multiple interventions before signing up for science), and that’s why the are so many programs with great anecdotal support that fail in rcts.
note: now pretty sure watermelon was necessary for the weight loss, and unclear if potatoes contribute or not. There are more complications but I don’t think this changes your larger point
Interesting.
Watermelon has 30 kCal and 112 mg K per 100g
(boiled) potatoes have 87 kCal and 380 mg K per 100g
So per calory they have roughly the same amount of potassium, but watermelon is clearly much less energy dense than potatoes.
My overall potassium over the last year+
I was losing weight from July to November in 2022, and August 2023 -now, so potassium doesn’t look like an obvious driver.
Oh wow!! Great data! Thanks for that.
So my incomplete tests for the moment seem to indicate that if I take no potassium and no calorie-not-dense meal, then I gain weight. If I just take ~2500 mg K or more but no calorie-not-dense meal, I lose weight very slowly, if I just take one calorie-not-dense meal a day but no K I lose weight very slowly, but if I do both, then I lose weight visibly. Do you think something like that could be consistent with your experience?
Define consistent? It’s definitely consistent with my broader experience that very little in weight loss or food in general makes sense. I can come up with stories that the key in me was potassium delivered in a high fiber/low cal package, but I put that as less likely than fiber + water + slow release sugar.