“Potatoes and corn for dinner” diet

Overview
Daily protocol
Lunch
Dinner
Nutrition
Thanks
Closing thoughts
Future work

Overview

Last time, I tried the “potatoes and cottage cheese for dinner” diet, and I lost 1.10lb per week for six weeks.

This time, I thought it’d be fun to try a “potatoes and corn for dinner” diet, and I’ve lost weight at the same rate: 1.10lb per week!

I can’t say that I recommend this version of the potato diet diet, though. Since kernels of corn retain much of their shape after having been digested, eating potatoes and corn for dinner every night makes for a very unpleasant time on the john.

Daily protocol

My protocol for the potatoes and corn for dinner diet was very similar to the one for my potatoes and cottage cheese for dinner diet:

Wake up around 10:30AM
Eat Panda Express for lunch, around noon
Go for a ~15 minute walk
Eat potatoes and corn for dinner
Go for a 30-45+ minute walk

I generally drank about 48oz of strong, black coffee each day (versus about 40oz on the potatoes and cottage cheese for dinner diet).

Lunch

I ate lunch at Panda Express each day, and I ordered the same thing each day:

Dynamite chicken or Sweet Fire chicken (2x)
Broccoli Beef
Super Greens (cooked broccoli, cabbage, and kale)

This is the same as what I ordered when on the potatoes and cottage cheese for dinner diet, except that sometimes I ordered Dynamite chicken instead of Sweet Fire chicken.

Two or three times per week, I would grab lunch with family and eat something totally different.

Dinner

For dinner each day, I ate:

6 large potatoes (~2lb)
1 cup corn

Preparation method:

Slice potatoes and place them in a pot of water
Add frozen kernels of corn
Boil for 40 minutes or so
Drain, reserving a small amount of liquid
Add a generous amount of salt and pepper
Mash

I didn’t peel the potatoes unless they were green.

I used bags of frozen corn kernels, and I used regular corn instead of sweet corn, figuring that regular corn would contain less sugar.

Nutrition

First, the macronutrients!

I’ve included nutrients for both this diet (potatoes and corn for dinner) and for the previous diet (potatoes and cottage cheese for dinner), for easy comparison:

	Potatoes and corn for dinner	Potatoes and corn for dinner	Potatoes and cottage cheese for dinner	Potatoes and cottage cheese for dinner
Nutrient	Amount	Percent of recommended daily value	Amount	Percent of recommended daily value
Calories	1,979	99%	1,954	98%
Protein	79g	158%	92g	184%
Carbohydrates	328g	119%	299g	109%
Fiber	34g	123%	31g	110%
Total fat	39g	50% of upper limit	41g	52% of upper limit
Saturated fat	8g	42% of upper limit	10g	52% of upper limit
Sugar	61g	–	63g	–

Next, the micronutrients:

	Potatoes and corn for dinner	Potatoes and corn for dinner	Potatoes and cottage cheese for dinner	Potatoes and cottage cheese for dinner
Nutrient	Amount	Percent of recommended daily value	Amount	Percent of recommended daily value
Vitamin K	418mcg	349%	418mcg	348%
Vitamin B6	5.6mg	332%	5.6mg	327%
Copper	2.9mg	323%	2.9mg	320%
Niacin	45mg	283%	42mg	262%
Pantothenic acid	14mg	280%	13mg	267%
Vitamin C	233mg	258%	233mg	258%
Manganese	5.0mg	216%	4.7mg	206%
Riboflavin (B2)	2.3mg	177%	2.4mg	188%
Selenium	92mcg	168%	116mcg	211%
Thiamin	1.8mg	151%	1.7mg	141%
Potassium	6,932mg	147%	6,624mg	141%
Phosphorous	1,398mg	112%	1,501mg	120%
Magnesium	453mg	108%	426mg	101%
Zinc	11.8mg	107%	12mg	109%
Folate	390mcg	98%	348mcg	87%
Sodium	2,117mg	92% of upper limit	2,636mg	115% of upper limit
Choline	481mg	88%	433mg	79%
Iron	14.8mg	83%	14.5mg	81%
Vitamin B12	1.9mcg	81%	2.6mcg	110%
Calcium	498mg	38%	656mg	50%
Vitamin A	289mcg	32%	386mcg	43%
Vitamin E	3.3mg	22%	3.2mg	22%

Both diets have a lot of Vitamin K, Vitamin B6, Copper, Niacin, Pantothenic acid, Vitamin C, and Manganese!

Sources:

Potatoes (90% boiled potatoes, 10% boiled potato skin)
Corn
Panda Express macronutrients
Panda Express micronutrient estimates:
- Super Greens (40% broccoli, 30% kale, 30% cabbage)
- Sweet Fire Chicken (55% chicken breast, 20% pineapple, 10% red bell pepper [didn’t eat], 5% onion [didn’t eat],10% sauce)
  - Main chicken breast nutrients
  - Supporting chicken breast nutrients
- Broccoli Beef (55% top-sirloin, 35% broccoli, 10% sauce).
Coffee
Regular salt (3/16tsp, estimated)
Morton lite salt (3/16tsp, estimated)

Notes:

Panda Express doesn’t seem to have published nutrition information for Dynamite Chicken (perhaps because it was a promotional item), so I’ve substituted nutrition information for Sweet Fire Chicken.
I ate slightly less potatoes each day on the potatoes and corn for dinner diet versus the potatoes and cottage for dinner diet (2.0lb instead of 2.1lb). This didn’t seem to affect nutrition much.
I separately estimated micronutrients for the Panda Express items, because their official nutrition information only contained macronutrients.
During the diet, I sometimes used salt that was perhaps 25% potassium, but this only increased my daily consumption of potassium by about 5%.

Thanks

Thanks to Slime Mold Time Mold for sparking my interest in the potato diet, and thank you to Slime Mold Time Mold and exfatloss for their encouragements on X!

And praise be to God, through Jesus his son :)

Closing thoughts

I’m a big fan of the potato diet, but I can’t say that I recommend this variant of it.

If you’re able to handle lactose, then eating potatoes and cottage cheese for dinner might be a better option.

If you’re unable to handle lactose, then eating potatoes and corn still doesn’t seem to be the way to go: Eating just potatoes or trying out a new variation of the potato diet might be better.

Future work

I hope that this writeup encourages people to try out the potato diet!

If you do, please consider writing up your results or tracking your weight in a spreadsheet and emailing it to me so I can do some analysis! :) My email is [email protected]

If you’re on X, feel free to tag me and use the hashtag #potatodiet, or if you prefer Reddit, I’m on a mod on the r/PotatoDiet sub.

Thanks, and until next time! :)