Overview
Not long after finishing my potatoes and corn for dinner diet, I started a new diet that has turned out to be probably my best one yet! I dub it “potatoes for dinner, eggs before lunch.”
As with my previous diets, this was a “half-potato” diet where I ate potatoes for dinner and Panda Express for lunch.
I lost an average of 1.15lb per week while on the diet.
Daily protocol
- Wake up around 10:30AM
- Eat two boiled eggs around 12:00PM
- Eat Panda Express around 12:30PM
- Go for a ~15 minute walk
- Eat six potatoes for dinner, around 6:00PM
- Go for a 30-45+ minute walk
- Sleep around 2:00AM
I generally drank 48oz of strong, black coffee each day.
I also had several days where I drank part of a canned cocktail (typically somewhere between a single sip and ¼ of a can, and an entire can on one occasion).
Pre-lunch snack
About 30 minutes before lunch each day, I would eat two plain boiled eggs.
For this experiment, I used eggs from my sister’s home-raised chickens, which are typically fed a mix of kitchen scraps and dry feed.
In my previous diets, I’ve taken the thing that was being tested (cottage cheese or corn) and eaten it together with my potatoes for dinner. For this diet, I took the thing that was being tested (eggs) and ate it separately, not long before lunch.
I’ve never found eggs to be particularly filling, and on this diet, too, I would eat the two boiled eggs and almost immediately be hungry for lunch.
Lunch
As in my previous diets, I ate the same thing at Panda Express for lunch each day:
- Dynamite chicken or Sweet Fire chicken (2x)
- Broccoli Beef
- Super Greens (cooked broccoli, cabbage, and kale)
A couple of times per week, I would grab lunch with family and eat something totally different.
Dinner
For dinner each day, I ate six large potatoes (~2.1lb).
Preparation method:
- Slice potatoes and place them in a pot of water
- 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.
Nutrition
First, the macronutrients:
| Nutrient | Amount | Percent of recomment daily value (RDV) |
| Calories | 1,978 | 99% |
| Protein | 87g | 173% |
| Carbohydrates | 293g | 107% |
| Fiber | 31g | 110% |
| Total fat | 48g | 61% of upper limit |
| Saturated fat | 12g | 58% of upper limit |
| Sugar | 57g | – |
Next, the micronutrients:
| Nutrient | Amount | Percent of recommended daily value (RDV) |
| Vitamin K | 418mcg | 348% |
| Vitamin B6 | 5.6mg | 329% |
| Copper | 2.9mg | 317% |
| Pantothenic acid | 15mg | 291% |
| Niacin | 42mg | 265% |
| Vitamin C | 233mg | 259% |
| Selenium | 123mcg | 224% |
| Riboflavin (B2) | 2.8mg | 212% |
| Manganese | 4.8mg | 209% |
| Thiamin | 1.8mg | 147% |
| Potassium | 6,684mg | 142% |
| Choline | 733g | 133% |
| Vitamin B12 | 3.1mcg | 127% |
| Phosphorous | 1,438mg | 115% |
| Zinc | 12.1mg | 110% |
| Magnesium | 429mg | 102% |
| Sodium | 2,236mg | 97% of upper limit |
| Folate | 381mcg | 95% |
| Iron | 15.5mg | 86% |
| Vitamin A | 421mcg | 47% |
| Calcium | 541mg | 42% |
| Vitamin E | 4.2mg | 28% |
As with the potatoes and cottage cheese for dinner and potatoes and corn for dinner diets, this diet had a lot of Vitamin K, Vitamin B6, Copper, Niacin, Pantothenic acid, Vitamin C, and Manganese.
Adding eggs made the diet be particularly high in choline.
Sources:
- Potatoes (90% boiled potatoes, 10% boiled potato skin)
- Eggs
- 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)
- Broccoli Beef (55% top-sirloin, 35% broccoli, 10% sauce)
- Coffee
- Regular salt (3/16tsp, estimated)
- Morton lite salt (3/16tsp, estimated)
Notes:
- 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 4%.
- Panda Express doesn’t seem to have published nutrition information for Dynamite Chicken (probably because it was a promotional item), so I’ve substituted nutrition information for Sweet Fire Chicken.
I ate 2.1lb of potatoes per day on this diet (versus 2.1lb on potatoes and cottage cheese for dinner and 2.0lb on potatoes and corn for dinner).
Side effects
If memory serves, the diet made me pretty gassy. Eggs are high in sulfur, and my Panda Express lunches contained a large amount of cruciferous vegetables (eggs broccoli, cabbage, and kale), which are also high in sulfur
Thanks
Thanks to my sister for supplying me with chicken eggs!
Thanks to Slime Mold Time Mold for sparking my interest in the potato diet, and thank you to mold_time and exfatloss, in particular, for their encouragements!
Praise be to God, through Jesus his son :)
Closing thoughts
This has probably been the best version of the potato diet that I’ve tried so far!
Unlike the potatoes and cottage cheese for dinner diet, this diet should be safe for people who are lactose intolerant, and unlike the potatoes and corn for dinner diet, this diet lacks the unpleasantness of having to defecate corn kernels. Weight loss on all of the potato diets that I’ve posted so far seems to be roughly equivalent, with my losing 1.15lb per week on this diet and 1.10lb per week on both the potatoes and cottage cheese for dinner and potatoes and corn for dinner diets.
Future work
I hope this writeup encourages more people to try out the potato diet!
If you’re on X, feel free to tag me (neoncube9) and use the hashtag #potatodiet, or if you prefer Reddit, there’s the r/PotatoDiet sub. Thanks, and until next time!