Potato diet day 11

I had a minor crisis of morale the other day regarding the diet, but I overcame it and now feel like I'm cruising. The long and short of it was that I was really committing to eat enough calories, but I just wasn't able to do it, and in the process of trying to eat I suddenly felt really ill and had to stop. My conclusion in that moment was that there is no need to force anything. The point of this diet is that it should be easy. So I recalibrated towards listening to my body, and I've been feeling better about it since. My main concern right now is that I feel a bit fatigued and that I'm quite bored of eating only potatoes.

I think my earlier reflections on limiting sugar were spot on. For whatever reason, sugar makes my brain go haywire with cravings. It has nothing to do with calories. My hypothesis about this is “something something dopamine.” This is particularly interesting from the standpoint of what my diet will look like after I get off the potatoes and reintroduce other foods. It may be the case that I wish to severely limit or abstain from added sugar forever, something I previously have not prioritized.

Speaking of calories, I've been reflecting more on why exactly this diet works for weight loss. I am in a pretty substantial calorie deficit at the moment and there is no question that the deficit contributes to weight loss. But I think there have to be other factors. To be specific, I'm down about 7 pounds, and it's not clear to me where that weight could possibly have come from in just 11 days except my gut. Bacteria have weight, and if I'm not feeding my gut microbiota very much then it stands to reason they will decrease in number. I mention this in contrast to the alternative idea that I've somehow lost 7 pounds of fat, which I suspect I have not. I will take another bodyfat measurement on Monday as part of my general weekly checkin (whereby I am also tracking progress with a chart on my whiteboard) and update accordingly. I suspect in this first 11 days we are losing gut microbiota weight first, followed by fat and muscle weight.

Before I can get to Monday, I have Easter with family this Sunday. I'm going to inevitably cheat on the diet, this is known. The key will be to keep it under control to the extent possible, and more challengingly to get right back on the potatoes Sunday night and Monday. I faced a similar challenge at around the same interval when I did this in November and hit my birthday dinner on November 12, which reduced morale (I was also sick at that point). This time I am more mentally prepared to stay the course.

Speaking of getting sick, it occurs to me that I don't actually have any hard evidence that this diet is what caused me to get sick last time. I had just sort of assumed it was the case, and while it seems believable that the diet might have reduced my immunity and prolonged my illness, I don't actually know this for a fact. I've gotten the flu while eating normally plenty of times. It could have just been that. Anyway, the point here is that I'm going to stay the course and simply hope I don't get sick. So far, so good.