What Is The Potato Reset?

 

History: How the Potato Reset Came to Be

If you are new here, hello and welcome! My name is Jeannine, the author of The Potato Reset. I have a long and crazy story about my health & weight loss journey but I have so much information to cover here about The Potato Reset, I’ll keep this short: I’m in my 40’s and have Hashimoto’s, despite those two things that typically keep us women from losing weight, I have lost over 100 lbs. I discovered the magic of potatoes part way through my weight loss journey and have been hooked ever since!

Back in 2017 I embarked on what would become my healthy obsession and passion for potatoes. I decided to eat only potatoes for an entire month. My goal was to reset my taste buds enough to tolerate more veggies. And it worked! After a month on just potatoes, for the first time in my life at the age of 41, I was able to eat broccoli without gagging.  I also lost 8 lbs that month – this was amazeballs to me because even in my 20’s I had a hard time losing even a couple of pounds in one month!

I continued to focus my diet around potatoes but with the addition of vegetables – what The Potato Reset is today.

By the fourth month I slowly incorporated more whole plant foods such as fruit, rice and quinoa. Then later very small quantities of nuts, and lastly, legumes. 

In eight months of focusing my diet around potatoes, I lost over 33 pounds without feeling hangry and never having to count calories. This is what food freedom feels like to me!

You will be amazed how much better simple, whole food tastes after following The Potato Reset for a week or longer. I recommend a month because it gives you a good amount of time away from processed foods –enough to learn a lot about yourself and your relationship with junk food. Having a break from making decisions about food multiple times a day is where the real learning happens. It enables you to step back and see your eating habits from an outside perspective.

What Exactly Is The Potato Reset?

The Potato Reset is a short-term plan to help you reset your tastebuds and lose weight in the process (that’s if you have excess fat on your body.) The Potato Reset is also a way to ease into a whole foods plant based diet.

Not only does it help to reset your tastebuds, it can help reset your relationship with food and improve your ability to tell the difference between real hunger and sneaky forms of not-actually-hungry such as boredom, hormonal hunger, stress hunger and so on.

This plan is for anyone who wants to lose weight in a healthy way without calorie counting or feeling restricted and hungry all the time.  It’s also for those who want to stop obsessive calorie counting and/or get a handle on their junk food addiction.

What You Can Eat on The Potato Reset

The Potato Reset plan includes all varieties of potatoes, sweet potatoes and yams, non-starchy vegetables, spices and plant-based sauces. No other starchy foods are allowed – no corn, beans, rice, or grains. You can have as many non-starchy vegetables as you like guid. You can eat the potatoes any way you like – mashed, baked, hash browns, potato pancakes, fries, soups, stews, etc. Be creative!. You can also eat potatoes only, if you wish. See the Guidelines at a Glance infographic below.

What You Can’t Eat on The Potato Reset

Due to their high caloric density and ability to make food hyper-palatable, we avoid overt fats such as: oil, butter, cheese, sour cream, mayo, nuts, seeds, avocado and even tofu. And for the simplicity sake of the program we avoid beans, lentils and other legumes.

Sounds boring right? That’s the point. As Spudfit Andrew Taylor says “Make your food boring and your life exciting”. This doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy your food, on the contrary, The Potato Reset book shows you how you can do amazing things with potatoes while maintaining simplicity. See the Guidelines at a Glance infographic below.

Click here to download a printable PDF of the Guidelines

Why Potatoes? 

Potatoes are satisfying, versatile, full of minerals and vitamins, rich in fibre and surprise: they contain protein too. They are the perfect food for weight loss due to their high level of satiety and versatility.

“One 5-ounce baked potato has 150 calories. An ctive man may burn 3000 calories a day and a woman 2300 calories a day.  That means the man would have to eat 20 potatoes and the woman 15 potatoes or they would lose weight.  That’s 5 to 7 large potatoes per meal, three times a day – a big dent in even the hardiest appetite – especially considering potatoes are among the most satisfying of all foods.”

Dr. John McDougall, author of The Starch Solution – drmcdougall.com

Condiments

Homemade sauces are the best, because you can control how much sodium and sweetness goes into it. But don’t stress if you can’t make your own, just don’t drench your taters in store-bought sauces, as they tend to be high in sodium and processed sugar. 

Avoid heavily processed sugars and artificial sweeteners. One exception to the rule, to keep you sane while you wean off sweet cravings, you can use 100% pure maple syrup or date syrup/puree – two tablespoons max per day – preferably as part of a sauce recipe and not straight-up. See the Sauce Shopping Guide & Sauce Recipes section in The Potato Reset book.

Spices

Use as much salt-free and sugar-free spices and herbs as you’d like. And because every vegan will ask: yes, you can use nutritional yeast flakes.

Use salt sparingly, sprinkle on your food after cooking – do not cook with salt. For spice shopping tips, homemade herbal salt and spice blend recipes see pages 28 – 29 in The Potato Reset book.

Drinks & Liquids

For hydration your best bet is water, you may also have unsweetened sparkling water and herbal tea. If you can’t stand to drink plain water add fresh lemon juice, lime juice or sliced cucumbers to your water. Coffee and caffeine teas are permitted but avoid using sweeteners and dairy – I recommend a small amount of unsweetened non-dairy milk such as unsweetened almond milk in place of milk/creamer.

For potato mashing liquid and creamy potato soups I recommend using a splash of unsweetened non-dairy milk or no-salt-added vegetable broth.

TIP: Eat only when hungry and just enough that you feel satisfied. You should feel comfortably full but not stuffed.

If you have any questions please ask in the Facebook Group or email me at jeannine@potatoreset.com