The fabulous french fry and hash brown diet

Richard Nikoley of Free the Animal started eating fried potatoes earlier this week and has lost five pounds so far.

This is the "magic" of potatoes. You can literally live off them, and some people have and do. Of course, you don't want to, nor do I, but it's a useful tool when you understand what's going on, which is one hell of a lot of things as I'm learning. Let me give you the very basics, though, for review.

–Potato fills you up and it's difficult to eat enough to maintain body weight.

–Eaten plain, it's pretty unpalatable and so even if you can eat enough to maintain body weight, you're going to have to get over that.

–Adding a little fat (1 tsp per medium potato) and spices will make them more palatable, but you will still have a difficult time eating enough.

–They have quality amino acids, meaning you will tend to guard lean muscle (and I supplement with branch chain aminos and liver tablets).

–Calories count, i.e., not eating enough equals weight loss; having sufficient aminos equals fat loss preferentially.

–And as UK Veterinarian Peter has also hypothesized, there may be a cute little trick that helps this along. Now while Peter—as a species agnostic veterinarian—is difficult for mere mortals to understand, things begin to sink in upon 2-3 readings of a post. The gist as this mortal understands: very, very low fat is essential. Pancreatic beta cells require fat to produce the insulin necessary to regulate blood glucose. Ahha! Lets load up on glucose, no or very little fat, and where does that fat to produce the insulin necessary to deal with the glucose have to come from? Your fat ass, that's where.

Yes, as I said, 5 pounds in 3.5 days. It's 1:43pm and I'm still not hungry and have had nothing since the plate I ate last night, recipe to follow. So let's get to the hash browns, just in case you get tired of french fries.