Opinion: One extreme diet to another

A man lost 50kg by eating only potatoes for a year.

With Christmas Day just a week away it is that time of year when many people overindulge in food and alcohol only to regret it early January when jeans are too tight and you are bigger than your beach towel.

It is then that the diet industry piles in with enticing claims such as "bikini body in 28 days" or "lose 10 kilos fast".

If the paleo diet was the trend of 2016, could 2017 be the year of the potato diet?

This week it emerged a man who ate nothing but potatoes for a year lost more than 50kg and, not only that, said he was a changed man.

For a whole year he ate about three to four kilograms of potatoes each day, saying he would eat them in every way - from boiled to mashed to baked. He even created potato pancakes.

To those who doubted he was getting enough variety in his diet, he argued otherwise saying he thought potatoes had enough protein, fat, vitamin C and iron.

The reason why he embarked on such a radical diet, he said, was his prior food addiction to soft drink, deep-fried food, icecream, cake, chocolate and a lot of pizza.

It must be hard to cure yourself of a food addiction because unlike a substance like alcohol or cigarettes, a food addict cannot give up the object of his or her addition because everyone still has to eat.

To try to cure one extreme diet of fast food, by adopting another extreme diet of potatoes seems to me a bit like trading one unhealthy diet for another.

One commenter on social media said there was nothing wrong with a potato diet, and the Irish had survived on it for years.

But that was because they had to, not out of choice.

Then again, when it comes to losing weight it seems we will try anything - from surviving on lemons and syrup, to cabbages, to juice diets, to no-carb diets, to fast days.

In seeking such a quick fix, the only thing you lose is the money from your bank account.

Far better to eat a healthier diet for life, or not put on weight in the first instance.

Hard advice though, particularly at this time of year.

But come Christmas Day, I am going to pile my plate high with roast potatoes and potato salad.