It seems like yesterday when, as soon as it was officially announced that Robert Pattinson would be playing Batman, doubts arose about his physical ability. But as much as the haters were sure to gloat in their certainty, Pattinson surprised everyone. In order to live up to the superhero's standards, in fact, he had been training hard (although he had initially declared otherwise). He trained five days a week, went jogging and had even taken martial arts lessons with the champion in the discipline, Rigan Machado. But it is not the first time that the British actor has joked about his strange, and singular, wellness methods. He once even claimed that he drank 17 coffees a day in order to be at his best on set.
The strange case of the potato-only diet
If he's hungry give him potatoes, that could be the beginning of his new story. Because Robert Pattinson, in a recent interview with the British magazine Evening Standard, claimed to have lost weight – it is not known when and for which role exactly – by eating only boiled potatoes for a fortnight, seasoned only with a small handful of pink Himalayan salt. The actor is reported to have tried various diets, but found this one really effective.
'Potatoes are extraordinarily addictive,' he explained during the interview. An extreme regime, which in wellness jargon is called the fasting method. 'I've pretty much tried everything, except maybe consistency'. In fact, he also refers in the interview to the keto diet, for which he had hoped to be able to eat platters of cold cuts, perhaps sipping a few beers in between (although, dear Robert, it doesn't quite work like that). 'Apparently the potato diet is detox, and what I can say is that you definitely lose weight,' he added. There was, of course, no shortage of criticism about this typically Hollywood obsession with constantly dieting to look a certain way, i.e. good-looking and with sculpted muscles. 'It is very easy to fall into this pattern, even if you are just controlling your calorie intake. You don't realise how insidious it is until it is too late".
Do potatoes help you lose weight in any way?
First of all, if you are wondering, the potato actually helps you lose weight. OK, it is a carbohydrate, but containing starch, a complex sugar better known as polysaccharide, it is naturally a detox tuber. This is because, by boiling the potato, the starch inside it crumbles, making it easier to digest and also providing energy. And then there are the nutritional values: one baked potato is around 160 calories. No less important is that potatoes are rich in vitamin A, with its disinflammatory power. Of course, they should not be fried.
The question, then, arises: but can a diet of starches alone, for 15 days, be seen as a kind of conventional detox experiment? Or rather, is such a drastic diet necessary to detoxify? The answer is no. Or rather, not for a fortnight of just boiled potatoes and a pinch of pink salt. Our organism begins to detoxify itself after a week of the fasting method, which in any case involves a diet more extensive than potatoes, supplemented with lean meat and vegetables, preferably in the form of passata. Those who practise fasting usually eliminate sugars, also found in fruit, salt and refined flours. Rather, they start a similar diet for one or two weeks, and then slowly supplement the diet with cheese and gluten-free wholemeal bread. Not forgetting herbal teas at will, which with their herbs and active ingredients balance out the whole fasting diet, however drastic.
