Aussie Man Eats Nothing But Potatoes for 365 Days

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Aussie man eats nothing but potatoes for 365 days. You heard it right, you heard it correctly. An Australian guy spends a year eating nothing but potatoes to conquer his food addiction. This is a pretty wild transformation story. Along the way, he loses 121 pounds.

He also gains a side hustle making money from this. We're all about really interesting, crazy projects that you don't hear about anywhere else on the podcast. My name's Chris Guillebeau, welcome to Side Hustle School. This year, I'm bringing you some remixes of our early stories from 2017, 2018. If you happen to have an incredible memory, each one is being rerecorded.

We'll also include some new updates in some cases. So when I was thinking about which stories to include, I was like, this has got to make the cut here. The Australian guy who eats nothing but potatoes, it was never intended to be a side hustle in fact, and just to clarify on the podcast, we're looking at income generating projects. We're not just looking at hobbies or interesting things people do. You have to make money with it.

So this was strictly a personal quest at first, and it did result in life transformation, which was his main goal, but then he also started making money from it. So I was very happy that it fit our criteria because this guy is pretty cool. His name is Andrew Taylor. I'm gonna bring you his complete story after the break. [Music]

For Melbourne native, Andrew Taylor, food addiction was a real problem.

At 36 years old, the former junior Australian champion, Marathon Kayaker and PE teacher, found himself at his heaviest and unhealthiest. He wanted to make a big change. So he decided to make a New Year's resolution that would transform his health, but he didn't adopt the fad diets and hectic gym sessions. A lot of people make on January 1st. He opted for something more unusual.

Andrew wanted to treat his transformation not as a weight loss problem, but as an addiction problem. So he decided to remove food as a stimulus altogether, and instead focused on one food only, potatoes. Now, how did potatoes come to be the sole object of his culinary affection? Well, he had a degree in applied science and a fascination with all things nutrition. Andrew spent six weeks researching the perfect food before he settled on, well, the humble spud.

Despite the shunning and disrespect potatoes have received over the years as a result of their high carbohydrate count, they actually packed quite a punch. Andrew could get all the fat, protein, vitamin C, and iron that he needed, and the high fiber content kept him feeling full. So between January 2nd, 2016 and January 2nd, 2017, Andrew started what he called the potato only diet, which would later go on to become spud fit. 99.9% of his caloric intake would come from potatoes, the other 0.1% from seasoning. If you saw the film "The Martian" with Matt Damon, you know just how vital those seasonings are to maintain the diet.

And to hold himself accountable and document the progress, Andrew did what? Well, of course he kept a video diary. He uploaded daily videos he made with his phone, uploaded straight to channel, no editing. It was as raw and basic as possible, just like many of those potatoes. This also reduced any barriers to him posting his videos.

It just made the process super simple. It's important to note that Andrew never planned on turning spud fit into a business. He just wanted to share his message with anyone who cared, which surprisingly turned out to be a lot of people. That YouTube channel started to attract attention. After just a few months, Andrew had developed an audience of devoted spuddies who tuned in to watch his progress.

His results were incredible. He lost 121 pounds over the course of the year. He was also unafraid to dig deep into the emotional aspects of his life, talking about depression, anxiety, and addiction. This provided a lot of value and comfort to his fans. Now, of course, all along the way, he was eating a lot of potatoes.

He ate them fried, mashed, boiled, waffled, any other variation he could think of. And pretty soon, the media began to take notice. His story was picked up by local broadcasters. Then it went viral. He was even mentioned in an episode of "Saturday Night Live," and Andrew realized just how much interest there was in what he was doing.

In fact, he was marketing his business before he even realized he had a business. When Andrew broke his year-long potato fast, he did it live on the morning TV show "Sunrise," which broadcast his story live to the nation. To capture the attention he was getting and to ensure his story wasn't just a flash in the potato pan, Andrew made a website. He spent $50. It was pretty simple.

Just shared information about his story, allowed him to add blog posts and links to podcast episodes. And now, with that website, he began to look at how he could monetize the attention he was getting. He started with free products to help him capture email addresses and then expanded into paid products, offering first a $25 ebook to help people create their own SpudFit Challenge and coaching services to help people with more one-on-one needs. This eventually grew into additional products that filled the gap between the two categories, Andrew's SpudFit Challenge Community, for example, where people can sign up and become part of a community of other Spuddies trying to tackle food addiction. These products took off.

It was never his intention, but before long, he was making a good amount of money. And even after the press coverage died down, Andrew continued growing his business through social media, podcasting, Facebook, YouTube, et cetera. He continues to be overwhelmed by the response his products received and the hundreds, now thousands of people he's been able to help through his story and the SpudFit Challenges. It is a true story, a life transformation and a side hustle success. Definitely not small potatoes.

Well, if you enjoyed this story, be sure to check out spudfit.com or instagram.com/spudfit, SpudFit on Instagram. It doesn't look like he's posting a ton on Instagram, but the website is still up. There is a membership site right on the About page. It says, "I ate only potatoes for an entire year, so you don't have to." Got a bit more about his story and also his products, blog and more. Check it out.

Big thanks to Andrew and congrats to him as well. Thank you to our listeners. Congrats to you also, so glad you're out there. Thank you for being part of this community for 3,100 plus episodes. I have so enjoyed making this show for you.

I'm grateful for you. I hope you'll continue to listen. It's always completely free, complete archives available for download on the website. But for now, I'm signing off. My name's Chris Guillebeau.

This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]

From the Onward Project.