Why Potatoes Beat Rice for Recovery

G'day mate!

This week had no gaps in it. Back-to-back filming days with Max Jolliffe and Rich Roll, straight into a brutal training block on Friday, then a flight to Switzerland to train alongside arguably the fittest person on the planet. Four days, three time zones, and a body that had to keep performing on demand throughout.

What got me through it wasn't a recovery shake or a bowl of white rice. It was a vegetable most people scrape off their plate without a second thought.

In this week’s newsletter (4 min read):
🍚 Why "clean carbs" like white rice are the wrong benchmark for recovery
🥔 The potato myth-bust: more potassium, more resistant starch, same plate
💵 A $2 loaded bowl that out-performs anything in a recovery tub

f you have a mate who defaults to white rice after every session, send them THIS link.

Fiber Is a Performance Nutrient

Most people think about recovery food as carbs versus protein, clean versus junk. Fiber barely enters the conversation. It gets filed under gut health, not performance.

That's the mistake. Per calorie, fiber-dense vegetables carry more of what actually matters than any "clean" recovery carb:

• More potassium and magnesium

• More resistant starch

• More polyphenols

Strip the fiber out of rice, pasta or a rice cake, and you've stripped out most of what actually does the work.

The real question after a hard session isn't how many carbs are on the plate. It's how much of that plate is doing anything once it's inside you.

Resistant starch isn't "starch you can't digest." It's starch your gut bacteria digest for you, and what they produce from it, short-chain fatty acids, helps repair your gut lining after a hard session. Skip the fiber, and you skip that repair crew.

Two Days on Camera, No Crash

I filmed back-to-back days this week with Max and Rich. Full days, cameras rolling for hours, zero room for an energy crash on camera. The easy move between takes is a bowl of white rice: light, bland, easy on the stomach. I skipped it both days. Potatoes instead. By the third hour of shooting on day two, the difference was obvious. No crash, no fog, no reaching for a coffee to paper over it.

The difference:

• White rice spikes blood glucose fast and drops it just as fast. Fine for one burst of energy, rough across eight hours.

• A cooked, cooled, reheated potato releases glucose slower, because cooling turns some of the starch resistant. And it carries roughly three times the potassium of rice, what your nerves and muscles run on for hours on your feet.

Cooling a cooked potato for 24 hours converts a real chunk of its starch to resistant starch. Reheating doesn't undo that, it just makes it more palatable. The same trick works on rice or pasta, but potatoes start with more usable potassium than either, so you're stacking two wins on one plate.

A Heavy Friday, Then a Flight

Friday was the heaviest training day of my week, full volume, no easing into it, and a few hours later I was on a flight to Switzerland to train alongside arguably the fittest person on the planet. No jet lag excuse. No easing in once I landed. What I ate in that window mattered more than any session once I got there.

Flights dehydrate you, and dehydration costs you potassium, which Friday's session had already burned through. Most people reach for a banana on a plane. A potato carries more potassium per serve than a banana, plus resistant starch that keeps feeding gut bacteria through a travel window when time zones and recycled air are already stressing your gut.

Long-haul travel hits gut health, not just your body clock. Fiber-fermenting bacteria are part of what keeps that disruption from turning into GI distress the next time you eat under stress.

What to Actually Do

• Cook a batch of potatoes at the start of the week, boiled or roasted, doesn't matter

• Cool them in the fridge for at least 24 hours before eating, that's when resistant starch peaks

• Reheat before eating, it stays intact, you just get a better texture

• Default to potato over rice as your post-session carb, especially on heavy travel or filming days

• Pair with a protein and a fat source, make it a complete plate, not just a carb dump

The $2 Loaded Recovery Bowl

Boil, cool overnight, reheat, top, eat.

2 medium potatoes, boiled, cooled overnight, reheated · 2 eggs · a handful of baby spinach · ¼ avocado · a squeeze of lime · a pinch of chili flakes · a drizzle of olive oil · salt

~600 kcal · 19g protein · 65g carbs (9g fiber) · 30g fat · about $2 a serve

Quick Notes

😁 In Switzerland filming something really exciting for Youtube, straight from LA where we had an incredible few days. So grateful for those of you who support and make this all possible.

🖌️ We’re switching up the design on the newsletter — happy to hear any feedback/ suggestions you legends have (as always).