Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds

MAR1984

MAR1984

New member
full article

snippit said:
Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts.

For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.

His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most -- not the nutritional value of the food.

The premise held up: On his "convenience store diet," he shed 27 pounds in two months.

For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub's pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily. So he followed a basic principle of weight loss: He consumed significantly fewer calories than he burned.

His body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal. He now weighs 174 pounds.

But you might expect other indicators of health would have suffered. Not so.

Haub's "bad" cholesterol, or LDL, dropped 20 percent and his "good" cholesterol, or HDL, increased by 20 percent. He reduced the level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, by 39 percent.

"That's where the head scratching comes," Haub said. "What does that mean? Does that mean I'm healthier? Or does it mean how we define health from a biology standpoint, that we're missing something?"
Click to expand...
 
MY WORLD IS SHATTERED
almost everything i learned is wrong. :cry:
but seriously the fat kid in me is saying yay snacks, but the part of my thats trying to lose weight and learn nutrition wants to think this is either mostly hokum or a fluke.
taunting fat people with a twinkie diet is mean.
 
Last edited:
Well, I mean he is right. It is calories in vs calories out. I would love to see a more detailed look at his blood work. Let's see more information before jumping on a 'twinkie' bandwagon.
 
10 weeks is not enough time to show the long term effects of eating this way. It takes the body a while to deplete it's stores of certain nutrients. I would like to see everything he ate because if he didn't eat enough protein then most likely he may have also lost a lot of muscle in stead of fat.
 
Some interesting snippets from the full article... It doesn't sound like he's really skinny fat...
Haub's body fat dropped from 33.4 to 24.9 percent.
Click to expand...

He maintained the same level of moderate physical activity as before going on the diet.
Click to expand...

He also ate vegetables and a protein shake in addition to his snack cakes. And he made sure to eat the veggies in front of his kids to be a good role model and ate the twinkies in private. He also cut out meat and grains - it doesn't say how much protein was in his shake.

Kind of interesting, and it doesn't 100% answer the question "What if you ate 1800 calories of twinkies" but certainly it suggests that you have a lot of leeway in your food choices if you're keeping calories under control.

He may also be genetically blessed in terms of losing fat rather than muscle, but still. Pretty interesting. It looks like he only lost 3 lbs of LBM out of 27. He did way better than I did on that front! Maybe i should have eaten more twinkies ;)
 
Jeanette401 said:
Some interesting snippets from the full article... It doesn't sound like he's really skinny fat...
Click to expand...

Yeah, okay, you got me...I couldn't be bothered reading the whole article!

That said, a twinkie is the only thing I have ever spat out in utter disgust.

I honestly didn't think anyone really ate them...
 
Twinkies never were my favorite. Hostess chocolate cupcakes though!!

It sounds like he was really on the "Twinkie + other snackie cakes + protein shake + veggie diet" but that's not as catchy for the media as "Twinkie diet".

I will admit to haven eaten twinkies. I think they tasted a lot better when I was 12. But who knows! Maybe the one I tried about 10 years ago was the same age as the ones I had when I was 12...

Like many of these diets I can't help but think "more power to you - but I'm sure as hell not going to try it" ;)
 
I think the only part of this story that people need to focus on is this...

For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub's pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily.
Click to expand...

He is "supposed" to be consuming 2,600 calories in order to maintain his weight. Instead, he started eating 1,800 calories per day, which is 800 calories less than what he was "supposed" to be eating - which is 5,600 calories per week less than what he should be eating. In order to lose a lb of fat, a person must burn (or lose) about 3,500 calories. With his daily intake of only 1,800 calories, which puts him 800 calories below his level of maintaining weight, this guy was losing about 1.6 lbs a week, purely based on his low calorie intake.

To me, this study doesn't prove anything else other than common sense. If you need to eat X number of calories per day in order to maintain your current weight and you eat less than X number of calories per day - you are going to lose weight.

The fact that this dude ate nothing but junk food has no bearing on what happened in regards to his weight loss. Yet, that's how this story is marketed? Sad. Now people will begin to think that they can eat whatever crap they want and still lose weight - without getting the message that they have to watch their calories.
 
It may not prove anything other than common sense, but how many times have you seen on this very forum someone saying "Are you saying that someone would lose weight eating 1200 calories of twinkies!!??"

I do agree with you though - I got an email from one of my buddies this morning with a link to this article and him saying he thought this was a diet he could follow. ... If that was really the case, he should :p I don't see him actually following this diet though.

I do think it is interesting in that it shows that for some people strict calorie counting can be more effective than 'eat healthy foods and don't count the calories' - another topic which I've seen a few debates about in these forums ;)

(Also - he didn't eat nothing but junk food, he also included a protein shake and veggies, took a multi vitamin - about 2/3 of his diet was 'junk'.)
 
Jeanette401 said:
It may not prove anything other than common sense, but how many times have you seen on this very forum someone saying "Are you saying that someone would lose weight eating 1200 calories of twinkies!!??"

I do agree with you though - I got an email from one of my buddies this morning with a link to this article and him saying he thought this was a diet he could follow. ... If that was really the case, he should :p I don't see him actually following this diet though.

I do think it is interesting in that it shows that for some people strict calorie counting can be more effective than 'eat healthy foods and don't count the calories' - another topic which I've seen a few debates about in these forums ;)

(Also - he didn't eat nothing but junk food, he also included a protein shake and veggies, took a multi vitamin - about 2/3 of his diet was 'junk'.)
Click to expand...

Yeah, this is pretty much what I had in mind when I read this article.

I figured posting this article would lead to some fun conversation. First thing I thought about was all the arguments I've seen that usually start with the "you can eat nothing but junk food and still lose weight as long as you eat fewer calories than maintenance". Even though I haven't posted here in a while, I had to come back in and share.

I'm usually on the side of "eat whatever you want within reason as long as your calories in are less than your maintenance". This guy takes it to the extreme and blows reason out the window.
 
yay!

Jericho said:
Well, I mean he is right. It is calories in vs calories out. I would love to see a more detailed look at his blood work. Let's see more information before jumping on a 'twinkie' bandwagon.
Click to expand...

I'm already on it. I've been on it since I started. ^_^ Snickers, Twinkies, whatever! I ate donuts this weekend!
 
Meh, no big news here really. We should all know by now that eating a calorie deficit will make you loose weight. And a couple months of this probably won't have too many long term effects, but I would caution eating that much junk for too long.

Heck, I've lost 64 pounds and I eat an ice cream bar or a cookie every single day! So long as I have the calories left for it, why not?
 
Jericho said:
He also likely doesn't have type 2 diabetes like you do though.
Click to expand...

Which only makes the diet even all that more amazing! It's not just for regular people but it works for T2 diabetics too as long as we take our meds and exercise an hour a day!
 
sometimes I just want to smack some sense into you..you know that?

You are focusing on just a very small part of the story instead of the REST..like this isn't suggested, there are possible long term health problems..he actually did eat some other things like veggies and a protein shake..whoever feels this is a green light for eating just crap, don't. There is more to the article than the headline.
 
Jericho said:
sometimes I just want to smack some sense into you..you know that?

You are focusing on just a very small part of the story instead of the REST..like this isn't suggested, there are possible long term health problems..he actually did eat some other things like veggies and a protein shake..whoever feels this is a green light for eating just crap, don't. There is more to the article than the headline.
Click to expand...

Yes I read that part. And I sometimes do the same ^_^
I make sure to get 4 ozs of protein or drink a shake, and I eat fiber supplements to make sure I got my fiber. Also take vitamins. So I'm sort of doing the same thing he's doing! Don't get mad at me! =D
 
This was an interesting post. I get the fact that he ate less, so he lost weight. Makes perfect sense. And I think it's fine for someone to have treats in moderation...Otherwise, you lose the will to exercise hard, to be happy, to essentially "function." But I think many people on this site subscribe to the notion of eating as much "real" food as possible (and the phrase "real" is so subjective here). I'm not pretending like I only eat "real" food or that it's a piece of cake (ha ha...not literally...). But I personally prefer to eat items from the store with less writing in the ingredients section. To each his own. Do what suits you I guess. But remember that many companies could care less about your health and will put whatever they want in foods to make them more tasty, failing to consider what it will do to your organs...Just my humble opinion guys. :D
 
This study only proves what most calorie counters already know: create a deficit and you lose weight. Still, I couldn't imagine following a sort of "plan" like this. I need to get my calories from lower-calorie whole food sources so I can eat more while maintaining a lower calorie count, lest I feel ravenous by the end of the day. What I find interesting is that the article states nothing to the effect of how hungry he felt on a day-to-day basis, energy levels, and so on... Really more questions than answers here.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top