So, you tried the Grapefruit diet and decided you needed a bit more variety in your life. Or maybe you thought the cabbage soup diet was pretty keen but you were tired of passing gas all the time. Perhaps you got sick of bacon and cheese and broke down after three months on the Atkins diet.
No worries, my friends, we have a new diet for you.
The Twinkie diet.
I’m totally serious here.
Kansas State University professor Mark Haub recently went on a ten week “junk food” diet. During this period he lowered his daily caloric intake from 2,600 calories a day to 1,800, and he consumed those calories in the form of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks. When he wanted a little variety he would chow down some Doritos.
But that’s not all! He also lowered his bad cholesterol, raised his good cholesterol, and lowered his BMI.
Now in all fairness he “only” took in 2/3 of his daily calories from the junk food, and also took a multivitamin pill every day along with a protein shake and plenty of vegetables. He did not significantly increase his activity levels, though.
In all seriousness, this type of example just proves what we’ve been saying around here at ShrinkGeek for a long time now. If you really want to lose weight you have to do two things – Eat Less. Exercise. Burn more fuel than you consume and your body will shrink. It’s just that simple.
For the record I just want to state that I would never seriously suggest that a Twinkie diet was a healthy way to lose weight. Ten weeks isn’t nearly enough time to see what kind of long term effect that sort of diet would have on your body, and I just can’t see there being any kind of benefit to taking in that many chemicals and preservatives as 2/3 of your daily caloric intake. That being said, I think that Professor Haub’s experiment is a very clear example of how it’s not necessarily what we’re eating that’s getting us into trouble here in America, but how much of it we’re eating that’s the real culprit.