For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate a convenience store diet of junk food — Twinkies, Little Debbie snack cakes, Doritos, Oreos, etc. — and lost 27 pounds:
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. [...] Haub’s body fat dropped from 33.4 to 24.9 percent.
Actually, only two-thirds of his total intake came from junk food:
He also took a multivitamin pill and drank a protein shake daily. And he ate vegetables, typically a can of green beans or three to four celery stalks.
Ah, CNN Science Reporting. It’s like listening to politicians talk about economics.
Let’s see, he’s 5’10″ and was just over 200 lbs; now is 175 or so. He reports losing about 3 lbs/week after dropping out about 5600 calories each week. He also added a multivitamin. (Which one(s)?)
From the “two thirds” convenience store diet, I guess he ate dinner at home with kids to set (not set?) an example. Did he really have “a can of beans” or 3 stalks of celery for dinner for two months? “Two thirds” of 1800 calories in vegetables is a lot of vegetables. That’s a great dietary practice.
But, it’s hard to tell what he did from the CNN article. The information is tantalizing, but since I can’t get to his social page from here, I can’t really dig into details. We don’t know how he ate before. Did he go from “eating out of boxes” at home (pizza, Mac ‘n’ Cheese, Regresso Soup, cereal, etc.) to eating less but still “out of boxes” at 7/11?
Consuming a pound and a half of calories less each week, plus restricting dinner to a “can of beans”, having 600+ vegetables nightly, and adding a multivitamin can make an enormous, cleansing difference.
More questions than answers in this one.
Folks might really enjoy the Fat Head movie along these lines. I plan to order it and enjoy. Nice antidote to Super Size Me.