Is it possible to lose weight while stuffing your face with Twinkies and other junk food? Well, a professor from Kansas State University’s department of Human Nutrition, Mark Haub, has been experimenting with a unique, and dare we say unconventional, diet regimen for the past several months. Remarkably, this diet consists almost exclusively of what we would consider junk food. We’re talking Twinkies, Snack Cakes, muffins, rolls, pastries, hot dogs, and peanut butter Oreos. Dubbed the Twinkie Diet, this diet is enough to make most people cringe.
As of this writing, Mr. Haub has succeeded in shedding weight on his Twinkie diet – and not a small amount of weight. He lost 10 pounds in the first three weeks of the junk food diet alone. How is this possible? It seems so counterintuitive. After all, aren’t those calorie packed junk food items like Twinkies and donuts supposed to make us gain weight?
The key to Mr. Haub’s success lies in the total number of calories he is consuming each day – approximately 1,800 calories per day vs. his normal diet of 2,400 calories per day. Prior to embarking on the Twinkie Diet, Mr. Haub was consuming about 2,400 calories per day to maintain his weight. You might call this his equilibrium calorie count. The calorie intake required to maintain his typical body weight. By reducing his total calorie intake by 25%, he succeeded in losing weight on a junk food diet. The science behind this phenomenon comes down to simple arithmetic. By burning more calories than you consume, you will lose weight. In fact, for each additional 3,500 calories of intake reduction vs. a standard maintenance diet you can expect to lose 1 pound of actual body weight. Unfortunately, as most of us have found out the hard way, the reverse is also true. Every additional 3,500 calories that we consume beyond our maintenance calorie count will result in a pound of weight gain. In fact the human body tends not to discriminate too much regarding the type of fuel we consume. Calories are calories when it comes to weight gain or weight loss. Calorie per calorie, Twinkies and Snickers Bars, it turns out are not any more fattening than broccoli and asparagus. It is just that it is far easier to overdo junk food because it is so calorie intensive.
To be truthful, Mr. Haub’s diet does not consist entirely of junk food. In fact, he fills out a portion of his daily calorie count with things like milk and vegetables to ensure that he is getting an adequate amount of protein and vitamins in his diet. But the main course is always something with high fat and sugar content. It is theoretically possible to eat just junk food and supplement with vitamins and a daily protein drink.
It is an interesting test and just goes to show that the only real way to achieve true weight loss is through a reduction in total caloric intake. That is the hard part for most of us. It requires real discipline. And while a diet of pure sugar and fat is not recommended, most of us can probably get away with a certain amount of junk food in our diets, providing that we limit our total calorie intake to a more reasonable level.
One important caveat. The focus of Mr. Haub’s diet experiment has been only on the affects of food type on weight loss or weight gain. If you were to do any research on antioxidants, free radicals and the processes going on inside your body as a consequence of the TYPES as well as the QUANTITIES of foods that you consume, you would discover that the Twinkie Diet is a recipe for health problems such as diabetes, cancer, and other significant problems that aren’t necessarily related to weight gain or loss. A healthy well rounded diet with a high vegetable intake is still the best diet for overall health. Just watch those calories! The silver lining to this study is that I maybe now I can feel less guilty about that very occasional but ultimate indulgence: Deep Fried Twinkies! Yummm!
