The Good Things About a Twinkie Diet

If you haven’t already heard about it, a nutrition professor named Mark Haub dropped 27 lbs. by way of eating . . .well, complete shite for two months.

Here’s the article: http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.htm

His motivation to do this was largely based on his desire to showcase that weight-loss (not to be confused with fat-loss) can be as simple as regulating calories.

Most people are caught up in the novelty of the food choices. However, I think that there are a couple of more interesting things to take from this:

* Despite eating very little nutrient dense food (and a whole lot of garbage), this highly-educated individual still made significant improvements compared to what he was eating before (likely a fair amount of healthy food but in excessive quantities). This is good; it shows how easy it is to improve fitness levels simply by reigning things in. And yes, there are better things to do this with than donuts.

* Standard indicators of fitness, such as body composition, blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose sensitivity, all improved in Haub. While this is somewhat surprising, it goes to show that fat-loss of any kind improves your blood markers. This is good; it shows how simple it is to make your family doctor happy.

* By making relatively minor tweaks, such as adding a protein supplement into his diet, Haub was able to avoid losing an excessive amount of muscle mass. This is good; it shows how easy it is to maintain one’s health with the addition of a small amount of nutrient dense food (or supplements). I will add, however, that Haub’s protein levels probably sucked pre-Twinkie diet.

* The not so black and white results of this experiment lead to the important discussion of what we really need to be looking at. They give me an opportunity to tell you not to get too fixated on macronutrients (fat, carbs and proteins) because there are a whole lot of things that don’t get quantified, such as anti-oxidants and micronutrients. Nature has a whole lot of goodness that factories miss out on. Search that out.

* Most importantly, people are talking about the essentials of nutrition (and what makes them). That’s pretty sweet too.