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ARTICLES

The Twinkie Diet – Food for Thought

If you are what you eat, this guy is a real Twinkie. Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University 27 pounds in 10 weeks living almost exclusively on Twinkies, Doritos, Oreos and other junk food.

So, how could this happen?  Many people seem surprised that you can lose weight eating junk food, which is why Haub’s story made international headlines. We want to thank Haub for making our point. For years we have been using Twinkies as an example, saying that you can lose weight eating nothing but Twinkies if you ate fewer calories than you burned.

Basically, weight loss is simple math — calories in versus calories out. Of course, no one wants to hear that.  We live in a world where millions of people spend billions of dollars on “miracle” weight-loss cures. People want to be able eat junk food and lose weight. Let’s hope this study does not encourage that.

There are two main problems with a diet like this. First, it is not healthy. There is no nutritional value in food like this. He did take a multiple vitamin, but that is not the same as getting nutrition from healthy food. Too many people use that way of thinking.

The second problem is that eating so much processed food will tend to spike your blood sugar because it breaks down so quickly. This will cause insulin overload and also leave you hungry an hour later. It must have taken tremendous willpower because this type of diet in normal calories would leave you constantly hungry. Consider that a pound of fresh spinach has the same number of calories as a single Oreo cookie. Which do you think would satisfy your appetite more? I know what you are thinking. Who wants to eat a pound of spinach? If you had a nice spinach salad, you could still add some dressing and nuts for the same calories as 3 or 4 cookies.

The bottom line is that this study just proves the simple point – it comes down to calories in and calories out. .In the end, fad diets are not successful in the long term because they do not address the real issue which is changing behavior. When you create a new behavior patterns, you will never have to diet again.  Hypnosis anyone?