Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds

rocky

Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html?hpt=T2

His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most -- not the nutritional value of the food.

Before his Twinkie diet, he tried to eat a healthy diet that included whole grains, dietary fiber, berries and bananas, vegetables and occasional treats like pizza.

"There seems to be a disconnect between eating healthy and being healthy," Haub said. "It may not be the same. I was eating healthier, but I wasn't healthy. I was eating too much."

El_Dangeroso

Not a controlled study first of all

Secondly, who said you can't lose weight if you're in calorie deficit? I mean duh.

Thirdly, I doubt his diet was oh-so-healthy to begin with if he was 27lb overweight. Sometimes you improve health just reducing the amount of crap you eat. It's almost always a short term thing - willpower runs out, always.

How offering the opportunity to stay hungry for the rest of your life is any kind of option to offer overweight people just shows how doomed we really are.

This is so short-sighted from a supposed professor of nutrition. Sounds like someone's getting a grant from the makers of twinkies (side note: did you ever actually taste one of those things? Yeauch, they are nasty.)

Here's an excellent detailed analysis on this 'study' if anyone is interested:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2010/11/twinkie-diet-for-fat-loss.html

rocky

I'm not advocating this 'diet', far from it.

The thing I'd point to here is the improvement in health indicators

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.

This leads me to believe that, for overweight individuals, a reduction in fat mass is more important than a 'healthy' diet, if this diet is not at a calorie deficit. So overweight people eating healthy and not losing fat, would be better off eating junk at a deficit until their fat reduces to normal levels. Sure, ideally overweight people would eat whole foods at a deficit...

I seem to remember either Martin Berkhan or Lyle McD making this point, but cannot find the article now.

Adelie

rocky wrote: »

This leads me to believe that, for overweight individuals, a reduction in fat mass is more important than a 'healthy' diet, if this diet is not at a calorie deficit. So overweight people eating healthy and not losing fat, would be better off eating junk at a deficit until their fat reduces to normal levels.

Maybe it's true that a reduction in fat mass is more important than a 'healthy' diet, I don't know. But I believe it's a lot easier to lose weight on a healthy diet than a calorie-restricted junk diet. For one, junk food is addictive and makes you want more. For another assuming it's high-carb, it's not very filling. Also I would be starving on a calorie restricted diet but on a lowish carb healthy diet with plenty of calories I've no problem losing weight. And I'd worry that the low-cal junk diet could mess up the metabolism once you came off.

The main problem seems to be actually getting onto a healthy diet... for some reason the first instinct of many is to limit their food, not to improve the quality or learn anything about nutrition. Also all the controversy over what's actually healthy can't help.

Blatter

Adelie wrote: »

Maybe it's true that a reduction in fat mass is more important than a 'healthy' diet, I don't know. But I believe it's a lot easier to lose weight on a healthy diet than a calorie-restricted junk diet. For one, junk food is addictive and makes you want more. For another assuming it's high-carb, it's not very filling. Also I would be starving on a calorie restricted diet but on a lowish carb healthy diet with plenty of calories I've no problem losing weight. And I'd worry that the low-cal junk diet could mess up the metabolism once you came off.

The main problem seems to be actually getting onto a healthy diet... for some reason the first instinct of many is to limit their food, not to improve the quality or learn anything about nutrition. Also all the controversy over what's actually healthy can't help.

I'd have to second that, sugar and grains have a serious hold over people and some people can't even consider giving them up and find it extremely difficult to limit them.

I always maintained that if someone wants to lose weight, if you control your carb intake to 80-120g a day, then it's relatively easy to lose weight because it's difficult to over eat on proteins/fats.

Macha

rocky wrote: »

This leads me to believe that, for overweight individuals, a reduction in fat mass is more important than a 'healthy' diet, if this diet is not at a calorie deficit. So overweight people eating healthy and not losing fat, would be better off eating junk at a deficit until their fat reduces to normal levels. Sure, ideally overweight people would eat whole foods at a deficit...

But the point is that overweight individuals will lose body fat on a 'healthy' diet, even without restricting calories. Keeping insulin levels under control by controlling carb intake will change the way your body metabolises the food it is given.

Research shows that long term, calorie deficit diets don't work because the body resists by reducing calories expended or breaking the diet and eating. Let's see what this guy looks like in 6 months.

El_Dangeroso

rocky wrote: »

I'm not advocating this 'diet', far from it.

The thing I'd point to here is the improvement in health indicators

This leads me to believe that, for overweight individuals, a reduction in fat mass is more important than a 'healthy' diet, if this diet is not at a calorie deficit. So overweight people eating healthy and not losing fat, would be better off eating junk at a deficit until their fat reduces to normal levels. Sure, ideally overweight people would eat whole foods at a deficit...

I seem to remember either Martin Berkhan or Lyle McD making this point, but cannot find the article now.

Oh god, I didn't think you were promoting it or anything!

The reduction in LDL means nothing at all really. Isocaloric diets high in refined carbs (as practiced above) will often reduce LDL as measured by a lab, but it will increase the small dense LDL while decreasing the good, fluffy kind.

Also, it take about 6 months to a year to really see the effect that a diet has on health, this is 10 stinking weeks! I'd love to see that guy continue for one, two years or more. He's be in bits.

White flour and sugar are bad bad things for health, we have decades of peer-reviewed research showing this. This guy's experiment isn't evidence of anything we didn't already know and I seriously question his motives.

Cue: Twinkie diet!! Lose 10lb in two weeks!! on the cover of Woman's Weekly

Blatter

Nutrition professors publishing this sort of experiment gives a bad name to nutritional experts all around the world.

We already knew that you can lose weight eating anything as long as your in a calorie deficit, ala Weight Watchers.

But to give the claim that eating a diet full of junk actually improves your general health and decreases cardiovascular disease is actually mind boggling.
Especially to claim it after what, 10 weeks on the diet? Give me a break.

El_Dangeroso

Another really good article here:

http://hbfser.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/the-prof-mark-haub-nonsense/

The author of the above article makes two really good points:

I forgot HDL always temporarily goes up when you lose weight, you are 'eating' your body's own fat, fat (especially sat fat) makes HDL go up like clockwork.

Also his calorie deficit was higher than 800 cals, article puts it at average calorie consumption of 1250 cals a day. This, for a full grown man is a starvation diet. Its only saving grace was the protein shake, a multivitamin and some veggies, god knows how bad he'd be without that.

Sapsorrow

SOCCER4LIFE wrote: »

Nutrition professors publishing this sort of experiment gives a bad name to nutritional experts all around the world.

We already knew that you can lose weight eating anything as long as your in a calorie deficit, ala Weight Watchers.

But to give the claim that eating a diet full of junk actually improves your general health and decreases cardiovascular disease is actually mind boggling.
Especially to claim it after what, 10 weeks on the diet? Give me a break.

I know it's horribly irresponsible of him, I would have to wonder what motives he had, publicity, funding etc.. He should have more integrity in his profession than to be promoting such misleading and confusing nonsense :mad:

And like Temple pointed out this 'study' (I winced typing that) has broken every single rule in the 101 guide on a how design a good sound unbiased scientific study. If I tried something like this for my final year project in college I would have failed without a doubt for being so ridiculous. Professor my arse, he probably got that title 70 years ago when no one (including the 'professionals') knew anything about anything anyway.

Oooh I'm mad :pac:

shadowcomplex

http://johnbarban.com/

That diet is mentioned in the above link, basically John Barban is a nutrition expert and creator of the adonis lifestyle, basically he preaches that people are brainwashed with regards what it takes to lose weight, he says no foods are bad for you but its the calorie toxicity that is, now that twinkle diet is an extreme but the point is there is a middle ground, you dont have to eat a bodybuilding type diet to get in shape

Look this guy

http://www.adonisindex.com/interview-with-jason-haynes-part-2/

He got into that type of shape doing only 2 things

eating less and training hard with weights

He didnt eat 6 meals a day
he didnt eat protein in every meal
he didnt eat 1g of protein per lb of bodyweight
he didnt do low carbs
he didnt do carb cycling

He ate how every normal person eats and ate less, one thing he used to help him were 2 24 hour fasts a week and on a low calorie plan the most important thing that he did to maintain his muscle was not consume large amounts of protein but train hard with weights

Sapsorrow

Ha he looks like a smack head!

El_Dangeroso

Sapsorrow wrote: »

Ha he looks like a smack head!

You just made me spit wine on my keyboard! :eek:

Sapsorrow

Oops sorry had my apology all ready there and every thing for that. been drinking 'organic' pear cider all evening. must stick to the gin in future.

Sapsorrow

Ignore my post, makes no sense anyway. He kinda actually looks like Anthony Kiedis, back when the Chili's wrote good music.

brianthebard

Sapsorrow wrote: »

Ignore my post, makes no sense anyway. He kinda actually looks like Anthony Kiedis, back when the Chili's wrote good music.

ie when he was a smack head????

Sapsorrow

brianthebard wrote: »

ie when he was a smack head????

LMFAO