Active Low-Carber Forums
Atkins diet and low carb discussion provided free for information only, not as medical advice.
Home Plans Tips Recipes Tools Stories Studies Products
Active Low-Carber Forums
A sugar-free zone


Welcome to the Active Low-Carber Forums.
Support for Atkins diet, Protein Power, Neanderthin (Paleo Diet), CAD/CALP, Dr. Bernstein Diabetes Solution and any other healthy low-carb diet or plan, all are welcome in our lowcarb community. Forget starvation and fad diets -- join the healthy eating crowd! You may register by clicking here, it's free!

Go Back   Active Low-Carber Forums > Main Low-Carb Diets Forums & Support > Low-Carb Studies & Research / Media Watch > LC Research/Media
User Name
Password
FAQ Members Calendar Mark Forums Read Search Gallery My P.L.A.N. Survey


Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1   ^
Old Wed, Aug-31-11, 15:52
tomsey tomsey is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 382
 
Plan: No caffeine, no alcohol
Stats: 175/154/150 Male 5'8
BF:
Progress: 84%
Default Twinkie diet guy revisited after 9 months off diet

Quote:
Nutrition professor Mark Haub, who lost 27 pounds eating mainly Twinkies, powdered donuts and Oreo cookies, is back to an average American diet.

Since ending his junk food experiment in November, he has gained 2 pounds and his cholesterol has also increased a little bit, he said. He also has gained a new insight into the debate over healthy eating.

"People have a hatred towards (processed) foods," he said. "I like them. I eat them. It's amazing how people believe if it's processed, it's not food."

What also caught Haub by surprise was "how vitriolic people can be when they take a stance, whether it's low-carb or paleo diet. It's like politics. Those discussions can get heated. It's the same thing with religion, I'm right. You're wrong."

Last fall, Haub shed 13% of his weight over two months restricting his diet to 1,600 calories while eating "junk food." Surprisingly, his cholesterol readings improved and his level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, decreased. This could have been explained by the decreased consumption of calories.

Today he eats three meals a day, consuming about 2,200 calories with food choices like turkey sandwiches, peanut butter, and snacking on pears.

"The main thing I did was reduce portion size," he said about what he learned from the diet. "It's that concept of mindfulness or mindful eating - I eat relatively the same. I just eat less."

And he still munches on an occasional Twinkie or snack cake.



http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/3...n-twinkie-diet/

Last edited by tomsey : Wed, Aug-31-11 at 16:07.
Reply With Quote
Sponsored Links
  #2   ^
Old Wed, Aug-31-11, 15:56
kindke's Avatar
kindke kindke is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 451
 
Plan: my own
Stats: 278/217/185 Male 5 feet 11 inches
BF:
Progress: 66%
Default

Quote:
restricting his diet to 1,600 calories while eating "junk food."


Wasnt his calories much less than that? 1600 is probably maintenence for alot of people.
Reply With Quote
  #3   ^
Old Wed, Aug-31-11, 15:59
tomsey tomsey is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 382
 
Plan: No caffeine, no alcohol
Stats: 175/154/150 Male 5'8
BF:
Progress: 84%
Default

Here is a snippet from an earlier article:

Quote:
For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.

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

The premise held up: On his "convenience store diet," he shed 27 pounds in two months.

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.

Reply With Quote
  #4   ^
Old Wed, Aug-31-11, 16:45
M Levac M Levac is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 6,498
 
Plan: VLC, mostly meat
Stats: 202/200/165 Male 5' 7"
BF:
Progress: 5%
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Default

Quote:
Last fall, Haub shed 13% of his weight over two months restricting his diet to 1,600 calories while eating "junk food." Surprisingly, his cholesterol readings improved and his level of triglycerides, which are a form of fat, decreased. This could have been explained by the decreased consumption of calories.

No, it could not. That's because there is no known biological pathway for "calories". However, we can explain everything by the reduction in sugar consumption. Body fat reduction, cholesterol improvements, triglycerides drop, etc.
Quote:
"The main thing I did was reduce portion size," he said about what he learned from the diet. "It's that concept of mindfulness or mindful eating - I eat relatively the same. I just eat less."

No, he does not. But yes, he eats less. Less what? He eats a lot less sugar than he did before the experiment during which he lost 27lbs. However, he eats a bit more sugar than during that experiment considering that he gained back a couple lbs. Remember he said that for a man his size, he should eat about 2600kcals/day. This means he now eats 400kcals less. But everybody here knows that merely cutting calories won't get you far, you gotta cut sugar. This means he eats about 100g less sugar every day.
Reply With Quote
  #5   ^
Old Wed, Aug-31-11, 17:06
tomsey tomsey is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 382
 
Plan: No caffeine, no alcohol
Stats: 175/154/150 Male 5'8
BF:
Progress: 84%
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by M Levac
However, we can explain everything by the reduction in sugar consumption. Body fat reduction, cholesterol improvements, triglycerides drop, etc.



That sounds insane..

He ate mostly sugar and junk (but little meat apparently) during the period where he lost weight and his lab numbers improved.
Reply With Quote
  #6   ^
Old Wed, Aug-31-11, 17:16
M Levac M Levac is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 6,498
 
Plan: VLC, mostly meat
Stats: 202/200/165 Male 5' 7"
BF:
Progress: 5%
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by tomsey
That sounds insane..

He ate mostly sugar and junk (but little meat apparently) during the period where he lost weight and his lab numbers improved.

Hehe, it gives you an idea of just how bad he ate before.
Reply With Quote
  #7   ^
Old Wed, Aug-31-11, 17:32
tomsey tomsey is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 382
 
Plan: No caffeine, no alcohol
Stats: 175/154/150 Male 5'8
BF:
Progress: 84%
Default

so you are saying he ate more sugar and junk before the experiment? and you know this for certain how?

so for this junk food experiment he actually cut down on sugar (eating debbie cakes as every meal) to the point where his lab numbers make good improvement and he loses 13% of his weight in a couple of months or so? that is what you are claiming?

seems to me what is mostly missing in his junk food experiment are meats.

Last edited by tomsey : Wed, Aug-31-11 at 18:02.
Reply With Quote
  #8   ^
Old Wed, Aug-31-11, 18:51
Thomas1492's Avatar
Thomas1492 Thomas1492 is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 5,827
 
Plan: Ketogenic
Stats: 500/408/300 Male 73 inches
BF:toodamnmuch
Progress: 46%
Location: Oregon
Default

What is missing from the conversation is this guy was not insulin resistant...He only ate this for 2 months...His body adapted and fortunately he was healthy enough to avoid damage...But what if he were to eat that diet for 2 years??? I think we would be seeing a much different outcome!This is the important part to look at...It is not what I eat for a month or two,but what I am eating for years,a lifetime!!
Reply With Quote
  #9   ^
Old Wed, Aug-31-11, 19:12
KarenJ's Avatar
KarenJ KarenJ is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 1,564
 
Plan: tasty animals with butter
Stats: 170/115/110 Female 60"
BF:maintaining
Progress: 92%
Location: Northeastern Illinois
Default

The guy was not just eating Twinkies and Little Debbie Snacks.

Go to Tom Naughton's blog... or others... Haub made his food log public. Here is Naughton's blog from that era:

Fathead Blog:

Quote:
I finally spent some time going over them and crunching some numbers. So, the answer to the question How can this guy be losing weight when he’s living on all all those refined carbohydrates? is … (wait for it): By not actually consuming a high number of carbohydrates. Despite the headlines, Professor Haub wasn’t living on a “Twinkie Diet” or a “Little Debbie Snack Cake Diet.” He was on a diet that includes Twinkies and Little Debbie Snack Cakes. First, let’s look at a couple of daily menus: November 12 Pumpkin Spice Donut Coffee Protein shake Onion Rings Steak Broccoli Macaroni and Cheese Baked potato casserole Dynasty Lychees Baby carrots Peanut butter cookies 2% milk October 29 Hostess cupcake Coffee Sesame chicken Teriyaki chicken Egg roll Chicken nachos Broccoli Lemon zingers Kit Kat Like my Fat Head fast-food diet, nobody would mistake this for any kind of health-food diet. The guy is definitely consuming sugar. And yet he lost weight, lost body fat, raised his HDL, and lowered both his triglycerides and LDL. How can that be? Well, let’s look at the numbers. I copied the daily nutrition totals into Excel and calculated Professor Haub’s average daily intake of calories and macronutrients over the 10 weeks he’s been on the diet: Calories: 1457 Fat (g): 61 Carbohydrate (g): 173 Protein (g): 54 As a percent of daily calories, it works out to: Fat: 38% Carbohydrate: 47% Protein: 15% Now, 173 grams of carbohydrate per day certainly isn’t low, but it’s not high either. Depending on whose figures you use, that’s about half as many carbohydrates as an average American male consumes per day. It’s also at least 1,000 fewer daily calories than an average male consumes. So it doesn’t surprise me at all that Professor Haub lost weight on a “Twinkie Diet” that is actually moderate in carbohydrates and very low in calories. I’d lose weight on that diet, too. (I’d hate it, but I’d lose weight.) I would also lose muscle on such a low protein intake, and according to his health assessments posted on Facebook, Professor Haub did in fact lose 6 pounds of lean body mass over the 10 weeks. So we’re looking at a fat loss of 20 pounds in 10 weeks, or two pounds per week. As with dieters everywhere, his weight loss appears to be slowing down as he goes along. During the first four weeks of the diet, according to his online data, he lost an average of 3.75 pounds per week, but slowed to 1.8 pounds per week over the next six weeks. That’s not surprising. There’s usually some initial water loss in the early phase of a diet, and of course once you begin to lose weight, your basal metabolism tends to drop. What would be interesting to see is how quickly he’d regain the weight if he went back up to 2500 calories per day and consumed more carbohydrates — not that I’d encourage him to try it. Overall, it looks like an interesting experiment, and it’s certainly generated a lot of media buzz. It’s just too bad the buzzing media reporters aren’t taking a little closer look at the professor’s online food log. There’s certainly junk food in this diet, but it is not (as one headline described it) a Junk Food Binge. When you consume fewer than 1500 calories and 175 carbohydrates on an average day, it’s not any kind of binge.
Reply With Quote
  #10   ^
Old Wed, Aug-31-11, 20:20
tomsey tomsey is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 382
 
Plan: No caffeine, no alcohol
Stats: 175/154/150 Male 5'8
BF:
Progress: 84%
Default

well something is not right because the diet was suppose to be just a shake, a vitamin, some canned vegges, celery, and sugar junk food.... didn't he end the junk food diet in the beginning of November? are those 2 days he selected from the actual diet period?

where is the complete log?


we do know that his calories went up to 2200 afterwards, apparently a satisfactory amount to him and he only gained 2 pounds after 8 months
Reply With Quote
  #11   ^
Old Wed, Aug-31-11, 20:30
tomsey tomsey is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 382
 
Plan: No caffeine, no alcohol
Stats: 175/154/150 Male 5'8
BF:
Progress: 84%
Default

still a lot of sugar and processed junk happening there
Reply With Quote
  #12   ^
Old Wed, Aug-31-11, 20:35
tomsey tomsey is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 382
 
Plan: No caffeine, no alcohol
Stats: 175/154/150 Male 5'8
BF:
Progress: 84%
Default

Check out november 15th:

Hostess Apple Fruit Pie
Caribou Coffee Depth Charge
Hostess Apple Fruit Pie
Water
Muscle Milk Protein Shake
Beef Noodle Soup
Paula Deen's Twice Baked Potato Casserole
Pringles Pringles Honey Mustard
One A Day Multivitamin Teen Advantage For Him
Mountain Dew Voltage
Blackberry, Raw
Banana
Kroger 2% Chocolate Milk


Cals = 1,776
Fat = 68g
Cholest = 135mg
Sodium = 2,151mg
Carbs = 236g
Sugars = 155g (2/3 a cup)


some of the days he has listed there seem incomplete

Last edited by tomsey : Wed, Aug-31-11 at 21:05.
Reply With Quote
  #13   ^
Old Thu, Sep-01-11, 00:50
M Levac M Levac is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 6,498
 
Plan: VLC, mostly meat
Stats: 202/200/165 Male 5' 7"
BF:
Progress: 5%
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by tomsey
so you are saying he ate more sugar and junk before the experiment? and you know this for certain how?

so for this junk food experiment he actually cut down on sugar (eating debbie cakes as every meal) to the point where his lab numbers make good improvement and he loses 13% of his weight in a couple of months or so? that is what you are claiming?

seems to me what is mostly missing in his junk food experiment are meats.

Sugar has distinct and unmistakable effects on human metabolism. We couldn't confuse those effects from those of meat for example. And removing or significantly reducing sugar from a diet also has unique and unmistakable effects on metabolism. But don't take my word for it, read it for yourself in GCBC.

For reference:
Link
Quote:
By 1955, Pete Ahrens of Rockefeller University came to this same conclusion although Ahrens was specifically studying triglycerides, rather than the LFDL particles that carry the triglycerides. Ahrens was considered by many investigators to be the best scientist in the world with regard to lipid metabolism. When he gave lectures, he showed two photos showing two test tubes of blood serum obtained from the same patient. One test tube was obtained when the patient was eating a high-carbohydrate diet and one while eating a high fat diet. One test tube was milky white and the other was absolutely clear. The clear plasma came during the high fat diet. Elliott Joslin reported the same thing 30 years earlier. He wrote: ìthe percent of fat rises with the severity of the disease and is especially related to the quantity of carbohydrate being oxidized rather than the fat [consumed].


We could say that the cause of these metabolic effects is about as obvious as the cause of a burnt down house.

Last edited by M Levac : Thu, Sep-01-11 at 01:09.
Reply With Quote
  #14   ^
Old Thu, Sep-01-11, 07:26
Angeline's Avatar
Angeline Angeline is offline
Senior Member
Posts: 3,423
 
Plan: Atkins (loosely)
Stats: -/-/- Female 60
BF:
Progress: 40%
Location: Ottawa, Ontario
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Thomas1492
What is missing from the conversation is this guy was not insulin resistant...He only ate this for 2 months...His body adapted and fortunately he was healthy enough to avoid damage...But what if he were to eat that diet for 2 years??? I think we would be seeing a much different outcome!This is the important part to look at...It is not what I eat for a month or two,but what I am eating for years,a lifetime!!



Here is food for thought. Where do obese toddlers fit in ?
Reply With Quote
  #15   ^
Old Thu, Sep-01-11, 07:47
OregonRose's Avatar
OregonRose OregonRose is offline
Wag more, bark less.
Posts: 692
 
Plan: Meat.
Stats: 216/149/145 Female 65.5 inches
BF:
Progress: 94%
Location: Eugene
Default

I'm just sort of stunned that a professor thinks he can "prove" it's a matter of calories by this experiment. The logic of proof doesn't work that way. (There's no way to prove all swans are always white, but you can disprove that thesis simply by producing just one black swan.)

We all know lots of people who lost weight after restricting calories, but as has been pointed out repeatedly, there could be a number of explanations for that beyond CICO. The proof needs to go in the other direction: If one person loses weight through an increase in calories, then we know the mechanism isn't simple CICO/ELMM. There are lots of people like that on this forum, and I'm one of them. His loss on a diet of twinkies is meaningless; it's just another white swan.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off



All times are GMT -6. The time now is 13:01.


Copyright © 2000-2024 Active Low-Carber Forums @ forum.lowcarber.org
Powered by: vBulletin, Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.