Thank you!!! Not sure why everyone is getting so worked up over this. I'm sure he's done what millions in Weight Watchers have done throughout the years. Go on a temporary diet eating tons of pre-packaged junk food (ever check nutrition labels on those "smart ones" meals?), but still created enough of a caloric deficit to drop weight. They count points for this crap, he counted calories.

Doesn't exactly teach you how to reach that utopia of intuitive eating we all strive for (Trust me, I'm a WW lifetime member), but you WILL lose weight in the interim. Trying to find some sort of reason he's lost (oh he must be adding more fat, oh he's lost because he's actually eating less carbs now, etc, etc, etc) is a waste of time. He ate less. Period. I checked his food journal on www.livestrong.com (user name haub). Rarely did he reach 1800 cals. Many days were as low as 1000, some as low as 800.

I agree. But his point was to show that it was all about counting calories. Well, I counted the calories and the numbers don't add up. How does that prove his point? It doesn't. In fact, it contradicts his point to a high degree. Seriously, lose sight of 60,000 kcals?!?

I'm really curious how you managed to count his calorie out? In fact I'm pretty certain he did not count his calorie out himself.

But I guess we could use the calorie in and the part of his weight loss that is not related to water to find out what calorie out was.

Why do we need to figure out calories now? We never needed that before. We ate when hungry, stopped when full. We had exactly zero nutritional science. And it didn't seem to trouble us one bit.

Calorie counting becomes useful if Twinkies are going to be a main part of your diet.

Before Twinkies, calorie counting was not needed as much. The tool was invented out of necessity.

How I managed? I used the calculator that comes with Windows 7 64 bit Ultimate. But seriously, all the numbers are in the article. 2600 kcals is what he ate before. 1800 kcals is what he ate during. 200 lbs is what he weighed before. 174 is what he weighed after. He did not change his activity level. Do the math yourself if you don't trust my ability.

LOL!!!!

PJ

OK, I'll bite. What quality does a Twinkie have that makes it so special that we need to count its calorie content, as opposed to animal flesh for example?

Before Twinkies, calorie counting was not needed at all. What is this necessity that drove us to invent calorie counting?

All right.

70 days * 1800 kcals = 126000 kcals (intake)

27 lb * 3500 kcals = 94500 kcals (from body stores)

126000 + 94500 = 220500 kcals.

220500 kcals / 70 days = 3150 kcals.

So his calorie out was an average of 3150 kcals per day during these 10 weeks. Just an estimate of course and even more so since it does not take into account possible water loss.

It's easy to intake much more energy than what you need by eating Twinkies. Because it just taste so good to most humans.

If we want to take notes in order to reproduce an experiment or make comparisons, we need a unit of measurement. Calorie is used as such.

Reminds me of a quote by Danny DeVito in 'Other People's Money' where he says, "You want some donuts?" and she says, "No, I'm not hungry." And he looks at her in confusion and says, "What do donuts have to do with being hungry??"

Maybe also because they don't provide the nutrients one needs, so also, the body keeps driving for intake.

PJ

I can't stand twinkies. It's much easier to stop eating twinkies than pizza. blech.

Yep, pizza is also a taste powerhouse.

I'm relatively certain that the composition of my oversized body is several different nationalities . . . and pizza.

PJ

Sorry buddy, your math is wrong. One pound is 454 grams, one gram of fat contains 9 kcals, which comes out to 4096 kcals, not 3500 kcals.

According to your math, a 1576 kcals deficit will produce a 27 lbs weight loss. There's just one problem: He did not eat 1576 kcals less than before, he only ate 800 kcals less than before. 2600 kcals before, 1800 kcals during.

How does the hypothesis explain that a 800 kcals caloric deficit at the onset will ultimately produce a weight loss equivalent to a 1576 kcals caloric deficit? The simple answer is that it can't.

He ate 2600 kcals before the experiment. He ate 1800 kcals during the experiment. This is a difference of 800 kcals. His weight was stable before the experiment. This means Eout was the same as Ein: 2600 kcals. Rather, this means we can rely on a Eout figure of 2600 kcals to predict future weight loss. This means the predicted weight loss will be 70 * 800 kcals, or 13.5 lbs. Yet he lost an actual 27 lbs. The prediction is off the mark by 100%. How can the hypothesis be so far off the mark?

Ancel Keys showed us that a semi-starvation diet causes lethargy, i.e. a reduction of Eout. Haub's experiment says Eout will increase. So not only is the hypothesis wrong with the numbers, but it's wrong with direction too.

The guy's experiment cannot be explained by calories alone. But the carbohydrate hypothesis can explain it completely. Remember, a fundamental principle of this hypothesis is that as insulin drops, fat is released from fat tissue faster than normal, or rather the balance between fat accumulation and fat release will shift toward more fat released to ultimately produce weight loss. Accordingly, if his previous diet drove his insulin higher than his experiment diet, then it's easy to see how an apparent caloric deficit caused a greater weight loss than what the calorie hypothesis alone predicted. How else would he start with a Eout of 2600 kcals, cut out 800 kcals from Ein for 10 weeks, and end up with a Eout of 3376 kcals, unless fat tissue was regulated not by calories but by hormones like insulin?