Ding Dong The Wicked Waistline's Dead

Today I was going to write about the four hormones that are the "bad ones" in our body, but instead I was watching the news this morning and came across a story on CNN that I thought was worth mentioning. We can get back to body chemistry tomorrow.

Mark Haub, a nutrition professor at Kansas State University dropped 27 pounds in two months by only eating junk food. By junk food I mean twinkies, Little Debbie cakes and Doritos. He limited himself to 1,800 calories and prior to taking on this sweet treat diet he was consuming 2,600 calories a day. Haub's Body Mass Index went from 28.8 and after the diet his BMI is now 24.9. Haub's LDL or "bad" cholesterol dropped 20 percent and his HDL or "good" cholesterol increased by 20 percent. Haub also reduced the level of triglycerides, which is a form of fat by a whopping 39 percent. His body fat dropped from 33.4 to 24.9 percent. Haub is not suggesting that the public take on this experiment, but what can easily be found from this particular study is portion control. He said that before this crazy diet he was eating the right stuff, he was just eating too much of it.

I'm not geared to say this is a good thing to do," said Haub. "I'm stuck in the middle. I guess that's the frustrating part. I can't give a concrete answer. There's not enough information to do that."

Most of this diet (two thirds) was intake of the junk food, but he also took a multivitamin pill, drank a protein shake once a day, and ate veggies (a can of green beans, three to four celery stalks or some carrots).

"These foods are consumed by lots of people," said Haubs. "It may be an issue of portion size and moderation rather than total removal. I just think it's unrealistic to expect people to totally drop these foods for vegetables and fruits. It may be healthy, but not realistic. There seems to be a disconnect between eating healthy and being healthy. It may not be the same. I was eating healthier, but I wasn't healthy. I was eating too much.

Haub didn't change his exercise plan which consisted of moderate physical activity. To be sure he wasn't setting a bad example for his kids he ate veggies in front of his family and his junk food when he was away from the table. Haub kept track of his body composition, glucose, cholesterol and blood pressure. He updated his progress on his Facebook page, Professor Haub's diet experiment.


Wonder what Haub's plan is now? He will increase his calorie intake by about 300 calories, but he said he's not going to stop eating the delicious snack foods all together. "I wish I could say the outcomes are unhealthy. I wish I could say it's healthy. I'm not confident enough in doing that. That frustrates a lot of people. One side says it's irresponsible. It is unhealthy, but the data doesn't say that."

I will not be jumping on this crazy train anytime soon, because my goal is to be more healthy not just thinner, but it is interesting that this insane idea worked at all. Never in my life would I have thought that I would have ever heard of someone losing weight from eating all of the things that we are told not to. Crazy don't you think!


I tried to link a video on here, but it was taking forever. If you want to see some coverage you can check it out yourself.