For 10 weeks, a Kansas State University human nutrition professor ate nothing but sugary snack cakes, candy bars, cookies, sweetened breakfast cereal, and chips. He lost 27 pounds. (He also "took a multivitamin pill and drank a protein shake daily. And he ate vegetables, typically a can of green beans or three to four celery stalks.")
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.
Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds
Photo by Mykl Roventine. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
