Twinkie Diet

It's the calories, stupid.

I'm not surprised at all by the success of the Twinkie Diet.

Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts.

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.

It's all about how much you consume.

Weight loss is not a mystery. Eat less and you'll drop the pounds.

It doesn't matter what you eat as long as you don't eat too many calories.

The discipline that it takes to limit one's food intake, battling the desire to eat a lot, is where it gets difficult for some.

But when it comes to losing weight, it's very simple. It isn't what you eat. It's how much.



MMM...Twinkies!