denis says stop exercising immediately people

Nothing wrong with a cheat day once a week.

Nothing wrong with a cheat day once a week.

Kirkwood, you could go all scientific about it, but it doesn't need that level of precision. My goodness, you know when you pick up a cola and french fries. Don't eat that stuff. When you go out for lunch get a chicken sandwich without cheese, and substitute a side salad for the fries. Unsweetened ice tea is a good way to avoid soda. You do that over your current habits, and you'll drop weight fast.

Eh, I find logging keeps you accountable. Logging for a week or so a "standard" week gets you a baseline. You really open your eyes to where you can cut out items or make substitutions.

you run a mile, then stop and do a set of push-ups ? that's impressive

Nothing wrong with a cheat day once a week.

No cauliflower?

Kirkwood, you could go all scientific about it, but it doesn't need that level of precision. My goodness, you know when you pick up a cola and french fries. Don't eat that stuff. When you go out for lunch get a chicken sandwich without cheese, and substitute a side salad for the fries. Unsweetened ice tea is a good way to avoid soda. You do that over your current habits, and you'll drop weight fast.

Exercise will not overcome bad eating habits. I always exercised and was still 35 pounds overweight. You have to cut back on food portions and certain types of foods. Maybe if you exercised like a boxer in training, then you could eat a lot. Otherwise, exercise just tends to increase your appetite, and mentally, let's you think it is ok to consumer bad food.

I agree 100%. People make diet rocket science with tracking, apps, meetings, charts, ordering food from a diet service, etc... What drives me nuts is the people who go to the store & buy a cart full of healthy choice microwave dinners & think they are healthy. There is loads of crap & chemicals in those meals.
Give up red meet? No...that isn't happening.

If you exercise daily but don't change your eating habits you wont lose weight.

Im pretty hammered right now.

denis says stop exercising immediately people

I ran past a woman on the bike path this summer. She caught up to me when I was doing my pushups and said "now you're just showing off". I took off my shirt, threw it to her and said "just a little something to help you remember what you've seen here."

Rick is right.















I feel dirty

you run a mile, then stop and do a set of push-ups ? that's impressive

He's not as right as he thinks he is.

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.

"That's where the head scratching comes," Haub said. "What does that mean? Does that mean I'm healthier? Or does it mean how we define health from a biology standpoint, that we're missing something?"



Haub's sample day
Espresso, Double: 6 calories; 0 grams of fat

Hostess Twinkies Golden Sponge Cake: 150 calories; 5 grams of fat

Centrum Advanced Formula From A To Zinc: 0 calories; 0 grams of fat

Little Debbie Star Crunch: 150 calories; 6 grams of fat

Hostess Twinkies Golden Sponge Cake: 150 calories; 5 grams of fat

Diet Mountain Dew: 0 calories; 0 grams of fat

Doritos Cool Ranch: 75 calories; 4 grams of fat

Kellogg's Corn Pops: 220 calories; 0 grams of fat

whole milk: 150 calories; 8 grams of fat

baby carrots: 18 calories; 0 grams of fat

Duncan Hines Family Style Brownie Chewy Fudge: 270 calories; 14 grams of fat

Little Debbie Zebra Cake: 160 calories; 8 grams of fat

Muscle Milk Protein Shake: 240 calories; 9 grams of fat

Totals: 1,589 calories and 59 grams of fat

Despite his temporary success, Haub does not recommend replicating his snack-centric diet.

"I'm not geared to say this is a good thing to do," he said. "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."

Two-thirds of his total intake came from junk food. 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.

Families who live in food deserts have limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables, so they often rely on the kind of food Haub was eating.

"These foods are consumed by lots of people," he said. "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."

Haub's body fat dropped from 33.4 to 24.9 percent. This posed the question: What matters more for weight loss, the quantity or quality of calories?

His success is probably a result of caloric reduction, said Dawn Jackson Blatner, a dietitian in Chicago, Illinois.

"It's a great reminder for weight loss that calories count," she said. "Is that the bottom line to being healthy? That's another story."

Blatner, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association, said she's not surprised to hear Haub's health markers improved even when he loaded up on processed snack cakes.

Being overweight is the central problem that leads to complications like high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol, she said.

How well are you managing your diabetes?

"When you lose weight, regardless of how you're doing it -- even if it's with packaged foods, generally you will see these markers improve when weight loss has improved," she said.

Before jumping on the Ding Dong bandwagon, Blatner warned of health concerns.

"There are things we can't measure," said Blatner, questioning how the lack of fruits and vegetables could affect long-term health. "How much does that affect the risk for cancer? We can't measure how diet changes affect our health."

On August 25, Haub, 41, started his cake diet focusing on portion control.

"I'm eating to the point of need and pushing the plate or wrapper away," he said.

He intended the trial to last a month as a teaching tool for his class. As he lost weight, Haub continued the diet until he reached a normal body mass index.

Before his Twinkie diet, he tried to eat a healthy diet that included whole grains, dietary fiber, berries and bananas, vegetables and occasional treats like pizza.

"There seems to be a disconnect between eating healthy and being healthy," Haub said. "It may not be the same. I was eating healthier, but I wasn't healthy. I was eating too much."

He maintained the same level of moderate physical activity as before going on the diet. (Haub does not have any ties to the snack cake companies.)

To avoid setting a bad example for his kids, Haub ate vegetables in front of his family. Away from the dinner table, he usually unwrapped his meals.

Haub monitored his body composition, blood pressure, cholesterol and glucose, and updated his progress on his Facebook page, Professor Haub's diet experiment.

To curb calories, he avoided meat, whole grains and fruits. Once he started adding meat into the diet four weeks ago, his cholesterol level increased.

Haub plans to add about 300 calories to his daily intake now that he's done with the diet. But he's not ditching snack cakes altogether. Despite his weight loss, Haub feels ambivalence.

"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."

Conclusions and Relevance Significant weight loss was observed with any low-carbohydrate or low-fat diet. Weight loss differences between individual named diets were small. This supports the practice of recommending any diet that a patient will adhere to in order to lose weight.

Yes, overall you need to burn more calories than you consume to lose weight. My broader point was that exercise does two things to most people:

1) Makes you hungrier
2) Mentally, gives you the green light to cheat more because you just worked out

Thus, for most normal people, exercise alone does not result in weight loss. And Kirkwood, I understand your point about it not mattering which types of calories you consume because they all count the same. Again, here are things to consider:

But if you fat slobs want to go on lecturing a guy who has lived sustained weight loss, then so be it.

Yes, overall you need to burn more calories than you consume to lose weight. My broader point was that exercise does two things to most people:

1) Makes you hungrier
2) Mentally, gives you the green light to cheat more because you just worked out

Thus, for most normal people, exercise alone does not result in weight loss. And Kirkwood, I understand your point about it not mattering which types of calories you consume because they all count the same. Again, here are things to consider:

1) Certain foods, like fruits and vegetables have important vitamins and minerals.
2) You're going to get hungry and want to snack. Eating things like unsalted peanuts and fresh fruits is going to results in lower caloric intake than twinkies and doritos. Same thing applies to getting thirsty. I drink unsweetened seltzer waters instead of sugary drinks.

But if you fat slobs want to go on lecturing a guy who has lived sustained weight loss, then so be it.

exercise has all kinds of positives besides weight loss - mental health effects might be more important. that being said I have never been able to get into a sustained, long-term exercise program.

Rick is 100% correct. I am silly for having brought up these issues. No guys ever says, I'll eat this snack and then go work it off later. Guys always restrain from eating the snack and then just work out instead. Additionally, no person has ever had a great workout, and then sits down and says, "I deserve to treat myself for such a great workout.". DID NOT HAPPEN. EVER.

There are no fat people in the gyms except for the ones that just started their membership.