Would YOU like to lose 25 pounds or more in just 2 short months?
Would you like to lose that weight while eating nothing but Twinkies, Ho-Ho’s, Devil Dogs, Little Debbie snacks and other convenience store goodies
Well…YOU CAN! Or so it would seem.
That was the experience of one Associate Professor of Nutrition at the Kansas State University. In so doing, he helped to prove a point I’ve been making for years. A calorie is a calorie.
He also helped reinforce a basic and accepted law of physics proven by Einstein, Newton and many smarter people before me. That law is simply this: energy taken in by a body versus the energy expelled by a body will result in either mass lost or gained.
Professor Mark Haub spent 2 months last summer eating nothing but sugary, crème filled snacks like Devil Dogs and Twinkies and lost 27 pounds in 2 months! Amazing, right? Wrong!
You see, the real reason Dr. Haub dropped the 27 pounds is that he did the one thing that will always result in a loss of mass (body weight) for any body. He reduced the amount of energy he took in!
Dr. Haub reduced his caloric intake from 2,600 kcal per day to 1,800 kcal per day during the specified period. Since a pound is made up of 3,500 calories, we can do some simple math and deduce the largest portion of his reduction. Almost 14 of the pounds he lost are attributable to the 800 kcal per day caloric deficit he created.
The remaining 13 came from the increase in activity he undertook during the study period. There; simple math and a simple fact: calories (energy) in vs. calories (energy) out equals mass (weight) gained or lost.
I’m NOT endorsing the Twinkie diet, or any other ridiculous “diet” plan out there. What I am saying is what I’ve said for over 12 years. If you consume fewer calories than you burn each day, you will reduce your weight. Period.
When it comes to the essential definition of a calorie, one calorie of Twinkies is equal to one calorie of steak is equal to one calorie of salad is equal to one calorie of Haagen Dazs Vanilla Swiss Almond Ice Cream.
This doesn’t mean you should ignore the quality of the calories you put in your body. It simply means that energy (calories) and mass (body weight) are related. Duh!
What we do know about calorie quality is this: whole foods have a far more thermic effect on the body. Additionally, our bodies tend to burn the calories from whole foods better and more readily than those from processed foods.
Scientists at Pomona College in California recently published a study in Food and Nutrition Research which showed that processed foods reduced the rate of diet-induced thermogenesis – calories burned while eating and in digestion - by almost 50% when compared to meals made of whole foods.
When you consider that up to 10% of your total caloric expenditure for a given day may be the result of diet-induced thermogenesis, a 50% boost starts to sound pretty good! For a 2,000 calorie a day diet, that’s an additional 100 calories burned just because you choose whole foods. That adds up to one pound lost every 35 days, provided your output (exercise and activities of daily living) are equal to your intake (food.)
So in theory you could eat a reduced calorie diet consisting of Twinkies or Snickers bars. But why would you?
Eat a varied, fresh, whole food diet and watch your “burn rate” go up. Reduce caloric intake and watch the weight come off.
Do both in conjunction with smart exercise (try this Power Fitness Camp) and watch the body fat fry off while you chisel the muscle! Soon, you’ll reveal the great physique hiding under that layer of “insulation”(you know, F-A-T!)
If you’re looking for an organic, whole food snack that’s delicious AND convenient, you have to try Prograde Cravers! Read about them here Prograde Cravers! and find out how they can satisfy your craving and help you maintain the “burn” of thermogenesis!
