Although sense has prevailed and people have finally started realising the importance of a healthy and well-balanced diet,
But nothing stops these insane fad diet creators from freaking us out with all sorts of terrible ideas to lose weight. So here, is another diet we were shocked to discover, the Twinkie Diet.
A Twinkie is a popular American snack which is a sponge cake with synthetic cream filling.
Unsurprisingly, like most fad diets this diet is also true to its name, In other words, you survive on nothing but twinkies when following a twinkie diet.
Sounds like a dumb trap to make you a sugar junkie. It’s dumb also because the diet was founded to challenge the very sane concept that for healthy weight loss it’s not the quantity but the quality of food that matters. Quantity matters as well but the quality is the key.
Here is a brief history of how this fad diet was created.
Mark Haub, a professor of nutrition at Kansas state university, reportedly lost 27 pounds in 10 weeks by consuming Twinkies, Oreos, Doritos and multivitamin pills.
The mission was to prove that weight loss is possible just by reducing the intake of calories regardless of what kinds of food you eat. So with all this junk food, he made sure to consume around 1800 calories a day when his body required 2600 calories per day.
By creating this calorie deficit, he managed to shed his extra pounds. However, he himself wasn’t very sure when it came to the question, Is it a healthy way to lose weight?
According to him,
“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.”
So yeah he lost weight but was it a healthy way to reduce weight, this still remains a different story.
Is it Healthy?
A simple one-word answer, No this is not healthy at all.
Yeah, they are right when they say that calorie deficit is a factor that contributes to losing weight in a healthy way, but what they never clarify is that it’s 1 of the thousand factors that actually count in healthy weight loss.
This diet has a list of cons and there is no rocket science needed to understand them.
Cons of the Twinkie Diet:
Here is a simple comparison to show you the difference between natural sugars and foods with processed sugars.
Spike in insulin levels:
Let’s say you have an apple and a piece of twinkie both with approximate 60 calories. But your body will react differently to both these foods.
When you eat the piece of twinkie the processed sugars will immediately be broken down and passed into your bloodstream, the insulin levels skyrocket because this refined sugar is broken down rapidly by the body. However, this won’t help you feel full in fact you’ll be craving more of it within no time.
Whereas, when you eat an apple it takes a little while for your body to break down the natural sugars and meanwhile, the fibre in an apple will slow down your metabolic rate and will help the fruit remains to expand in your gut which keeps you feeling full for some time, without spiking the insulin levels.
Insulin Resistance:
Living on junk food and processed sugars puts your body at risk of developing insulin resistance, which increases the chances of getting diabetes. This can also lead to cardiac issues such as heart attack and strokes etc because the levels of trans fat in this junk fellow won’t spare your arteries for long.
Malnourishment:
All you eat is sugar and junk with almost 0 nutritional value so you will be left malnourished and fatigued and will have to survive on multivitamin pills to regain your levels of natural minerals and vitamins.
Other Factors:
Needless to say, there are many factors that cannot be measured for example mood but are highly impacted by your food choices.
So with an immediate spike in insulin levels, which is then followed by an immediate drop, this is called a sugar crash and this highly disrupts your mood.
This diet is a shortcut to a complete physical and mental break down.
Our Take:
The Twinkie Diet is actually the worst possible and unconventional way to explain the very sane idea that the quantity of what we consume really matters.
However, what you need to consider here is that we are too conscious about every little thing we own, eg we never compromise on the quality of gas we put in our car and look for the best possible option.
Mate, your body is a million times worth more than your car so why compromise on its fuel quality when you won’t ever risk the fuel quality for your vehicle?
That kind of sums up the discussion.