I have been trying for a long, long time now to get to 165 lbs, and while I'm not there yet, my "plateau" has been set at a hard stop at 170 lbs. Try as I might, I just couldn't seem to get below it. The closest I've ever been in my adult life, aside from Marine Corps boot camp, was at the height of my P90X/INSANITY days. On August 4th, 2011, I weighed in at 166 lbs. I haven't been back since.
(Full disclosure - the 169.1 lbs was after a particularly cardio-heavy CrossFit workout.)
So what have I done different recently to change the direction of my weigh loss and break the plateau? Start doing CrossFit every day? Nope. Fat burning supplements? Nah. Paleo? Not even close! I have one word that inspired me to lose weight and break the funk that I've been in for the last three-something years.
Twinkies.
Yes, Twinkies! (Thank god they brought them back. ;-P)
Before I get there, allow me to take you on a quick trip to tell you how I arrived at Twinkies as an effective tool for weigh loss.
I'm currently working on my MBA. I recently finished a business planning residency where the focus was exploring the feasibility of a startup. I pitched an idea to my classmates that gained traction - we decided to explore the possibility of doing a P90X-specific meal delivery service. I've done P90X a number of times now and have coached numerous people through it, and the thing I learned that is most difficult about P90X is not the actual workouts, and it's not even the time commitment (though both of those things are difficult). The most difficult thing about P90X is the nutrition plan. I have yet to meet a single person who could abide by it 100%. Most people just "eat clean" or they do their best. It is a rare and special individual who can devote an hour a day, six days a week to working out and then tack on the additional time to prep the meals prescribed by the P90X meal plan. It's just not practical.
We quickly realized, sadly, that no one was interested in paying for a P90X meal delivery service. So our team pivoted and decided to look at developing an app based on the sound principles of Precision Nutrition. The app would help users to find "anytime" and "post-workout" meals. However, after a conversation with an executive at Precision Nutrition, I was directed to an article on how nutrient timing, i.e. meals that are better suited for after working out than others, might not be as important as was once thought. This principle has been a fundamental principle of good nutrition in my book for years, and now it's just, poof, gone! (In all fairness, it's not completely gone, it's just not as important or as scientifically beneficial as was once thought.) I was knocked on my butt. My nutrition world was stood on its head.
Enter the "Twinkie Diet."
The Twinkie Diet was a self-experiment performed by a nutrition professor at Kansas State University. The man went on essentially a junk food diet for 10 weeks and lost 27 pounds. What's more, he not only lost an impressive amount of weight, some of his blood chemistry markers improved. His bad cholesterol went down, good cholesterol went up, and his triglycerides (blood-fat) decreased 39%! How did he manage to accomplish this eating predominantly junk food?
Simple. He ate about 1000 calories less per day than his daily requirement.
At the end of the day, it's not about low-carb meals, turkey burgers, and eating breakfast religiously. To this day, it seems that all sound nutritional principles are up for debate. Carbs are bad; no, high-protein, low-carb diets may be linked to cancer. Egg yolks are bad; no, they're actually a source of good cholesterol. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Eh...maybe not so much. It turns out, we might not know as much as we think we do about nutrition. So, is there anything we can say for sure about nutrition. Is there anything we do know about nutrition. It turns out, we do. As Twinkie Diet guy proved, theories about good nutrition come and go, but one thing holds constant:
Weight loss = calories in less than calories out
Frankly, I realized the power of calorie balance years ago. That principle helped me to get to 166 pounds to begin with. What changed recently to help me get back in the right direction? Stay tuned and I'll tell you!
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