The Convenience Store Diet

foolforcarbos

I know a group of people here love to hit that Disagree button on everything I post. So let's flip things around.

I stated for 4 years (2007-2010), I circumnavigate all of S.E.Alaska eating nothing but dehydrated Mt House food, and by the end of a season, would add upwards of 50 large Snickers bars, a week, or around 7 a day, just to try to add on more weight. Ten hour days kayaking, 3 hours setting and breaking camp, and miles of heavy backpacking (photo gear) taking photos to well document the areas. Maybe that was my version of the convenience store diet. It worked. I was burning way more calories than I was taking in. Mainly due to space, carrying 78 days of food at a time. And with that limited space - and resupplies months apart, it was practical. One can pack a lot of those Mt House dehy food packages into a kayak. I also did this back in 1994 so if you want:

https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19940407&slug=1904268 and there are other articles I wrote for publication afterwards, like Sea Kayaker Magazine. Anyway...

Also, I read about a woman who wanted to make a solo trip to the pole. She reportedly ate a mix of butter and sugar for her food supply, so she could travel light and walk long distances and have the energy. She ate nothing else. Butter and sugar mixed and stored in squeezable bottles.

So, I am linking the two articles, which will link their own studies and resources for all you factual folks, and this is just my way of saying I do look at all views and angles. I am not simply a Keto pusher saying this Keto is the only way. In fact, I stated I am trying to get time to kayak as much as possible, but it's not practical nor in my budget to close shop and go back to Alaska this summer and live on Mt House once again.

https://legionathletics.com/how-insulin-works/

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/

I think the CNN link is, at the very least, worth the read.

But that dehydrated diet fed me for 8 months of the year, for 4 years in a row. No different than someone growing up as a kid, I guess, able to eat anything they wanted, but they were active enough to get away with it. And I'm not going to get into aging. Or if ten years later, for me, if wandering through Alaska would still work, as well.

But for those who ask why people defend sugar, or what happens on cheat days, or believe strictly in calories in calories out, this may show the flip side of the debate. One can eat high carbs, and whatever they want, and it still comes down to amounts and activities. I do try to stay open and look at all views.

Now, Mark did say when on his convenience store diet that:

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?"

So for those who loved the movie Supersized, or whatever that movie was, didn't catch it, that doesn't mean he thinks this is a great approach to losing weight.

Dawn Blatner, from the A.D.A, did state: Before jumping on the Ding Dong bandwagon, Blatner warned of health concerns.

Of course she did

But there has also been ten years of research since Mark and his convenience store diet. Or my last major trip to Alaska. But I am throwing this out just for conversation. Or, for those same people who just simply like to hit the Disagree button one more time, here ya go

ritzvin

I remember eating lots and lots of dibs (an ice cream product) when I was last in Alaska for a few weeks... worth noting the weird variations in pricing for some things up there before anyone reading this judges a diet. As far as I could guess, some junk food companies were more likely to have some sort of pricing requirement with the general stores. Ice cream novelties sold at the exact same price as down here at every store, while even small bags of chips might be $8.

With that being said, there are nutritional requirements that need to be met (including protein, vitamins, minerals), so *only* butter and sugar water would likely be a bad idea for more than a very short period. If burning a ton of calories, I could see a vast majority of calories coming from sugar+butter not necessarily being an issue (but not quite all). I didn't read the specific links above, but I do recall reading up on the twinkie- diet professor before, and while he primarily lived on those types of items, he did supplement with protein (possibly also a multi vitamin..I don't remember).

lemurcat2

Yeah, we've had threads on some of the weird mono-diets before (including the Twinkie diet), which are usually done as an experiment or to illustrate a proposition (typically that calories are what matter for weight loss, and merely losing weight usually improves test results if one starts out obese). There's some guy in Australia who did a year long potato diet that we've discussed too. I think someone here posted about doing a personal experiment eating only things that could be purchased at 7-11.

janejellyroll

lemurcat2 wrote: »

Yeah, we've had threads on some of the weird mono-diets before (including the Twinkie diet), which are usually done as an experiment or to illustrate a proposition (typically that calories are what matter for weight loss, and merely losing weight usually improves test results if one starts out obese). There's some guy in Australia who did a year long potato diet that we've discussed too. I think someone here posted about doing a personal experiment eating only things that could be purchased at 7-11.

Yes, that 7-11 thread was fascinating. If I remember correctly, the OP was doing a cut and did it only eating items from a 7-11 and had good results.

Theoldguy1

The human body is pretty resilient in most cases and can put up with a lot of odd diets for a short time. Stay on one of these for 2-3 decades (like people do with the Standard American Diet) and come back and report on medical markers.