Snickers* Diet

This week, I’ll be out of town at a conference for four days. Catering at events like this usually revolves around bakery items, which I absolutely cannot eat (I am severely gluten intolerant). After hours, I’ll be staying with a friend who is not exactly conscientious about his food choices; I could ask him to stock up on foods I can eat, I suppose, but I’ll only be at his house for one meal a day; additionally, he’ll be out of the house when I get there at the end of each day, and I would rather not cook in someone else’s kitchen for four days. I’ve read enough about professor who tried out the “Twinkie Diet” that I thought it might be fun to test it out, with slight modifications.

Twinkie Diet synopsis: professor ate junk food for two months; thanks to a caloric deficit, he lost weight; additionally, his cholesterol and triglyceride numbers improved (see the link to CNN for more details).

I can’t eat Twinkies (gluten), but I can eat Snickers. I looked at the nutrition info, did some math, and thought, why not? Each Snickers is 250 calories; five a day would put me at very slightly fewer calories than I eat now (I average @1300-1400 per day currently, which is workable for me; I am mostly sedentary, exercise very infrequently, and do not have a lot of weight to lose). Math’ing out the macros (not necessary for caloric deficit; I’m thinking in terms of satiety), at 12g fat per bar, that’s 60g fat per day, which is not out of line with what I eat now; the carbs and the protein are where things get dicey. At 33g carbs each, that’s 165g of carb per day, which is a bit more than I eat currently (very roughly 100g per day); since I have no medical problem which necessitates watching carbs, I have no problem bumping them up for a few days (for science!). The protein, though... at 4g per bar, that’s 20g per day… that’s a bit low…. Upon further thought, I decided to sub out one of the Snickers per day with a gluten-free protein bar (which also has a significant amount of fiber, and slightly more calories), hence the asterisk in the title of this post; I’ll be consuming just shy of 1300 calories per day. (Why not a protein bar diet for four days? Most of them have quite a bit of sugar alcohol in them; this particular brand does not, but has over 20g of fiber per bar; either way, if I ate protein bars for four days, I’d be in the bathroom more than I’d be in conference sessions. Additionally, protein bar diet is not nearly as much fun to say as Snickers bar diet). So, four Snickers plus a protein bar, plus a multivitamin (because vitamins), for four days. (The cost works out to roughly $25 total for those four days, which is a heck of a lot less than my $60 per diem.)

My prediction: I’m still going to lose some weight, thanks to being in a calorie deficit, although I may retain a little bit of fluid as a function of eating more carbs than I do currently. The protein is a little lower than I usually eat, but seeing as how I don’t lift weights on a regular basis anyway, this shouldn’t be a real problem. I’ve been playing with 16/8-style intermittent fasting recently, so I’m not terribly worried about being physically hungry – hunger doesn’t really bother me. Most importantly, I’m not worried about eating something that will put me in the hospital for a few days while I’m 1000 miles from home, which is kind of a big deal (the last time I went to a conference, I found out the hard way that rice served in restaurants is frequently cooked in stock thickened with wheat flour; I missed most of that conference).

I am definitely not recommending this as a long-term weight-loss strategy; this is really no better than any other highly restrictive eating plan, as it definitely does not teach moderation. I have two reasons for doing this: for starters, eating Snickers for four days is better than playing the dietary lottery with conference food, where hidden gluten or cross-contamination will put me in the hospital (I generally do not consider any food to be “junk” food, but rather as existing on a continuum of more/less healthy; that said, I take great delight in being able to tell people who look at me sideways while I’m eating two or three Snickers at lunch that I’m eating them for better health). More seriously, this is to prove a point: for weight loss, you can still eat candy bars and lose weight – it’s about CICO. The fact that the CI for me is going to be Snickers (and one gluten-free protein bar) is irrelevant in terms of weight loss: outside of specific medical conditions, there is nothing inherently wrong with carbs in general or sugar specifically, nor does “clean eating” really matter, either (I refuse to wash the Snickers before eating them). CICO. That’s it.

Have at, doubters.

(Apologies in advance to the mods.)