Here’s a CNN story I read in mid-November. I hope you find it helpful; for me it was a true ‘light bulb’ moment. To prove calorie count trumps all, a nutritionist ate nothing but Little Debbie Snack Cakes for a couple of months and lost 27 pounds. Not only did he lose the weight, his blood work improved. Counter intuitively, his triglycerides and glucose levels got BETTER.

He doesn’t espouse Twinkies as a nutritional mainstay. It’s just an exaggerated means to illustrate the relationship between caloric intake and weight control.

Bottom-line: If you eat less than you burn, you WILL lose weight.

He is roughly my age and weight. So following his example I began a limited calorie diet the week before Thanksgiving (there’s an app for that.) I’m happy to report that in the intervening weeks I’ve lost 24 pounds, having gone from 200 to 176 pounds (as of this morning, 2/26/11.) And I’ve eaten everything from pasta to Mexican food—albeit in limited amounts.

Yes, I mixed in healthy foods too, but the freedom to eat what I wanted made this a maintainable diet.

Comments?