Does the Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet Really Work?

Remember Jared Fogle. He lost weight on the Subway diet and cashed in big with a TV contract. A few years went by, and a clever young woman named Christine Dougherty wrote a letter to Taco Bell with her story about losing 54 pounds on her Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet. Before you can say "nachos del grande" she's all over TV showing off her svelte body, the result, we are supposed to infer, of the young woman replacing her higher fat and calorie tacos and burritos with the "Mexican" fast food chain's slimmed down Fresco Menu versions.

What's next? Ronald McDonald touting his Happy Meal cheeseburger diet?

So, does the Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet really work?

If you're wondering if the Taco Bell diet really works, it does - and it doesn't. Any time you consume fewer calories than your body needs, you will lose weight. The real question is, will you keep the pounds off long term? In the case of Christine Dougherty's Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet, probably not.

Why the Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet concept is flawed

The premise of the Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet is that Christine Dougherty lost her 54 pounds by eating off of Taco Bell's Fresco Menu, a variant menu that basically subs salsa for cheese in seven of the chain's tacos and burritos. You have to pay close attention to realize that Christine Dougherty was not just eating off the Fresco Menu but also making other sensible choices. These dietary modifications trimmed 500 calories a day from Christine Dougherty's previous diet, limiting her daily caloric intake to about 1,250 calories per day.

Since the Taco Bell Fresco Menu only cuts about 50 or 100 calories from a taco or burrito, it was more likely Christine Dougherty's other sensible choices throughout the day (skipping her Starbuck's café mocha or blueberry muffin for breakfast perhaps?) that actually did far more to slim her down than her Fresco meals at Taco Bell.

You do the math

The mere act of cutting 500 calories from your daily intake will almost guarantee you will lose one pound per week since there are about 3500 calories in a pound. (500 calories X 7 days = 3500 calories or one pound).

As Dr. Melina Jampolis commented on CNN.com, "They're (Taco Bell commercials) giving far too much credit to the Taco Bell product. Whenever you reduce by 500 calories and make reasonable, healthy choices, you're going to lose weight."

Her viewpoint was echoed by Dr. Robert Keith, a nutrition and food science professor at Auburn University. "Various diets -- grapefruit diets, banana diets--they all work for a while, because you don't eat many calories," he said. "The bottom line is, she lost weight because she didn't eat a whole lot."

To Taco Bell's credit, the company does not call its Drive-Thru Diet a weight loss method. "The disclaimers at the bottom say this is part of a lower calorie effort. We say you should exercise," said Tom Wagner, Taco Bell's vice president of consumer insights and lead project manager of the Drive-Thru Diet. "We don't in any way try to market this as a miracle solution to lose weight."

Still, it's all about inference. The bloggers at Skinny Scoopers played right into the Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet hype: "For now, we've decided if we can get buns that look like Christine's, we're all about thinking outside the bun."

The truth is, it's doubtful you could get buns like Christine's retrieving your food from a drive-thru window from the comfort of your SUV. Even Taco Bell's PR flack is advising people to exercise. Maybe a good place to start would be, um, walking into the restaurant.

The real Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet secret: motivation

Perhaps if there's one weight loss secret you can learn from Christine Dougherty it is the power of motivation. The lure of cashing in on her Taco Bell Drive-Thru Diet as Jared Fogle did with Subway may have given her the extra drive to accomplish her supreme weight loss and fitness goals.

Sources:
http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/lose-weight-taco-bell.html
http://www.skinnyscoopers.com/index.php/food-finds/459-down-50-pounds-eating-taco-bell
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2009/12/taco-bell-drive-thru-fast-food-diet-mcdonalds-subway.html
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/01/05/taco.bell.diet/index.html
http://www.tacobell.com
http://www.thedrivethrudiet.com