Vinay Menon: Forget Ozempic: Man says he lost more than 50 pounds by eating McDonald’s for 100 days

There may be an emergency summit this weekend for diet gurus.

And it may be catered by McDonald’s. A warning: I am not a doctor. I am not a nutritionist. And I am certainly not encouraging anyone hoping to shed a few pounds to make a thrice-daily pilgrimage to the Golden Arches.

That is what Kevin Maginnis is encouraging.

The 57-year-old Nashville man, TikTok star and greatest free PR in the history of fast food, made headlines earlier this year with a counterintuitive declaration: He would get in shape by eating nothing but McDonald’s for 100 days.

On Thursday, Day 100, a slim and exuberant Maginnis visited NBC’s “Today” to unbox the results. He lost 58.5 pounds, plunging from 238 to 179.5. (It seems decimal points are McMandatory when McNuggets are in the McMath.)

“I feel amazing,” Maginnis said, looking amazing.

Meanwhile, the “Today” anchors — Craig Melvin, Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb and Carson Daly — looked utterly baffled, like they were interviewing a man who claimed to have dramatically improved his sprinting speed by tying cinder blocks to his Adidas.

Maginnis embraced a regimen that is unlikely to be endorsed by Health Canada. He’d go to McDonald’s three times a day and order whatever he craved. But the fine print, missed by some media, is portion control. Maginnis downsized every order by 50 per cent. Medium fries? Half a medium fries. Big Mac? Half a Big Mac.

And while no menu item was off limits, sugary drinks were verboten. No pop, no McCafé monstrosities. Maginnis also quit booze. Instead, he hydrated exclusively with 80 to 90 ounces of water per day. He did not snack between his oh-so-Happy Meals.

I know what you’re thinking. OK, he lost mega pounds with Quarter Pounders? But are his insides now deadlier than a plague rat in 14th-century Barcelona?

Ms. Kotb, visibly skeptical, asked about his blood work.

I fell out of my chair. Maginnis says his triglycerides dropped by 205 points. His cholesterol is down 65. And an A1C test, which measures blood sugar, moved him from “prediabetic,” pre-McDiet, back to a “healthy range.” McWeird!

These results are the exact opposite of Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 “Super Size Me” doc.

And I am so having a Spicy Habanero McChicken tonight.

Maginnis, this unpaid mascot for McDonald’s, is either a folk hero or may soon be hospitalized. Tough to say. For 100 days, his only fruits and vegetables were apple fritters, blueberry muffins, the lettuce, tomatoes and pickles on burgers, and packs of ketchup? The only exercise he got was sticking his arm out at the drive-thru?

Why does my Apple Watch keep shaming me into going for a brisk walk?

Maginnis says what you eat does not matter. It’s about how much you eat.

Taco Bell? If you are willing to feed me for the next 100 days, I will attempt to peer-review his thesis. Email me, Krispy Kreme. I have a glazed idea for a future column.

The “Today” segment started with a before-and-after image so dramatic, I wondered if it had been doctored by a Photoshop specialist from Team Kardashian. How can McDoubles make a McBelly vanish in three months? Maginnis looks like a different person. Then again, I have seen before-and-afters in which the person not only lost 150 pounds, but suddenly seemed to belong to a different race.

He’s down to a Size 28? But how did this Mediterranean Diet turn his eyes blue?

It’s the health gurus who should be freaked out by this McDiet. How are you going to persuade a client to embrace Paleolithic or Volumetrics when delicious Sausage ’N Egg McMuffins are a half-block away? Maginnis didn’t count calories. He just went to McDonald’s and ordered whatever an invisible Ronald whispered in his ear.

It may be years before his house stops reeking of Filet-O-Fish.

I bet this McDiet catches on. All crazy fad diets catch on for a while. Remember the “Vision Diet,” in which lunatics put on blue-tinted spectacles before every meal in to make the yellow-red foodstuff look less appetizing? There was a “Baby Food Diet” that had adults chowing down on nothing but Gerber. The “Ice Diet” called for participants to consume a daily litre of frozen water and possibly turned a number of enterprising Zamboni drivers into millionaires. At one point, weight loss enthusiasts were even dipping cotton balls into tropical smoothies and swallowing them whole.

Once a person discovers a new diet that works it can become a religion.

I was sitting in Jordan Peterson’s living room one morning and he was eating ribs. He explained a strict devotion to “meat and greens” helped him overcome a number of autoimmune disorders, including psoriasis and uveitis. So he quit dairy, juice, nuts, sugar, carbs, anything straying beyond the taxonomy of “meat and greens.”

I was like, “Ribs? Dude, it’s 9 a.m. I’m getting queasy. Have some Corn Flakes.”

But I was doing what Maginnis is now warning against: “Stop vilifying the food.”

He says portion control is the key to conquering obesity: “Three meals, cut in half.”

His next goal is to climb a 100-foot rope, possibly with a Caesar McWrap between his teeth: “Round 1 was eliminate the obesity. Round 2 is increase the beast in me.”

He does look amazing. He has the energy of a neutron bomb.

But I still don’t get this McDiet. Maybe a Hot Fudge Sundae will help.

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