The 32 year old photographer and YouTuber, Anthony Howard-Crow first appeared on big fitness pages after Men’s Health published his story about his ice cream diet experiment. As he explains in one of his videos, he started a YouTube channel called Abs & Ice Cream back in 2011.
Anthony’s experiment was a 30 day diet in which pretty much the only thing he ate was ice cream. Well, he used to take some protein powder ad well, but the majority of the calories were coming from the ice cream. A new job he got forced him to cut the plan short, but he felt he proved his point by losing 2 pounds a week and finishing the experiment with impressive abs.
Another recent diet stunt was Anthony’s 30 day junk food diet that got him shredded by losing about 2 lbs a week, just like the ice cream diet.
“The whole point of these demonstrations,” he says in the video, “ is to show you—basically prove, in the best way I can—that you can eat anything you want and still lose weight.”
To be more specific, Anthony had to consume nothing more than 2,000 calories a day from ice cream, 500 calories a day from protein powder, and a bit of alcohol here and there, just for fun.
As the Youtuber puts it, although he lost almost 30lbs, gained and impressive six-pack and improved his blood work, he was far from happy. In fact it was exactly the opposite of that. “This diet was, hands down, without a doubt, the most miserable dieting adventure I have ever embarked upon,” he says.
“I was moody, and just generally unenjoyable to be around,” he added. According to Men’s Health Australia, his goal was to show that calories matter more than anything else for weight loss—more than macronutrients (carbs, protein, fat), more than exercise, more than when you eat or how many times you chew your food or whatever else the cool kids are talking about these days.
If he could go from 88 to 73 kilograms in 14 weeks while eating dessert at every meal, then it’s impossible to argue, as many do, that calories don’t matter. “The overall goal of my projects is never to present them as healthy, real ways to lose weight,” he says.
Proving ice cream isn’t evil at all he shared some of his results: Anthony’s blood lipids all improved, with higher HDL cholesterol, lower LDL, and dramatically lowered triglycerides. Even his blood glucose declined slightly, despite eating enough sugar to blow his pancreas out.
A weight-loss, and obesity specialist, Spencer Nadolsky, D.O., revealed that it isn’t surprising that all those blood markers moved in a healthy direction.
“With weight loss, a lot of these things improve regardless of the underlying issue,” he says. “But it’s interesting that he got so tired.” “Despite how miserable it was, I definitely don’t want this to be my last stunt diet,” Anthony says while acknowledging he has no idea what his next one might be. “Hopefully some kind of food-related inspiration will just hit me one day, or come out of seeing things through my clients that I never even thought about. Either way, you have not seen the last of these crazy projects.”
