Not until you see all the McDonald's food John Cisna ate in a given day, every day for six months, does it hit you: This man lost 60 pounds eating like this.
The staff at a McDonald's in Palm Beach Gardens trotted out the dishes for a typical day and laid them before him. Two egg white breakfast sandwiches, oatmeal and milk for breakfast. A bacon ranch chicken salad, a yogurt parfait and two bags of apples for lunch. A cheeseburger meal with small fries for dinner.
Yes, fries. Yes, a burger.
"It's a lot of food, isn't it?" he asks rhetorically.
It's obviously a lot of food. The real question is: Is it good for you?
That's the question Cisna, an Iowa science teacher, set out to answer as a human guinea pig in 2013.
Three sophomores in his science class started with a hypothesis for a project: Is it possible to eat nothing but McDonald's for 90 days straight and be healthier for it? The 90 days soon became 180. The students designed the menu, and Cisna volunteered to eat nothing but McDonald's within very strict nutritional guidelines.
That's 540 straight meals. No cheat days. Just items that the students chose for him from the McDonald's menu, staying at or below 2,000 calories and meeting the FDA's daily recommendations on as many as 15 different categories such as vitamins C and D, fiber, sugar and calories from fat.
"I figured it couldn't work," said Zoee Risdal, a student in that science class.
But it did. Cisna lost 61 pounds. His cholesterol dropped from 249 to 170, as did several other risk factors.
McDonald's corporate learned about his weight loss and now they pay Cisna to travel around the country speaking to high schools and other groups. He was in Palm Beach County last month, where he spoke to Lake Worth High seniors about making good choices with food.
"I talk about the importance of choice. It's a process of getting people to think for themselves," Cisna said. "This is what education is about: making kids think."
Cisna grew up a baseball player in Des Moines, just 45 minutes south of the school where his students ran his experiment, and earned a scholarship to Iowa Sate. He was a jock, fit, stout but never overweight.
But by age 54 (he's 56 now), his weight had ballooned to 280 pounds with a 51-inch waist. He was a binge eater who could devour a whole pizza after a long day of work. Or a 24-ounce ribeye at dinner. A family-size pack of potato chips in front of the television. "I was a mess," he said. "I was a heart attack waiting to happen."
Then he hatched the idea with his students at Colo-Nesco High. He says he chose McDonald's because they serve a variety of food throughout the day. Plus, they post all their nutritional information in a "menu builder" online.
Keep up with Tampa Bay’s top headlines
Subscribe to our free DayStarter newsletter
You’re all signed up!
Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get started.
Explore all your optionsHis students came up with 56 different menus for him. He ate 108 of McDonald's 133 items. And walked for 45 minutes every day. Still, his wife and three daughters were scared for him. "This is the dumbest thing you've ever done in your life," his oldest told him.
"The only one who backed me on this idea was my doctor," Cisna said.
A friend who owned a local McDonald's franchise donated all the food for the experiment, because the McDonald's diet isn't cheap. It would have cost Cisna about $22 a day, more than $150 a week. "Everyone thinks you can eat cheaper going out. No way," he said. "You can buy a lot of groceries for $150 a week."
And it's also not a diet he endorses. It was far from perfect. He and his students never managed to create a menu for him that kept the sodium in check. They wanted to target 2,500 mg or less. They never got under 3,800.
"I don't want people to be on a fast-food diet only — that's just stupid," Cisna said. "This was an experiment."
Some groups have accused McDonald's of using Cisna to pitch fast food to high school students. But Cisna's message was about more than running for the golden arches, said Lake Worth assistant principal James Cooper. "His point was you can make good choices whether you go to the grocery store or wherever you go."
Cisna's best evidence is the man he's become -- choosing a balanced diet after the experiment ended. Today, he's 227 pounds with a 36-inch waist. His first regular meal was salmon and steamed vegetables at a hometown restaurant with his family.
"I took my first bite of salmon and my mouth started uncontrollably watering," he said.