Taco Bell Admits 'Drive-Thru Diet' Isn't a Diet

(Jan. 20) – Lose 54 pounds eating fast food and you, too, may become a media star.

At least that's how it's working out for 27-year-old Christine Dougherty, who held up her former "fat pants" at a press conference today, just like Subway poster boy Jared Fogle once did.

"I know his story inspired people to lose weight," Dougherty told reporters. "So I hope my story will also."

How much did she weigh when those pants fit her? Dougherty isn't saying. She does, however, claim she wore a size 12 dress before shrinking down to a super-skinny size zero.

Now Taco Bell – a company once famous for its "Yo Quiero" talking Chihuahua – has turned this woman from Pensacola, Fla., into the face of its "Drive-Thru Diet Menu" campaign.

But just because Taco Bell has registered "Drive-Thru Diet" as a trademark – and uses it in advertising – doesn't mean that anyone considers the Drive-Thru Diet an actual weight-loss program.

"It's not a diet plan for weight loss," Ruth Carey, a registered dietitian hired by Taco Bell, told AOL News.

Various disclaimers on a company Web site echo that sentiment.

So what is it?

"Think of the Drive-Thru Diet Menu as better choices at the drive-through," said Carey. "And there are many Americans who eat a drive-through diet many times a week."

Dougherty's new-found fame has spurred questions about how she became Taco Bell's new healthful face.

At the press conference, where Taco Bell released a study on America's drive-through habits, she recounted her long battle with the bulge.


"It was really when I got in my later teens that I started to gain weight and not really feel like I was in control," Dougherty said. "And then I got married, and I still gained weight. And I tried various small changes."

Low-carb diets didn't work. Then she tried taking note of the calories she was wolfing down.

As a young woman working in a business consultancy, she said she rarely has time to cook. That's what led her to Taco Bell.

She said she's especially fond of the the 170-calorie Fresco Ranchero Chicken Soft Taco, one of seven items with no more than 340 calories on the Taco Bell menu.

After eating at Taco Bells five to eight times a week – frequently via drive-through – she started to see results.

The loss came without obsessively writing down every calorie in a journal and without a demanding exercise routine, she says.

"I think the reason this worked so well for me is because I was very realistic, and I didn't have to make huge, drastic changes," she said. "I was already eating out a lot."

Dougherty says she never had intention of reaching out to the chalupa-making conglomerate to tell her story, but her husband eventually convinced her to write a letter.

"So I did," she said, "and here I am now."

Taco Bell claims that 70 percent of its customers order their meals through the drive-through window, and giving those customers more healthy alternatives is key to its new strategy.

"The simple reality is that Americans are on the go, and many of them typically purchase drive-through 10 times a month," Carey said. "What we now know is that they want a healthier alternative."

Of course, losing 54 pounds in two years is quite an incentive. Taco Bell wouldn't dare make that sort of promise.

If you want those results, you'll probably have to go on a real diet.