Tim Donahue’s 25-day, restaurant-only eating experiment ended with a reported nine-pound weight loss and higher energy, but also high costs and an episode of illness after he returned to pizza. The Hoboken resident described the project as a personal filmmaking exercise rather than nutritional advice, according to Fox News Digital.
The experiment was difficult to sustain
Donahue, a 27-year-old Hoboken resident who works in advertising in New York City, originally intended to continue for 30 days but stopped at 25 because weddings and work trips conflicted with the plan, Fox News Digital reported. With black coffee as his only exception, he limited what he ate to items available from Sweetgreen and focused largely on its bowls. He identified the hot honey chicken bowl as his preferred order.
The main obstacle, Donahue said, was organizing daily life around restaurant hours. He sometimes skipped drinks with friends or brought a salad when going out. Although avoiding alcohol and other restaurant meals reduced some spending, he described buying every meal from Sweetgreen as very expensive and said cooking at home would cost substantially less.
The reported result came with important limits
What diners can learn from menu labels
For Hoboken diners ordering from large restaurant chains, the available information is broader than the headline calorie number. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, chains and similar establishments with 20 or more locations must post calories for standard menu items and provide written information such as sodium, fat, carbohydrates, sugars, fiber and protein upon request. Calories alone therefore do not describe a meal’s full nutritional profile, and the labeling requirement does not turn a restaurant-only plan into nutritional advice.
Donahue said he lost roughly nine pounds, but his account does not show that Sweetgreen itself caused the change. The result may also have reflected how much he ate and the broader routine of the experiment; the available reporting includes no independently assessed diet or medical evaluation. Donahue said he is neither a doctor nor a nutritionist and would not recommend the plan to others, according to Fox News Digital.
After the challenge, Donahue ate cheese pizza at a neighborhood pizzeria and said he felt quite sick. That is his description of the episode, not an independently verified medical explanation.
Sweetgreen adopted the idea
Sweetgreen did not pay Donahue to conduct the experiment, but Nicolas Jammet, the company’s co-founder and chief concept officer, said his video prompted the chain to invite 30 people to eat only Sweetgreen for 30 days and document how they felt. The company said it received hundreds of applications, Fox News Digital reported.
The broader cost context points in the same direction as Donahue’s own advice: restaurant-only eating can be more expensive than preparing food at home. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service forecast in August that food-away-from-home prices would rise 3.6% in 2026, compared with a 2.5% increase for food-at-home prices, according to its Food Price Outlook.
