Shangri La Diet
Shangri La DietUC Berkeley Professor Seth Roberts (http://sethroberts.net/reviews/index.html) has a diet that lets you eat anything you want, as much as you want, whenever you want, no pills, no exercise, no prayers, no recipes - and get as skinny as you want.
Roberts has a book out but you don't need it - the diet can be completely described in a newsvine summary.
The premise is simple: your body wants to store food energy as fat so when the winter famine comes you'll survive. So it trains you to eat the highest calorie foods you can find in preference to anything else. When you find a bunch of calories it raises your set point to help you pack on the pounds. And it trains you to crave the taste of whatever made you do that.
To short-circuit this training and lower your set point, Roberts adds a tasteless but high calorie bump in food intake twice a day. Of primary importance, this bump must happen at least an hour after any meal, and at least an hour before any meal.
Roberts suggests two alternatives. You can have a couple of tablespoons of light olive oil - not extra virgin but the really light flavourless kind. And yes, that's 2 tablespoons twice a day. 9 calories per gram!
Or you can do the same with 2 tablespoons of fructose or sucrose mixed into about a pint of water. For some reason the body doesn't regard the sugar as a flavour in itself. Obviously this option is not something a diabetic should do - if you want to try with sugar you should talk it over with your doctor first.
The results on the site look a lot like LowCarb? weight loss profiles. I shed 45 pounds in 6 months that way about 10 years ago. But like everyone else I couldn't keep LowCarb? going more than a couple of years and then all the weight came back. And then some.
I haven't tried dieting since. But this seems so simple, and to my mind makes sense ... so I'm in. I use the ELOO version, 4 tablespoons in divided doses - 1 Tbl, Breakfast, Lunch, 2 Tbls, Dinner, 1 Tbl. I'm flirting with getting rid of the 4th Tbl, but haven't tried systematically yet. It's just that some nights I feel too full. Heh. With the oil I'm consuming an average of about 1500 kcalories / day ad libitum. I used http://www.fitday.com to figure that out so I think it's pretty reliable. Less than half what I ate ad libitum before starting.
I'm reporting results at http://petermerel.newsvine.com/_news/2007/03/01/593909-the-shangri-la-diet . I've been on for 3 weeks now and am rapidly shedding the fatsuit without using a jot of willpower. If anyone else here tries it please add a note to let us know how it works out for you. ~ PeterMerel
SamFalvo?:
Hi Sam! Please check out the ShangriLaDiet link below. It's a diet where you can consume sugar 2 or 3 times a day and actually use it to lose weight fast. I don't know that it's a Get-Out-Of-Diabetes-Jail-Free card. But it's sure as crap working for me. As you know I love my tucker and generally go back for thirds given the opportunity. In 2 weeks on this diet I'm down to 1500 calories per day of ad-libitum eating. No hunger, no cravings, no forbidden foods, no trouble at all.
You might still get diabetes - but you'll be the thinnest diabetic your doctor has ever seen ... ~ Pete.
No thanks. Spiking bloodsugar levels is precisely what causes the pancreas to develop a tolerance for the sugar in the first place!! This is what happened to my great grandfather, my grandfather, and my father. And so far as I can tell, it's now happening to me too. It's patently clear that I feel adverse effects with sugar intake, so I am absolutely not taking any chances. But thanks for your concern. :) --SamuelFalvo?.
No worries, Sam - I wouldn't do that either. There's also a zero-sugar olive oil based version of the same diet, which is what I do. Look, check it out - I am not a doctor, but it sounds like exactly what you're asking for - a willpower-free lifelong diet that allows you to determine rationally what you do with sugar. And eat however you like with the exception of maybe 2-4 hours per day. Can't get simpler than that. ~ Pete.
I've been reading some more on that diet of yours. Good lord, Pete! Oils derived from any vegetable source is able to be digested by a Diesel engine as fuel. PeterMerelRunsOnDiesel?! -- SamuelFalvo?
Given there's only one book on the diet so far, a new one called "The Diesel Diet" might just be a bestseller. Or it might get confused with a PeakOil book. Would that be bad? I dunno but I'm thinking of getting together a team of fat geeks, taking pictures of us prancing around in speedoes, then going for corporate SLD sponsorship as "Team Bertolli". I already emailed Bertolli about that idea but for some reason they haven't gotten back yet. Maybe I should just register the domain name and wait for them to come to me ...
Or, we can demonstrate how the diet can revolutionize the kinky sex scene with some 1337 zentai pr0n! Get some fat geeks into a zentai suit and show the effects of the diet on a weekly basis -- one picture per week, each. Then, we can graph tummy width versus the amount of (zentai) girls they've been width. Sounds like solid scientific research material here. ;)
In all seriousness, though, I'm a little concerned with swallowing tablespoons worth of any kind of oil. At least, straight. It seems like it's vomit material to me. But, if the key is taste versus bounty ratio (hmm, foods taste better, it must be spring-time. Stock up!), then why should I have to gulp down diesel fuel 4 times a day? Why not eat normal foods with your nose pinched off to prevent the taste from being sensed while eating?
Actually that's exactly what most folk do to lose the last 10 pounds - they use swimmer's noseclips. But that's not much fun I guess - this is a foodie's diet. Eat as much as you want of anything you want. You can do the oil in just one dose a day if you can stomach that - many have found that's actually the most effective way to do it. And after the first month or two it doesn't matter - the background level of appetite suppression means dosing time doesn't matter and you can just skull the oil at bedtime. The way you do that is to float it on cold water - feels like you're just drinking water so there's no gagging or other horrors. And actually the cold oil feels quite nice in your tummy - I've got to the point that I look forward to it. Now that's kinky! ~ Pete.
Right; it's precisely that gag reflex that I have issues with. I'm particularly prone to gagging.
I was worried about it right up until I tried it. I use a wine glass. Trick is you put the oil in first - start with just 1 tbl say - and then an equal amount of water. I use a few grains of sugar too but you don't need to. Obviously the oil floats on the water, but putting the oil in first seems to result in it getting coated in a thin skin of water. I also keep the oil in the refrigerator to help disguise it. And chase it with a whole glass of water.
Here's a question -- it's said that the Mediterranean diet is a good diet. What is the one characteristic about it that makes it mediterranean? How does this compare with, e.g., Italian cuisine, where one serves salads prior to meals (and/or after -- in my grandmother's house, salads were always served afterwards)? And, the salads have, of course, Italian dressing, and Italian dressing is just vinegar and olive oil.
The SLD trick isn't the oil per se - that's just a convenient way to consume dense calories with no flavour. Deconditioning your body's association between specific tastes and caloric density is the point.
SLD theory says this conditioning triggers cravings for the taste of high calorie foods in times of their abundance. These cravings naturally evolved to increase human stores of fat in preparation for a winter famine which now never comes. Over a lifetime of high abundance high calorie foods your body naturally becomes fatter and fatter - it "raises its set point".
If you diet by restricting calories, your body actively maintains this set point by increasing metabolic efficiency. I thinks winter has come. But when you stop, it doesn't ramp your metabolism down again. So, by middle age, eating ad libitum or dieting, most industrialized humans are either over-exercised or blimpified. We sedentary engineering types face a rigged game.
SLD hacks this game, giving the body a dose of flavorless high calorie foods to break the flavor/calorie conditioning. What's amazing is this works almost immediately. Your body no longer knows there's abundant high caloric food, and it isn't interested in anything less. Can't crave what you can't taste, but don't crave what you can ... result: last week I actually spat out a piece of chocolate. First time in 44 years on this planet that's ever happened!
So you don't feel hunger, so your body doesn't monkey with your metabolism. Low appetite plus normal metabolism means you rapidly and reliably de-blimpify. And for good this time. You have the root password to your gut.
You may have problems if you've already yo-yo dieted so much that your metabolism can get by on just a tiny number of calories. Such SLD-immune folk appear able to get the thing to work by combining it with exercise ... but that takes the Shangri-La out of it. Me, I'm happily losing weight as a couch potato. Well, soon a couch stringbean ;-).
Well, I for one enjoy exercising. But I stopped, I think, because I gained weight somehow. But, oddly enough, I bike a lot of places, and my legs are super-cut now as a result. I can accelerate, on an up-right hybrid on-road / off-road bicycle, from zero to 20MPH in about 20 seconds, without standing on the pedals. Considering I weigh about 1/5th that of a Porsche 914 (230lbs), I think that's pretty significant. That gives you an indication of how much power output my legs alone are capable of bursting. Sustained, it's less, but once you're up to speed, there's no further point in bursting anyway. Initial calculations with *educated guesses* for things like distances and such indicates that I produce close to 100W of power -- 1/3rd the ideal for my body weight (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-powered_transport ). All things considered, that's actually a fair amount of power, since it's clear I'm not really in shape (yet). The funny thing is, I'm getting faster all the time too. I'm sure I can produce higher output if I were to resort to standing on the pedals, or using clip-on pedals (the kind that require the specially made shoes), since then I could use leg-power for the full 360 degree rotation per leg, instead of just half the cycle. Given the use of clip-ons, I would be able to produce 200W of motive power -- one quarter of a horsepower -- which meshes perfectly with "average in-shape" expectations, when you think about it.
I was interested in dropping the pounds so that I can enjoy the aikido again. I still do enjoy it when I go, but there is a strong element of laziness involved now. And breathing problems, but that could be directly related to the lack of exercise. My upper body gets weak because it has all that extra heft to lug around, but it's not generally exercised for it. My ideal weight is 175 pounds, BTW, so you can imagine how much weight I'd have to lose.
The odd thing is, anyone who looks at me simply do not believe I weigh 230 lbs. :) They're shocked when I tell them. :)
I spent a couple months last year playing with bodyweight exercises - the kinds of things you see at http://www.bronzebowpublishing.com/exercises.html . But I think I'll wait on them until I'm skinnier again - why spend time lifting flab when it's melting off anyway? And I get enough exercise hefting around my 7-year-old anyway - boy likes piggy-back rides and damned if I'm going to stop giving them until I can't anymore. The years go by too fast!
To build muscle, of course. However, I have to admit that I haven't been participating in Aikido or yoga of late, mostly due to lethargy. Speaking of which, have you noticed any alterations of your physique in terms of muscle mass? How has your average energy level been?
SLD doesn't seem to affect muscle mass, but it is a new diet and only a few folk can say much about that. Most of the folk on the boards report increased energy and less fatigue, and I do too - better sleep and lots of omega 3s seem good for that. FWIW I feel a bit stronger than last month - my boy seems easier to heft about. But giving piggy back rides to a 7 year old isn't exactly what you'd call science ...
One thing that confuses me is the scheduling of filling up on diesel (sorry; that's just too funny a concept to think about). I can see taking 1 tbsp 1 hour prior and after lunch. But how are dinner and breakfast handled? What kinds of foods do you eat for breakfast, such that the oil doesn't initiate a regurgitation response? Is the oil consumed after or before breakfast? Similar questions for dinner as well.
Does the diet have any effect with teaspoons instead of tablespoons? E.g., does it work similarly, albeit with reduced effectiveness?
All this is answered in the FAQ at http://boards.sethroberts.net/index.php?topic=3398
So, I decided to try the diet out for a duration of one week with the sugar water, to see how I adjust to it. I'm using the sugar water because nobody, anywhere, has ELOO. Several places could special order it, but only by the case. And the other kinds of oils? Gobsmackingly expensive. The goal is not to lose weight in one week, but to measure the impact of sugar water on my weekly health. If any weight loss accompanies it, that's an added bonus.
Sunday
I had one full glass (about, but not exactly, one pint) of sugar water 1 hour before dinner, and again after. Only two teaspoons of sugar could be dissolved before the water reached a state of full saturation. So, between the two glasses of water, I had injested 4 teaspoons, or approximately 60 calories. For dinner itself, I had home-cooked ravioli from Trader Joe's.
I ended up getting hungry as I went to bed. However, I didn't have anything particular that I was hungry for. So I ended up not eating anything at all, and my body was fine with that decision.
Monday
For breakfast this morning, I decided to have some Cinnamon Toast Crunch. You know, those golden-wafers-of-almost-completely-sugar? Anyway, I had two bowls of that stuff. My typical intake of that stuff is three. It is not yet clear if the cause for the reduction of intake is related to drinking raw sugar the night prior. But it is a data point that is markedly different from what I normally do.
I should point out that I consider breakfast cereals as treats, and I positively do not eat this stuff daily. I normally have a bowl of fruit with a (Yes, note the singular here) scone. That's the extent of my breakfast in most cases. Today is quite the exception.
I rode to work today on my bike after taking one week off (I ride the car for one week, then I ride the bike for one week. This keeps the car mobile in case I need it. Rotary engines aren't known for liking to sit idle for any length of time). My energy level was quite high. Of course, I also just had two bowls of Jet-A fuel.
I'm currently, as I type this, sipping down a full pint of sugar water, having dissolved 3 packets of sugar (I'm hoping that one packet is one teaspoon). It's one hour after I've had breakfast and brushed my teeth. I'm pacing myself so as to drink the pint over the period of one half hour. As indicated by Seth, doing this effectively prevents an instantaneous spike in blood sugar levels.
As you may know, sugary foods tends to send my head into a tailspin. It often feels like my eyes are about to pop out of their sockets, and I partially lose motor control (randomly) for my eyes. Sometimes, I don't get these symptoms, and instead, simply lose my ability to think. These are clear, distinctive symptoms of type-2 diabetes. Yet, drinking the sugar water apparently has not exacerbated any of these symptoms, so far. What I did notice, however, is that what symptoms of high blood sugar I have seems more distributed. So instead of eating, then an intense blast of symptoms, then being fine, the "symptom level over time" curve is much flatter, and the intensity is greatly reduced. In short, if anything, it appears to be helping to regulate blood sugar levels. Still, I was hoping for the ELOO route.
Tuesday
Consumed sugar water as I normally do, but, so far no observable weight loss. There was no appetite suppression at all. I'm finding that I need to take much longer to drink the sugar water now, too. It now takes me up to 3 hours to drink a pint. This obviously conflates breakfast and lunch times.
Wednesday
Weighed 219 this morning.
Due to social factors, I wasn't in a position to consume sugar water. I had many meetings today, as I normally do on Wednesdays. During the beginning of the day, I was very tired. I just wanted to go home all day. Also, at the end of my day, I had spent some time at a local restaurant celebrating an event with a co-worker.
I'm inclined to believe that I may be a rare breed: someone who is both hypoglycemic and potentially diabetic. Drinking the sugar water produces both beneficial effects (I have energy) and negative effects (headaches, etc), depending on the quantity and rate of intake. Obviously, it's possible to balance the intake to remain at an optimum level.
Thursday
Back to drinking the water. So far, there is no observable weight difference. In fact, I have so far gained one pound. Instead of 219 on the scale, I'm at 220. I attribute this to noise, though.
Friday
220lbs.
Saturday
218.5lbs. Oddly enough, this came after eating half of a large pizza, and downing a half-liter of Coca Cola. About two hours after doing so, I had the runs of my life. ;)
The experiment has since ended. No discernable weight change, despite the use of sugar water. Olive oil is to be tried next. When will I start that? Probably within the next week or two, when my stomach feels normal again. :(
I tried the sugar water and really couldn't face it. Try leaving feedback at http://www.bertolli.com and tell 'em you'll join PeterMerel's SLD team if they'll be good enough to sponsor us ...
I have to admit, I don't think it's going too well. No weight difference at all so far. Although this wasn't the focus of the experiment, it still contradicts the "it works the first day!" common theme that so many people seem to agree on. --SamuelFalvo?
I'd like to address your perception that an oil based version of the diet is too expensive. First, you can order ELOO online for very cheap from amazon.com . Second, even if you did the walnut oil instead you have to balance the cost of the oil against the cost of the food you wouldn't be buying and eating. The oil cost is just not a big deal. I don't know whether the SW is a way to control your sugar problems or not, but certainly being diabetic or hypogycemic and messing around with your sugar intake must be a dangerous thing to do. I am not a health care professional and you shouldn't take my advice on anything to do with your diet or health - I can only say what's worked for me. But if I were you I'd use the SW only as a way to get your regular daily sugar intake tastelessly, and use ELOO for the bulk of the tasteless calories. ~ Pete.
Well, it's certainly dangerous if I don't consider the reaction from the sugar. I suppose I'm lucky in that I can feel the body's reaction almost instantaneously. So, I am able to enjoy sugar -- just not a whole lot of it in one sitting.
The ELOO will be my next step. It is costly -- $16 or so for 34 oz. And since I don't pay anything for food right now except on the weekends, to me it's a pretty big hit. (Google feeds me well. Oh, and the "Google 15?" Doesn't happen with me. I weigh exactly the same now as I did when I first got interviewed. But I digress.) But, I'll give it a shot -- one week, just like the sugar water, unless I get sick. :) I just wanted to try the SW first, because it was cheaper.
34 ounces is over 2 weeks of oil (* 2 tbls per ounce = 68 tbls / 4 tbls per day = 17 days). So that's under $8 per week. Say a dollar a day. Let's say you get the same AS as myself. So you're eating half as much. Your food budget would have to be less than $15 per week for this to actually cost you money. If you're only spending $15/week on food at present, Sam, you don't need the ShangriLaDiet.
You forget that I work for Google, where I receive free food cooked by trained, gourmet chefs. Our cafeterias produce food approximately the same quality as a top-end Brazilian steakhouse.
Yes, I forget that. I wonder whether they might have a quart or two of ELOO in the communal larder then?
The SLD forums are buzzing with a new AS trick I think I'll try this week. Simply, if flavour-free calories break the taste-calorie associations, why not calorie-free flavours? People have reported significant AS using either lemon-water or kool-aid-sweetened-with-fructose.
Apparently the trick is to drink these things both with meals and between them - no flavourless window to worry about. So if the oil is too expensive for you ... how about lemons?
This also suggests something like lemon-water sweetened with Splenda, the 0-calorie sugar substitute that actually tastes like real sugar and has no known adverse affects at all. --SamuelFalvo?
My God, I think I completely accidentally found a mechanism that works for me. And quite by accident too. Did I mention this was purely accidental?
At work, I've found that eating two to three bowls of Super Sugar-Coated Frosty Chocolate Bombs (or any other modern box of edible chunks of sugar we call cereal today; I've taken a liking to Cinnamon Toast Crunch and to Lucky Charms) at 10:30AM, a Googley lunch at 12:30, then another 2 to 3 bowls of a different kind of cereal at 3:30 to 4:00PM, that's enough to keep me full until 9 to 10PM at night. I've been doing this for the last two weeks, not even noticing what I've been doing until this morning, when I found that my weight is 217.3 pounds. That means, in no uncertain terms, I lost, in the last two weeks, almost 3 pounds.
IF, on those rare occasions, I do find myself hungry at about 7PM, I have myself a sandwich with MEAT in it. (Note the pattern? Carbs, proteins, carbs, proteins, ...). However, I must admit, it IS pretty rare that I get hungry then. Good application of the AlternateHardAndSoftLayers pattern there :-)
NOTES:
Bring on the Frosted Mini-wheats and Chocolate Cheerios!!! --SamuelFalvo?
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