Road to Shangri-La
I've been reading about Seth Roberts's "Shangri-La diet" (henceforth SLD, but not to be confused with the "Steak Lover's Diet") and I thought this would be a good place to think out loud. This isn't strictly a lowcarb thing, but it has interesting implications, maybe.
For those who haven't heard about it, the SLD isn't actually a "diet" in the usual sense of the term. It's a technique for supressing appetite. It involves consuming tasteless calories at least an hour before a meal, and this should also be at least an hour after eating anything. That is, it's done in the middle of at least a 2-hr window of time between eating anything at all. The tasteless calories could be in the form of sugar dissolved in a glass of warm water--I believe Roberts himself used granulated fructose, and has taken a good deal of heat for this dubious choice. Also, from what I've read, dilute sugar water doesn't work for a lot of people. Alternatively, one could use pure fat. Roberts suggests extra light olive, a couple of teaspoons. And that's essentially the whole diet. He claims that doing this blunts appetite and resets the body's setpoint, so that one will simply not want much food at meals. That's the method. Now the theory behind it... Roberts is a research psychologist. His theory is that there is an association between flavor, energy, and appetite. The completely unrevolutionary idea is that flavors stimulate appetite, i.e., when we eat a flavorful food and then "reward" the body with calories/energy, we set up a reinforcement to keep repeating the act. This, Roberts argues, makes sense in a setting of scarcity, as he imagines the paleolithic era to have been. So one way to make use of this principle would be to eat only bland foods, with little variety, because variety itself is a way of heightening the flavor stimulus. There was some discussion about this recently in the "Anchell diet" thread, concerning the seemingly arbitrarily restricted list of non-meat food options. It may also be relevant to the all-meat diet discussions and the experience of those who find that *any* veggies give them cravings. Roberts considered the bland food approach, but recognized that he, and most people, would be unable to eschew flavorful foods permanently. It's one thing if your environment *forces* bland foods upon you, but most people will not willingly accept that austerity. Anyway, keeping to the fat-based version of the SLD, the premise is that taking in flavorless fuel a few times a day weakens the connection between flavor and energy, so that when one does eat, one wants less. Roberts himself claims that doing this actually resulted in too much weight loss, but even now, his ad libitum daily intake is only about 1200 calories, mostly taken in a single meal, with a couple of pieces of fruit during the rest of the day. That seems like pretty extreme caloric restriction to me, but I guess the point is that it's his ad libitum setpoint, while following this plan. It's interesting to me that critics of LC diets often charge that they work by limiting food choices and variety, and by the satiety-inducing property of fat. I think there are good reasons to restrict carbs that are independent of weight control. Maybe the SLD in conjunction with an overall LC plan would work well. |
Is this the guy that does all the self-experimentation?
I'm confused why sugar water would be considered bland. It is sugary, not bland. Hmmm... In some regards, I think this is why the Meat and Egg diet works so well. It really shuts my appetite off and I think two things do that... lots of protein and bland food. My only problem with this method is that I seem to have a limit to how long I can do this before it ends in a binge. |
I've been wondering whether I should start a thread on this. I'm glad someone did. I started the diet on Monday (using Extra Light Olive Oil instead of sugar). My appetite was greatly diminished almost immediately. I have lost 3 pounds so far.
I'm still lowcarbing, since lowcarbing has "cured" my IBS, eczema and ADD. I just wasn't losing weight. (BTW, there's an old thread on this diet here.) |
The SLD and the S-LD may have more in common than we think. Perhaps the S-LD’s flavorless fuel is a low pyruvic acid former like any of the SLD’s lossoyhdrates.
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Well if I was going to try it, I’d go with expeller-pressed coconut oil dissolved in warm water for the flavorless fuel. That’s what Mary Enig and Sally Fallon use to suppress appetite in their book Eat fat, lose fat. |
I remember not letting my kids have any candy or sweets before a meal, because it supresses appetite. May be it does make sense, gotta try coconut oil version.
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Well. if steaks and grapes don't do it for me, I'll fall back on the virgin coconut oil, or extra virgin light olive oil, according to what's on hand. But I'm keeping it as an emergency back up plan.
Thanks once again for leading the way in cracking this weight loss dilemma, ubizmo and jaeger. Your posts are valuable. |
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Is it really flavorless? I would definitely try it if it were. Quote:
I didn't make it past 3 days on Anchell, lol. I don't like feeling deprived. I'm really enjoying the oil thing since I can eat whatever I want, but I really, really have no desire to overeat at all. It's different from a feeling of fullness. I used to binge-eat well past fullness. This is more a feeling of just having NO interest in food at all after satiety is reached. I know it's only been five days for me, but I've never experienced this feeling before, so I'm quite hopeful. |
There is a lot of issues I have with this theory. Right now, though, I'll stick to this one. If it is true that you can unlearn the association between nutrition and flavor (a stupid theory IMO) ... what effect would calorie free highly flavorful food have?
We've had fake food for many decades now - foods that taste like they're loaded with sugar and fat but actually are not. If this theory is correct - that flavor paired with tons of energy teaches the body to associate flavor WITH rich nutrition, thus leading to capitalization on that by increasing hunger - isn't it true that drinking diet soda would "break" or at least confound the association just as much as drinking bland oils? We see from observing dieters this is not true. The more you reduce calories in food, while also loading it with taste sensations that are pleasing, the more people eat. Diet food does NOT teach the body that taste is a poor indication of nutrition, which, in theory, it should. This implies to me (and it is very obvious) that taste (and it's superior texture) -> nutrition is hard coded in our genes. It cannot be learned or unlearned, and at best controlled by eating LESS often (like once or twice a day) or from fewer foods (example, a low carb basic diet). Also, the shangri-la diet seems to be ignoring the fact that oil is NOT a "flavorless food". Even though we cannot perceive a vivid taste, research shows we CAN detect the presence of fat in food through other means. If we reason the smart body wants to capitalize on ample nutrition, and if we recognize the body CAN detect fat as a nutritious substance (it can), then the idea that drinking oil before meals helps you to eat less for this theory is ridiculous. Oh, I don't doubt eating oil before meals helps you to eat less at meals. But, it's quite simply only because FEW substances reduce the rate of gastric emptying, blood sugar response, and increase satiety the way fat does. If the shangri-la diet recommended an oil and vinegar drink, the results would be even more spectacular because vinegar is both calorie free AND potently cleanses the palate (vinegar, like fat, reduces blood sugar and gastric emptying thus increasing satiety and fat burning capabilities). Fructose water? That one's strange. All I can assume is that since fructose is extremely low GI, yet also a carbohydrate (thus instant energy), it is a good way to quickly stop hunger and induce a metabolic fed state WITHOUT contributing to the insulin roller coaster that a glucose drink would. Few things quickly take away hunger than a surge in energy before your body starts cranking out the insulin (and then, once that happens, your hunger grows and grows as lipolysis and GNG is suppressed to near nothingness as you peak with the hypoglycemic episode). If you go into a meal like that (fed, yet, without risk of dramatically becoming hyperinsulinemic thus hungry later) ... it is reasonable to assume you'll eat less at that meal. Basically the diet, IMO, is a gimmic. It is a way of tricking you into getting your metabolism to control its insulin and hunger without uttering the unsexy words "don't eat freaking starch and sugar" :lol:. Ultimately, like all fads, it is too silly, the rules too pointless and vague to really work out long term. |
There was a thread on this already, if anyone wants to see it.
http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthre...ight=Shangri-La |
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I already posted this link. See above. (Third post in the thread.) |
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If it's a silly, ridiculous gimmick, how do you explain the people who have lost 25, 30, and 50+ pounds on this regime? You might want to ask these questions of the author of the diet, Seth Roberts, at his forum. |
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Sorry, missed it. Quote:
There are people who swear by the cabbage soup diet, but it's still a gimmick. I'm skeptical about this, particularly the sugar water thing. Roberts is making a lot of money from his book, like many, many people have in the past, and many, many people will in the future. And that's OK, but the fact that there's so much money in the new diet business leads me to assume something is fraudulent until proven otherwise. Most diets are gimmicky -- it's a fact. The 7 day diet. The dessert diet. The flavor theme diet. The same color food diet. And on and on. What makes me suspicious about this is there's no real science behind it, just some psychological theorizing. There's science behind low carbing; it explains why people overeat and how they can stop, in a verifiable way. This is just some guy's psychological theory, and there's no science I can look at to check it out. |
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Have you read the book? This is the least "diet booky" diet book I have ever read. He includes failures as well as successes in his case histories. I would suggest reading it before condemning it. I must say I'm surprised by this attitude, coming from a lowcarber. I'm reminded of the old "weight loss on Atkins is all water weight" nonsense. I doubt a person could lose 25 or 50 pounds following a "gimmick" diet. |
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I'm not condemning it, and no, I won't read the book: I've found what works for me. If this works for someone else, that's great, I'm happy for them. I'm happy for someone who makes WW, or low fat, or anything else work for them, too. But I'm still skeptical about anything -- not just this diet, anything -- that I can't verify with science, that can't be falsified. This can't be falsified, at least not in any practical way. That doesn't mean it's bad, it just means it isn't for me. Quote:
Every diet book has its success stories. They are a necessary part of the marketing plan. Just because something works doesn't mean it isn't a gimmick; just because something is gimmicky doesn't mean it's without value. Gimmicks have value, and in fact, I believe all popular diets are gimmicky to some extent. Just naming a diet is part of the gimmick in many cases. What in the world does the SBD have to do with South Beach? What does the Hamptons Diet have to do with the Hamptons, and so on? |
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You are not obliged to read the book at all, unless you are going to criticize. How do you know there's no science behind it if you haven't read the book? This sounds kind of like criticism/condemnation to me - "There are people who swear by the cabbage soup diet, but it's still a gimmick. I'm skeptical about this, particularly the sugar water thing. Roberts is making a lot of money from his book, like many, many people have in the past, and many, many people will in the future. And that's OK, but the fact that there's so much money in the new diet business leads me to assume something is fraudulent until proven otherwise. Most diets are gimmicky -- it's a fact. The 7 day diet. The dessert diet. The flavor theme diet. The same color food diet. And on and on. What makes me suspicious about this is there's no real science behind it, just some psychological theorizing. There's science behind low carbing; it explains why people overeat and how they can stop, in a verifiable way. This is just some guy's psychological theory, and there's no science I can look at to check it out." Quote:
I think you misunderstood me. I said the book contained quite a few failures as well as successes. The book sounds more like a guy reporting on the findings of his research than a "diet guru" using the hard sell. Look, I'm not here to argue with anybody, or to fight Seth Roberts' battles for him. I just get annoyed when anyone makes assumptions and/or criticizes something they really haven't investigated. |
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