Sorry about duplicating a thread that already existed. I did search on "shangri-la" but missed it.

Personally, I find pure fat pretty tasteless. It does, of course, enhance the flavors of other foods, which is one reason why low-fat diet foods tend to be unappetizing.

*dilute* sugar water doesn't taste like much either, but I can't see going that route.

I agree that on the face of it this method is...silly. BUT it's so easy to try, and the risk is zero (with the olive or coconut oil version anyway) that there seems to be no good reason *not* to experiment with it. At worst, I'll have consumed some extra fat.

I find it interesting that Roberts's own eating pattern has settled into nearly a one meal/day pattern.

A) Without writing a long post I have no desire to write, I know there's no science behind it because there can't be science behind it, not the kind of science I'm interested in.

B) It is a fact that Roberts is making a lot of money from his book. It is a fact that diet books tend to make a lot of money. That isn't a criticism; that is an observation. I used that observation to explain why I'm skeptical about this, as I am skeptical about anything I can't verify with science, where money is involved. That isn't criticism. Take my word for it: had I decided to be critical, there would have been no doubt.

I'm sorry if explaining why this diet could be a gimmick, and why I'm skeptical about this, and many other diets, somehow upset you. It wasn't my intent. And now, I hope this thread can return to the merits and demerits of this plan.

I think he's a CRONer. On his site, someone said he eats 1200 calories a day.

And here is a radio interview with Roberts.

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/S...7_ShangriLa.mp3

The theories are silly.
The rules are gimmicky.
I did not, however, say it wouldn't produce weight loss.
I do believe it works. It works because the more flavors you eat, the more you over eat. Over eating is not bad because over eating makes you fat (it doesn't, healthy people control weight and feeding on a continuum of time). Over eating is bad because over eating destroys metabolism by spiking sugar & insulin. Anything that reduces how much you eat at meals automatically will lead to better metabolic functioning.
Another reason it works is because the "magic foods" all favorably modulate metabolism over a continuum of time. The metabolic effects of drinking oil before a meal, and fructose in water, all eventually lead to the end point of lower blood sugar, lower insulin, and less eating.

The shangri-la diet works not because of conditioning the body to "forget" food is nutritious; it works because, indirectly, you are orienting your metabolism toward fat burning by following the rules.

If I believe the diet works, why am I bashing it? I'll tell you. It is because, like all fads, it doesn't encourage understanding and instead leads to more confusion and frustration in the end. In the end, you will not lose weight with this diet, and in the end, you will only be more confused than you were before.
That is the nature of a gimmick: you get swindled.

For something to qualify as being a gimmick, it must rest on a foundation of lies, thus not delivering what was promised at all. Therefore, a true gimmick always has an outrageous, scientifically invalid claim propping it up in the spotlight. In the case of the shangri-la diet, it is that you can manipulate the body psychologically. This is beyond ridiculous. There is zero merit to the notion you can "unlearn" the association between flavor and nutrition. The body is not dynamic the way a mind is. The body is preprogrammed throughout evolution - genes are the biological equivilent of computer code. Based on this preprogrammed knowledge, the body can deal with a variety of circumstances you throw at it... but only the ones that it has the programs, or genes, to deal with.

It seems as if the body is capable of true learning, but this is deceptive. What the body is capable of is very different from true psychological learning, which is a transforming event. When the mind learns, it is changed forever. The body, on the other hand, never learns or unlearns anything: anything it is capable or not capable of has always existed in genetic code. You can damage your body with unfavorable environment, but this is different from learning (or unlearning) a physiological response.

Therefore, you cannot ever possibly "teach" a body to forget flavor means nutrition in the way you can teach an infant, through conditioning, to be afraid of a white mouse.

Like I said earlier, the TRUE mechanisms this works are hidden from the dieter. Fat with a meal reduces blood sugar response/insulin. Drinking fructose in water induces a metabolic fed state rapidly (thus decreasing hunger) without the consequences of spiking insulin and blood sugar, leading to less feeding at a meal. Eating less often decreases appetite, and increases the efficacy of your fat metabolism.

Because none of this is ever explained to the dieter at all, the diet cannot possibly lead to a greater understanding of the nature of his or her obesity (entirely metabolic and neurophyisological in nature BTW). Therefore, it won't ever lead to long term, constructive solutions. How can you apply workable solutions that will fit into your life if you don't even understand the nature of the problem? No one who is normal is going to follow these silly gimmicky rules forever.... but if one understands the metabolic truths that make this fad diet work, they actually have a SHOT at favorably altering their metabolism and thus health/weight forever.

Atkins told me WHY, exactly, cereal made me over eat and why eggs would not. Atkins explained, in detail, the physiological processes involved,... real hard science that could be verified.

This guy is talking gibberish about how taste "teaches your body" to associate food with nutrition (LOL)... and then he goes on to say you can actually uncondition your body with a few "magic tonics", so that you can eat whatever you want without over eating. It's BEEE ESSS people! This isn't science, it's a gimmick.

So, you read the book?

If you think Seth Roberts is a guy who came up with a gimmick in order to sell lots of diet books, then you know very little about how this book came to be. Here's some background info.

Self-experimentation as a source of new ideas: Ten examples about sleep, mood, health, and weight
Seth Roberts, University of California, Berkeley

You know what? There are plans that really might seem "silly" or "gimmicky" that people actually have success with whether 15 studies can prove "real" science behind them or not.

I've followed CAD and lost weight. Do I fully understand and believe all the explanations they gave for the "why" it works? No. Was it easy to follow and did it give me weight loss if I followed the rules? Yep.

Even plans with "real" science behind them are put out to make money for the authors. Each of the LC and semi-LC plans I've seen are all basically the SAME, but have their little hooks to make you feel like it's a whole new idea. Atkins pictures piles of meat and mounds of foods like lobster with butter, heaps of veggies dripping with butter... to draw in people who love those foods and want to eat them again. South Beach is a different spin on LC, then there was the Hamptons Diet with its macadamia nut oil to set it apart, and now it's the coconut oil miracle, before that, the Zone....

Some very successful and healthy "losers" just want a set of rules to follow and to see it work, and they're good to go.

I had never heard of this "diet" until you posted, but I happened to be in Barne's & Noble tonight and saw it on the shelf so I found a big comfy chair and perused it--not difficult considering it is a small book. There are some things in it that reminded me of another book I read called Eat Fat - Lose Fat by Mary Enig, a nutritionist with the Weston-Price Foundation, who suggests drinking a glass of water mixed with a tablespoon of coconut oil before each meal. However, she differentiates between certain oils like corn and soybean oil and saturated oils, like coconut oil. Both talk about leveling out your blood sugar. Robert's "Shangri-La Diet" does recommend low carbing and eating low GI foods if you have a lot of weight to lose. The one thing that I didn't see either author address (albeit I didn't read every word in the Sangri-La Diet book) were the other factors that affect overeating such as emotional eating and slow metabolism. Both of those factors have a great bearing on why I have difficulty losing weight. Emotional eating has nothing whatsoever to do with being hungry. Therefore any appetite surpressent, whether it be an appetite surpressing drug, the regime outlined in the Shangri-la "diet," eating proteins that are digested more slowly or anything that helps blood sugar not to spike, do not help when I am anxious, depressed or upset. That is a psychological issue that unfortunately I and many others have to get a handle on before we can attain lasting weight loss.

Well, as long as you have a good reason.

I listened to a streaming video interview with the author of the Shangri-La Diet and he was unimpressive at best and sounded like a complete dork at worst. Being a phsychologist I wonder if what he was REALLY trying to do (or maybe what he inadvertently did) was to see if people would eat less at meals because of the power of suggestion. He did mention Pavlov's experiements. The suggestion of course is that if people drink a sugar water or oil and water solution before eating a meal they would not be as hungry. Ok so I tried it with the sugar water and I got a headache about 5 minutes after drinking it and became ravenously hungry. Maybe that's because I already fugured out what this guy was up to.

As a side note---I just picked up a magazine with an article about The Code Diet, supposedly based upon the Golden Ratio described in The Da vince Code. I didn't get the magazine because of the diet ---I was interested in another article. Anyway, the author must not have gotten past fifth grade if he didn't know anything about the Golden Ratio before reading the Da Vinci code. (rotfl) One thing about The Code diet and most diets I have come across is that that all fall into about the 1200-1500 calorie range more or less including all the various diet plans on eDiets.com. I have also noticed from reading the journals of people who are successful at losing weight both on this message board and others that they also eat between aprox. 1200 to 1500 calories more or less no matter what WOE they are using. No magic. Just a matter of calories consumed and calories burned.

Oh...I've merely been taken in by the power of suggestion! How silly of me. Thank you for straightening that out for me. I'll start eating more and put those pounds back on right away.

Dear happy,

Are you replying to me? I wasn't talking about you. I haven't read all the posts and didn't even know you were on it. If it works for you, great.

ps: Why single me out? Several others have trashed the Shangri La diet big time. At least I was willing to try it.

If the placebo effect is doing the work, it would be expected to be gradually extinguished, i.e., the appetite suppression would be temporary. Of course, this diet hasn't been studied in any formal way, so for all we know it *is* quite temporary.

I haven't even read the book, but I think there's still a lot we don't understand about appetite. For example, on my daily IF plan, by the time it's time to eat, I'm very hungry, and I want a big meal. Why? Is my BG way low? Nope. Am I in danger of running out of any fuel? Nope. Plenty of fat available. So why do we get hungry at all so soon? Is there some metabolic clock keeping track of the last time fuel in any form was taken in?

Suppose there is such a clock (maybe leptin has something to do with this?). It keeps track of the time since the last meal and also controls the intensity of the gustatory reward system. That's why food tastes so good when you eat less frequently. Hunger, flavor, and time since last meal all seem closely linked.

This is all speculative, but it matches my experience.

Now we do something different. We take in modest amounts of fuel without engaging the reward system: flavorless fuel. Perhaps this resets the "clock" so that when we eat an hour or so later, hunger is muted, flavors are muted, and we simply eat less.

All it has to do is last long enough for habit to replace any benefit from the belief, which is generally about a month.





Interestingly enough, I've been doing a little poking around about appetite because mine sort of hit the skids. We know a fair amount -- not as much as we should, but enough to know that there's more to it than BG. BG seems to come into play more to get you to continue eating rather than as an appetite initiator. The real appetite initiator seems to be ghrelin, which in turn, is influenced by circadian rhythms, ie, you get hungry before meals because you have sort of programmed yourself to get hungry at those times. Look into ghrelin and obestatin, which is where the cutting edge stuff on appetite is right now (leptin is, like, so last year, dude). They were both just discovered within about the past 10 years, so it's brand new science.

It's obvious there is some kind of rythm to our eating, otherwise, people would not get hungry at the traditional time they eat.

But this has little to do with how much food, quantity wise, we eat over a continuum of time, and it has little to do with why some people's abilty to regulate their fat stores breaks (obesity).

Appetite and hunger are two different things. Appetite explains why we don't eat much food if we haven't eaten in awhile, and it explains why we eat so much at a buffet even when we were full with one meal. Hunger has nothing to do with appetite, it is deep, it is produced by metabolism and our endocrinology, and it (as well as a thousand other metabolic differences between obese vs thin) is the real difference between those who can't regulate weight and those who can...

Appetite influences behavior, and behavior influences metabolism. To a certain extent, metabolism can influence your appetite as well. The relationship between appetite and weight (metabolism and hunger) ends there. Appetite has zero direct influence on weight and eating trends. When it comes to weight problems, they are physiologically real problems at the root of it. No one gets obese because they really like food.