A Palo Alto resident found SLD so effective (lost 10 pounds in 1.5 months) that he told others about it. “Everyone I speak to about the diet laughs at me or just shakes their head,” he wrote. (Which is good.) A tenant of his, a Stanford medical student, asked his nutrition professor how such a crazy diet could possibly work. The professor, Dr. Clyde Wilson, replied:
Fats and sugars reduce hunger when consumed in moderate amounts. Fructose stimulates less of an insulin response than glucose, putting you at less risk of subsequent hunger. Flavored foods result in a greater caloric consumption. Unflavored fructose and olive oil would therefore reduce hunger during a subsequent meal. Any small healthy snack will provide the same result. A small healthy snack would be, for example, a whole grain cracker with some peanut butter and half an apple.
The interesting thing about SLD is not that the oil or sugar water reduces hunger — most food does that — but that it causes easy weight loss. This is what needs explaining. Why does X calories of sugar water cause you to reduce future consumption by more than X calories? This paragraph doesn’t explain this.
Since fructose, sucrose, and unflavored oils all have the same effect, it cannot be due to a special property of fructose.
As for the prediction that a small healthy snack will have the same effect, that has not been my experience. I’m pretty sure that weight loss would not be such a big problem if one could lose substantial weight (such as 10 pounds in 1.5 months) by eating as many small healthy snacks as you want.
“eating as many small healthy snacks as you want.”
Hmm. Is SLD “drinking as many tablespoons of flavorless oil as you want?”
More or less, yes — there are no tight restrictions.