At the Shangri-La Diet forums, Heidi 555 wrote (excerpts):
I highly recommend nose-clipping a high percentage of food. My weight has been steadily dropping down and my body is shrinking. But best of all I feel really good in my body. For the past five years I’ve been dedicated to getting in shape. I gradually built some muscles but found it impossible to lose those last 10 pounds of fat. Working out made me look stockier. Now I am in the enviable position of trying to figure out what I want to weigh. Imagine that – pick what I want to weigh! I can’t believe that I’m trying to figure that out.
For the most part, I don’t mind nose clipping lots of food. I enjoy eating even with nose clips on. Yesterday, I made some delicious cream of mushroom vegetable soup. I raved about how delicious it tasted. My husband looked at me as if I was slightly nuts. I was wearing nose clips and couldn’t taste a damn thing. Yet, I enjoyed every mouthful and raved about how great it “tasted”. The healthy, creamy, warm, texture, umami elements were deliciously satisfying.
I have found the same thing — that there is a lot of pleasure to be gotten from the non-smell elements of food (creamy, sweet, salty, sour, etc.) and that the overall effect, when these elements are present in good amounts, is that the food tastes delicious, even without smell. When I have nose-clipped chicken, for example, I sprinkle it with salt, sugar, vinegar, and hot sauce.
I don’t worry about a two hour window. I’m also flexible each day with what percentage of food I nose clip. I think in general I nose clip somewhere between 40 and 90 percent of what I eat. But it’s not as bad as it sounds. With strong appetite suppression, I often don’t care if I taste what I eat. I try to nose clip extremely healthy food. But sometimes I have a fridge to mouth nose clipped binge. The weirdest thing is that I always feel like I’m eating a lot. Maybe eating as much as you want, of whatever you want, always feels like a lot.
It’s especially interesting she doesn’t worry about a two-hour window.
With flavorless oil and unflavored sugar water, there is a dosage limit, of course: you’ll probably want to stay under 400 calories/day so that the rest of your diet provides good nutrition. With nose-clipping there is no obvious calorie limit. Everything we know about nutrition suggests you could eat all your food this way. Given the right choice of foods — foods that are adequately creamy, salty, sweet, etc. — you’ll still enjoy everything.
Ever since I read about the SLD, I’ve wondered if the real reason smokers lose weight (or gain it when they quit smoking) is because they can’t taste/smell food as well when they smoke. IIRC, you mention in the original paper that smokers don’t lose all that much weight because of smoking, but still they lose some.
What if there were a pill that temporarily interfered with your ability to smell/taste food? Would that be the ultimate diet pill? Perhaps there is a drug already out that has that as a side effect.
I had difficulty swallowing food with my nose clipped.
I have difficulty swallowing liquids with my nose clipped. I have to drink slowly in small sips. Perhaps I also eat more slowly with nose clips. I’ll have to pay attention and see.