One way to do the Shangri-la Diet is to drink sugar water. This can cause your blood sugar to go too high if you don’t drink it slowly. Dr. Edward Pooley, a UK doctor, has noted that in the UK you can buy FibreSure, which is powdered inulin, a flavorless soluble fiber. Adding it to the sugar drink should slow digestion of the sugar. It is also sold in the United States.
Month: January 2008
Advances in SLD: Eating Lots of Nose-Clipped Food
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.
The Best Way to Learn is to Do (Jonathan Schwarz edition)
“The best way to learn is to do,” wrote the late Paul Halmos at the beginning of an article about how to teach college math that inspired me to start self-experimenting. Jonathan Schwarz says something similar:
America is so completely depoliticized that I support people doing pretty much anything (except forming neighborhood fascist gangs, and even that doesn’t worry me too much). Perhaps I’m foolishly optimistic, but I believe people will learn from the horrendous mistakes they’ll surely make. And even if they don’t, giving it a shot is the only way they have even a possibility of doing so.
Well put.
A subtle defense of the Iraq War? If Halmos were alive I like to think he’d agree with this:
Lesson 1: The best way to learn is to do.
Lesson 2: And the best thing to do is something small.
Why New Year’s Resolutions?
Justin Wolfers gives seven possible explanations for New Year’s resolutions. Here’s another: They improve self-image. A Catholic who has gone to confession and been granted some sort of absolution has a better self-image after confession than before. Likewise, a person who wants to do X but hasn’t (a “sin of omission”) feels better about him- or herself after making a New Year’s resolution to do X.
Mark Liberman’s resolution — surely for a different reason. I can’t imagine making a New Year’s resolution — see busman’s holiday — but if I did it would be . . . to blog less. I enjoy blogging too much.
Happy New Year!
An Excess of Caution at The New Yorker
From an otherwise excellent article about Rudy Giuliani:
Many, perhaps most, politicians probably value competence and probity somewhat less than devotion.
Uh, how about
Perhaps most politicians value competence and probity less than devotion.
Too much hyper-editing or too little? During a visit to The New Yorker, I used the bathroom. In the next stall, there were page proofs on the floor. The occupant was studying them.
Anti-Depressants, Suicide, and a Malfunctioning Legal System
This sort of combines two recent posts of mine (here and here):
Unlike the possibility that anti-depressants may cause suicidal ideas, [addition of] the black box warning has been followed by the deterrence of non-psychiatric doctors from treating depressed people. The rate of hard outcome suicide, not just thoughts, shot up. It had been dropping prior to that.
Supporting data. Related FDA overreaction.