I met David Lawrence when I appeared on his radio show a year ago. Since then, he has lost more than 100 pounds. He started at 355 (BMI 50); now he’s at 246 (BMI 34). Very impressive. How did he do it?
I’m not really doing anything special other than portion control (very easy, just eat a little not everything), and being more active. Occasionally I’ll remember to drink a Mexican Coke [he lives in Los Angeles] an hour or so before a big meal, and that cuts it down to size, but I can’t really claim that I’m following the SLD regimen. More like, I park in the first spot I come to in the parking lot, and walk to the buildings. Feels great.
There seem to be three changes here: 1. Eating less. 2. More walking. 3. Mexican Coke before some meals. I am skeptical that trying to eat less can have massive long-term effects, so I discount that factor completely. More walking can certainly be potent if pre-walking you are very sedentary, as perhaps David was. I’ve never heard of anyone losing 100 pounds by walking more, however. And the additional walking doesn’t sound like much.
So perhaps the Mexican Coke before big meals is actually doing something. This is fascinating because in general soft drinks are fattening. (They are the perfect ditto food: strong constant flavor, quickly-digested calories.) Yet it is possible that with this particular timing the calories in the Coke don’t get associated with the flavor of either the Coke or the following meal. If so they would function as SLD calories and that could indeed cause substantial weight loss (or at least make it much easier to do portion control).
There isn’t any precedent in the study of learning for “associative strength” (generated by the calories) to get lost, as it were, but then no one would ever look for such a thing. Normally the flavor of the Coke would hang around in the brain waiting for the calorie signal generated by the sugar but when the meal comes along the flavor signal gets muddled. Perhaps combining the Coke flavor memory with a wide range of other flavor memories creates a jumbled mess that is so inconsistent that the Coke goes from ditto food to the opposite, completely-new-flavor food.
David will appear in two episodes of Heroes in October.
Thats really intriguing. I noticed that here in Ireland that the coke tastes really diferent from the coke in Portugal, i really dont like it. Maybe there is a remote possibility that the coke as some kind of unusual flavor?
Before i used oil in SLD i used candies with some “flat” flavor, exactly before lunch and it really toke my appetite away.
Maybe there are some particular flavors that are “null” besides salt and sugar.
Interesting. My mother got started, lost a fair amount of weight, but didn’t need to keep taking the SLD calories once she had lost 20-30 lbs.
I think the way he talks about the Mexican coke cutting meals down to size is interesting. You’ve hit an interesting facet, many people do experience spoilers for meals. Some people can spoil their appetite (I never could, it just ramped it up so I could eat more).
Salt and sugar are null because when dissolved in water they have no smell. They are detected only by the tongue, not the nose.
Dear Seth,
I’m now following this diet since 1 week ago
and I’ve lost 3 kgs, thanks for the inspiration, first I’ve trie ELOO but it
turns unuseful for me, then I tried sugar,…then here I am losing 3 kgs,
well, still got 12 kgs to lose, wish me best luck on my program
Doesn’t Mexican Coke use real cane sugar as opposed to corn syrup that’s in U.S. Coke?
Are we all going to be terrified if that’s the secret to a lot of weight problems: the overabundance of corn syrup in our diets since the 1980s or thereabouts?
About fructose, here is an essay by a group of self- and small-group experimenters.
https://www.figureathlete.com/article/diet_and_nutrition/the_low_fructose_diet
Stephen –
Thanks for that link. I will herewith go fairly low fructose (particularly of the corn variety.)
Yes, Mexican Coke does use real cane sugar. There is another brand of soda called Jarritos. It also uses sugar and has interesting flavors, such as tamarind.