Advances in the Shangri-La Diet

A friend writes:

[My girlfriend, who is 5′ 5″ and started the diet at 174 pounds] has lost 12 pounds [over 2 months], no longer feels constantly hungry since starting the diet. We’ve been putting the flaxseed oil on toasted sourdough rolls (from Trader Joe’s) because the oil doesn’t seep through as easily. I like the way flaxseed oil tastes on toast but in this circumstance we’re nose-clipping so we don’t taste it. The toast makes us feel less queasy afterwards than taking the oil straight. We do two tablespoons/day instead of three because we’re including the calories in the toast which we also don’t taste.  The TJ’s honey whole wheat bread is denser and holds the oil a little better than the sourdough stuff she likes. Either way there’s usually oil left on the plate that  came through the holes in the bread. I said, since you can’t taste it why not use the whole wheat? The texture, she says, but I think it’s really because her mother made her eat whole wheat bread growing up which she never liked and still doesn’t even though under these circumstances she can’t taste it. Bad associations, maybe? Good old Pavlov, it’s like he’s still around. The effect on my back pain [it made his back pain go away] has become even more noticeable. If I skip the oil for a couple of days I start feeling it again. [emphasis added]. I haven’t been consistent enough with it to lose weight, and now that [my girlfriend] has gotten a little skinnier she’s starting to make comments to me about how I might want to lose a few pounds.

I have tried flaxseed oil on toast, eaten nose-clipped, and it is my favorite way to consume the flaxseed oil. It tastes like hot buttered toast. It’s not so easy here in China where I don’t have a toaster. You can’t do it with untoasted bread — the water repells the oil, so it doesn’t soak in.

7 thoughts on “Advances in the Shangri-La Diet

  1. Igor, thanks for the link. My wife was recently pregnant. I asked her doctor if it was a good idea for my wife to increasing omega 3 consumption during her pregnancy. She said yes if the source was fish oil but not if it was from flaxseed oil. She said there were data indicating that pregnant women had greater difficulty processing flaxseed oil, due (I guess) to the hormonal changes during pregnancy.

  2. I wonder if the Shangri-La diet would work with lard? I know lard has a bad reputation, but quite simply put: That is bullshit.

    A couple of interesting links:

    https://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/03/l-word.html

    The fatty acid profile of lard might give us a clue. A major portion of lard is monounsaturated, 40% by weight. This is the same type of fat that predominates in olive oil (73%), and which is widely recommended by mainstream nutrition experts. Another prevalent class of fat in lard is saturated, at 48%. More than one third of this saturated fat is stearic acid, which even the most hardened lipophobe will agree has a “favorable” effect on blood lipids. Then there’s the 8% polyunsaturated fat, which has been the darling of mainstream heart disease research for decades due to its ability to lower blood cholesterol (for the record, I believe the polyunsaturate content is lard’s least healthy feature). The omega-3:6 ratio depends on how the pig was raised, but is typically skewed more toward omega-6.

    So what does that leave us with? 66% fats that we’re told are heart-healthy, and 30% non-stearic saturated fats that are supposed to be unhealthy. But if you still believe saturated fats cause heart disease, check out this post, this one and this one. Well if the fat composition of lard isn’t unhealthy, then what else could be the problem?

  3. don’t get the nose-clipping, i just pour the oil into a spoon, drink it down, got used to the taste pretty quickly (my 11-month-old loved it from the get-go).

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