The theory behind the Shangri-La Diet predicts that new food is less fattening than familiar food. At the center of the theory is the idea that smell-calorie associations raise the set point. New food is less fattening because its smell is less associated with calories. This prediction explained why I often lost weight after visiting foreign countries, but not after visiting other places in America.
A few days ago, I got an email from a 40-year-old man who has taken this a step further:
I’ve developed a variant of your diet which works really well for me, and which I haven’t read about so much on your blog, so I thought you might be interested. Â I live in NYC, and I’m obsessed about different foods. Â I’m constantly on the hunt for new restaurants, novel ethnic cuisines I’ve never had, etc, and NYC is a great place to indulge this hobby. Â A couple of years ago I was about 210 lbs, which on my 6’0 frame is at least 30 lbs overweight. Â I read your book, and tried the oil, etc, and it worked well for me, but it felt like a lot of trouble, and I was actually dropping weight faster than would normally be considered healthy. Â So I changed the strategy, and simply made up a rule, never to eat the same thing twice.
If I want to lose weight, I follow the rule religiously. Â I go to different restaurants, order radically different things off the menu, choose unfamiliar beers, wines, cocktails etc when I’m out at bars and clubs. Â If I follow the rule 100% of the time, I drop about 1 lb per week consistently. Â If I “cheat” one or two meals a week, I maintain my weight. Any more than that and I slowly gain weight. Â I’m currently 179 lbs, and have been between 175 and 185 for about two years. Â Although I’m active, I’m no gym rat, and this “system” is the only nod towards a healthy lifestyle I’ve made during that time. Apart from never repeating a meal, I eat and drink whatever I feel like.
The dose-response relationship (the more he does it, the bigger the effect) makes other explanations less plausible. He later added:
One thing I forgot, which is important, is I absolutely don’t eat when I’m not hungry, and I’ve never had a problem walking away from food if I’m full. Â Some people might have problems with that, I guess. Also it requires more discipline than I made it sound. Especially when you’re busy, it’s very tempting to hit the same lunch spot every day.
interesting idea. but i really wonder where he finds menus with ‘radically’ different things in new york city. restaurants — even ethnic ones — are pretty homogeneous these days. restaurant kitchens are simple and tend to use the same ingredients. for instance, if you are talking about thai food, how many different brands of fish sauce are there, and how many dishes can you get that don’t have it as a major element of the taste? is taste/calorie association really that specific that a piece of beef or pork seasoned one way or another would trigger or not trigger it?
There are literally thousands of restaurants in new york, and almost every one of them has something on the menu which is quite different. in a given week, I might eat fish tacos, a meatball sandwich, pho, chicken and rice from a street cart, a hamburger from five guys, an australian meat pie, linguine with clams, a sesame pancake with sliced beef in the middle, chicken vindaloo, a banh mi, etc.
All of these things, and many many more, are available within about half a mile of my office.
If I’m really stumped, it’s usually a failure of imagination rather than actual availability. I read numerous new york food blogs, and I’ll dig through those for inspiration. Check out https://www.eatingintranslation.com/ for an idea of what’s available.
How different are we talking, here? Is not one ingredient the same for two days in a row, or will it work to say, eat sweet and sour pork one day, and then a carnitas burrito the next?
The reason I ask is because this would be very interesting (and fun!) to test, but is just not feasible where I live. If I could eat somewhere different for every meal, I could see myself losing weight just by virtue of the amount of running around I’d have to do, but I can’t. And buying so many single portions just isn’t practical or cost-effective.
I could, however, change it up by cooking the same thing multiple ways. My spice rack is pretty extensive. For instance, instead of just making one big bowl of brown rice, I could do simple brown rice one night and curried brown rice with cayenne the next. This sort of thing is completely feasible for your average person.
Well, I mostly just try and keep it as different as possible. Certainly I’ll eat carnitas tacos one day, and schnitzel or something the next. Obviously it’s no good to just change the shape of the pasta and leave the sauce the same
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If you can cook for yourself (I rarely do, you should see the size of my new york kitchen), then you can easily do this technique exactly as you describe. The biggest problem I have on the rare occasions that I do cook, is what to do with the leftovers, which are by definition, the same thing twice. If they’re freezable, I freeze them, and put off eating them as long as possible (at least 6-8 weeks), if they’re repurposeable in some manner (roast chicken -> chicken soup, etc), then I’ll do that.