This person has been doing the Shangri-La Diet (SLD) for two weeks:
The appetite suppression is now strong. Yesterday I went to dinner at one of my favorite Mexican restaurants. Ordered my favorite meal there. I could only eat about 1/3 of my favorite dish and a few chips and salsa. . . .. That is nothing short of amazing. The best part is: it satisfied me. I would normally eat the whole meal and not be satisfied, I would be able to eat more. I wouldn’t normally eat more, but I could eat more. Not this time. Didn’t want more.
He eats about 700 calories/day nose-clipped — that’s his version of the diet. Before he started the diet he was gaining 10 pounds every year. When he started SLD, he weighed 250 pounds at 5 feet 10 inches tall (BMI = 36).
If I were to write The Shangri-La Diet all over again I would emphasize nose-clipping. You can easily eat lots of smell-free yet healthy calories nose-clipped and get great appetite suppression, as in this case. That’s one reason the book is short. I wanted to get the idea out in the world soon, so other people could help improve it. That’s what happened. Nose-clipping was someone else’s idea (Gary Skaleski, 2006), not mine. It was a better application of my theory and early findings (e.g., sugar water causes weight loss) than I was capable of. Now, thanks to the Internet, I can find out what happens when people do the new improved version.
I’ve tried this diet and lost a few pounds but not very many. It was weird in that I sort of felt hungry but I didn’t necessarily want to eat.
I hear about weight loss all the time, but that only tells a limited part of the story. What body fat percentage have people gotten down with with SLD?
I have been doing this diet the past few months, and it’s amazing to me. For years I have never been able to lose those pesky last 10-15 pounds I need to lose, and as of today I’ve lost 7 pounds.
It started slow, but after a month or two I noticed the weight steadily start to come off.
Also, I find I can adjust the amount of oil I take to adjust my appetite. If I’m eating too much and getting cravings, I take more oil. If I’m eating too little, I take less.
Another benefit- it’s made it easy to switch to a “paleo-style” diet that limits processed foods, and I don’t crave the old foods. But I don’t think the paleo diet would work for me without the oil.
Seth, I think it’s an amazing discovery, I just wish I had found your book earlier!
Michal, I would recommend you keep up the diet. That’s exactly how I felt for the first month or two- still kinda hungry. But then the effects really kicked in and the hunger was gone. Now I feel in control of what I want to eat.
Another benefit- it’s made it easy to switch to a “paleo-style” diet that limits processed foods, and I don’t crave the old foods. But I don’t think the paleo diet would work for me without the oil.
This is what I’ve found, as well — drinking oil suppresses overall hunger, true, but it also shifts the foods I desire. If I’m not drinking oil, I want a blast of carbs before bed. On the oil, I may get hungry late at night, but I want a bit of protein instead.
That’s been one of the key benefits of Shangri-La for me — it makes it possible for me to remain compliant with LCHF/Paleo.
(This experience is also why I don’t take Stephan Guyanet’s Unified Theory of Palatability seriously.)
Tom, that’s an interesting comment:
Could you explain it?
The difference between Stephan’s theory and mine, as far as I can tell, is that his theory says that anything that makes food more pleasant raises the set point. Whereas I say only flavor-calorie associations (which make food taste better) raise the set point. I find that unlikely — why should salting one’s food raise the set point? How much pleasure we derive from salt is determined by how much we are salt-deficient. Which seems to me unrelated to fat storage. Anyway that is related to your criticism but not the same. I would like to understand your criticism better.
Hi, Seth,
My point is probably more basic than the question you’re asking. But I’m simply thinking that my ingesting oil clearly did nothing to change any quality inherent in the carbs that I invariably crave on days when I’m not drinking oil. Yet oil-drinking drives their perceived ‘palatability/food reward’ to zero.
The effect is clear and 100% repeatable for me. On no-oil days I always want carby cookies or crackers, with milk, before bed. On oil days I sometimes want meat (or eggs), with water, before bed…but never carbs.
(I’m wondering if there’s only one ‘set point’ — perhaps there are different ones for different classes of nutrients?)
Isn’t the oil itself sort of a bland food? It has calories with zero taste. This tricks the body into lowering the setpoint.
Perhaps that’s how it is compatible with Guyanet’s theory of palatability.
Yet I still get hungry, Meegs. But the food I desire shifts. One food gets more palatable, another gets less palatable, because oil was consumed hours earlier?
That makes no sense to me.
I read the comments on WHS and people seem to be tying themselves in knots to make Stephan’s theory work. But…why?
I hope it’s not because Stephan is supposedly “nicer” than Gary Taubes. (At this point, I hardly think he is. And who cares? I just want to know what to eat to get healthier.)
Sorry for following-on to my own post, but I just saw J.Stanton’s comment over at Hyperlipid, which expresses my feelings about Stephan’s current tangent better than I ever could:
“When one starts with a conclusion and works backwards, it is often necessary to skip over, gloss, conflate, or otherwise befuddle the explanations of the parts that don’t support the predetermined endpoint.
source: https://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2011/10/adipocyte-insulin-resistance.html
Tom, I guess I have a different experience with the oil. When I take it, my hunger goes away. I simply stop thinking about food.
And yet, even if I have taken the oil, if I go to a restaurant and start eating something highly rewarding (chips, dessert, etc.) I find it difficult to stop. This isn’t the case with protein. If I eat a couple of eggs, I’m satisfied.
Hi Seth:
Correct me if I’m wrong but I interpreted your statement “He eats about 700 calories/day nose-clipped — that’s his version of the diet” to mean the person ate food nose-clipped, yet got the same results as if he/she had taken oil or sugar water without a nose clip.
Is this correct? Please clarify.
johnny, your interpretation is correct.
Diet Soda – I believe the prevailing theory is that diet soda tends to increase appetite, resulting in the person eating more calories, gaining more weight over time.
I’m doing intermittent fasting (not eating during work, until about 6 PM in the evening). I have no problem fasting during the day, but I get by by drinking obscene amounts of diet soda.
I’ve recently read about your Shangri-La diet and started implementing those concepts into what I am already doing. My guess is that diet soda is ultimately bad for weight loss, but it would seem that drinking diet soda without ingesting calories close to the time I drink the soda (during my fast) would support flavor/calorie disassociation.
I’m guessing it doesn’t work as my appetite has not decreased at all, but I would like your take on what the difference is between that and doing calories with no flavor, if any.
Ingesting flavor w/ no calories (such as diet soda) can be helpful, I believe if
–you would have otherwise drunk/eaten something fattening (such as regular Coke)
–it reduces a craving for flavor. when I started ingesting lots of calories without flavor (the Shangri-La Diet) I started to crave flavor. So the calories without flavor helped me do SLD.
I hope that answers your question. To put it briefly: Flavor w/o calories by itself does nothing. But it will help you do SLD (calories w/o flavor).
Seth, after listening to your podcast on Jimmy Moore I have been thinking more about SLD and I have a couple of theories/observations that have been bubbling around for a couple of days – wondering your thoughts.
1. Often, I lose weight when I have a cold. I had always attributed that to a boosted metabolism, but now I’m considering the change in smell that occurs when I’m congested.
2. Smokers weigh less than non-smokers, and crave sweets when they quit. This is perfectly consistent with what you wrote above about calorie-free flavor.
3. Often I drink sugar water at work, because it’s convenient when I travel to different offices – sugar is easy to come by at the coffee station. Am I sabotaged if someone put a big pile of brownies in the kitchen? Should I avoid drinking the sugar water in the kitchen, or should I wait at least an hour before or after SMELLING the brownies before drinking the sugar water?
Are you sabotaged by brownies that you smell but don’t eat? No, I think smells not from your food don’t matter.
Is salt a flavor or a taste?
My nephew posed the question in response to your defining the difference between you and Stephan
“I think that if you add salt to white rice that white rice becomes more palatable”
That led me to ask is salt a flavor or a taste. Sugar is a taste and my assumption is that salt would be similar.
You said:
Whereas I say only flavor-calorie associations (which make food taste better) raise the set point. I find that unlikely — why should salting one’s food raise the set point? How much pleasure we derive from salt is determined by how much we are salt-deficient. Which seems to me unrelated to fat storage. Anyway that is related to your criticism but not the same. I would like to understand your criticism better.
Salt is a taste. My theory says that smell is what matters. Salt has no smell. Just as sugar has no smell.
Hi Seth, I really like you blog, podcasts and the concept of this book. I didn’t like the implementation, but tried another variation with similar effects. Eating as much as possible novel foods and spacing repeat foods apart when I didn’t have access to a novel food. Originally I thought I’d run out of novel foods but that hasn’t happened nor do I think it will happen anymore. Same weight management effect but also up regulating sences of smell and taste. My apetite hasnt changed however and remains healthy. Overall I had a good experience with this approach and must say that it’s given more reason to enjoy life. A few draw backs is that it also polarized me giving me more favorites but also dislikes. Some smells now practically send me running