Pat McGee of Grand Prairie, Texas, learned about the Shangri-La Diet last week and realized the theory behind it explained something strange that had happened to him:
A couple of years ago I unpacked my scale and was astonished to see that I had lost 25 lbs sometime in the couple of years before that. [He went from 165-170 pounds to 140-146 pounds. He is 5 feet 8 inches tall.] I was mystified as to why, as I could point to no changes in anything I thought might be relevant in my life.
Last week, I found out about the SLD and read the first few chapters of the book. I realized that about three years ago, I had switched from sodas [with sugar, such as Coke and Pepsi] to weak iced tea. I did this mostly because I was feeling cheap and didn’t feel like paying for bottled sodas any more. I use 5 small teabags and a cup of sugar per gallon, steeped for about 6 minutes with a little lemon juice. Basically I want something that’s got just enough flavor that it’s not plain water.
When you are 5’8″ and 170 pounds, losing 25 pounds without trying (from BMI 26 to 22) is astonishing. Not only that, he has kept it off. His story is a little different than mine because I didn’t stop drinking anything — certainly nothing as fattening as Coke or Pepsi.
Here is a new use of the ideas behind the Shangri-La Diet — namely, identifying what caused massive accidental weight loss. Obviously others can use his discovery. From a theoretical point of view, he replaced strongly-flavored drinks with a weakly-flavored one. According to conventional ideas about weight control, this should have no effect.
It is also an interesting example of behavioral engineering because he switched from standard soft drinks (such as Pepsi) to his concoction without difficulty. His drink was pleasant enough. It derived pleasure from flavor (tea), sweetness (sugar), and sourness (lemon juice). A little salt would have allowed him to reduce the flavor even more.
So THAT’S why Southern girls stay slim.
Tea should be weak, coffee strong and soda abjured. Everyone knows that?
interesting story but the ‘surprise’ of weighing one’s self and discovering one has unexpectedly lost 15% of one’s body weight is hard to believe. how much did his pants/waist size change? i fluctuate between 190 and 205 and even a 5lb change pushes me an inch in waist size. no way he lost that much weight and didn’t have to change all of his pants to a dramatically smaller waist size – like 2-3 inches at least. And if he had tailored clothing like suits?
Seth,
the temperature of the drink should be considered as well. There are weight-loss plans that basically recommend you to drink as much as 2 litres of cold water daily. The logic behind is that your body must “heat” the liquid, which means you burn energy, at least part of which is fat.
Which makes sense, considering that polar explorers and climbers in high altitudes prefer warm drinks in order to conserve energy.
That is to say that I do not dismiss your explanation, I only suggest additional mechanisms that may be involved.
Regarding my previous comments see the comment section here
https://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2011/05/energy-expenditure-in-obese-vs-slim-non.html
Not to discount the shangri-la effect, but much of his weight loss can be attributed to the reduction in intake of calories by eschewing the soda. Soda especially can have an amplifying affect on weight gain if you’re vulnerable to the metabolic syndrome/insulin effects of all those sugar calories.
Tomas,
From a purely thermodynamic point of you burn an extra 37 (kilo)calories for every liter of ice cold water you drink. I’m guessing there are some inefficiencies in the system, but I don’t think it’s that significant. And there’s a good chance all his sodas was ice cold or at least refrigerator cold.
I’ve started noticing a correlation between my general food cravings and my consumption of diet sodas — more diet sodas = more cravings. Replace with carbonated water (La Croix) and my cravings become more controllable.
All of this makes me think that the danger of the diet soda is that it’s like a 1/0 increase in flavor sensations. Since there’s such strong flavor but so little reward, the brain is confused and seeks out additional consumption (more soda, perhaps more food?) as it seeks the caloric reward that it expects to accompany the flavor.
Anyone else notice something like this? Struggling a bit to explain what I think is going on here, so curious if anyone has observed similar things and if they could put a theory to their experience.
Hundreds of studies and millions of people have found that reduction of calories produces no long term change. Suppose you eat less than usual today, for example. It won’t change your weight a month from now. As for temperature, his ice tea was as cold as his sodas.
justin,
I have a similar experience. I am generally weary of foods and drinks that make me consume them more and more until I am “mechanically” full, ie. I would still eat more, but my stomach can’t take anymore and I feel a bit sick.
Eliminating such foods completely is the best way to go for me.
rphil, I think he knew he’d lost weight without weighing himself, he just didn’t have the details until he weighed himself. If you use a belt you might not have to get new pants.
Justin, if you usually drink the diet sodas with other food they may produce cravings because they become unusually strong signals for calories — the smell of the diet soda becomes associated with the calories of the other food. (And your surroundings become associated with the smell. Surroundings –> smell –> craving.) However, if you drink diet sodas away from other food I can’t explain this.
In response to Justin. I have had serious diet soda addiction through the years. At one time I switched to Mineral Water(Pellegrino) most of the day to help my sleep. I definitely noticed a reduction in cravings and lost some weight.
It is so expensive and our Sams quit carrying it, so I rarely buy it anymore, but have been able to limit my diet soda intake with the help of supplements.
@BlueMorrissey – I too had a serious diet soda addiction. I kicked it when I ended up in the hospital, heavily doped up for a week. I used that time to get past the withdrawal symptoms. It worked well but I can’t really recommend using this method on purpose.
However, changing from diet soda (and any caffeinated drink) to water had no effect on my weight (about 40 pounds too many).
BlueMorrissey- I invested in a carbonator and bottle of trace mineral drops and make my own sparkling mineral water at home now from tap water. I drink so much more water (much more enjoyably) and I have spent almost nothing. I highly recommend looking into doing something similar. Here’s the mineral drop I use (it lasts years): https://bit.ly/mbMItm
Seth, getting into possible biological pathways, do you think one of the major factors might be Dopamine ‘food reward’ pathways overriding the Leptin ‘satiety’ pathways that are supposed to make us stop eating. I’ve been reading up on Dopamine and addiction, and am beginning to suspect it may be directly correlated with the Set Point theory of weight regulation.
Which diet soda it is might matter– I’ve got a little anecdata suggesting that aspartame in particular increases appetite.
In response to Justin and others- I also find diet cola seems to increase cravings and induces me to drink more diet cola. It may be best for some people to avoid it, even if just to save money as Pat did with regular cola.
I would also be curious if anyone has a theory on this. A starting position might be that some diet soft drinks still impact blood sugar and insulin, whether through caffeine and/or artificial sweeteners:
“Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution” recommends diet soft drinks sweetened with sucralose rather than aspartame. Dr. Atkins notes sucralose does not raise blood sugar. He also encouraged people to avoid caffeine, as excessive caffeine can cause unstable blood sugar.
In “Good Calories Bad Calories” Gary Taubes describes the animal research of Stylianos Nicolaidis, where rats secreted insulin in response to the mere taste of a sweet substance. It did not matter whether the sweet substance was sugar or a no-calorie sugar substitute.
@Nancy: anecdata – like that word.
@rphil: Maybe he wore stretchy pants.
Hi rphil,
I don’t know how much my waist size changed. I retired a couple of years before that and switched from fitted pants to elastic waistbands, since I didn’t have to dress up anymore. I might have noticed something the once I had to wear a suit, but wearing the suit was so unpleasant in itself that I didn’t.
Pat
He also cut his sugar intake in half – assuming he consumed the same amount of tea as he once did cola. A gallon of cola has ~ 100 tsp of sugar and a cup of sugar (his weak tea recipe) is 48 tsp.
Hi Jeff,
I don’t think switching away from drinking soda had anything to do with it. Remember that I switched from sodas to sugared water (well, weak tea), not to plain water with no calories. With a cup of sugar per gallon, I think it had around the same number of calories. Or at least I once counted calories given my typical consumptions of each and decided that it wasn’t enough to make a difference, much less that much difference.
Pat
Thanks nix. I will definitely check that out. I will drink more water period, if it is mineral water. Something about the carbonation that helps replace the diet soda.
Come to think of it vs. I began the switch to mineral water when I was doing Atkins. It was his recommendations that helped me make the change. That did help with the diet and helped me lose about 60 lbs on it. My moods eventually became so awful while doing super low-carb that I cannot stick with it. I just try to stay away from sugar now. SLD is so much easier and takes away many of those cravings, and especially diminishes the desire to get seconds.
Nancy, it was/is Diet Mt. Dew mostly, but also Diet Pepsi. Yes aspartame.
Hi Chuck,
I actually do drink more weak tea than I did sodas. When I did the soda thing, I also drank about as much ice water as I did soda. Well, without measuring, it seemed to me to be about the same. When I switched, I pretty much quit drinking ice water at all and now just drink tea. Water is so boring.
I find it interesting that I didn’t think to put these little details in my initial description. Y’all’s questions pushed me to remember and to describe them. It’s a good thing I wasn’t trying to publish this in a scientific journal – the referees would have bounced it for being irreproduceable. (and JIR probably wouldn’t have taken it as being too factual.)
Oh, another detail, which I don’t know whether it matters or not: from Labor Day to Memorial Day, I still always had two sodas a week when I volunteered at the Monday Night concert and got them free. I did take bottles of frozen tea to the summer music festivals instead of buying sodas.
Pat
Fizzy mineral water can be very cheap – Tesco, the British supermarket chain, sells a two litre bottle for 16p – that’s ca 27 cents. We always have a couple in the fridge.
I lost 5-10 lbs as well when I stopped drinking Soda. I believe it came not from caloric deficit (I notice their is no mention of how much soda he drank)…but from the reduction of sugar.
Couldn’t this particular anecdote be explained by Paleo diet principles?
Admittedly, there could be overlap between the two, but I see this as one of the weaker examples of Shangri-la proof that have been presented.
I don’t remember anything in paleo principles about weak flavors being less fattening than strong flavors.
Sorry…I wasnt talking about the strength of flavors. I was talking about the amount of sugar (not the amount of calories). That was exactly my point. I think there is another way to interpret these result…in terms of carbs as opposed to strength of flavor
The paleo story…carbs stimulate insulin which stimulates fat storage….cutting carbs (and keeping calories constant) would stimulate fat loss because of the hormone changes.
I hope I don’t come off too grumpy. I do mean all of this in good faith. Big fan of the self experiments you do and I own a copy of the Shangri-la diet (even loaned it out with my recommendation).
I see. Thanks for clarifying that. Since I lost weight by drinking sugar water — that is, by consuming more sugar — I am the last person you will convince that eating less sugar inevitably causes weight loss, as the paleo story has it.