Category: Shangri-La Diet

SLD on TV (postmortem)

Seth Roberts20 Comments

On Wednesday Stephen Marsh and I appeared on The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet to talk about the Shangri-La Diet. The clip, alas, is no longer available. There were two critics: a doctor and a dietician. A friend of mine was amused by the doctor’s belief that because someone from Berkeley had criticized the diet it couldn’t be any good. Discussion in the SLD forums. Before the segment, the producer said to me, “What happens determines the length. If it’s interesting, it will be longer. If it’s boring, it will be short. That’s just the reality.” It was really short. If she hadn’t told me that . . . I felt bad for a while but other people convinced me it was okay. I’m pleased by the publicity, of course. Overall, I like the show; I like its focus on everyday issues and problems.

Two other diets were covered in the previous segment: The Flat Tummy Diet and The Warrior Diet. The author of the latter wasn’t pleased.

Stephen Marsh answers the critics.

David Lawrence: Down 100 Pounds!

Seth Roberts8 Comments

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.

SLD: “A Lazy Person’s Diet”

Seth Roberts4 Comments

I wish I could embed YouTube videos here but it messes up the layout. Especially I would like to embed this charming video from Kevin Mullaney, whom you may remember from an earlier video about the Shangri-La Diet. In the newer video, he calls SLD “a lazy person’s diet”. I like that!

Kevin’s ticker indicates he has lost about 60 pounds. The last 10 were from SLD plus a low-carb diet.

Thanks to Buxi.

Is Childhood Obesity Due to Not Enough Exercise?

Seth Roberts10 Comments

As any reader of The Shangri-La Diet knows, I attribute the obesity epidemic to ditto foods — foods that taste exactly the same each time, such as factory food and fast food. We eat a lot more of these foods today than 50 years ago or even 20 years ago.

An alternative explanation of the obesity epidemic that many people believe is too little exercise. People who deal with childhood obesity, in particular, often say the problem is too much TV, too little playground.

If kids are fat due to lack of exercise, more exercise should be a good solution. A new study shows it isn’t. It turns out that giving kids more P.E. doesn’t cause weight loss:

In studies involving nearly 10,000 children, primarily in elementary schools, none demonstrated a reduction in BMI with those who were assigned to the most phys-ed time, compared to those who didn’t have as much.

Via Calorie Lab.

The Difference Between Being Fat and Not Fat

Seth Roberts21 Comments

I have never read a better description of the difference between being fat and not fat:

I had a gastric bypass and ate 750-1000 calories of liquid meal replacement a day. I had complications and couldn’t swallow food. I lost over a hundred pounds. I regained it over a number of years. Once I lost weight and was normal, my life did change for the better. It’s the only reason I had my child. For the first and only time in my life it was easy to have people in my life. People wanted to be around me. I had boyfriends who treated me well for the first and only time in my life. I got married. All this happened very quickly and easily with no effort on my part. Being fat is completely different. I think the way people treat a fat person is similar to being disfigured or in a wheelchair with your legs cut off. In many instances it is better to be dead than to be this fat.

From an anonymous blogger who weighs about 280 pounds. She isn’t trying to sell anything, make a journalistic or academic point, appear to be this or that. The post goes on:

My daughter had a fat friend over for a sleep over the other day. It’s the second fat friend she’s ever had over. The difference between these girls and the thinner girls is striking. The fat girls are obsessed with food. They are more driven to eat, more interested in food, more hungry than the thinner girls. The thin girls are interested in food far less. It’s not that they are better than the fat girls, they are simply less hungry. My daughter first fat friend got up all through the night to raid our refrigerator. This child acted as if she were starving. She ate until she was literally ill and threw up on the sleeping bags. Then later she peed on my daughter. My daughter is fastidious and she was completely revolted. That was the end of the friendship.

I came across this because she is trying the Shangri-La Diet.

Shangri-La By Another Name?

Seth Roberts1 Comment

There’s a new diet called something like Fat Loss For Idiots or The Idiot-Proof Diet in which you lose weight by constantly changing what you eat. Here‘s how the creators put it:

To lose weight your diet menu needs to be SHIFTED every few days –and this is something you’ve never tried before, and that’s why you’ve never been able to change your body when dieting.

Never tried before? When I go to a foreign country that’s close to what happens. And I do lose weight. According to the theory behind the Shangri-La Diet, this should work — because you are constantly eating flavors you haven’t yet associated with calories. Thanks to Tim Lundeen.

100 Pounds Lost on the Shangri-La Diet

Seth Roberts3 Comments

WheatenDad, a 70-year-old man who lives in San Carlos, California, started the Shangri-La Diet two years ago and began posting his weight on the Shangri-La Diet forums. At the time, he weighed 300 pounds (BMI = 38). Now he weighs about 200 pounds (BMI = 26). He lost about 1 pound/week for 2 years:

He did SLD by taking 3 tablespoons/day of extra-light olive oil. In February 2008 he increased it to 4 tablespoons/day. In May 2007 he started walking 1-2 miles/day, eventually increasing this to 3-4 miles/day.

SLD in Indonesian

Seth Roberts3 Comments

There is a long discussion of the Shangri-La Diet here on an Indonesian forum. I like the locations some posters give: “the hottest city in Java,” “space,” “a quiet little house,” “above the earth,” “nowhere to be found.”

Thanks to Mark Schrimsher of CalorieLab. The 2005 CalorieLab post on SLD — now an historical artifact. Why Japanese People in Japan Don’t Get that Fat.