Category: Shangri-La Diet

The Robot Diet

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The robot works by talking to you about how much you’re eating and exercising. It helps people stick to their diets by verbally asking dieters to input data about what they ate on a touch screen. The robot then provides encouragement and advice.

More. Social facilitation effects are powerful. For example, if you are riding a bike with someone else you will be able to go faster and farther than if you ride alone. Next, perhaps: A robot that judges your appearance (praise only!).

Thanks to Dave Lull.

Comparison of Strategies for Sustaining Weight Loss

Seth Roberts9 Comments

A recent issue of JAMA has an article titled “Comparison of Strategies for Sustaining Weight Loss: The Weight Loss Maintenance Randomized Controlled Trial”. It reports an experiment that compared three ways to keep from regaining weight you’ve lost.

If you want to lose weight it paints a discouraging picture. It was an very expensive study, 27 authors, five grants. About 1000 subjects. Four years just to collect the data. The whole thing might have taken seven years. Must have cost millions of dollars. Might have cost tens of millions of dollars.

Given the huge expense, surely the subjects got the best possible establishment-approved weight loss advice. They did lose 19 pounds in six months. Here’s how the advice was described in the article:

Intervention goals were for participants to reach 180 minutes per week of moderate physical activity (typically walking); reduce caloric intake; adopt the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension dietary pattern . . . and lose approximately 1 to 2 lb per week. Participants were taught to keep food and physical activity self-monitoring records and to calculate caloric intake.

Shades of Marion Nestle’s “move more, eat less”! Aside from the DASH “dietary pattern,” which was meant to reduce blood pressure, not weight, this advice could have been given fifty years ago. Apparently, those who did the study and those who funded it — who are representative of the larger research establishment, I assume — believe there has been no theoretical or empirical progress since then.

Many fields haven’t progressed in 50 years. Fifty years ago, 2 + 2 equaled 4. The basic principles of thermodynamics and inorganic chemistry were the same then as they are now. Lack of progress in weight loss advice would be fine if the advice actually worked but the whole study derived from the fact that the advice is poor — the weight loss it produces cannot be sustained.

To help people sustain their weight loss, the study compared three methods: 1. Monthly contact. Usually a 10-minute phone call (“with an interventionist”), every 4th month a hour face-to-face visit. Although the article claims this treatment was “practical,” I suspect it is too expensive for widespread use. 2. Encouragement to visit an interactive website. The website helped you set goals, allowed you to graph your results, and had a bulletin board, plus several other features. This was the focus of the whole huge research project: the effect of this website. It could be offered to everyone practically free, except that if the subject didn’t log on after email reminders she got a phone call. 3. “A self-directed comparison condition in which participants got minimal intervention [that is, nothing].”
The personal contact condition was slightly better than nothing. By the end of the study, the website was no better than nothing. And nothing was bad. The subjects regained about two-thirds of the lost weight during the maintenance year and, looking at the weight-versus-time graph, were apparently going to regain the rest of the lost weight during the coming year. Subjects in all three conditions continued to regain the lost weight throughout the year of maintenance.

In other words, this exceedingly expensive study could be summed up like this: We tried something new, it didn’t work. The abstract didn’t face this truth squarely. It concluded: “The majority of individuals who successfully completed an initial behavioral weight loss program maintained a weight below their initial level.”

It’s a Catch-22: Without a good theory, it’s hard to find experimental effects. You’re just guessing. Most of what you will try will fail. Without strong experimental effects, it’s hard to build a good theory. I was in this situation with regard to early awakening. I had no idea what the cause was. It took me ten years of trying everything I could think of, dozens of possibilities, before I managed to find something that made a difference. From that I managed to build a little bit of a theory, which helped enormously in finding more experimental effects.

The people who did this study had no good theory about weight control. Nothing wrong with that, we all start off ignorant. The website they tested was just the usual common-sense stuff. What’s discouraging for anyone who wants to lose weight is how little progress was made for such a huge amount of time and money. If it takes seven years and ten million dollars and a small army of researchers to test one little point in a vast space of possibilities . . . you are unlikely to find anything useful during the lifetime of anyone now alive (or any of their children). The people behind the study also had a poor grasp of experimental design. With 300 people in the website group, it would have been easy to test many website design variations: weight-loss graph (yes or no), bulletin board (yes or no), etc., using factorial or fractional factorial designs. Their study merely showed that one particular website didn’t work. They learned nothing about all other possible websites. They might have been able to say: no likely website will work. They can’t because the study was badly designed. The study cost something like $10 million and that was the statistical advice they got!

The huge expense and the lack of progress in the last 50 years go together. The methodological dogmatism I discussed recently has bad consequences. It leads to studies that are more expensive and take longer. The proponents of the methodological rigidity say they are “better” not taking account of the cost: continued ignorance about health. A better research strategy would be to fund and encourage much cheaper ways of testing new ideas.

Sweet and Ignorant

Seth Roberts2 Comments

Speaking of ignorance, after all this time, we don’t understand the effects of artificial sweeteners. Excellent health journalism by Jill Adams. The Shangri-La Diet shows we didn’t understand the effects of sugar. (Universally believed to be fattening, even by Gary Taubes, it turns out to be extremely slimming under some conditions.) Which we have been eating even longer.

Thanks to Dave Lull and Andy Pattantyus.

Bear Stearns and Self-Experimentation

Seth Roberts4 Comments

Understanding and investment go together: The more you understand something, the more you should invest in it. On Friday, Bear Stearns owners thought their stock was worth $30/share; they were utterly wrong, it turned out.

In this sense, self-experimentation — research so cheap it can be done as a hobby — is a statement of complete ignorance. Because it is so cheap, you can test a hundred absurd ideas. If you use more expensive research methods, you cannot afford to test ideas you think are absurd. You must search a smaller solution space. If you are not correct about where the answer to your question will be, the region of possibilities that contains it, your research will fail to find it.

My self-experimentation about why I was waking up too early revealed that I was almost completely ignorant about what I was studying. Two of the causes I found — eating breakfast and not standing enough — were not on my list of possibilities when I started. The Shangri-La Diet is outside the range of weight-loss methods that obesity researchers consider reasonable; without self-experimentation, it would never be tested.

If Not Noseclips, Dark Sunglasses?

Seth Roberts7 Comments

In this interesting video about losing weight, Paul McKenna, a British hypnotist, recreates a study in which people ate food blindfolded. In the study, they ate one-quarter less when blindfolded than when not blindfolded. This doesn’t impress me; nothing is stopping the blindfolded subjects from eating more at later meals. But it makes me wonder how not seeing your food affects flavor-calorie learning. It might make it stronger (you’re less distracted) or it might make weaker (the sight of food acts like glue to strengthen flavor-calorie associations — there is actually evidence for something like this).

While wearing noseclips while eating with others is too weird, wearing dark sunglasses might not be. And what about listening to music (for distraction) while you eat? My calorie learning experiments are continuing; eventually I should be able to test these possibilities.

Thanks to Gary Skaleski.

All About Nose-Clipping

Seth Roberts1 Comment

Over at the SLD forums, Heidi555 posted these useful links:

1. Nose clipping ditto foods to extinguish cravings

2. Conditioning Appetite Suppression

3. Nose clipping lots of food really works — it’s easier!

This is about as far from the “losing weight is just a matter of calories in versus calories out” dogma as you can get. Last week at a dinner I sat next to a young doctor who said exactly that. I said nothing.

Thanks, Heidi.

Calorie Learning: Introduction

Seth Roberts7 Comments

In a series of posts, each titled Calorie Learning: [something], I’m going to use a blog to communicate self-experimentation. To see the whole series, look in the category Calorie Learning (under Self-Experimentation).

This research will be about how we (or at least I) learn to associate flavors with calories — more precisely, smells with calories. This learning is at the heart of the Shangri-La Diet, which derives from a theory that says the flavors of your food increase your set point if they are associated with calories. The stronger the association, the bigger the increase.

Why study this? 1. Maybe I can improve the diet. 2. It matters. It happens with every bit of food you eat. It controls what you eat and your appearance (assuming my theory is right). 3. Little is known about it. As I wrote in the appendix to The Shangri-La Diet, Anthony Sclafani has studied this learning extensively in rats. No one has studied it extensively in people. 4. The experiments can be simple and easy — or at least that’s what I think now.

A few weeks ago, a friend told me how much she liked those cellophane-wrapped white-bread sandwiches sold in delis and bodegas. Egg salad sandwiches, for example. They were addictive, she said. That sounded about right: White bread (and bread in general) is digested very fast, witness its very high glycemic index. Fast digestion means the calorie signal it generates in the brain overlaps a great deal with the flavor signal it generates in the brain. The more overlap of the two signals, the stronger the association created. The stronger a flavor’s association with calories, the more you like it.

Her comment gave me an idea: I can create a random new flavor by randomly combining many spices, mixing them into butter, and spreading the butter on white bread. The spices supply the flavor, which I can reproduce as often as I want by making a big enough batch of spicy butter when I start. Spice mixtures are cheap. I can easily and cheaply make a huge number of flavors that should taste entirely new. This means I can start fresh — which is where you want to start when doing a learning experiment — as often as I want. White bread is cheap, easily available, has little flavor, and provides a strong signal per calorie. If I want to increase the time between the flavor and the calories, maybe I can spread the butter on crackers, which have few calories, and eat the bread later.

Will it work? Stay tuned.

Science in Action: Flavor-Calorie Learning (another simple example)

Seth Roberts4 Comments

At the heart of the Shangri-La Diet is the idea that we learn to associate flavors (smells) with calories. This learning was first shown in rat experiments. There’s some human evidence, but not much. If I could discover more about what controls this learning, I might be able to improve the diet. For example, maybe I could say more about what the flavor-free window should be.

My earlier self-experimentation on this subject – I used tea for flavor and sugar for calories — was helpful. To my surprise, I found that really small changes in flavor made a noticeable difference. If I switched from one canister of Peet’s Gunpowder Tea to a new canister, the ratings went down, although everything else stayed the same. From this came the notion of ditto food: Foods with exactly the same flavor each time are especially fattening. I hadn’t realized what a difference it would make if you kept the flavor exactly the same each time.

It’s been hard to learn more. After Christmas dinner, my mom gave me the leftover brandy (A. R. Murrow). I used it for a very simple experiment in which I learned to like it. I’ve never drunk brandy in any quantity and I started off not liking it. Every day for a few weeks, I drank one tablespoon. I drank it in a few sips over a few minutes. I didn’t eat anything else for at least 30 minutes. I rated how good it tasted on a 0-100 scale where 10 = very bad, 20= quite bad, 25 = bad, 30 = somewhat bad, 40 = slightly bad, 50 = neutral, 60 = slightly good, 70 = somewhat good, 75 = good, 80 = quite good, 90 = very good. The overall rating was the maximum of the ratings of the several sips. (The first sip usually tasted the best.)

Here are the results.

learning to like brandy

I’ve observed similar results five or six times. They are more support for the most basic conclusions: 1. The effect is very clear. One tablespoon of brandy has only 30 calories. 2. A really simple experiment is easy.

That’s a promising start but then it gets hard, or at least non-obvious. As a way to study flavor-calorie learning, this little example has several flaws: 1. Slow learning. 2. Expensive materials. 3. Little control of flavor. The best I can do is choose which liquor to buy. Soon I will run out of ones I haven’t used. 4. No way to separate flavor and calories in time. 5. No way to change the calorie source.

An earlier demonstration used a soft drink. It’s really Science in Inaction: I’ve made zero progress in a year.

Obesity and Refrigerator Design

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In the last chapter of The Shangri-La Diet, I discussed what environmental changes my theory of weight control suggested. An article in the LA Times about how to reduce obesity by changing the environment contains some ideas that strike me as unwise:

laws regulating portion size

but also a good one, from Brian Wansink.

A 2006 study in the International Journal of Obesity [by Wansink and colleagues] found that when candy was placed in a clear dish, people ate 71% more than when it was in an opaque dish. The same study found that the closer the food, the more likely it would be eaten. . . . “We need to make small changes in our environment. That can be as small as moving fruits and vegetables to the middle shelf in the refrigerator” [said Wansink].

In Japan — where portion sizes are smaller without the need for legislation — most new refrigerators have three compartments separately accessible from the outside. Two are above freezing, one is below. Wansink’s comment suggests not only that such refrigerators are a good idea but also that one of the above-freezing doors should be transparent. Behind the transparent door you’d put fruits and vegetables.

Thanks to Dave Lull.

Advances in SLD: Eating Lots of Nose-Clipped Food

Seth Roberts3 Comments

At the Shangri-La Diet forums, Heidi 555 wrote (excerpts):

I highly recommend nose-clipping a high percentage of food. My weight has been steadily dropping down and my body is shrinking. But best of all I feel really good in my body. For the past five years I’ve been dedicated to getting in shape. I gradually built some muscles but found it impossible to lose those last 10 pounds of fat. Working out made me look stockier. Now I am in the enviable position of trying to figure out what I want to weigh. Imagine that – pick what I want to weigh! I can’t believe that I’m trying to figure that out.

For the most part, I don’t mind nose clipping lots of food. I enjoy eating even with nose clips on. Yesterday, I made some delicious cream of mushroom vegetable soup. I raved about how delicious it tasted. My husband looked at me as if I was slightly nuts. I was wearing nose clips and couldn’t taste a damn thing. Yet, I enjoyed every mouthful and raved about how great it “tasted”. The healthy, creamy, warm, texture, umami elements were deliciously satisfying.

I have found the same thing — that there is a lot of pleasure to be gotten from the non-smell elements of food (creamy, sweet, salty, sour, etc.) and that the overall effect, when these elements are present in good amounts, is that the food tastes delicious, even without smell. When I have nose-clipped chicken, for example, I sprinkle it with salt, sugar, vinegar, and hot sauce.

I don’t worry about a two hour window. I’m also flexible each day with what percentage of food I nose clip. I think in general I nose clip somewhere between 40 and 90 percent of what I eat. But it’s not as bad as it sounds. With strong appetite suppression, I often don’t care if I taste what I eat. I try to nose clip extremely healthy food. But sometimes I have a fridge to mouth nose clipped binge. The weirdest thing is that I always feel like I’m eating a lot. Maybe eating as much as you want, of whatever you want, always feels like a lot.

It’s especially interesting she doesn’t worry about a two-hour window.

With flavorless oil and unflavored sugar water, there is a dosage limit, of course: you’ll probably want to stay under 400 calories/day so that the rest of your diet provides good nutrition. With nose-clipping there is no obvious calorie limit. Everything we know about nutrition suggests you could eat all your food this way. Given the right choice of foods — foods that are adequately creamy, salty, sweet, etc. — you’ll still enjoy everything.