On the SLD forums, a member named Del posted this:

Roughly a month ago, I got tired of the oil. I was fighting to take it and something about one of them was causing an allergic reaction (dermatitis), so I switched to noseclipped oatmeal with brown rice protein. I haven’t noticed any change in my appetite suppression (read, still ridiculously good) and my weight loss has maintained at the usual rate of 3lbs or so per week. I’m really enjoying it and I have that nice full feeling as well.

So in the interest of sharing, that’s:
1/2 c. quick cook oatmeal
2T. brown rice or egg white protein
1 c of water
Cook in microwave for 2 minutes, let sit for one minute. Consume noseclipped morning and night.

In conventional nutritional terms, oil and the oatmeal mixture are very different. One is all fat, the other has almost no fat. Yet they have had the same effect on her weight. The theory behind the Shangri-La Diet predicts this but few if any other theories do. For example, if you believe in low-carb diets, you would predict that the oil (no carbs) would cause weight loss more easily than the oatmeal mixture (which has plenty of carbs).

From Tayster, below a poll that asks “do you sing in the car?”:

It’s been a week since I started the Shangri La Diet and I have lost eight pounds. More importantly, I have lost the cravings that I used to have. I don’t feel like eating as much food as I did before. And when I do eat food, I feel like I need to make it something besides a bag of chips and a chocolate cherry Coke. Since I eat less meals, I prefer to make the meals count.

I still can’t explain it, but it works.

One comment: “CHOCOLATE CHERRY COKE?!!! How did I not know about this assuredly sublime creation?!”

Here is a nice endorsement of the Shangri-La Diet by Ben Popken. A very interesting aspect of what he is doing is the use of photographs to fool himself — or not — that he is being watched.

The taking and uploading of photos helps keep me honest. I know that if I fall behind, I have to announce it. Not many people are watching it but just seeing a few views here and there helps reinforce the idea that I’m being monitored.

Photos of his weight, for example.

All his photos.

Thanks to CalorieLab.

In The Shangri-La Diet I argue that the obesity epidemic is due to what I call ditto food: Food that tastes exactly the same each time. Just as you will make a very deep hole with a gun if you hit exactly the same spot each time you fire it, you will produce a very strong flavor-calorie association if you eat a food that tastes exactly the same each time.

The experience of a Colorado man supports this idea. He went to a doctor because of shortness of breath. He didn’t smoke. His test results resembled those of workers in microwave popcorn factories, who often have lung damage because of exposure to a flavoring chemical. The doctor asked the man if he was around a lot of popcorn. “How could you possibly know that about me?” the man said. “I am Mr. Popcorn.” He had eaten microwave popcorn twice a day or more for at least 10 years. When he stopped, he lost 50 pounds in six months. Apparently he made no other changes.

On the Shangri-La Diet forums, Timothy Beneke has posted about a creative method of avoiding compulsive eating.

Tim has been an excellent weight-loss engineer. His discovery, after losing 80 pounds, that he could lose even more by eating taste-free nutritionally-balanced mush is one reason I believe the theory behind the Shangri-La Diet. The theory predicts this will work, yet the mush is quite different nutritionally than flavorless oil or sugar water.

Few people have used the theory behind the Shangri-La Diet more successfully than Tim Beneke, an Oakland journalist. I put before and after photos of him — before and after he lost about 100 pounds — on the front page of the proposal for The Shangri-La Diet. He writes:

It’s very clear to me this summer that it’s much easier for me to go tasteless and only consume the mush if I don’t go to Berkeley, and just stay home in my apartment (except going for my neighborhood walk). And it’s not merely a matter of behavior. When I go to Berkeley and walk near places where I am accustomed to eating (and tasting) — mostly restaurants, sandwich shops and coffee houses — I actually experience more hunger and must consume more mush to satisfy hunger than if I stay home.

I’m not surprised that auditory and visual signals for food cause hunger. There are lots of conditioned cravings like that. Tim goes on to wonder if these learned signals for food raise the body-fat setpoint, as the theory behind the Shangri-La Diet says that food-associated flavors do. If you walk by your favorite bakery every day, will you weigh more than if you don’t?

I always lose weight when I travel in foreign countries. I’ve attributed this to unfamiliar food. But could unfamiliar places also play a role?

In 1973, Edward Zamble, a professor of psychology at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, published an experiment very relevant to this question. He divided rats into two groups. Both group got their daily meal at random times. For one group, the meal was preceded by 30 minutes of light; the light went off before the food was available. The other group was exposed to the same amount of light but the light bore no relation to when they were fed. The rats with signaled food ate more and weighed more than the rats with unsignaled food.

I knew of this experiment — and often mentioned it — before I came up with the theory behind the Shangri-La Diet, but I never connected them. Thanks, Tim.

From the SLD forums, someone who recently started SLD:

On vacation at my friend’s place in Dalarna Sweden. Used to live here some years ago and I´m now hanging out with all my old buddies, an jeeees… everything’s about food. BBQ´s, breakfast, snacks and lunch….? What´s this? Has food been so important before? Haven´t noticed that before, all food talk and all snacking. For fun I counted how often the word FOOD was used-25 times- during the day!!!

The theory behind the Shangri-La Diet says that food with unfamiliar flavor will be just as unfattening as food with no flavor (such as flavorless oil and sugar water). The Shangri-La Diet mentions using random spice combinations to get unfamiliar flavors.

I do this with smoothies. With smoothies there is no sense of loss — you’re not “ruining” something by randomly flavoring it. In my practice, “adding random spices” (also called crazy-spicing) means adding spices from three or four randomly-chosen spice mixes. It works great. Today I made a smoothie from crushed ice, plain yogurt, an egg, protein powder, powdered fiber, sugar, Splenda, Tabasco Sauce, vinegar, and, as I said, lots of four randomly-chosen spice mixes (Russian Sausage, Poultry Seasoning, etc.). Were I not in the middle of a flaxseed-oil experiment, I would have added flaxseed oil or some other oil. It tasted great.

As Michel Cabanac might say, pleasure is additive. This drink provides pleasure from these properties: creamy, protein, cool, liquid (satisfying thirst), sweet, salty (from the spice mixes), hot (Tabasco Sauce), spicy, sour. Nine sources, more than most food. They add up to a lot. It doesn’t matter that it tastes like nothing and that on a menu, no one would order it.

An hour later I thought: That tasted so good! But I was too full to want more.

I will be blogging more about that egg.