The Shangri-La Diet

In response to my post about Sensa, a couple of readers suggested I take a look at Seth Robert's Shangri-La Diet. I promptly did some googling, reading what I could find online, and also reserved the book at my public library. I picked the book up yesterday, and I've read about two thirds of it already -- it's not long. It is, however, very interesting, and blessedly clearly written.

Here's what I have been able to glean so far about the theory and practice of the Shangri-La Diet:

Roberts states -- and he is not alone in this -- that the body has a "set point," a weight it wants to weigh. If we get below this weight, our bodies make us hungry. If we get above this weight, our bodies tell us we're too full. This is likened to a thermostat, where if the temperature dips below the regulated 70 degrees the furnace kicks on, and if the temperature gets above the regulated 70 degrees the furnace goes off. Just as a thermostat can be set at lower or higher temperatures, Roberts says that our set point can be set at a higher or a lower weight.

Our cave man ancestors (back to them again) lived in a feast-or-famine world. Therefore, we have evolved to have the set point turn up, making us hungrier, when food is plentiful, so that we'll store fat, and the set point turn down when food is scarce, so that our bodies burn the stored fat, and blessedly, so we don't feel as hungry. It is in a world of constant abundance, with no famine, that this tendency to be hungrier the more food is available is turned against us.

Here's where Roberts gets original: He says we can reprogram our set point by eating certain foods. Some foods are far more powerful for pushing up the set point than others are. If we deliberately consume set point lowering foods, he says, our bodies will "believe" they need to be thinner, we'll feel less hungry, we'll naturally eat less, and will lose weight effortlessly.

Even more radical, Roberts claims that the thing that makes a food a "high" or "low" set point food is a taste/calorie linkage in the brain. He says this explains the idea of "acquired tastes" (and all tastes are acquired tastes, let's face it.) The more the brain associates a given flavor with calories, the more strongly that food will raise set point, the hungrier that food will make us, and the more addictive it will become.

Therefore, the more we can break the brain's linkage between between taste and calories, the more we can program our set points downward. Roberts says we can do this in two ways:

1) By consuming very, very bland calories
2) By consuming calories with unfamiliar flavors

Therefore, the heart of the Shangri-La Diet is the deliberate consumption of calories with NO FLAVOR associated with them. Roberts recommends either sugar water (he says that sweetness by itself, with no additional flavor, like cola or lemon or whatever, isn't perceived by the brain as a "flavor") or bland oil, particularly extra light olive oil (ELOO). The only hard-and-fast rule of the diet is to consume between 100 and 400 calories worth of one or the other or both of these substances every day -- closer to 100 calories worth if you only have a few pounds to lose, and up around the 400 calorie mark if you have substantial weight to shed.

Those bland calories must be consumed at least an hour after anything with flavor -- ANYTHING with flavor, even sugar-free gum, tea, coffee, or toothpaste -- and you must wait an hour after consuming your bland calories before you put anything with flavor into your mouth again.

That's it. The heart and soul of the Shangri-La Diet. Roberts says that this alone will cause weight loss, because your set point will down-regulate, and you'll automatically eat less in accordance with that new set point. No food is banned, no measurements demanded.

I am not looking for a reason to stop low carbing; I assume this comes as no surprise. On the other hand, I'm living proof that you can, indeed, eat enough on a low carb diet to actually gain weight. Despite hopeful claims, and clinical evidence of a very real metabolic advantage to low carbing, one cannot eat unlimited quantities of food on a low carb diet and still lose, or even maintain, weight. Sorry.

So the concept of being able to dial back my set point is interesting to me. I'm not saying I buy Roberts hypothesis, but I find it plausible enough to try. With the oil, of course, not the sugar water.

The big sticking point for me was that two-hour flavorless window. There are no two hours of my waking day that I do not want to drink tea. I can easily go without food for that long, but no tea for two hours? Torture. (We're not talking sweetened tea, here, just plain, black tea.)

With a little thought, I hit on the way I can do this. See those words "waking day?" Hah! I now have a bottle of ELOO and a little plastic shot glass in my bathroom. When I wake up to pee long about 3 am, I will swallow a tablespoon or so of ELOO. I will take another as soon as I wake up, somewhere between 7 and 8 these days. By the time I've taken my meds, weighed myself, fed the chickens, taken the dogs for a walk around our woods, taken a shower and gotten dressed, just about an hour is up, and it's time for tea. So there are my two doses of ELOO (which is what Roberts recommends) without any torturous tea-less-ness. We shall see if I start to shrink. It's not likely to do me any harm, at any rate.

Hmm. It's 7 pm, my Greek Stuffed Peppers should be done, and I think I'm going to quit here. I'll pick up again tomorrow, 'cause this stuff is interesting as heck.