These are the results from the third week of my experiment on the Shangri-La Diet. If you are curious, you can take a look at the first and second weeks’ results and read the introduction for the explanation of why I was doing it and how I think it works. Also note that I was doing it simultaneously with low-carb maintenance.
I believe this is the last entry I will be making for the Shangri-la diet. Please see the summary comments below for more info.
Saturday (Day 15 | 15 from goal)
Gained a 2 pounds but not too unexpected since Friday is my cheat day. A pretty average day as far as appetite goes.
Sunday (Day 16 | 15 from goal)
Weight unchanged. I wasn’t starving for breakfast but ate my typical amount. I didn’t get to take the oil in mid morning like I normally do but was only a little hungry for lunch after Aikido class. I still ate all of my lunch and a couple of pieces of low-carb chocolate for desert. Switched to grapeseed oil instead of olive oil to see if it makes a difference and also decided to take 1.5 tblsp instead of just one for my doses. I have been reading on several other people’s logs that taking more oil seems to make a difference so I will try it out. Only upping it a little since TAD is worried about me taking too much. For dinner had pizza toppings (the things you do for low-carb) and one small “full” slice. Probably more than I should have had. Felt a bit full afterwards.
Monday (Day 17 | 14.5 from goal)
Down by half a pound. Surprised that I lost anything considering my dinner, but it was probably because of Aikido class yesterday. Not too hungry for breakfast but felt full after I finished (more than usual). I upped my dosage of the oil to about 1.5 tblsp. Lunch was definitely a different experience! I wasn’t hungry at all and we didn’t leave until 12:30. At the salad bar I had a very strong urge NOT to get as much as I usually do. I built my salad about 2/3 as big as I usually do and I had a hard time finishing it. I felt more full than usual for the rest of the afternoon as well. This was definitely a different feeling from not being hungry… I honestly did not want to eat as much. That’s basically what I was expecting most of my experience on Shangri-La to have been like. So I wonder if it is changing the oil from olive to grapeseed or the increased dosage that made the difference. Dinner I ate less than usual as well, but it was more of a concious effort. I didn’t feel full after dinner but I wasn’t hungry either. That’s more what I’m used to. I would rather have my lunch experience be the norm.
Tuesday (Day 18 | 14.5 from goal)
Weight unchanged. Breakfast was nothing unusual. Lunch we had earlier than I was hungry (still around 12:30) but I didn’t feel the urge to eat less like on Monday and finished what I ordered. Felt hungry enough for a snack before Aikido class and had my typical light dinner afterwards.
Wednesday (Day 19 | 12.5 from goal)
Down 2lbs. Not too unexpected for the day after class. Usual breakfast (I am such a creature of habit). Lunch might have been a problem because one of our managers came to town and took us to lunch early and I think I still had about 10 minutes to go before the hour was up since my dose. I didn’t really want to go into detail about why I was just sitting there while everyone else was eating so I went ahead and ate anyway. Dinner wasn’t anything special either… didn’t particularly feel any less hungry or full faster.
Thursday (Day 20 | 14 from goal)
Up 1.5 pounds, but not unusual. Typical breakfast, typical lunch… I forgot to take my second dose of oil until 4:30pm though and had a bad reaction to it. I remembered I needed to take it when I realized I was hungry. It is apparently not a good idea to take the oil when you’re hungry. I started feeling very nauseauted about an hour after I took the oil. We had to attend an orientation meeting for parents at the place my son will be attending camp this summer before we could go to dinner and I ended up having to excuse myself and go lay down in the car to avoid throwing up. Fortunately I felt better after another half hour but it was not a fun experience.
Friday (Day 21 | 14.5 from goal)
Gained half a pound. Since I didn’t get to attend Aikido on Thursday evening, not too surprising, but a bit disappointing. There was a lot going on that day so I ended up missing my morning dose. Our schedule was off that evening as well and after Thursday’s experience I didn’t want to take the dose before I went to bed. For a Friday, my normal low-carb “cheat” day, I was pretty restrained. I was “good” all day, though I did have a small desert after dinner.
Summary of Week and Thoughts:
I’m pretty disappointed with my weight loss results. After 3 weeks now, I haven’t lost a significant amount of weight. After thinking about it for the long Memorial Day weekend, I think I’m not going to go the 4th week. If I had lost even a pound then I might have considered it, but I haven’t.
So for me the Shangri-la diet has not been a successful way to lose weight. I have to admit that it frustrates me after having read so many other accounts from people that it is working for. I followed the simple instructions defined in the book as closely as possible. Having lost as much weight as I have on the significantly more complicated low-carb lifestyle, I am no stranger to being strict and precise in following directions. I believe if every day had been like Monday of this week, then I would have ended up losing weight. But that was the only day that really had the “I’m not hungry and get full quickly” effect that I had been expecting from reading other people’s results. Shangri-la still didn’t work for me and I would like to know the reasons. I wish I knew why I didn’t have Monday’s experience every day. Here are some ideas why I didn’t:
I would like to know if anyone else has had some of the same factors to deal with and similar experiences on Shangri-la. I’d love to hear from other low-carb people who’ve tried it and see if they ended up with the same results, or, if not, what the differences were.
On the positive side, Shangri-la has been a very effective way for me to control when I am hungry. I may not have eaten less, but I was able to pretty easily control the times of day when I was eating. This came in handy for eating lunch with co-workers who don’t like to get out as early as I typically did. And I may use it in conjunction with Induction (the most restrictive phase of Atkins where you “jump start” your weight loss) soon as a method of controlling my hunger, to finally get rid of those last 15 lbs.
I’m disappointed that the Shangri-la diet didn’t work for me, but I hope it continues to work for many other people and I will keep an eye on the developments to see if someone discovers what the key is for people like me who haven’t seen success. I think there’s probably just something else “missing”, and someone will stumble on the answer just like Seth Roberts did in accidentally discovering the key to the diet in the first place. Congrats to those of you lucky enough to have bodies that respond to the diet, I envy you.
Yesterday a friend of mine coined a new term that will be one of my favorite words for a while. I was doing some testing of a functional area of the website we’re working on and found some unexpected behavior that at first I thought was a bug but on more thought, and realizing that it had some benefits, determined it might actually be a feature that we just didn’t document very well for the user.
I IMed my friend who’s managing the project and explained my thoughts…
Friend: interesting… what’s the cross between a bug and a feature? beature? fugture?
Lindsay: heh.
Lindsay: I like fugture
Lindsay: or fug for short
Lindsay: beature is too much like beautiful… and a fugture is anything but beautiful!!
So it’s all Fugtures now, baby!
New terminology can make old problems into their own solutions! Instead of spending hours working out the fixes for the mile long list of change requests you inherited with maintaining someone else’s old code, just tell the client that it’s fine the way it is…call it Fugture-Rich!
Too bad it doesn’t really work that way… oh well, back to searching for some more fugs to squash.
These are the results from the second week of my experiment on the Shangri-La Diet. If you are curious, you can take a look at the first week’s results and read the introduction for the explanation of why I’m doing it and how I think it works. Also note that I’m doing it simultaneously with low-carb maintenance.
Saturday (Day 8 | 14.5 from goal)
Gained back the two lbs I lost on Friday, but I was pretty much expecting it since Friday is my low-carb “cheat” day. I only ate half of my typical breakfast. I wasn’t hungry for lunch and waited almost an hour and a half beyond when I normally eat, but I wasn’t compelled to eat much less than usual when I did eat. I was a bit hungry by dinner time, but I didn’t finish my salad like I normally would. I took my second dose late that night and found that I was nauseated 10 minutes after until I fell asleep, which is something that hasn’t happened to me before. Also noticed something strange: plain water tasted sweet, something that I haven’t experienced since some heavy ketosis phases on Atkins. I am pretty sure I’m not in ketosis, so that wasn’t expected.
Sunday (Day 9 | 14.5 from goal)
Stable weight. Small breakfast again. Went to Aikido and wasn’t hungry afterwards when we got lunch, but again, wasn’t compelled to eat any less than usual. Got treated to dinner for Mother’s Day at our favorite Mexican place and couldn’t resist having a margarita and a few chips, but I didn’t clean my plate. My second dose of oil nauseated me a bit again but not for very long as I tried to drink a good bit of water afterwards. Water didn’t taste sweet today.
Monday (Day 10 | 15 from goal)
Gained half a pound. Not sure if it’s from the margarita or what. Craved my whole breakfast (bar and cup of yogurt) today so I ate it all. Wasn’t hungry for lunch and actually ate a small one for me. But I was hungry for dinner and probably had a bit more than I should have. Switched brands of oil. The new one has less flavor for me, but that also makes it taste “better”. The old one had a little bit of bitter flavor. I’ve noticed that I don’t gag at all anymore taking the oil or immediately try to wash it down with water. I’m wondering if I’m starting to make a flavor association. It tastes a little buttery.
Tuesday (Day 11 | 15 from goal)
No weight change. Ate my typical breakfast but was distracted at work by a fire drill and wasn’t able to take my oil in the morning like I have been. Still didn’t get hungry for lunch until about 12:30. Ate my typical salad for lunch. Took the oil about an hour later than I usually do in the afternoon (around 3:30) and noticed that I didn’t get the hunger pang I usually have around 4:45. Went to Aikido class and ate my typical small dinner when I come home. But I also had some low-carb ice cream. I’m trying not to artificially eat less just to see what happens… if I’m craving something I will eat it.
Wednesday (Day 12 | 13 from goal)
Lost 2lbs, but it is the day after Aikido class. Was hungry for breakfast and ate the whole thing. Wasn’t able to take the oil between breakfast and morning like I have been but still wasn’t starving for lunch and ate it a late but not a lot less food than typical. I left a lot on my plate at dinner, but most of it was the extra large portion of vegetables that came as a side dish, and we had an appetizer, so I probably didn’t eat less over all.
Thursday (Day 13 | 14.5 from goal)
Gained 1.5 lbs. No change in the amount I ate for breakfast, though I wasn’t as hungry this morning. Had my customary salad for lunch. Though I didn’t have the snack before Aikido class that I usually do (a breakfast bar). I took my afternoon dose of oil at about 4:30 so I wasn’t hungry before class. Had my typical light dinner when I got home and some low-carb ice cream for desert.
Friday (Day 14 | 13.5 from goal)
Lost a pound. Again typical from the day after Aikido class. I was pretty hungry for breakfast and ate the whole thing. I was also a bit hungry for lunch, which we had close to 11:30 instead of waiting till after noon. Cheated on my low-carb regimen for dinner since it was Friday, having some bread and a desert. But I didn’t clean my plate like I usually do.
Summary of Week and Thoughts:
I’m starting to lose faith that Shangri-La is going to be effective for me, but in the spirit of the experiment I’m going to keep it up for the next two weeks as long as I don’t gain any significant weight.
I’ve lost less than half a pound comparing the averages of the two weeks, but it’s better than not losing anything at all. I’m finding it interesting to watch the cycle of my weight change throughout the week. There’s definitely a pattern.
I wonder if I’m doing something wrong to not have lost more by now, but I have been very careful about making sure that I followed the simple directions. Possibly it could have something to do with the oil that I’m using. I no longer find it unpleasant to take the dose and I’ve noticed that I have the thought of it tasting buttery. Perhaps that means that I’m making a flavor association with the oil. I am going to try Grape-seed oil (another oil that I’ve read has very little flavor) next week to see if it makes a difference.
I have always been very sensitive to the tastes of things so I wonder if that could be a factor against my success in the diet. I avoid food that’s extremely hot and spicy because I don’t like being “assaulted” by my food. I don’t add salt or other flavorings to food and I sparingly add sauces if offered because I enjoy tasting the flavor of food as it is given. I also can taste the difference in different brands of bottled water which some people tell me is silly, but I distinctly dislike most “natural spring water” because I can taste the minerals. Could that make me unsuitable for the Shangri-La diet? Will I be unable to avoid the flavor/calorie connection?
Another problem may be that I also truly enjoy the food that I eat and hardly feel full at a meal. Stopping eating is mainly a matter of no longer having food on my plate to eat. It’s almost never an issue of feeling uncomfortably full. Even eating slowly doesn’t seem to have an effect on the amount I eat. This isn’t a problem with the low-carb lifestyle because you can eat as much as you like as long as it’s low-carb. But since the ultimate effect of Shangri-La seems to be voluntary calorie restriction, I may be out of luck.
Update: Week 3, I’m done.
One of those videos videos where I’m sitting there saying “yep, uh-huh, yeah, I know how that goes…”. Why is it so hard to get motivation sometimes?
I read a great article by Kathy Sierra of “Creating Passionate Users” fame this morning. She brought up the point of how glib talking people usually get their way more often then their less-articulate counterparts. While it is not always true that the fast-talkers are wrong, the problem comes in when the deep-thinkers are overlooked when they might be right.
Kathy’s article was in the context of making business decisions, having meetings about development issues and deciding on a course of action. But the discussion made me think about another conversation I had recently with a developer friend about interviews for development jobs.
It seems as if technical interviews are definitely stacked in favor of the glib. Considering the fact that many of the best developers (at least in my experience) are often the introverts and don’t like to rush into things headfirst, they are at a disservice with the typical method of interviewing.
It usually goes like this:
It’s amazing that any introvert developers get hired!
A developer’s job is about solving problems, but not instantly. Its about learning new technologies and methodologies to solve those problems if you don’t already have the appropriate knowledge. Its about becoming aware of your environment and working within those constraints. And its about efficiency: using whatever tools you can find to save you time, reusing things you and other people have developed to keep you from reinventing the wheel and leveraging whatever knowledge resources (search, books, friends) you have available to you to get the job done. But all of that takes time, and those skills are not accurately measured in the typical kinds of interviews that I and other developers I know have been exposed to (or given!).
Wouldn’t it make more sense if you were given a set of reasonable project requirements with the tools and environment you’d be using at your potential employer (see virtualization) and access to whatever personal tools you’d use if you were working there (ie, internet access, IM, phone, your library of code snippets, your favorite books), and allowed to take 8-24 hours to complete the project to the best of your ability. Then your potential employer could review your work and call you in for a code review so you could justify your choices. Someone who got through that process in good standing would stand a lot better chance of being successful in your company in the long run. It would give people a chance to be judged on what they DO and not what they SAY. And it would get rid of the fast-talking BSers.
“But what if you had your buddy code the whole thing for you?”, the interviewers might say. It doesn’t really matter if the code review process is implemented well. Since one more aspect of development is to be able to understand code that other people write, its still an appropriate test of someone’s ability. Who cares if you really wrote it if you can step through each part and thoroughly explain it to the interviewer’s satisfaction. If there’s still a question of aptitude, the interviewee could expand some functionality during the course of the interview. I have a whole network of developer friends with different areas of expertise that I call on when I need help with some concept I haven’t had to deal with before. And they call on me when I have knowledge that they need as well. We share code snippets all the time. It’s another tool. It’s another method. It’s just part of being a good developer. But in the end it’s all about whether the interviewee really understand the code that they’re presenting. If they didn’t write it this time but they understand and can explain it, they’ll be able to write it next time.
I would rather have someone come onboard at my company who had already demonstrated their capability with problems similar to what they will be expected to work with in my environment than take the chance that the silver-tounged person who knew all the answers can’t produce. That’s the risk you take with the standard tech interview process that’s all based on talk. Time for a newer approach!
Check out this great Google Maps parody. Just a quite literal example of the perception that “The map is not the territory“.
A few weeks ago I got a beta invite to Dabble DB. I tried it out and I was simply blown away. I haven’t been so impressed with the comprehensive usefulness and ease of use of an online application in a long time.
Its so easy that my nine year old son, Avynn, was able to create a database to track his test scores for the Accelerated Reader (AR) program at school with minimal assistance from me after we had a 15 minute conversation about what a database is. He created a table (termed a Category in Dabble) of books and one of his AR test scores, set up the relationship between the tables and created a view that grouped and totaled the results by quarter (displayed below). It took us about 45 minutes to build including the painfully slow data entry skills of a third grade typist!
I had already played with Dabble DB for a while before the experiment with my son and managed to create a database application to maintain a customer database for a friend of mine with 6 tables each with relationships, some with more than 1 per table, and 11 views with grouping and aggregation in under 4 hours. It’s something that my friend would easily be able to make immediate use of and easily add any missing data fields and relationships. The orientation, learning curve and jotting notes for feedback took up the majority of the time I spent on it. I could easily recreate the entire application in about 1.5 hours if I needed to do it again. I was amazed at how easy it was.
Here’s part of the email I sent back to the developers (Avi Bryant and Andrew Catton) after that project:
First I want to say thanks for the invite! And second I want to say OH MY GOSH this is an awesome application! I am so very impressed. And I’ve beta tested a lot of things. This is the most useful, functional and well thought out beta I have seen maybe ever, especially among the class of app it is. Relational databases are not easy things to create and maintain, but you guys have done a really excellent job making it simple, quick and even fun (in an extremely nerdy way)!
I’ve been playing with it for a few hours today, setting up a project that I’ve had in mind to do for a friend of mine and I’m amazed at what I have after my relatively small amount of effort. During the whole experience, I kept saying, “well, X is cool, but I wish it could just do Y… that would make it even better.”, and to my amazement, after poking around a few minutes more, I’d find that I can do Y!! I started out with a big list of enhancements and by the time I was done whittling out the stuff that was there anyway, I’ve only got 5! You guys rock!
Dabble DB came out of beta last week and I think that it is a great alternative to anyone who’s now using more than one Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or a Microsoft Access database to keep track of their information. Dabble DB is friendly enough that anyone who can handle creating a spreadsheet and certainly someone who’s using an Access database can easily set up their own Dabble applications. Heck, if my son can do it, then just about anyone can! No longer will small business owners need to rely on their brother-in-law’s programmer friend to set up a small database for them. As one of those potential programmer friends, that’s probably not good news for me wanting to pick up some side work, but oh well, more time for my own pet projects. Of course Avynn’s leet database services are for hire if you need them after all!
Here are my observations and experiences from my first week of trying the Shangri-La Diet. Read this introduction if you’d like to know more about why I started it and how I think it works.
Here’s a chart of the week’s progress:
Saturday (Day 1 | No Data):
Of course, I forgot to weigh myself before I started. But figured I wouldn’t lose anything that day anyway. I didn’t notice an appetite suppression, but actually found myself kind of freaking out during the hours when I wasn’t supposed to eat anything. I craved something sweet, but I wasn’t hungry. And I was anxious about not eating even though I wouldn’t normally eat during those times anyway.
Sunday (Day 2 | 16 from goal):
Went to Aikido class before lunch which usually makes me pretty hungry. I wasn’t starving for lunch though I didn’t feel compelled to eat any less than usual. I was neutral about dinner as well. Not particularly hungry but not feel full any sooner.
Monday (Day 3 | 14 from goal):
Lost 2lbs, but not unexpected the day after Aikido class. I typically fluctuate a good deal during the week anyway. I noticed the appetite suppression for lunch. I am normally the person rounding up my friends at 11:30 to head out but I didn’t get hungry enough to bug people until 12:45. Since I waited until I was hungry I ended up eating my entire lunch. But I didn’t want my usual dessert (a couple of pieces of low-carb chocolate). Dinner we went for sushi and I ordered my normal portions but had a hard time finishing everything. I also felt very full for the rest of the evening.
Tuesday (Day 4 | 15 from goal):
Gained a pound. Not that unexpected because the sushi wasn’t low carb (I had rice and eel with the sweet sauce). Didn’t feel like eating my whole breakfast though, and waited till about noon to eat lunch. Again passed up on my sweet after lunch. I felt a bit tired all day. Not sure if it was related to the diet. Went to Aikido class that evening.
Wednesday (Day 5 | 14.5 from goal):
Lost half a pound. Pretty hungry for breakfast but that is also typical for mornings after my night Aikido classes. Felt satiated before I finished and didn’t eat the whole thing anyway. Taking the oil at mid morning kept me from getting hungry again until about 12:30. I ate a small lunch for me and actually felt pretty full. Skipped the after-lunch sweet again and decided I’ll quit bringing them to work. Felt tired again but still not sure if it has anything to do with the diet.
Thursday (Day 6 | No Data):
Forgot to weigh that morning. Wasn’t dying for breakfast and didn’t eat the whole thing again. Wasn’t hungry at 11:30 but my friends were. I had a small bowl of chili for lunch with a side of mushrooms. I felt very full afterwards. Wasn’t hungry again until I got home from work and finished the bar I half ate for breakfast. That tided me over quickly. Ate a little more than usual after getting home from Aikido class that evening.
Friday (Day7 | 12.5 from goal):
Lost 2 pounds from Wednesday. Only had half what I normall do for breakfast. Wasn’t hungry until I actually sat down to eat lunch. Friday’s are typically my day to “cheat” so I had some chips with lunch. Ended up eating more than I did yesterday. Wasn’t hungry until about 4:45 then suddenly it hit me. Cheated again at dinner with bread and a dessert, but its Friday. I’ll probably gain back the weight but we’ll see what happens tomorrow.
Summary of week:
Basically I think that the diet has been working at least as an appetite suppressant. Whether it was what really made me lose the two pounds is up to question since my weight fluctuates a lot with Aikido training anyway. We’ll have to see what happens next week. Also, I’m a bit concerned with how tired I have been, though today I wasn’t particularly.
Next week I will quit bringing my snack after lunch since I haven’t eaten it all week. I might also leave part of my typical breakfast (yogurt and a breakfast bar) at home. After Aikido class I will up my dosage of oil a bit for the next day to see if that makes a difference. And I will try to observe what is making me tired and if I think it’s related to the diet.
Update: Results from Week 2.
Week 3, I’m done.
This is the first in a series of posts I’m going to write about my experiment with the Shangri-La Diet which has been emerging as a controversial way to lose weight within the blogsphere. Why would I want to try it? Weight has always been an issue in my life and I’ve always been trying to find a way to control it, and I enjoy self-experimentation.
About 3 years ago, I was 100lbs overweight. I lost 95lbs faithfully and strictly following the Atkins lifestyle. I’ve been maintaining for almost a year and a half now, within a 10-15 pound range, but I’ve never really managed to get all the way down to my goal. I “cheat” a lot more than I did before maintenance, usually taking at least one day a week to eat whatever decadance I’ve forbidden myself for the rest of the week. So I’ll gain a couple of pounds from that indescretion and spend the next 6 days being “good” and work it off again.
Overall, I have been happy with my low-carb experience and it’s a very effective and powerful way for me to stay fit and healthy. Despite what the popular media tells you, living the Atkins way is actually a very healthy lifestyle. In a nutshell, I consume a large amount of healthy fats and the food that I eat is higher in quality and nutrition density than the food I ate before. After all, when you’re going low-carb, you’re basically giving up the highly processed, trans-fatty, high-fructose corn syrup laden crap that makes up 80% of the diet of most typical Americans.
But still, there’s that last 10-15 lbs that I just haven’t been able to get rid of. I kept telling myself that I’d bite the bullet and go on Induction (the first, most restrictive phase of Atkins) again for a couple of weeks and try to shed that weight, but I’ve put it off mainly because I’ve just been lazy and not as disgusted with my body as I was before I started Atkins.
So that’s why I was interested when Tad said: “Well, I’ve found my new diet!”. He has a few more pounds to lose than I have, and his extreme pickiness about food has prevented him from doing Atkins and several other diets he’s looked into. So if he’s interested in something at all it’s got to be easy to follow and not too crazy as far as what you are allowed to eat. And I think the Shangri-La diet fits the bill.
What is the Shangri-La diet? It’s a new method of controlling your weight that Seth Roberts discovered through self-experimentation and observation. The gist is that you take a tablespoon of unflavored oil or 4 tablespoons of sugar dissolved in water twice a day with a buffer of an hour before and after the dose with no food and drink other than water during the buffer. Yes, it sounds insanely pointless, too simple and counter-intuitive. How can you lose weight by eating more calories? Especially of fat or sugar?
The premise is that your body has something conceptually like a thermostat that it uses to regulate your weight. There is a “set point” which is the “temperature” that the thermostat is set to and your body is constantly adjusting your hunger, turning on the heat (hunger) or the A/C (loss of appetite) to cause your weight to stay at the set point. When your weight is higher than the set point, you aren’t hungry. When your weight is lower than the set point, you want to eat. To control your weight, you have to be able to move your set point to where you want it to be and effectively reset your hunger thermostat. Once your set point is where you want it, you will be compelled to take in as much or little food as you need without discomfort of hunger or extra effort of eating special foods to maintain that weight.
In the book, Roberts focuses on the psychological aspects of the diet, his theory of flavor/calorie connection and how it affects our hunger and calorie consumption. He doesn’t go into much detail about the biological aspects how the diet works, other than through illustrations of scientific experiments in an appendix that seem to confirm the hypothesis without necessarily explaining it. But I’m the type of person who likes to know how things work and I’ve been giving this a lot of thought.
I am certainly not a medical professional, so I can’t be considered an authority, but I will take a stab at a theory on how the diet works biologically anyway. I have read Roberts’ book and did some reading based on the short paragraph in his book about the hormone lepitin. While doing that research I came across references to insulin and so did a refresher on some of the things I learned about how insulin affects the way you process food from my research on Atkins/low-carb diets. If someone has some additional insights or corrections here, I welcome the clarifications! I’d like to know as much as everybody else how it really works and someone with the proper credentials should be able to work it out.
I think the effects of the diet all have to do with influencing the functions of of lepitin, a hormone that tells the brain how much fat your body is storing, and insulin which directs how you utilize and/or store the calories that you ingest. I think that the set point itself is related to an acceptable ratio of lepitin in your bloodstream (your hunger thermostat will be triggered when the ratio is off balance) and the diet works by “tricking” the function of insulin, keeping it from switching from utilizing calories for energy to storing calories as fat for a longer period during the day resulting in a suppressing of your appetite. Tricking the insulin functionality consistently eventually causes your the acceptable ratio of lepitin to be changed so that your set point is lowered. And with your set point lowered your body doesn’t think you need to store as much fat and consume as many calories so you lose weight.
How does the insulin tricking function work? I think this is where Robert’s flavor connection comes in. When you eat something with a strong flavor association it triggers your brain to release more insulin to take care of the incoming food. When you eat things that have no flavor, there is no extra insulin released, but the insulin that’s already in your bloodstream continues to work on the energy release function instead of the storage function. Now I can see how that works for oil, but not so sure about the sugar water. So maybe I have it all wrong…
But maybe I have a partial clue. Regardless of how it works, it does seem to be working for many people who have tried it. And so I’ve decided to try it myself. So far it’s working for me too. I’m on the 7th day since I started and I’ve already lost about 2lbs.
My goals are modest:
If Roberts’ diet can do all that for me then I’ll be happy. So I’m giving it a month and using the oil method. If it doesn’t work, no harm done. Oil can’t be a lot more low-carb! If it works, Woohoo! Shangri-La found!
