The Fugue

If you look over at that graph you’ll see that I’ve gone from 120 kg to 117.2 kg in 4.5 weeks. Enough that I think we can say it’s not a fluke and I can blog about it in good conscience.

I’ve been doing the Shangri La “diet” for a few
weeks now. Redbeard blogged
it when I told him
about it when I first read about it on the Creating Passionate Users
blog.
It’s a strange but scientifically-based diet based on two fairly established
theories: first that your body has a body fat set point which works like a
thermostat, and second that your body learns to associate calories and taste,
raising the set point when you eat food that has been associated with calories.

I’m not going to go into the why in detail, since you can learn that at Seth
Roberts’ site. He wrote a book
about it too, but the diet is simple enough that the mechanics can be explained
in one sentence.

Every day, ingest 4 tablespoons of extra-light olive oil or sugar dissolved
in water at least one hour away from tasting any food (or anything else with
taste, like toothpaste). I like to have a tbsp of ELOO followed by a chaser of
a quart of water with a tbsp of fructose (lower glycemic index), twice a day.
The sugar water is effective at getting the oiliness out of your mouth quickly.
But when I’m in a hurry I’ll take 2 tbsp of oil, or sometimes if I’ve been
procrastinating it all day I’ll take 4 tbsp of oil.

Your appetite will reduce and you will lose weight on your body’s terms simply
by not being as hungry. I’ve read blog entries about how your appetite totally
disappears blah blah… well mine didn’t, but I’m 6′4″ and we wouldn’t really
expect that now would we? I do feel somewhat less hungry, or at least full
sooner. Is it a placebo effect? Time will tell. If time doesn’t tell then I’m
tricking my body into a better weight, and I’m ok with that. (As an aside, how
do you control for a placebo effect when a standard placebo (sugar pill) would
actually be following the diet? ;-)

The big question is, is it sustainable? I mean, do we really want to be
drinking olive oil the rest of our lives. Well, drinking olive oil isn’t that
bad after you get used to it. No, really. Sugar water is actually more of a
pain because if you care about not messing with your blood sugar you have to
drink it slowly. In the book he talks about someone who does the diet down to
his optimal weight, then stops and slowly rises back up 10 pounds or so, then
goes back on, etc. I could live with that, even if I couldn’t live with it
every day which I think I could. Besides, I predict that if this diet works for
a lot of people, and I think it will, then it won’t be long until someone makes
a tasteless pill with enough calories that doesn’t mess with your blood sugar,
and it’ll be just like taking vitamins.