SD Blogger

I was so busy yesterday I forgot to take my olive oil.  Normally I take 3 tablespoons around 10pm, mixed with a little water.  This morning I had a decent sized breakfast sandwich (provided for free at a meeting), normally something like that would keep me satisfied well into the afternoon.  I started getting hungry around 12 and by 1 I was really hungry.  I’m not going to jump to conclusions but it certainly seems like the SLD effect has diminished in just one day.

Regardless of what the scale says I’m getting smaller.  I tried on 3 pairs of pants I haven’t been able to wear in over a year, they fit me now.  I have two more that are another size down that I’m getting close to fitting, I can actually button them. 

Weight: 256.0

I didn’t really make a conscious effort to watch my diet this weekend.  SLD did help with hunger and I didn’t eat as much as I normally would have, although I did eat a lot of non-nutritious snack type foods.   I’m actually glad to be back at work where I can get back into my routine.  Before SLD work was my downfall because I’d go out for lunch so often.  Now it’s turned into my most stable time, I usually have a salad or cup of soup for lunch.

I’ll probably stop posting my weight every day.  I get too frustrated if it doesn’t go down every day even though I know it’s going to fluctuate.  Over the weekend I weighed myself at 8am and was at 257.8 and again at 11am and I was 256.0.  I’m guessing my scale’s accuracy is + or - a couple of pounds.  From here on in I’ll post my weight on Fridays only.  I’ll still be posting throughout the week but probably not every day and not always about the SLD.

Weight: 257.4

Curioser and curiouser… I ate very little yesterday, went for a 2 mile run after work and this morning my weight is exactly the same?  These things happen, I’m sure it will start dropping again soon.  On the plus side, I’ve lost half an inch off my stomach in the last week and a half.

I had 1 egg, a sausage patty and 1 slice of toast for breakfast.  Nothing with sugar in it and I was suprisingly full afterwards.  I actually felt stuffed for a couple of hours.  There’s a definite trend here, anything with sugar causes me to be hungry sooner.  That’s good news because I actually don’t like sugary breakfast foods.

Technorati Tags: shangri-la diet

One of the most popular and controversial developments in weight loss over the last few years has been gastric bypass surgery.  There’s no doubt it works, several people in my office have had it and they’ve all lost a lot of weight and look much healthier and happier.  But it’s not without risks, one co-worker nearly died from an infection and other complications.  And once you have the surgery you’re faced with a lifetime of small meals, it’s not reversible.

I’ve often thought that if someone could somehow come up with a non-surgical method that replicates the effects of gastric bypass surgery, that someone would become very rich indeed.  Well it seems like Seth Roberts has come up with something very close.  For myself and many others the so-called Shangri-La Diet has greatly reduced our food cravings, we feel full on less food and don’t experience the sort of cravings we used to.  The method is completely reversible, if you want to go back to your old eating habits just stop taking the ELOO. 

The Shangri-La get rich quick plan:
Step 1: Discover an easy and inexpensive way to lose weight.
Step 2: ????
Step 3: Profit

The only problem with the Shangri-La Diet, from a business standpoint, is there’s no way to make money off it.  Sure there’s a book but it’s only 11 bucks and the method is so simple you can learn everything you need in a few minutes.  The only special food you need is Extra Light Olive Oil, available in any supermarket.  It would have been very easy for Seth Roberts to concoct some special blend of oils and push that as the official Shangri-La Diet oil, maybe a blend of ELOO and flaxseed oil.  He could have pushed it in the book, claimed the added health benefits made it more effective than straight ELOO and sold it through a website for $20 a bottle and had plenty of takers.  But he didn’t do that, he simply explained his ideas behind the diet and presented his own experience with it. 

Perhaps there’s a business opportunity here.  Someone could produce such a blend of oils, fund a clinical trial to prove the effectiveness and start selling it.  I think a lot of people look for that kind of official imprimatur, it makes them feel like they’re part of the group. 

We’ll know the Shangri-La Diet has hit the mainstream when we start seeing SLD branded oils and cans of sugar water at the supermarket and commercials with before and after pictures on TV.

Weight: 257.4

 Daily weigh-ins are a strange thing.  I ate nothing at all yesterday between 9am and 8pm, had a small dinner and somehow gained weight?  I’m not worried about it, after all even a 1 pound fluctuation is only .3% of my body weight.  As long as the trend continues downward I’m happy.

Today I had a nice healthy bowl of oatmeal for breakfast.  I’m interested to see if I have the same lack of appetite all through the day that I experienced yesterday.

Update: It’s funny, oatmeal is one of the foods that are supposed to be filling due to all the fiber but I’m much hungrier today than I was yesterday.  I had instant oatmeal with maple and brown sugar flavoring.  Perhaps the sugar caused my blood sugar to spike and then crash, causing the hunger?  I definitely have the low blood sugar shakes that I used to get when I ate cereal for breakfast.  Tomorrow I will try a non-sugary breakfast, maybe eggs and toast, and compare the results.  Lunch today is going to be chicken soup, about 200 calories, and a few saltines.  It should turn out to be a pretty low calorie day.

Technorati Tags: shangri-la, diet

Weight: 257.0

 Back on track after a not so great weekend.  I’m also back on track with exercise, I had gotten really lazy over the last couple of weeks which can’t be helping.

I’ve changed my regimen a bit, I’m now doing two tablespoons of sugar in 16 ounces of hot water during the workday and two tablespoons of extra light olive oil around 10pm.  I had bumped it up to 3 and 3 but I think that may have been a little excessive, that’s around 700 calories.  

Breakfast was a McDonald’s Sausage Egg McMuffin, weighing in at 450 calories.  I had been drinking my orange juice/banana/soy protein shakes which weighed in at over 500 calories and made me feel hungry after an hour or two, I assume because of the high sugar content.  While the McD’s isn’t really healthy it certainly keeps me full, I probably won’t eat anything until 1pm or later.  I need to find a healthier low-sugar breakfast, I’ll try oatmeal tomorrow.

This is going to be the week that, for me, proves the effectiveness of the Shangri-La Diet.  I’m certain it’s decreased my hunger and food cravings, now I’m going to make a concerted effort to really reduce my calories and increase my exercise and try to force my weight below 250 for the first time in years.

Technorati Tags: shangrila, diet

It’s been nearly two weeks so I want to make a few observations.  First, I really hate the name “Shangri-La Diet”.  I understand they needed to call it something to sell the book but it just sounds so hokey.  And it’s not a diet at all.  There’s no special menu or recipe, you simply eat less because you’re not as hungry.

One thing that I’ve had a hard time getting through my head is that the olive oil and sugar water are not acting as some kind of magic fat burner or instant appetite suppressor.  If I feel hungry I shouldn’t just take a swig of ELOO.  If I ate a big meal drinking more olive oil isn’t going to burn it off.   You have to follow the plan and drink it in the prescribed amounts on a regular basis.  It’s this regular intake of flavorless calories that lowers the set point and reduces your hunger.  But that doesn’t mean you can overeat or eat whatever you want.  I ate some really fattening food yesterday, the Shangri-La Diet isn’t going to make it magically disappear. 

That brings me to my next point:  The Shangri-La Diet can reduce feelings of hunger but hunger is not the only reason we eat.  I ate ice cream yesterday because I like it, not because I’m hungry. In fact I was still full from a relatively small dinner an hour earlier, I actually had to force myself to eat the ice cream.  It sounds disgusting to say that but when I look at the actual amount of food I ate it wasn’t all that much.  I simply made a conscious decision to eat ice cream because it’s good, dammit, and I wanted it.  It still takes discipline to eat right, I had to make a decision to eat a small salad for lunch today and I have to fight the urge to go out for a burger later.  In my pre-SLD days I always started the day with good intentions, I planned on avoiding fattening foods through sheer willpower.  That worked great until lunchtime rolled around and I was so incredibly hungry that I gave in to the fast food temptation.  And of course I felt like crap after eating it.  Now I eat less food before work and feel less hungry at lunchtime.  It doesn’t even seem possible but it truly is working.

I’ve also noticed the desire to eat at the times I normally do, even if I’m not hungry.  I’ve always eaten a big lunch at 1 so part of me still wants to do that, even if I’m not feeling hungry.   If I’m reading a book or watching tv I’ll feel the need to snack on something.  The SLD helps in these situations because I’m able to assess my hunger level and make decisions based on need rather than want.

Weight: 258.2

 I ate a lot of tasty but high calorie foods this weekend.  The difference is that I consciously chose to eat those foods and in some cases I almost had to force myself to eat them because I was full.  Why force myself?  Because I felt like it was my last chance to really chow down on some foods that I love, movie popcorn, In-N-Out, ice cream.  I have enough confidence in SLD that I feel like I can get back on track this week.  My goal is to get under 250 within 7 days.

Technorati Tags: shangri-la, diet

Weight: 255.2

Wow, 2.2 pounds in one day?  I can’t say it was water weight because I drink a lot of water throughout the day.  Daily weigh-ins are probably going to fluctuate a bit so I’m not going to get too excited but the fact is this is a new low.  From here on out I’m in uncharted territory. 

I actually wasn’t that hungry this morning but I ate a small breakfast anyway because I’m going to a work function this afternoon and I don’t want to risk being ravenous around the free food.  In the past it wouldn’t have made much of a difference, eating a small breakfast would maybe delay the onset of severe hunger by an hour or so but I’d still feel that overpowering hunger.  That’s one of the biggest benefits of the Shangri-La Diet, an awareness of my appetite and the ability to control it rather than it controlling me.

So far I’ve lost nearly 5 pounds without severe hunger or feeling deprived of food.  I’ve been eating a lot less but it’s enough to satisfy me.  I feel like I’m finally able to take control of my weight and as a result I feel like I can control other aspects of my life, like money and relationships, that I had been feeling were never going to improve.

I won’t be posting again until Monday, I’m going to just stick with what I’ve been doing and not think about my weight or the diet and see how where it leads to. 

I’ve been keeping track of my weight in Excel, here’s the graph.  The blue line is my weight, the pink line is a 3 day average to show the trend.  I’m trying to find a more attractive option for displaying a graph in Wordpress, the Excel graph is hideous.

Technorati Tags: shangri-la, diet

Weight: 257.4

Now that I’m taking larger amounts of ELOO and SW I’ve noticed a real difference.  Yesterday I had no snacks, deserts or soft drinks, I ate two small meals and one average dinner and never felt really hungry or deprived.  I’m eating about 700 flavorless calories a day but I have to be taking in at least 1000 calories less per day compared to my pre-SLD habits.

The Seth Roberts episode of the Glenn and Helen Show podcast was ok but I don’t think he really conveyed what the diet is and how it works.  What I find interesting is the immediate negative comments that were posted at the Dr. Helen blog.  People seem to take great pleasure in pointing out that diets don’t work and the only way to lose weight is eat less and exercise more.  What they don’t seem to understand is that the Shangri-La Diet helps you do exactly that and explains why eating certain foods will actually make you hungrier and more likely to continue eating the worst kind of foods.

I’m a smart guy, I know you need to eat less to lose weight and I sure as hell tried.  I lost 15 pounds by eating less and working out more but then I hit a plateau and became frustrated and slipped back into eating poorly.  My downfall was always the same:  I would get so hungry by lunchtime that I would make poor choices and eat fast food.  After thinking about this destructive cycle I realized that people who are naturally thin can’t possibly be feeling this kind of hunger.  Sure, everyone gets hungry but this kind of deep, overpowering hunger must be something that only fat people feel.  Is it psychological?  Physical?  A learned response?  I could never figure it out.  Then I read about the Shangri-La Diet and it made sense.  This business about the set point would explain why some people just don’t get as hungry as others.

But what really makes sense to me is the theory that eating things like processed foods and fast foods, what Seth Roberts calls “ditto foods”, foods that taste the same every time, lead to increased hunger.  My diet consisted almost entirely of ditto foods and I experienced really strong hunger throughout the day.  Since I’ve tried the Shangri-La Diet it’s been fairly easy to avoid those kind of foods and my hunger has been greatly reduced.  For me to go an entire workday on a small breakfast and a small salad and not feel hungry when I leave at 6pm is nothing short of a miracle.

Update 1:20pm:  Breakfast today was a banana and OJ shake, about 18 ounces.  I found myself getting hungry at 11, unlike yesterday when I had solid food for breakfast.  Could the high sugar content of the juice have contributed?  Tomorrow I’ll eat a real breakfast and see how it compares.  I ate a small salad again at 11 and it didn’t seem to satisfy the hunger I was feeling but then about 10 minutes later I started feeling full.  When I took my lunch break at 1 I wasn’t hungry at all.  Lately I’ve been noticing that I want to eat at my normal times, even when I’m not hungry.  It’s not hard to resist the urge since I’m not hungry but it’s interesting to see that it’s not just hunger that drives the urge to eat.

Technorati Tags: shangrila, diet