SD Blogger

This on again, off again stuff is getting old but I’m back for another try.

My last try with ELOO didn’t seem to have any effect so after I finished a bottle I decided to stop all SLD activity for a month to give me time to reset and remind myself just what my normal set point is. To my surprise I’ve found myself being less satisfied by the same amounts of food I used to eat. Where before a bowl of soup would leave me full now it just leaves me not hungry. I’ve found myself getting hungry sooner after a meal than before. So with that in mind I’m ready to give SLD one last try.

I’m going with Walnut Oil. It’s just much easier for me to get down than ELOO, plus it’s a little cheaper. The plan is two tablespoons at night plus I’m going to try for two tablespoons of sugar disolved in water every afternoon. As for my diet, I’m going to try to live by a few simple rules:

OK, so I didn’t make my pre-vacation goal, I only got down to 253. But the good news is that despite not exercising much for two weeks and going off SLD for about a week and then spending 5 days in New Mexico, I didn’t gain anything either. It was surprising to me because I love the food there and often felt extremely full, like I was overeating After a few days I realized I wasn’t actually eating that much. I’d skip breakfast, order a lunch that I couldn’t finish and then feel stuffed until about 7. Same story with dinner; I’d order something and not come close to finishing it. Much like Seth Roberts’ Paris vacation I found myself wanting to eat more but just not able to.

Now that I’m back home I’m switching back to ELOO. The walnut oil went down easier but didn’t have the pronounced appetite suppresion I had with ELOO. I thought it didn’t have much effect at all until I realized I wasn’t able to finish any meals. So for me I give walnut oil a D for appetite suppresion and a B for satiety. ELOO was previously a B in both categories for me so I’ll try it again. I’m taking 3 Tbsp every night before bed.

One thing I’ve learned from my continued struggles is that the Shangri La Diet is no panacea for weight loss. Despite the claims of some people that they simply lost the desire to eat I’ve had a hard time staying on the plan. I think my difficulties are entirely psychological and I have a pretty good idea of why.

I’m going to continue with SLD and continue blogging here. Somehow knowing that I have to report my results makes me feel obligated to stick with the plan.

Thanks to commenter Cliff for getting me hip to Edit Grid, a fantastic online spreadsheet. It has some very cool features that Google is lacking, namely the ability to create graphs and embed them in your blog! The above graph tracks my weight against my target and should reflect any changes I make at the Edit Grid spreadsheet.

I’ve found Google Spreadsheets to be a nice tool for weight tracking.  It’s free and you can access your data from any computer.  When I weigh myself in the morning I can wait until I get to work before entering the data.  Then on my days off I can access the same spreadsheet at home.  I keep track of the day, weight and BMI.  I’ll also add a 5 day trend line once I get a little more movement.  The only thing it seems to be missing is graphing capability but I can easily copy the data into Excel when I need that.

I have a vacation planned for October 17: 5 days in New Mexico.  That gives me a nice short term goal:  I want to get my BMI under 30 by the 17th, which means I need to get down to 245 pounds.  This morning I was at 253.8.  9 pounds in 13 days seems a little drastic but I’m not going to kill myself getting there.  If I’m vigilant about food and exercise I should at least make some progress towards that goal.

It’s been a week since my last post so here are my observations:

It took about 4 days for the SLD effect to start kicking in. I first noticed it after eating a fairly light dinner and feeling satisfied, if not full.  For the rest of the night I kept thinking of the two molasses cookies I had in the fridge and how I’d like to eat them but I just couldn’t muster up enough desire to actually get up and eat them.  It actually would have required more effort eat them than it did to avoid them.

Since then I’ve noticed a gradual lessening of hunger between meals and feeling more full after relatively less food.  I went to a ballgame today (damn Padres lost!) and ate a slice of pizza with lemonade and felt pretty full for several hours.  Dinner at 6 was pasta, which I couldn’t finish, and now at 10 I’m still feeling stuffed.  More importantly I think I’m getting over the psychological need to eat snacks, like a cookie or ice cream.

Tomorrow is my first day back to work since the SLD effect came back.  It’ll be interesting to see how it holds up to all the fast food temptations I get at lunch time.

I haven’t stuck to my exercise plan but at least I had a few days of activity.  I need to step it up in that department.

I’ve also upped the walnut oil to 3 Tbsp, trying to jumpstart the SLD effect.  The walnut oil is still less greasy than the olive oil and goes down easier.

I’ve also noticed I sleep better lately.  I tend to sleep soundly right up until my alarm goes off, rather than waking a few hours early and drifting in and out.  I think it’s getting me more REM sleep because I’m feeling refreshed when I wake up.  I think that’s due to the Omega 3s in the walnut oil and the flax seed oil in my morning shakes.

Oh yeah, my weight.  I finally started losing weight 3 days ago.  I’m down to 254.4.  It’s a start anyway.

Weight: 257.6

Just setting a starting point.  My intial goal is to get down to 225. 

Last night I had 2 Tbsp of walnut oil.  This morning I had my breakfast shake. No noseclips on hand so I pinched my nose while I chugged the shake.  I estimate 90% of the flavor was gone. 

12 noon and I’m a little hungry but not bad.  I’ll take lunch at 1.

After a lot of reading and a lot of soul searching I’m re-committing to the Shangri La Diet with some new ideas from the members of the sethroberts.net forums.

1. Walnut oil instead of ELOO.  Many SLD’ers have reported good results from Walnut oil.  A bonus is that it’s high in omega-3, which is supposed to help with brain functioning.  I tried 2 Tbsp last night, mixed with a few ounces of water.  It wasn’t as oily/greasy as the ELOO but had a slight aftertaste of walnuts.  I’m not sure if the taste is enough to counteract the SLD effect but there’s only one way to find out.  I’ll stick with walnut oil for 14 days, then switch back to ELOO if I don’t see the desired effects.

2.  Noseclips.  Using noseclips while eating tends to dull the flavor.  Seth Roberts has stated that eating any food while wearing noseclips should have the same effect as consuming flavorless oil.  I’ll be using noseclips with step 3.

3.  Breakfast smoothy consisting of orange juice, a banana, psyllium husks, soy protein powder and flax seed oil, consumed while wearing noseclips to kill the flavor.  A bummer because I really like the taste but a small sacrifice to make.  The flax oil here is for health benefits, not SLD weight loss.

4. Reducing ditto foods.  This is a big one for me.  My diet has been pretty monotonous, consisting of high flavor fast foods and other crap.  It’s not realistic to expect to go cold turkey on that and switch to a macrobiotic diet but I’m going to make every effort to eat foods I normally don’t eat. 

5.  Smaller portions.  I’m going to try to limit my meals to 500 calories or less.  When I tried SLD previously this wasn’t too difficult.  Avoiding soft drinks and chips or fries will keep most lunch time meals under 500 calories.

6. Exercise.  A minimum of 30 minutes every day, either running or resistance training.  30 minutes is the minimum, I usually exercise for longer than that, it’s the every day part that might be tough.

7.  Tracking.  I will be weighing in every day and tracking the data on a spreadsheet.  I will not be posting my weight every day, probably once a week will be sufficient.  I’m thinking of taking a weekly photo and posting the series when I’ve lost a decent amount.  I’m not really into looking at myself but it might be a good motivator.

 So that’s my plan.  Really pretty easy compared to other weight loss plans but as always the deciding factor is committment to the plan.  This blog has already helped with that: I started blogging back in May and if I had stuck with it and had average results I would have lost 30-40 pounds by now and be near my ideal weight.  Writing about the daily effects of the oil helps keep me focused on maintaining the SLD plan so I’ll be tracking my progress closely.

The Shangri La Diet sure sounds great, right?  Just drink a little flavorless oil every day and you won’t feel hungry.  Watch the pounds melt away without even really trying.  Unfortunately it’s not quite that easy.  As anyone who’s struggled with weight knows, there are powerful psychological issues at play.  In many cases (including, apparently, myself), there is a significant emotional component to eating.  I semi-intentionally stopped adhering to the SLD regimen a while back, in part because I didn’t like the full feeling I was getting when eating what used to be a normal meal.  That’s right, I was rejecting the diet because it was working.  See,  a big reason I’m overweight is I eat junk food out of habit, on some level I find it comforting.  Not comfort in the sense that I’m all stressed out and it calms me down.  It’s become something of a ritual for me to get out of the office on my lunch break, listen to talk radio, get drive through food and enjoy time alone.  After work there’s always the urge to eat something simple and tasty, like pizza or processed boxed dinners.  The next day there’s the urge for an Egg McMuffin or donuts or a breakfast burrito.

What it all adds up to is I wanted to eat crappy food more than I wanted to lose weight so I stopped SLD and recently even stopped exercising.   Fortunately I haven’t gained weight but things have definitely gone downhill.  A recent comment from successful SLDer Stephen M. got me thinking about all this and refocused on losing weight.  After reading through the forums at SethRoberts.net I was inspired to try SLD again, with some tweaks and (hopefully) improvements.  I’ll outline my new regimen tomorrow, as well as start tracking my weight again.

This graphic was a big help in getting me out of my rut.  It’s a compilation of results reported by members of the sethroberts.net forums.

I fall in the 225 to 342 category, where dieters have reported an average of 30 pounds lost in 15 weeks.  That’s about the same tonnage I’d like to lose so I’m going to use that as my target.

Thanks to Stephen M and all the other SLD’ers who’ve reported their experiences.  I wouldn’t be back on track without your inspiration.

Weight: 253.6

Normally I’d be disappointed with not losing any weight over a week but I was on vacation and although I stuck with the EVOO regimen I also enjoyed several fine meals out.  I was actually down to 252.3 at one point before the gorging began.

I’ve been taking 2 Tbsp of EVOO before bed.  The SLD effects are back but not as pronounced as I would like.  I’m going to increase to 3 Tbsp per night and see how that goes.  In all this experimenting I’ve never been below 250 so that’s my goal for the next two weeks.

 Also, I had stopped tracking my weigh-ins on a spreadsheet.  I feel like this has gotten me out of touch with my weight so I’m starting that again.

Weight: 253.6

I’m starting to see the Shangri La effect after a few days of being back on the plan.  Today I had a light lunch and was satisified, although not bloated-full.  It’s almost 5 hours later and all I’m only now starting to feel the urge to eat.  It’s good to see I’m losing wieght again too, although that’s more attributable to me making an effort than to any SLD effect.  I’m starting to get back in the mindset of just not needing to eat all the time too.