The Shangri-La Diet

Upon writing my little "review" for Water for Elephants I remembered that I didn't do the same for my sweet diet book: "The Shangri-La Diet". If you haven't heard of this book, you should definitely pick it up. It's probably available to buy on amazon or something like that for around $6-8 total. Not a bad investment for a diet book.

So to answer your question up front, no, I haven't lost any weight and the reason is because I haven't ever followed the diet. My buddy from work lost 30 lbs. on this diet so I picked up the book to see what it had to say. I honestly think it would probably work.

I don't want to write the whole book but this idea is a serious paradigm-shifter for weight-loss. The author compares your weight to the setting of your thermostat. You "set" the thermostat, if it's too hot, the air comes on; if it's to cold, the heat comes on. For weight, you eat more if you're under your "set" point, and less if you're over your "set" point. This totally makes sense to me and I always hover within a few lbs of my current weight (for those dying to know, a "healthy" 240). So he concludes you have to do something to "lower" your set point.

The second point is that Americans particularly have strong flavor-calorie associations: all of our food is strong-tasting and generally loaded with calories. He feels if you consume 200-400 "flavorless" calories a day, you will effectively lower your "set" point because your body will kick in to the "use the fat" mode. You won't feel hungry and as a result will simply eat less.

That's the diet! Eat whatever you want, just drink 200-400 calories a day of flavorless calories (sugar-water or extra light olive oil). The one catch is you have to consume the oil in a 2-hour "flavor free" zone, and brushing your teeth counts as a flavor; otherwise it would be easy to do it right in the morning and wait for another hour before eating anything. I can't seem to find a point in the day where I can drink roughly 3 tbls of extra light olive oil (not including work hours where I always forget to take a little vial of oil to work). Morning? Going to work and brushed my teeth (not an option to skip in my opinion). Night? I eat dinner upon getting home and brush my teeth before bed.

Anyways, if you want to try a diet I think this would seriously work and basically costs nothing. You should lose the "healthy" way: roughly 2-3 lbs per week. Note you can lose as long as you'd like, but if you stop taking the oil you'll eventually slowly creep back up to your old weight. Sounds promising to me. If anybody knows more about it let me know.