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PaperclipPerfector  13d ago (text post)   1647 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for May 15, 2024

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Anyone ever try the Shangri-La diet? It didn't work for Yud but apparently nothing works for him, even Ozempic. Other people report near-miraculous results.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/BD4oExxQguTgpESdm/the-unfinished-mystery-of-the-shangri-la-diet

The concept is that your body's "set point" is controlled by access to familiar, flavorful food that your body associates with caloric intake. Your set point goes higher when you consume familiar high flavor/high calorie food. In the ancestral environment it made sense to take on extra fat when berries and nuts were plentiful.

On the other hand, the set point can go down when these familiar foods aren't available. Many people experience weight loss when traveling to an unfamiliar country and eating unfamiliar food. Seth Roberts, inventor of the diet, experienced this weight loss when traveling and drinking unfamiliar sugary beverages, not exactly a health food.

So here's the Shangri-La diet. Every day, drink one tablespoon of extra light olive oil (extra light flavor) mixed with water. Plug your nose so you don't taste it at all. This should happen during a window where you don't consume any flavors for one hour before or after.

Having calories but no flavor breaks the association between flavorful foods and caloric availability and lowers your set point. Or something.

I'm skeptical but I'm willing to give it a try.

Keto worked great for me but unfortunately I'm a cholesterol hyper responder and my levels shot up to over 400. That's probably fine, but I'm conservative so I gave up. Unfortunately, the weight all came back over the next 6 months. So now I'm trying this. Hope it works!

breaks the association

This isn't how your - or anyone's - body works.

Here's all of dieting summed up:

  • Processed foods and sugar are the devil. You have to stop eating them completely. There is no other way.
  • Put protein at the center of your diet. Every full meal you eat should contain a non-trivial amount of protein. Protein is meat, poultry, pork, eggs, and dairy. You can supplement (but not replace) with protein powders.
  • Figure out if you are fat or carb sensitive. Most people just retain a lot more of one or the other. You do this by keeping track of what you're eating day-to-day, nothing how you feel (lethargic, tired, etc.), and then weighing yourself.
  • Like sleep, regularity is important. Eat at the same times as much as possible (this is hard when traveling, I understand that). Snacks can be snacks in that they're smaller meals. They can't be absent minded. Plan your snacks.
  • Hydrate

What do you think causes people on the Shangri-La diet to lose weight? I'll present a few possibilities.

  1. The mechanism explained in the Less Wrong article is correct
  2. Something else we don't understand
  3. No one actually loses weight, they are lying
  4. Simply watching one's weight is sufficient to lose weight
  5. Survivorship bias: only the people who lost weight report it

In any case, there don't seem to be any downsides and the anecdotal evidence is strong. I don't need a causal mechanism as long as it's safe which this diet obviously is.

  1. Simply watching one's weight is sufficient to lose weight
  2. Survivorship bias: only the people who lost weight report it

Pretty much these two things. Most diets fail because the diet-er just stops.

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