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PaperclipPerfector  16d ago (text post)   1677 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

I'd argue against bullet point 1, or at least ratchet it back a bit. I read Robert Lustig's book Metabolical and he is clearly wrong about a number of things. Sugar (sucrose, fructose, etc.) is obviously not great to eat constantly and vigilance and curating one's consumption of it can only help, but Lustig calls it a "toxin." It's not a toxin. Or, rather, it's not a toxin in small enough doses. I'd also flag "processed" food as overly vague. There are lots of meanings to the word processed and again just being processed doesn't necessarily make a food harmful to eat. Another point against Lustig (and I realize I'm the one mentioning him, not you, but he has been my most recent exposure to these same claims you're making) is he bangs the drum about "organic" food, a thing which always makes me immediately hold whoever's doing it suspect. Organic farms are arguably less sustainable than non-organic farms, and are not pesticide-free.. (Once again I realize you have not pushed organic food.)

I personally agree with your view on protein, as well as the importance of sleep and hydration.

Agree that "organic" types give me pause as well. Monsanto is just Gregor Mendel with a legal department. More food is pretty much always better in a global context.

Also agree that sugar isn't a "toxin" but that the highly refined granulated stuff (that is also present as a preservative in lots of foods) fucks hard with your pancreas and associated insulin cycles. That Type 2 Diabetes is now somehow mostly an acquired malady is evidence enough for this.

Re: "processed" foods, my general rule is to stay on the perimeter of the supermarket and, for main meals, that I must somehow be preparing the food via application of heat. If I'm not doing that, I should be conscious of what I'm eating; I don't have to "cook" milk, yogurt, cheese, nuts, nut butters, fruit, veggies. I should be the one cooking various meats. This is why I stay away from veggies (error), things in a can generally (massive exception here is canned fish).

Something I definitely overlooked: If you're eating at home for most of your meals, you're going to see results. For a variety of reasons, purchased full meals (anywhere from fast food to fast casual to sit down restaurants) is horrible for you. But that's the market meeting a demand. It is not the fault of "evil" corporations or mom and pop Italian restaurants.

I don't know if it's true or not but I feel as if living here in Japan for the last two decades really changed my diet. Like I haven't bought any sort of jarred pasta sauce since around 1999, but as a kid my mom served the Ragu weekly, and as a youth and young man I wouldn't think twice about it. I make my own salsa, guacamole, etc. But this is also largely because you just can't find that stuff regularly where I am. I have been known to make pot pies from scratch, simply because I get nostalgic for the frozen food of my childhood in the South.

Unlike what you're saying I eat many more vegetables now, as well as fruit. Probably at least part of that is because of my wife's skill in preparation.

I'd be a blob of walking triglycerides if I still lived in the states. Maybe.

Unlike what you're saying I eat many more vegetables now, as well as fruit.

Wait, I think this is what I am saying?

I took

This is why I stay away from veggies

to mean you avoid vegetables. Maybe just those in a can? Although you should know canned and frozen vegetables often retain many of their nutrients just fine, this is particularly true of frozen vegetables. I dislike making such statements without a good source though. Probably you already know this and are avoiding the added sugars/sodium etc.

Thanks for pointing that out.

Massive typographic error on my part. I don't stay away from veggies. Fixed in the original comment.

I think like all things, the dose makes the poison here. The modern diet has so much processed food and sugar in it that it’s a toxin in that high amount. We probably eat and drink more sugar in a day or two than a farmer in 1500 would have consumed in a month.

I have some observations that support the idea that modern flavors are hyper palatable and probably not only encourage overeating at the time, but also make a normal human diet unappealing. I don’t think olive oil and water actually do anything, my personal suggestion is to simply eat bland unprocessed foods until you get used to tasting the subtle flavors of normal foods.

I think the same is true of entertainment— if you don’t do the hyper-stimulating games and tv shows and so on and just do things that people would have done in 1900 you’ll find books, magazines, board and card games, and radio dramas just as interesting as video gaming.

Hyper stimulation is a real phenomenon and I think it’s generally good to occasionally “fast” from those things, and learn to slow down and get back closer to the kind of lifestyle that was normal for most of human history.

That's probably true for many. I recently got my buddy back home to stop drinking sodas. Whether he has kept up the abstinence I obviously don't know. I avoid drinking anything sweet, and only rarely even drink orange juice, which I remember I used to love. I can't even remember the last time I had it. I live in Japan with a Japanese wife and have Japanese in-laws though so my diet is dramatically different from what it used to be. Hopefully I am getting some of the acquired/acquirable health benefits of living here.

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