incoherence.net

A few months ago, I decided to shed the pounds put on whilst enjoying Factset’s free lunches; my hefty progress resembled that of my freshmen 15 ⁽¹⁾, and it took a long hard look in the mirror to convince myself my “holiday weight” was neither temporary or holiday-related.

I reasoned I didn’t need to go on a formal diet when perhaps a few minutes of exercise a day coupled with a reduction in food intake would be sufficient. That said, most fad diets offer a way to rid the junk with immediate results while maintaining minimal effort and allowing for desirable foods, but I’ve noticed while it seems to work initially (the dieter is in a focused, weight-shedding mental state), results tampered off and the dieter goes through periods of rapid weight loss and gain ⁽²⁾. Plus, those crazy numbers advertised in diets only applied to the morbidly obese anyway.

Then I came across the Shangri-La diet. It stood out for good reasons: the effort and cost are truly minimal, people have testified positive results, the inventor stood to gain very little from promotions of the diet ⁽³⁾, and he can only vouch for his diet via empirical evidence and not scientific explanation (i.e., experience). It did manage to catch enough interest that the post describing his diet still has readers commenting on the technique, two years after it was transcribed.

The diet works by “disassociating calories from flavor”. The body needs calories for energy and it associates calories with flavor given the tendency for today’s high-calorie foods to indeed be very flavorful. This bond is supposedly broken by ingesting calories from foods with no taste, tricking your body into thinking caloried foods do not taste good and curbing its desire to consume excessive energy. End result: eat less naturally without feeling that much hungrier, and recreational junk food eating is replaced with wholesome fruit and vegi consumption.

And the way it’s done is by drinking gobs of sugar diluted in water or teaspoons of olive oil, twice a day, in between meals as to not conflict with the normally flavorful foods during breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

That’s it! No exercise regimen, no counting calories or watching for carbs. I will admit the oil and sugar taste pretty gross in complete isolation, but with the price of entry and commitment being are low ⁽⁴⁾, I went for a week on this diet in conjunction with the aforementioned light exercise and reduced eating, then for the sake of comparison tried a week just without the oil.

Initial results were as expected; I dropped 3-4 pounds within the first two days easily, felt a little hungry at times, but refrained from dipping into emergency rations ⁽⁵⁾. It leveled off, though, and the pounds came roaring back over the weekend as I resumed a more traditional burger and beef rice plate diet. The following week, without my greasy EVOO medicine, I still managed to lose a pound, and I’ve kept the same “diet” – light exercise, half-hearted attempts to eat less/healthier – with consistent progress.

To me, going without the calorie supplement is more natural, not to mention less gag-inducing. But who knows? Maybe it’ll work for you; I can contribute a mostly unused bottle of EVOO as motivation.

1. to my credit, what I gained by midyear was quickly lost along with the novelty of cafeteria food as well as my student budget (↩)
2. i.e., “rewarding yourself by indulgence” (↩)
3. specifically, a $14 book, and I suppose more if he held stocks in sugar and olive oil companies (↩)
4. although the creator has said to keep the weight off, the dieter is bound to a lifetime sipping of grease (↩)
5. cookie jar (↩)