The Shangri-La Diet

Seth Roberts is a very interesting man. He's a professor at Berkley who consistently writes about how people in positions like his have lost sight of the need to be useful. It's a provokative thesis but his own actions are a pretty powerful argument in favor of his point.

He's a relentless experimenter. When he had been sleeping poorly for years, he would track his sleep and test it against all sorts of strategies until he found ones, like standing more during the day and not eating breakfast, that consistently worked. Then he would test his theories by, for example, standing more or less and eating different things for breakfast. He also found that staring at faces in the mornings seems to have a significant positive affect on depression. His site is here and is highly recommended.

The part of his work that I'm currently interested in testing is his theory of fat mass set point that he lays out in the Shangri-la diet. Essentially he's found that a flavorless, calorie containing food or beverages, taken at least and hour before eating, causes the body to lower its fat mass set point immediately. It's an excellent example of the types of practical work that he says researchers ought to be doing. It's easy to do, cheap and (he says) highly effective, but even if it's not, there's no harm done. Compare that to the cost, risks and potential effects of a weight loss drug. How would you even know it's working and how do you compare the benefits and costs?

I'm planning to try this for the approximately 3 weeks left before we leave for the US. I don't have much fat to lose- perhaps about 5-10 pounds, so that should be a good test period. I don't plan to change by Perfect Health Diet style of eating and in line with Seth's thesis I'll be drinking a glass of sugar-sweetened water a couple of hours before eating. I'll weigh myself every morning and we'll see what's happened by the time we leave for the US on the 20th.