Shangri-La Diet Experiment, Week One

On April 30 I read Seth Roberts’ book, The Shangri-La Diet. I had first heard about the diet a few months ago, online, and tried drinking fructose water to curb my appetite as described in the book. I didn’t feel any difference in my appetite and gave up after a few days.

After reading the book, I realized that I had been doing a lot of things wrong, and decided to try again. This time, I decided to try taking two tablespoons of extra light olive oil every day, an hour after, and an hour before, eating. (You’ll have to read elsewhere for the details.)

I was already on the Jenny Craig diet, which is basically just portion control, eating about 1200 calories a day. I had lost about 11 pounds since the end of February this way. Since two tablespoons of olive oil have 240 calories, I decided to cut out the Jenny Craig-mandated snacks to compensate for the calories, even though Seth Roberts says you should just eat normally.

I started drinking one tablespoon of olive oil in the morning right before I go to work and one right before I go to bed. This began May 1st, 2006. That day I was 143.4 pounds (I’m 5’3”). My initial weight loss goal is 130 pounds. My lowest adult weight was 120 pounds.

When I started this experiment I decided that my criteria for success would be whether I felt less hungry and how fast I lost weight. So far I don’t feel less hungry. Many of the accounts of this diet that I’ve read online describe feeling very full as a result of the oil/sugar. People go all day without eating because they’re just not hungry. I do not feel that way. Rather, I feel pretty much normal.

As for the weight, here are my readings for this week:

5/1/2006 - 143.4
5/2/2006 - 142.6
5/3/2006 - 141.8
5/4/2006 - 142.8
5/5/2006 - 141.4
5/6/2006 - 139.8
5/7/2006 - 139.6
5/8/2006 - 142.8


As you can see, I appear to have lost steadily, then jumped up three pounds this morning. I don’t know if there’s something wrong with my scale, or if I’m retaining water, or if this is just a normal fluctuation. We’ll have to see how it goes next week. Before this experiment I was losing about a pound a week. If I was really at 139.8, then I lost about 3-4 pounds last week. That would be very promising. I’ll report back next Monday.