Some Of Us Need To Be Re-wired

This article presents a sobering view that many of us might just be hard-wired to overeat.

They talk about developing drugs or "behavior interventions" to modify this. I do wonder if the SLD could in fact be one of those "behavior interventions" that they are talking about.

I think that the AS brought on by the SLD while not permanently re-wiring us certainly has the same net effect.

Link: Some People May Be Hard-Wired to Overeat

(Photo: poolie)

Eating Slowly

For most of my life I've been the sort of person who pretty much just wolfed-down their food as fast as possible.

Since I've been on the SLD, I've been eating more slowly. Part of this is a calculated effort on my part to slow things down, part of it is that I've been less hungry and that has a natural tendency to slow my eating down.

This article highlights several good reasons why eating slower is better for you - and the majority of them are directly tied to weight loss.

Link: 9 Strong Reasons to Eat Slowly

(Photo: Spring Dew)

Skipping Lunch

I've been skipping lunch this week.

That was not my plan when Monday rolled around, but that's what happened.

Three reasons for this:

1. I've been really busy at work this week.
2. The cafeteria in my office building has sub-par food.
3. I've not been all that hungry.

I'll repeat the last one (and make it a bit bigger) in case you missed it:
I've not been all that hungry

I don't recommend skipping meals and I don't plan I doing this very often, but as I've said before I think that it's crucial for success on the SLD that you only eat when you are truly hungry and at least this week that's not been the case for me. I'm not about to force myself to eat a meal when I'm not hungry, that's how I became overweight in the first place.

Link: Knowing When to Put the Fork Down
Link: Three Squares?

(Photo: Danielle Walquist)

Exercise for Breakfast

I don't think it's a good idea to skip meals, but on the other hand if I'm really not hungry I'm not going to eat -- even though it's "mealtime."

This morning when I woke up, I was not particularly hungry. Instead of eating breakfast, I took my morning dose of ELOO and then did an hour of exercise. When I was done exercising, I was really not very hungry at all and it was almost time for lunch anyway.

Bottom line: I ended up skipping breakfast - which is not what I was planning to do, but between the oil and the exercise I really didn't have any appetite, and I was not about to "force" myself - that would negate the whole point of the AS that I'm trying to achieve.

(Photo Alana Elliott)

Combining the Shangri-La Diet with Another Program

A problem with many conventional weight-loss programs such as Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, etc. is that since they are based on reducing your calorie intake via portion control you quite likely will be hungry many times while you are on the plan. This can cause you to "cheat" and diminish the benefits of the program.

As Seth Roberts mentions in the book, you can use the SLD as a tool to help mitigate your hunger while on one of these other programs, thus decreasing your appetite and increasing your chances of success.

However, I think you do need to be careful about accounting for the caloric content of the oil.
For example 1tbs of ELOO contains 120 calories and 14 grams of fat. Using the Weight Watchers points formula, this would equate to 3.5 points per tablespoon, or in my case 14 points per day since I'm consuming 4 tbs. daily.

I would suspect that if you don't account for at least some of the points in the oil, and consume your full daily point allottment, you will actually end up overeating and not seeing much weight-loss.

(Photo: malias)

Three Squares?

Many people have put forth that to assist in weight-loss, your food consumption should be broken down into many "mini-meals" over the course of the day. This is apposed to the traditional 3-meal-per-day-schedule that many (most?) of us are on. I've heard numbers like 5, 6 and 8 thrown-around as the optimum number of "meals" one should be consuming daily.

I also know a few people that have had lots of success losing weight by simply adopting a "never eat anything after 6:00pm" type of regimen. This would require you to either eat a big lunch and skip dinner altogether or to start eating your dinner at 5:00pm or thereabouts -- not very compatible with many of our work schedules.

I think that one would need to be careful about adopting either of these policies in conjunction with the SLD, as they both are somewhat at odds with a central tenant of the plan: eat when you are hungry, but only when you are hungry.

When on the SLD, I don't think that multiple mini-meals per-day are necessarily a bad thing but two points to keep in mind:

1. Make sure you are actually hungry before eating any of these meals (mini or otherwise).
2. 5 or more meals during a typical day would be pretty tough to schedule and still have one or two two-hour windows for ELOO consumption.

As for the evening-cutoff and the SLD - you may find yourself in a situation that the AS is sufficient and that you are not hungry after 6:00pm (or whatever your cutoff time is) but I think that if you are truly hungry in the evening, you should eat. That's kind of the whole point of the SLD.

(Photo: KB35)

Total Daily Calorie Intake

The SLD can help you lose weight, but it's not a magic pill.
I think that it's important that before eating something (particularly a "bad" food, we all know what they are) you need to ask yourself a few questions:

• Why am I eating this?
• Do I really want this?
• Am I really hungry?

These questions are very important because when you embark on the SLD program -- unlike most other weight-loss programs which are actual "diets" -- you are in this case not explicitly managing a reduction in your calorie intake. You are actually adding calories to your diet with the intention that the resulting AS will in fact result in a net reduction of calories.

This net reduction will not occur by magic. If you are eating because it's "time to eat" or because you have nothing better to do, then you are not leveraging the AS. Remember: you need to reduce your total calorie intake by at least enough to offset the additional calories you are consuming. In order to achieve the weight loss you are seeking, you of course would need to offset more than the additional calories which have been added -- perhaps considerably more if you want to achieve significant weight loss.