In spite of requests in the comments, I cannot tell you the name of my novelist mother, because I am only allowed to have a xanga under conditions of strictest secrecy. In particular, #2 son has told me that he will be mortified if his friends can ever recognize him in any cute stories I might tell about him.
Not that it is impossible to figure out who I am, but it has to be more trouble than the junior high will go to.
I had to go pick #2 son and Pinky up on Friday morning at 7:00 a.m. from a friend’s house. I had directions, though no actual street name or address or anything, but eventually I fetched up at a farm. There was a nice border collie to greet me, and a pool with a rock waterfall, and cattle, and a basketball hoop, and a trampoline, and I was admiring all these marvels as I went up to the door and rang the bell.
No answer. I knocked, I went around the house, I peeped in the windows. Nothing. I figured that, if the boys had to be picked up at 7:00, someone would surely come down soon, so I sat on the porch and read for a bit.
It did cross my mind that, since I did not have any address or street name to go by, it was possible that I was at the wrong house, and was sitting by a total stranger’s pool at 7:00 in the morning, enjoying their waterfall under false pretences.
It was this reflection which prevented me from diving in.
In any case, I waited there for half an hour, and then gave up and went to the gym for half an hour on the treadmill, and the two bits of time combined gave me the chance to read The Shangri-La Diet, so I can report to you fully.
The main question is, of course: is it insane?
There really are two parts to this question. The first is, does this wild claim seem plausible? And I guess, having read the whole book, I can imagine that the wild claim in question could be true. The author is saying that drinking oil and sugar water is an appetite suppressant. He himself only eats one meal a day, and sometimes only every two days. I daresay that would lead to weight loss. And his arguments about it being an appetite suppressant seem plausible. I do not know enough about rats and associative learning to be able to judge — we will have to get Sighkey in on that — but the argument seems at least internally consistent. So yeah, I guess it could work.
But the other part of the question is this: is this an insane thing to do? After all, plenty of things are appetite suppressants without actually being smart, as this famous ad reminds us.
The Shangra-La diet proposes that we swallow 29-60 grams of sugar, two or three times a day. Do not think this is a small amount of sugar. A chocolate-coated, caramel and nut ice cream bar only has 19 grams of sugar. I could not even find anything in my house that contains 29 grams of sugar. The government food pyramid, which has been pretty heavily influenced by America’s convenience food lobbyists, recommends a limit of 22 grams of sugar a day. The author claims that people following his diet, with as much as 180 grams of sugar a day in addition to eating whatever they care to, will naturally choose to eat less sugar than usual, but I can’t imagine that he could be right, because the amount is so large. Who among us is already eating that much sugar? (And, for me, since sugar is a no-no for those concerned about triglycerides, this would be particularly worrisome.)
What’s more, you have to do this forever. The author admits that, as soon as you stop drinking the stuff, you will gain weight. And I daresay he is right, because you will not have made any changes in your behavior. So we are talking about something fairly unhealthy on a permanent basis.
We should bear in mind that this book is directed toward the person who has tried dieting repeatedly without success. I don’t believe in dieting, myself. I don’t think everyone has to be thin, and I am more concerned with health than with weight. However, I dieted once. My doctor told me to, so I got the book Change One, which said the same things my doctor had said, but in a practical and step-by-step way, because I am biddable and good at following rules when the directions are clear.
I lost weight, and have maintained that loss for a couple of years. I would not say that it was difficult, though I faced some challenges with which I will not bore you, but which should help me do the same thing again, now that my doctor is getting onto me again. I did have to follow the rules about eating and exercise, and to learn to accept hunger. There was a point at which I wondered whether I would be hungry for the rest of my life, but it was followed soon after by a point at which I stopped feeling hungry. I also stopped losing weight at that point. Having lost a good bit more than the 10% of body weight that experts say is realistic, and required for health benefits, I quit following the diet. I kept eating right and exercising, and maintained that loss.
However, when my triglyceride levels were the same this year as last, my doctor — though impressed by my muscular development — reiterated his views on diet and exercise. I am intending to go back to the stricter rules, for the sake of my lipids.
Roberts says, if you are doing what your doctor says and eating right and exercising, his bizarre ritual will just make it easier. My mother said I could try it out for a couple of weeks, what’s the harm? So I tried drinking a cup of his sugar water, and I am here to tell you that it is literally sickening. Roberts, in the Q & A section of the book, suggests that you see a doctor if all that sugar makes you sick, but I have just seen a doctor, and have no troubles with insulin function or anything of that kind. It makes a person sick to drink two to four tablespoons of sugar in water, IMHO, because that is a sickening thing to do. I got through the entire cup in the morning and about half the cup in the evening, but I do not think that I could do that again. Maybe people like the author who usually drink sugary drinks could do this more easily than I.
Obviously, the sugar method is not going to be the right choice for me, but there is an alternative. You can instead take two tablespoons of oil a couple of times a day. This will come to the entire amount of fat I ought to eat, which is not realistic, but it is at least olive or canola oil. My problem with this possibly healthier option is that I am afraid that I could not bring myself to drink a spoonful of oil, let alone a quarter of a cup each day. Capsules don’t contain enough to do the trick, Roberts says, and he claims that you get over the loathsomeness of drinking oil with time. You are not allowed to brush your teeth or do anything else to take the taste from your mouth for at least an hour, so give up those thoughts of fixing the problem that way.
Will I try the oil? Hmm….
It seems to me that between tolerating hunger and having to drink sugar or oil, tolerating hunger might be the less unpleasant of the two.
As for #2 son, he was snoring away, as was everyone else in the house. I picked him up an hour or so later with only mild recriminations. After all, I enjoyed reading by the pool. Too bad I didn’t take a picture for the Summer Reading Challenge.
It might work, but it sounds really unhealthy. Like Atkins.
oh it sounds horrid. what’s wrong with exercising and cutting back on the fats and the refined flours? says the girl who needs to do just that……
Just a quick note to say that my understanding is that just one tablespoon of sugar dissolved in water is enough — and dissolving it in enough water to keep it from being sickeningly sweet is okay. The claim is that weight loss will be faster if both the oil and the sugar water are taken, and that it will be faster with the larger quantities of oil or sugar. But since fast weight loss isn’t something you’re interested in, just the sugar water, and just one tablespoon of sugar, should serve the purpose.
One tablespoon of sugar — a standard measure tablespoon — isn’t much sugar. IMHO.
I don’t know if I could drink either one. Maybe once but not multiple times a day.
Aside from the fact that refined sugar and oil really aren’t good for you, I have no doubt that they’d be bad enough to make you nearly stop eating.
But if you’re not eating food, where do you get nutrition? I mean vitamines and essential nutrients.
Are vitamins reccommende to avoid scurvy, beri beri, et al?
I went to look for your mom’s blog and couldn’t find it.
I tried to sign up for a blog, but their website wouldn’t talk to my phone.
They have question you can click on to get answers, but what you get are vauge statements that don’t answer the question. Livejournal is very confusing. I have problems understanding “open architecture software.” Is it something you have to put on your computer? Is it on their server and you operate it with your browser? They don’t say anything except that they have it.
I did trip over Neil Gaiman’s blog, and got seriously derailed. That was fun.
If I can get an internet connection for the computer when it arrives, I’ll go back and try it again.
You would definitely lose weight on the oil and sugar ‘diet’ – just as you would when eating less than 1500 calories a day on anything (there are only 5 calories per teaspoon of sugar). That’s why all the fad diets ‘work’ , they are all calorie restriction diets. Basic fact of metabolism, if you use more energy than you consume in calories you lose weight = physiological physics. I’m not sure what 29 grams of sugar would do to your insulin levels however. Unbalanced sugar consumption is a good herald for Type 2 Diabetes and once you have that it’s with you for the rest of your life (my mother has Type 2 diabetes and she does not enjoy the blood tests, and eye tests – for cataracts – and foot inspections – for gangrene – that go with it) As far as appetite suppression is concerned, that happens if you are on an overly restrictive calorie intake anyway. Just as overeating fouls up your appetite control so to does long term undereating (been there, done that). Exercise itself is an effective appetite suppressant. Just as an aside, have you ever considered gettng a second medical opinion about your triglyceride levels if they concern you. Doctors are human just like the rest of us and they also have the little obsessions. You are borderline in your tri levels, not in the bad zone, another doctor may tell you not to worry about them especially as you are eating healthily and exercising regularly.
Note: Rats on food dep do not lose their appetite – they are more likely to mistake fingers for rat pellets so handlers get bitten more often 🙂 And yes, rats and many other animals, including humans, will lose their appetite for something if they feel or are physically sck after eating that something. It does not, however, generalise to other foods.
This guy sounds shady. We’re supposed to believe a psychology professor who seems to not have any verifiable data to back up his claim? He does not, as I have been seeing hither and yon, appear to be obese. He seems a little unhappy, but not obese.
And anyway, I don’t know what oily, sugary things you all are eating, but when I eat my my oily albacore tuna or my sugar saturated chai lattes I know that the furthest thing from my mind is, “I simply couldn’t eat another bite!”
Maybe, “Bring on the chocolate” is more along the lines of thought there…
Thanks for the link to your mom’s site. I didn’t notice the other color of the text when I read it the first time.
It’s fun reading your blog, your daughter’s and your mother’s. All three of you have a clear style in correct English. The bigest difference is what you choose to talk about.
After reading your mom’s blog, though, I want to go find a dictionary and look up “linguistics,” which I previously thought I understood.
Hmmm….another book to read while reading this sugar-diet book would be Sugar Blues by William Duffy. It would be an interesting juxtoposition.
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