Last week,
The way you do this is by consuming “tasteless” calories outside of a period of time in which you normally eat. (So if you have lunch from 12-12:30, you might have your “tasteless” calories at 2, and then a snack at 3:30 or wait for dinner or whatever.) The guy who made it up determined you can get tastless calories by drinking sugar water or by downing a tablespoon of extra light olive oil.
I could hardly believe it would work, but figured this was the cheapest, easiest sort of experiment I’d ever heard regarding weight loss, so I thought what the hell, I’d try it for a week. I couldn’t feature drinking oil, so I went with the sugar water route: 3tbsps white sugar dissolved in about 2 2/3rds cups water (which was the saturation point where I could drink it without gagging, and drink it over the reccommended 1/2 hour period (so you don’t get a blood sugar spike)), 2x a day.
To my complete astonishment, 8 days later (I started last Wednesday) I’m down two pounds without even *thinking* about it. I just wasn’t all that hungry much of the time. I didn’t feel like I was eating less, particularly. I wasn’t being particular about what I *was* eating. I just apparently wasn’t eating as *much*, without any thought going into it.
Side effects, cons:
–this much sugar can’t be good for my teeth.
–by the second round of sugar water I definitely get that too-much-sugar flavor/feeling at the back of my throat. This can be mitigated by remembering to brush my teeth after lunch (which presumably helps with the tooth thing)
–possible gassy tummy/liquid bowels, but that may be from eating too many eggs in the last week, too. I’ll keep better track of what I’m eating this next week and see.
Side effects, pros:
–all that sugar water basically obliterates my sweet tooth
–I’m getting 6-8 glasses of water a day without even trying
–our fancy venetian water glasses are getting used :)
Caveat: I’ve had a cold for the last week, which once upon a time always meant weight loss for me. I’ve noticed the last six months or so (previous to which time I hadn’t been sick in a while) that I’ve generally been starving when I’ve had a cold, so I’m not sure how much appetite suppressant illness is at this point. Still, it could be affecting the whole weight loss thing.
Would I keep this up forever? Probably not, not at this level. The guy says weight stabilization involves fewer of those tasteless calories, so if I did this until I hit my goal weight and then dropped off to one round of sugar water a day, I might keep doing that. I’m going to try it for another week, anyway, to see what happens, because it’s really very curious and interesting. :)
And out of sheer scientific curiosity — how about following the next tastelss week with a full week of tasteful calories at the same times/same amounts? I’m all in favor of eating frequently as a means of preventing over-eating induced by hunger, just seems weird that taste should matter.
For the record, the sugar water’s actually not bad for your teeth at all (or at least much). Basically, it’s not the sugar itself so much as the sugar plus some component that makes it stick to your teeth, as in sweet baked goods, that really makes trouble.
Rather than subject Kit to that, I’ll spare her the trouble. I log my calories, food intake, etc. pretty religiously. At the moment, my optimal caloric intake on a given day is around 2000, and as my BMR is in the mid to low 3000’s, that is a pace for solid weight loss. I’ve hit that mark consistently for over a month at this point. When I’m not dieting, I hit 3500c pretty easily.
When I was on Shangri-La, I ended up eating between 1500 and 1700c per day without particular effort. However, the additional caloric intake from the plan (I was doing oil rather than sugar) added an extra 300-400c.
As such, the net result of the plan, in my experience, was a caloric intake that was comparable to my dieting intake, which is quite a feat in my mind.
I am now off the plan because, honestly, I’m doing ok on my diet and I’d rather be able to eat those 300-400c, but I was definately suprised at it’s efficacy.
That said, there is a far simpler test that anyone can do to see how flavor (and familiarity) impacts things. If you’ve already got a lot of variety in your diet, don’t bother, but if you’re like a lot of folks and eat within a set of familiar foods (especially fast foods or pre-prepared foods) then this can have a dramatic impact.
Pay attention to how much food fills you up for a day or two. Actively think about the full feeling. Then, for one of your meals, try something completely new (or that you haven’t had in years). See if it affects yoru fullness.
If it does nothing, no harm no foul. I figure this stuff is idiosyncratic. But if you can tell the difference, then the proof is in the pudding.
I do note, Since I went off th eplan I took that lesson to heart, and have been going out of my way to try new flavors when I eat, and the result has been greater satiation and about a 100-150c drop on my average intake.
I feel like a shill, I admit, but it really is freaky how well it works. :)
Or pepsi. Fucking Pepsi is what gave me calories. *mutter* Good to know, though, thanks!
Yeah, well, Hig Fructose Corn Syrup is its own brand of the devil!
Sounds like a fairly harmless kind of fad at least — and trying out new foods regularly sounds much more tempting than the regular restrictive diets. Can’t hurt, indeed…