Day 87: down 17.6 lbs

Day 86: down 17.4 lbs.

Day 85: down 17.6 lbs.

Day 84: down 16 lbs.

Another one bites the dust

I check a number of SLD-related blogs most days, and was about to drop Shangri-La Diet Journey from the list, as it hadn't been updated in many weeks. Now I know why -- the journey has ended.

Mine may have as well. I'm coming up on two weeks with no flavorless calories, and I'm still losing weight. If I hit an extended plateau, or start gaining, I imagine I'll start up again. SLD or no, the blogging will continue.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 83: down 15.4 lbs.

Day 82: down 15.6 lbs.

Day 81: down 16 lbs.

My body fat is holding steady at 26%. Today will make 26 out of the last 27 days I've run.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 80: down 14.8 lbs

Day 79: down 15.4 lbs.

Another arbitrary milestone: 15 lbs. down.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 78: down 14.6

My official weigh-in was 183.8; after my morning run, I was 181.4, which would be down 17 lbs. But a lot of that is just sweat, so I won't count it.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 77: down 13 lbs.

Wednesday and Thursday I was in Chicago for work. We also went to Wrigley for the Cubs-Astros game (Clemens vs. Maddux!), which meant beer, a hot dog, beer, cheese fries, beer, some buffalo wings after the game, and beer. Not an ideal diet, to say the least. I also missed my run for the first time in about three weeks.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 75: down 13.8 lbs.

No weigh-in tomorrow, and probably no blogging. I'm traveling for two days. I hope I can get in a run each day, though.

Although I'm not at a low and am at the same weight I was 11 days ago, my 7-day moving average has dropped 12 days in a row.

Still no significant change in appetite since going off of SLD. "The Fat Guy" over at A Shangri-La Diet Blog has been off for 11 days and has lost some weight.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 74: down 14.6 lbs.

I'm starting day 4 of my post-SLD experiment. I haven't noticed any change in appetite, and my weight is still trending downward. Early days, though.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 73: down 13.8 lbs.

SD Blogger reports going off of the diet and gaining weight.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 72: down 14.4 lbs.

Stephen M's got an interview with Dr. Roberts on his blog.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 71: down 14.6

My weight continues to drop. I'm at a new low at 183.8. I had to extend the y-axis on the weight chart on my tracking spreadsheet, and re-factor the numbers for the sparkline graph for these pages. Am I risking it all by going off of SLD?

I'm on day 17 of my run every day routine. My legs are feeling it a little, but not enough to really slow me down.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Ten weeks: down 13.8

This will be my last day on SLD for at least a week. I'm down a couple of pounds in the last two days, and at 184.6 lbs. I've just matched the low I hit last Saturday. My seven-day moving average is on a nice downward slope, approaching 185 lbs. I don't have records going back that far, but I think the last time I was under 185 was about 1994.

Here's the chart. Click on it for a better view. I changed the moving average from three days to seven days since the last time I published it.


Update: I just finished my last flavorless window for a while. Now, what to eat to celebrate?

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 69: down 12.8 lbs.

Day 68: down 12 lbs.

I'm in my tenth week. I'm going to take next week off, with no flavorless calories. I'm curious to see what happens with my appetite. I'll be travelling for part of the week, so I was probably going to have poor compliance anyway.

One thing I've been wondering about: what is the time-frame of the effect of the flavorless calories? Dr. Roberts has written that "[t]he effects are cumulative and long-lasting." The oft-repeated example of the guy who had no results until after seven weeks would seem to support that. Yet numerous times I've read in the forums or in blogs that people either 1) go off of the flavorless calories and see a big increase in appetite almost immediately, or 2) take some oil at some particular time of the day to stave off hunger for that day or even for that part of the day.

I've been off SLD for one or two days at a time, and haven't noticed any appetite change. Miller at Our Lips Are SLD wrote "My appetite remained suppressed over Friday, Saturday and Sunday even without the oil." I tend to believe it's "cumulative and long-lasting," so I wonder if just one week off will tell me anything.

Somewhere on Dr. Roberts's site is a graph showing both his weight and his flavorless calorie consumption. At one point, he decided he wanted to gain back some weight and stopped the sugar water. I don't remember how long it took for the weight gain to start.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 67: down 13.2 lbs.

As I wrote Saturday, my SLD compliance hasn't been very good. I'm on 1 tbsp. canola oil, twice daily. I took last Thursday's first dose, then didn't get any until Monday morning. I didn't notice any change in my appetite, and my weight was down a little.

The Fat Guy writes that he went off of the oil for two days, and his hunger came back with a vengeance. That wasn't my experience. I almost wish it was, so I could stop thinking about whether it's working and just do it.

I should stop for a week to see what happens.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 66: down 13.2 lbs.

My weight may not be at a low, but my three-day moving average weight is: 185.3 lbs.

Day 65: down 12.2 lbs.

Well, that new low didn't last long. That extra burger I ate last night when I wasn't really hungry and those two beers I had when an old friend dropped by later must've done me in.

My 5K went reasonably well yesterday. I ran faster than I have since 2003.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 64: down 13.8 lbs.

Having dropped 2.6 lbs. in two days, I'm at a new SLD low weight: 184.6. My scale tells me my body fat is back up to 27%. This is similar to what happened about two weeks in -- a few days where my weight went one way while the fat numbers went the other. I'm guessing it's water weight, which tends to increase the fat estimate the scale makes via bioelectrical impedance.

My SLD has been a little lax for a week. I took only 1 tbsb. each day last weekend and Thursday, and I skipped Tuesday and Friday altogether. I'll probably miss today and tomorrow, too. I wonder if I just needed to reduce my amount of flavorless calories, or if every-day running is starting to work, or maybe it's just random.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 63: down 12 lbs.

I'm in another weight plateau, with my three-day average staying in a 1.1 lb. range for 14 days. My scale says my body fat has dropped, though, reading 26% the last two days and 25% the day before. It's dropped to 26% several times before, but never for more than one day. I wonder if the weight training is starting to work a little.

5K road race tomorrow; I'm off on a short, easy run this morning.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 62: down 11.2 lbs.

I've now on day 8 of my new run every day routine. I looked back over my running log, which goes back four years, and I've run five or six days in a row numerous times, and seven days in a row once, but never eight until now. I've reduced my average run, so as to maintain about the same weekly mileage, at least for a while. As I've said, nine years ago I ran virtually every day for 60 days.

I picked a bad week to start this new routine, though. Since Monday I've had a sore throat and general achiness. It's much better now, but I still feel it. I also have a road race on Saturday. Normally I'd take Friday off, but since I've been sick and have little chance of running a good time, I'm going to run tomorrow, too.

My appetite was a little down this morning.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 61: down 11.4 lbs.

My scale said 25% body fat this morning, which I think is the lowest I've seen in the 3 1/2 years I've had it. I suspect it's a one-day anomaly. It was 27% yesterday, as it was for most days for over a month. A handful of times since I started SLD it's read 26%.

No flavorless calories yesterday; too much going on for Independence Day to do it.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 60. Weight: down 12 lbs.; readership: down even more

That puts my average loss at 1 lb. every five days. More than half of it came in the first 18 days.

I have a hit counter on these pages that tells me how may people are reading (or at least how many times the pages have been loaded into a browser). Interest has dropped quite dramatically over time. Four to six weeks ago I was getting about 50 page loads a day; now it's around 10. I wonder if the same is happening at the official Seth Roberts site. He wrote about it a month ago.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 59: down 10.6 lbs.

Via this post in the Seth Roberts forums I came across another set-point-based weight loss method. Survival of the Thinnest is a book by David Hariton published in 2004 that says 30 minutes of aerobic exercise, every day, will lower your "lipostat" which is apparently the same thing as the "set point" described in the SLD book. And like SLD, it has a genetic component to the theory.

Keep in mind that I haven't read "Survival of the Thinnest," and the web site isn't all that detailed, so I may have much of this wrong.

Anyway, in the forums, this was roundly attacked, using mostly straw man arguments. The method is described as 30 minutes of aerobic exercise every day. Several people chimed in to say things like 20 to 30 minutes 3 to 5 times a week doesn't work; or diets in women's magazines say to walk or run, and that doesn't work; or (and this one really cracks me up) the people caught up in the running craze of the 80s aren't all thin. Well, some of them are! I'm guessing the ones that run every day are a lot thinner than the ones who don't.

I've mentioned before that nine years ago I lost a lot of weight -- 32.5 lbs. in 60 days. I did it by running about 30 minutes virtually every day and eating healthier foods. I didn't go hungry, or count calories or grams of fat or carbohydrates. Just from the brief description on that forum post and the Survival web site, that may just match exactly what Hariton says in his book. I plan to read it and find out. I'll let you know.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet

Day 58: down 10.2 lbs.

Just the facts, ma'am.

Day 57: down 12.2 lbs.

I'm back on track with my exercise, with good runs each of the last three days and some weight training, too.

If you haven't seen Annie's Shangri-La Diet Blog lately, check it out. Lots of good stuff.

tags: diet, weight loss, Shangri-la Diet