The Shangri-La Diet > Science/Theory
What's your personal favorite theory?
rs-px:
I know this is a perennial favorite of newbies to this forum, and you might expect better from me, but recently I've been trying to work out how SLD works.
Seth gives a good explanation in the book but the whole thing about set points seems awfully nebulous. It concerns me that there's no way to measure set point and it's not explained how the body communicates this magical set point between stomach and brain (especially bearing in mind that digestion doesn't "happen at once" but can take 12-24 hours). Sure, we can point to hormones, but which hormones? Is there a system already documented that might explain this?
So do you buy the set point theory, or do you think something else is at work? If so, what? What's your personal favorite theory? :)
Personally I think that calories without flavor is key. I just can't take it any further than that. Our bodies measure the "usefulness" of food by its taste. It uses a sense to do this. No surprise or argument. Flavorless calories somehow bypass this. That's where I get a little lost :(
VeganKitten:
--- Quote ---That's where I get a little lost
--- End quote ---
You an me both! :?
stainless:
In trying to make sense of the flavor-calorie association it seems plausible to me to use the caveman arguement. Our distant ancestors likely had to deal with periods of feast and famine throughout the year. During the spring/summer/early fall, there is an abundance of food. Not just amount of food, but variety. Since different plants are harvestable at roughly the same times there were a number of different flavors during the good times. Also, I believe it's true to say many animals are easier to hunt during spring/summer/fall as compared to the winter. Your body senses all these different flavors and says, "Stock up! Gain weight! Eat as much as I can!"
Now compare it to winter (or other times of famine). Food is scarce. Maybe there's some dried/salted food available, but little in the way of fresh food. Animals are less active so hunting is harder. Whatever food supply you have is likely to be limited, monotonous, dull. Your body now says, "Now's the time to make use of those fat deposits. Burn that fat! Don't waste energy!" So now your body isn't hungry, and it's losing weight.
Who knows if that theory is anything close to accurate? But I know the principles of SLD are working for me.
rs-px:
--- Quote from: stainless on June 27, 2008, 06:02:03 am ---In trying to make sense of the flavor-calorie association it seems plausible to me to use the caveman arguement. Our distant ancestors likely had to deal with periods of feast and famine throughout the year. During the spring/summer/early fall, there is an abundance of food. Not just amount of food, but variety. Since different plants are harvestable at roughly the same times there were a number of different flavors during the good times. Also, I believe it's true to say many animals are easier to hunt during spring/summer/fall as compared to the winter. Your body senses all these different flavors and says, "Stock up! Gain weight! Eat as much as I can!"
Now compare it to winter (or other times of famine). Food is scarce. Maybe there's some dried/salted food available, but little in the way of fresh food. Animals are less active so hunting is harder. Whatever food supply you have is likely to be limited, monotonous, dull. Your body now says, "Now's the time to make use of those fat deposits. Burn that fat! Don't waste energy!" So now your body isn't hungry, and it's losing weight.
Who knows if that theory is anything close to accurate? But I know the principles of SLD are working for me.
--- End quote ---
How do you account for the cravings for flavor, such as what Seth describes in the book, and I think most of us have experienced? Could this simply be an addiction to flavor? Might some good advice be that, for the best SLD results, try and break that addiction by only eating bland foods?
karky:
My theory:
We crave flavor because:
In times of plenty, everything tastes good, is fresh, has plenty of good flavor. We want to eat a lot of it to make up for what we weren't getting in the dark times of famine/hunger (winter)
In winter, everything tastes not as good, it is stored food, not so tasty, particularly since the only way to store anything until very recently was dried or salted, or in the root cellar hopefully not spoiling, which is why there is a saying, One bad apple can spoil the whole barrel. Not to mention, you couldn't eat all you wanted, you had to make your stored food last all winter long, and pray for a short winter and a mild spring. I think this is why flavorless calories work, you are tricking your stomach into thinking it is a time of low quality food with low quality flavor, so it shuts off your hunger mechanisms.
So, basically, your body makes you crave flavor in order to make up for the lean times (which aren't coming).
During the lean times, your body would shut the hunger mechanism down somewhat so you could make it through the winter without going too crazy.
This has been going on for as long as there have been humans, except for the last 100 years, when, with the advent of electricity, food storage and production became easier. And for most of us, there have been no times of famine, or winters with no food. So, while our brains know we aren't going to starve come wintertime, our stomach never got the memo, and now food is very tasty and plentiful all year round, and the human body has been programmed for YEARS to eat A LOT when food is plentiful and tasty. So we crave flavor and lots of it, and we eat. And HFCS is not helping matters at all, neither are food manufacturers, who engineer their products to taste good, taste the same EVERY time, and give us an awesome calorie hit, which our bodies mistakenly think we need a lot of because "winter is coming".
So we crave, and we eat, and we gain.
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