Too Busy For Words - the PaulWay Blog

Browsing around for a categorical statement about the four types of documentation (which I though Kathy Sierra had mentioned somewhere), I found out about the Shangri-La diet. Basically the idea is that you break your subconscious association between taste / eating and calorie intake, by having periods during the day where you eat nothing, drink water, and in the middle take a small quantity of calories that are nearly flavourless. A weak sugar solution or light vegetable oil seems to be the best bet - I don't think I could go to swallowing a raw egg, let alone quickly. This breaks the 'Pavlovian' body response which causes us to get hungry, so we eat less while still getting the required calories per day. And while Kathy Sierra notes that it can even work too well, to the point where she has to consciously think about eating, I think that I can probably stand to get over half of my projected daily calorie requirement (which is 2416.74 calories according to http://www.medindia.net/patients/calculators/CalorieResult.asp) in this way. If it helps me cut down on my weight, which is over what I'd like and still rising, then so much the better.

And then I look at the bag of chocolate and 'sour' candy on my desk, and suddenly it really hits home. Before writing this, I stopped concentrating for a moment and my hand automatically moved a sour bear to my mouth without me actually thinking about it. This was after I'd been thinking "The Shangri-La diet, eh? What a good idea. I could start that now, maybe." Time to start breaking some bad habits... Given that the same site calculates my ideal weight at 72 kilos, and that in turn puts my projected daily calorie requirement at 2142.18 calories, I think it's going to be a good thing.