Shangri-la Diet Update

I've been following the Shangri-la Diet forums a good deal. It is where I got most of the concepts for the best practices thread. The people are friendly, there is a lot of information, and a lot of innovation.

However, I find that some of the changes I made in following the best practices have not worked well for me.

Taking oil in the middle of the night was effective once. After that, as time went on, taking it at night first worked ok, then a good deal less well than taking it at 10:00 a.m. and then finally started to quit working at all. 10:00 a.m. works better for me than 3:00 p.m., which is "ok" but 10:00 a.m. is better.

The various protein powders in water were ok for a while, now they don't seem to work well. They are great for getting more protein, but they don't work at all as flavorless calories for me, though they do work well for others. If they work for you, you can't beat them as a source of nutrition and loss of hunger. As it is, I use them to make sure I am getting enough protien if I end up short on protien in what I eat during a day.

Grapeseed oil is a lot easier to swallow, but doesn't seem to work as well for me over time. Some walnut oils, which is reputed to be a better oil, has too much flavor for me. ELOO works very well. I'm going back to it, I think, probably blended just a little with a flavorless walnut oil I found.

What convinced me that I needed to change is that I've basically had a month or so of experiments where my weight loss went flat (well, it slowed down to gaining a half pound for the thirty day period) and my hunger and eating were up just a little. It was a huge difference to follow two months of two pounds a week to go to a little less than two pounds a month. Instead of making my target weight a month early, I'll be lucky to make it on schedule. On the other hand, by the end of the day, I'll have lost eighty pounds.

So, while most of the tweaks work better for the people who are reporting, many don't seem to work that well for me. As I observed in the FAQ thread: the diet needs tweaking but if you find something that works, seriously consider just sticking with it instead of changing it about. You need to adjust the method to you, not you to it.


For more: Shangri-la Diet Information

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I strongly advise mild exercise when (and if) you are up to it. Gardening and stretching are both good, as are swimming or just treading water. A lot of people have started doing DDR (Dance Dance Revolution -- a video game) as a sort of interactive jogging replacement. For many people, DDR or walking are not options because of their weight or physical problems. At the same time, weight lifting isn't aerobic enough (and costs too much money).

But Wharton method stretching is aerobic, you can get the book for free through your library or interlibrary loan and learn the method that way, and it helps with flexibility. Gardening was used in a test of seniors and found to be effective exercise. It has a learning curve, but many people enjoy gardening a great deal. DDR is usually started by borrowing a child's game machine bought at a garage sale and going from there.

It is hard, but it is possible to get mild exercise once you've started to lose weight.

And losing weight is possible, not a dream or a mirage.