The Shangri-La Diet is unlike any diet you ever have come across; it is, in the truest sense, a hack.

It does not involve consciously choosing to eat less of any food; you may eat whatever you currently enjoy in whatever portion you like. All that is required is consuming approximately 100 to 200 calories a day of either sugar water, or a flavorless oil (such as light olive oil).

Sounds ludicrous, no?

How could adding additional calories of sugar and fat help you to lose weight?

To answer that, it would help to have a brief refresher on classical conditioning and Ivan Pavlov. Pavlov, you may remember, was a Russian physiologist who performed a series of experiments on dogs. He noted that when he began presenting a stimulus, such as a bell, before feeding the dogs, they soon began to associate the sound of the bell with the food. This caused them to reflexively salivate at the sound of the bell in anticipation of the food.

The Shangri-La diet posits that this same associative force works to bind flavors, calories, and appetite. When someone first eats a new food, the flavor is novel and unassociated with calories. Quickly, however, the flavor comes to be associated with the caloric content of the food. The stronger the flavor and the quicker the food raises blood glucose levels, the stronger the association may become.

When these familiar-flavored foods are consumed regularly, it signals the brain that safe, calorie rich foods are readily available. As a consequence, appetite is upregulated. This makes perfect sense from an evolutionary perspective.

What then of unfamiliar or flavorless foods? The exact opposite: they lessen the appetite. And that is precisely the impetus for drinking the sugar water and/or olive oil. Though they taste sweet and/or oily, they are not perceived by the brain as flavors. As a result you lose weight without the usual struggle.

My take: I have just begun to try the diet and will update you periodically with my results. Interestingly, when I told my wife about this diet, she said that it was well known in Cuba that drinking the juice of sugarcane cut the appetite. It was often used by workers in the cane fields. Stay tuned….
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