Weak Iced Tea and the Shangri-La Diet
Thursday, June 2nd, 2011Pat McGee of Grand Prairie, Texas, learned about the Shangri-La Diet last week and realized the theory behind it explained something strange that had happened to him:
A couple of years ago I unpacked my scale and was astonished to see that I had lost 25 lbs sometime in the couple of years before that. [He went from 165-170 pounds to 140-146 pounds. He is 5 feet 8 inches tall.] I was mystified as to why, as I could point to no changes in anything I thought might be relevant in my life.
Last week, I found out about the SLD and read the first few chapters of the book. I realized that about three years ago, I had switched from sodas [with sugar, such as Coke and Pepsi] to weak iced tea. I did this mostly because I was feeling cheap and didn’t feel like paying for bottled sodas any more. I use 5 small teabags and a cup of sugar per gallon, steeped for about 6 minutes with a little lemon juice. Basically I want something that’s got just enough flavor that it’s not plain water.
When you are 5’8″ and 170 pounds, losing 25 pounds without trying (from BMI 26 to 22) is astonishing. Not only that, he has kept it off. His story is a little different than mine because I didn’t stop drinking anything — certainly nothing as fattening as Coke or Pepsi.
Here is a new use of the ideas behind the Shangri-La Diet — namely, identifying what caused massive accidental weight loss. Obviously others can use his discovery. From a theoretical point of view, he replaced strongly-flavored drinks with a weakly-flavored one. According to conventional ideas about weight control, this should have no effect.
It is also an interesting example of behavioral engineering because he switched from standard soft drinks (such as Pepsi) to his concoction without difficulty. His drink was pleasant enough. It derived pleasure from flavor (tea), sweetness (sugar), and sourness (lemon juice). A little salt would have allowed him to reduce the flavor even more.
