The Shangri-La Diet
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| Author | Seth Roberts |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Dieting |
| Genre | Non-fiction |
| Publisher | Perigee Books |
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Publication date
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April 2006 |
| Pages | 203 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 123498697 |
| 613.2/5 22 | |
| LC Class | RM222.2 .R5597 2007 |
The Shangri-La Diet is both the name of a book by the psychologist Seth Roberts, a professor at Tsinghua University and professor emeritus at UC Berkeley, and the name of the diet that the book advocates. The book discusses consuming 100–400 calories per day in a flavorless food such as extra light olive oil one hour outside of mealtimes as a method of appetite suppression leading to weight loss.
As a graduate student, Roberts studied animal cognition, specifically rat psychology. As a psychology professor, Roberts read a report by Israel Ramirez, a scientist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, about the effect of saccharin on the growth and weight of rats. Based on this research, he developed a new theory of weight control. The theory led him to eat foods with a low glycemic index and to eat sushi many days in a row, which caused him to lose twenty pounds.
In 2000, Roberts visited Paris. He noticed an extreme loss of appetite and speculated that this was due to drinking flavors of soft drinks that were not available to him in the US.
The book features short anecdotes from followers of the diet who had heard of it through Roberts' blog or The New York Times. Roberts' diet is based on the fundamental principle of a set point – the weight which, according to Roberts, a person's brain strives to maintain. When actual weight is below the set point, appetite increases; when actual weight is above the set point, appetite decreases. Furthermore, eating certain foods can raise or lower the set point. Foods that have a strong flavor-calorie relationship (such as fast food or donuts) raise the set point, whereas bland foods which are slowly digested (like extra light olive oil or fructose mixed with water) lower the set point. Roberts states that the diet is based upon connecting two unconnected fields: weight control and associative learning. Because of this, the research behind the diet is from multiple fields, ranging from Pavlovian psychology to physiology to rat psychology.
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