The Shangri-La Diet: The No Hunger Eat Anything Weight-Loss Plan

167 Pages·2007·0.92 MB·English

by  Seth Roberts

Table of Contents

Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1 - WHY A CALORIE IS NOT A CALORIE
Chapter 2 - THE CASE OF THE MISSING APPETITE
Chapter 3 - A NEW THEORY OF WEIGHT CONTROL
Chapter 4 - HOW TO DO THE SHANGRI-LA DIET
Chapter 5 - COMMON QUESTIONS
Chapter 6 - EXTRA CREDIT: EIGHT MORE WAYS TO LOSE WEIGHT
Chapter 7 - CHANGING THE REST OF THE WORLD
Appendix - THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE THEORY BEHIND THE DIET
Acknowledgements
NOTES
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
“Seth Roberts, during a twenty-year bout of fiendish creativity,
was willing to use his own body as a laboratory,
and now has hit upon a weight-loss theory that just
might benefit a few million people. This is what can
happen when creative people ask smart questions, and
have the relentless energy to follow through.”
—Stephen J. Dubner, coauthor of Freakonomics

“In fact, it might benefit a few billion.”
—Dennis Prager, radio talk-show host

“Instant willpower!”
—Woman’s World

“Absurd, ridiculous, and remarkable. It is quite simply
one of the most unusual weight-loss books ever written.
. . . I have an inkling that Seth Roberts just might
be onto something. The Shangri-La Diet is most certainly
a paradigm-shifter of epic proportions.”
—Diet-Blog.com

“Everything on the cover is literally true. You make
one almost-subtle change, and you lose weight. . . . The
first and only diet book that I’ve ever seen that really
delivers.”
—CalorieLab.com

“The Diet to End All Diets. It’s like a diet pill in book
form. No one need ever be fat again!”
—Joyce Cohen, New York Times columnist and blogger (Hunt Grunt)

“The strangest, easiest way to lose weight.”
—Kathy Sierra, blogger (Creating Passionate Users) and author of Head First
Java

A PERIGEE BOOK
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a
division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England •
Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.) •
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of
Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.) • Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel
Park, New Delhi-110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0745,
Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.)
Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offiices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the
time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for
changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not
assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2006 by Seth Roberts, Ph.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or
electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted
materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions. PERIGEE is a registered
trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. The “P” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA)
Inc.

PRINTING HISTORY
Perigee trade paperback edition / May 2007

eISBN : 978-1-101-04077-5

Roberts, Seth Douglass, date.
The Shangri-la diet: the no hunger, eat anything weight-loss plan/Seth Roberts.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
eISBN : 978-1-101-04077-5
1. Reducing diets. 2. Weight loss. I. Title.
RM222.2.R
613.2’5—dc22

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: Neither the publisher nor the author is engaged in rendering professional
information, advice, or services to the individual reader. The ideas, procedures, and suggestions contained
in this book are not intended as a substitute for consulting with your physician. All matters regarding your
health require medical supervision. In particular, excess weight can be associated with “hidden” ailments,
such as heart disease and diabetes, that should be medically determined before undertaking a major change
in your dietary habits. Neither the author nor the publisher shall be liable or responsible for any loss or
damage allegedly arising from any information, advice, or suggestion in this book.

Most Perigee Books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions,
premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. Special books, or book excerpts, can also be created to fiit
specifiic needs. For details, write: Special Markets, Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New
York, New York 10014.
http://us.penguingroup.com
To animal-learning researchers everywhere
Let them gather all the food of these good years. . . . That food shall be a reserve
for the land against the seven years of famine.
—GENESIS 41

Curiously enough, the immense dinner of the night before, which ought to have
lasted me a week, made me hungrier than usual.
—Love in a Cold Climate
FOREWORD

The ShangriLa Diet, first published April 2006, came into a world not expecting
it. There had been a Freakonomics column in the New York Times about my
work and a website started by someone else devoted to the diet, but these did not
change the fact that the book was unlike any other diet book on the market. It
described a counterintuitive, strikingly simple new way to lose weight that had
no obvious precedent. Drink fat to lose fat? Really?
Was the world ready for such a break with the past? Fortunately for me and
anyone who wants to lose weight, the answer was: Part of the world.
The plainest evidence of the openness to this new idea in weight loss was the
rapid growth of the Internet forums for the book (http://boards.
shangriladiet.com). Nine months after the book came out, the forums have more
than thirty thousand posts from more than two thousand people, and they
continue to grow steadily.
Thousands of forum posts have shown that SLD worked much better than any
other diet the person had tried. “It’s a miracle,” one poster explained, “because
it’s an easy, cheap, and painless solution to a very serious problem. What makes
it a bloody miracle is the unexpectedness of it. . . . In my heart of hearts, I was
sure I’d never be thin again.”
Many of the posts describe how the diet has affected appetite (“my night
snacking cravings are just gone”) and eating behavior (“turning down
chocolate,” “only eating when I’m actually hungry”), confirming what the book
describes.
Much of my professional life has involved statistics and data analysis; I was
able to put these skills to good use because a poster in Texas named Rey Arbolay
started and has maintained a special place on the forums for posting SLD
weight-loss progress. To date, about one hundred people have provided data.
This moved the evidence that the diet worked beyond a series of single cases.
(For my analysis of this data, see “What to Expect,” page 81.) As far as I know,
such broad and detailed information is not widely available for any other weight-
loss method.
On the other hand, forum posts also pointed out some weaknesses, limitations,
and failures of SLD. The first version of the diet did not work for everyone, and
some people lost weight only slowly. As these results came in (along with many