I dongeddit. If he's a foodie, after he has the oil or sugar, he's going to want something yummy right? And then the signal would be tripped.
after he has the oil or sugar, he's going to want something yummy right?
Seems like the answer is "no." What makes him want something yummy is having something yummy. So he has something not-yummy, which quells his appetite without triggering the storage instinct.
Isn't this similar to the diet standard that involves frequent snacks but no large meals?
I don't think so, because the key insight is that flavor matters: if you have yummy snacks, you're going to want to keep eating. If you have some oil, or sugar water, then apparently you won't.
so we should prepare foul meals for ourselves (if we want to lose weight). Most foul things have deleterious health effects. But I suppose we could drink human sweat and be ok.
Sugar water, people, sugar water!
(Not tough and stringy old people, though.)
But what I meant was, the article said he was a foodie and wasn't interested in bland meals. I don't see how eating oil gets him any further than the bland meals would. You're still left with the problem of not being able to enjoy food on a diet.
So basically, you just called us all fat, right?
Is there a substantive difference between sugar water and an apple, other than the former seems to really work for this dude? An apple seems like a fair compromise between eating real human food and creating a simple syrup in order to achieve a dietary effect.
I think we are neglecting the point that we should really all drink human sweat.
His meals are normal and yummy, but between meals, he has oil or sugar water, which suppress his appetite, which makes him eat less, even when he eats otherwise yummy food. Let's try it this way: we tend to believe that eating is the way to satisfy our urge to eat. Roberts' insights is that when we eat stuff that tastes good to us, our appetite stretches to accomodate eating more of it. Remember Shakespeare's line about Cleopatra? "she makes hungry / Where most she satisfies." Like that. What Roberts found is that consuming calories that didn't trip the yummy detector got his body to say, "That's ok, but we don't need any more of it."
No idea about the apple, Smasher. Try it, maybe they'll write you up in the Times (I'm guessing that apples are too yummy).
I still have a question a couple of bland things like olive oil and sugar water 'trick' your body into thinking that food is scarce.
Does this method work by fooling your body's metabolism ('time to burn the fat, food is scarce!)' or by fooling your brain into not wanting to eat so much? What Roberts says sounds like the latter, but the mechanism sounds like it would have to be the former.
Armsmasher, apples count as 'real human food'.
Nothing like sitting down with a nice hot cup of vegetable oil between meals. I sense an emerging connoisseurship.
Emerging nothing, they already have an olive oil tasting bar at my local grocery. (And people who properly spell words like "connoisseurship" read too much, or are smart. No, wait....)
I had a vague sense that olive oil snoots already poke the heavens. I had in mind more of a boutique mentality growing up around canola oil, or some other gloop usually indistinquishable from other members of the equivalence class of gloop. To distinguish such gloops requires connoisseurship indeed.
14, agreed. I was saying that sugar water is an unacceptable snack, and apples are human food that might serve the same function as sugar water, since, after all, apples are more or less sugar water.
"connoisseurship"
I wrote it with one "n" at first, but then Google done learned me.
i thought apple juice was more or less sugar water. apples were a bit better, if the peel was consumed (and i think the flesh is good for fiber or something, although i'm less sure abut that...)
a boutique mentality growing up around canola oil
You can create this mentality by marketing Artisanal Cañola Oil imported from Chile.
I find that Wesson brand Canola Oil has a slightly acrid aftertase at the back of the mouth, but it's top note of orange peel and hibiscus makes up for it.
Crisco brand Canola Oils, however, while evenly balanced across the palate, has an overly pushy front note of burning tire.
Have any MAC users with Safari had trouble accessing NY Times articles from a blog link today? I tried to read an article about a guy with weird headaches via DB's Medrants, and now I can't read about Roberts. I don't have a problem if I go to the main web page and then click on the link for the magazine, but right now I find that Safari is stuck on an ad for Sun microsystems, and Clicking on the little button in the top right-hand corner that says "Skip this ad" doesn't work.
Apple flesh is good for fiber and I think the peel is where most of the nutrients are.
And has anyone considered the gastro-intestinal implications of taking an extra couple tablespoons of oil per day?
Canola oil makes my face break out, but I think there's hope for cànôla.
I'm guessing that apples are too yummy.
Not yummy enough to make you eat a bushel of them, though. I doubt anybody keeps enough apples around at a given time to make apple gluttony a problem. Of course, if that apple whetted your appetite and there's a bag of chips nearby...
Really, this guy's method just seems to be an overcomplicated version of this simple truth: if you buy tasty junk, you will consume it faster than you planned (fatass!). So don't buy tasty junk. Willpower exercised in the grocery store goes a lot further than willpower exercised in the kitchen.
Mine host is ahead of us on the eight knds of sugar water front.
Tom, it seems to me that the lesson is that if you eat untasty stuff between meals, you will eat less of the tasty junk at mealtime even when you have it. And the argument is over whether an apple inbetween meals would have the same appetite-suppressant effect.
27: I'm not convinced that the argument makes that case. To assume that the between-meals oil inhibits eating during the actual meals, you'd have to assume that the "thermostat"-altering effect lasts for quite a while. And if that's the case, wouldn't the tastiness afforded by the meal counteract it?
I think he just discovered a way to avoid between-meal snacking. And that satiety can be achieved with an unpalatable food well before one would naturally stop eating a palatable food. I've done the same thing eating carrots instead of stuff I'd actually enjoy.
It's interesting and all, but self-testing a pet theory about how to regulate your own behavior is not exactly the kind of stuff you'll find in the pages of Nature.
Also, I'm deeply suspicious of the parenthetical claim that sweetness is unimportant to hunger regulation. Maybe that's just the NYT's oversimplifying the guy's case, though.
I had in mind more of a boutique mentality growing up around canola oil, or some other gloop usually indistinquishable from other members of the equivalence class of gloop. To distinguish such gloops requires connoisseurship indeed.
Like with vodka.
It follows that vodka shots are slimming.
I once tried to keep some statistics about my awareness/sleepiness, energy levels, food intake, sleep, exercise, etc. etc. so that I could correlate the data after a period of time to try to find little tricks just like this. It lasted about a week before it got too tiring and annoying and I quit.
Does the unfogged readership have any diet tips? I don't need to lose weight, but I'm always looking for ways to boost my energy and powers of concentration.
Someone I know swears by the Dadamo blood-type diet. As a type O individual, I'm not sure that I'm willing to give up on wheat entirely.
I'm working on losing a little jollity myself. If anyone has a Mexican cuisine–centric diet, I'd appreciate it. (Another mile to jog for each enchilada?)
32: At least for me, the low carb diets work amazingly well. I just can't sustain them.
Eat only those Mexican foods which are prepared without lard. That'll lose you some weight but quick.
what does wheat have to do with being type O?
Lowering your carbs just a little -- especially sugars -- does a lot for energy, I've found. Also, lots of caffeine.
The easiest way not to crash in the afternoons is not to eat sweets. But sweets are tasty. Also, run five miles a day.
My method of dieting is to not eat. I have an average of 1.5 meals a day. Sometimes I eat dinner, sometimes not. Usually, I eat lunch. Sometimes, breakfast.
My appetite went down considerably when I started taking ADD medication, a stimulant. I won't worry as long as I retain my generous love-handles.
bostoniangirl,
These are pretty common knowledge, but getting enough sleep and lifting weights works for me.
The sleep part stimulates HGH, and the pumping iron part builds muscle mass while reducing cortisol.
And, no, you won't get bulky.
only those Mexican foods which are prepared without lard
"That," my dear boy, not "which."
California has already caused him to go slack.
Lordy lordy lordy. We don't really mean that, do we? "Which" is acceptable for restrictive clauses.
no: the use of which implies that all mexican foods are prepared without lard -- clearly false.
The use of that entails that bw is setting out an exceedingly small subset of the larger set known as "mexican foods" -- which is presumably his intent.
text, it's not about carbs. There's a whoel theory that people who have blood type O haven't evolved to eat wheat.
It's alleged that we should stick to true rye and older grains. From the book blurb:
"Type 0, the oldest blood type, reflects a time when humans survived by hunting their food. Small but frequent servings of meat (excluding pork), poultry, and fish along with vegetables and fruit form a healthful diet for Type 0. Grains (especially wheat), legumes, and dairy products - largely unfamiliar to those hunting ancestors - are incompatible with Type O biochemistry."
I think it's probably bogus.
Exercise is good, and I probably don't get enough of it. The problem with coffee is that it can make you wired which is not conducive to calm, sustained work.
hmmm. the formulation only those . . . which might not be as confusing as I stated above.
In which case I'm an ass.
no, but coffee is conducive to a manic, all-encompassing drive to work, then followed by a pleasant bout of listlessness, then sleep. Then, because you pulled the all-nighter, play on a blog for an hour or two. Then repeat.
Here's a diet that conceptually easy: try to exercise every day, eat what you want, but don't pig out.
43: No, that would be "Mexican foods, which are prepared without lard"--it's the comma that drives the meaning, not the 'which'. I insist.
Even Fowler is with me on this one. More. (I realize that Zwicky got pwned on positive 'anymore'--the linguist and I are still trying to figure that one out.)
Weiner's right--the which/that distinction for restrictive/unrestrictive was invented by Fowler out of whole cloth.
Hey w-lfs-n--let's try to convince them that 'their' and 'they're' really are interchangeable. I think we've got them intimidated enough that, working together, we could do it.
Yglesias! Get away from his computer!
leave the breaking of rules to the competent professionals, and then only if they have a good reason for breaking them
I guess we could let it go if you have a really good reason, BW?
1) The blood type thing is nuts, but my sister (A+) is trying it.
2) I wonder: lots of cultures that don't have weight problems have very flavorful, spicy food. What flavors are supposed to trick the brain?
3) Easy diet:
a) Cook for yourself; reduce processed packaged crap.
b) Work out regularly.
c) Eat what you want.
d) Vodka is a food group.
I don't like vodka so much. If I'm going to drink hard liquor, I prefer girly fruity drinks or other non-girly Caribbean drinks like the mojito.
I'm really a wine and beer kind of gal.
2) is demonstrably false. I associate spicy cooking with the following regions of the country: the south (specifically N.O., sad enough); the southwest.
I'm pretty sure those are the most obese areas.
Many of the skinniest regions of the world (where it is not due to extreme poverty) serve up, if not bland, fairly mild offerings.
although if it were true, it would support the all mexican food diet, which I favor.
Hmm. French food is flavorful, and fattening, yet the French are skinny. Probably due to cigarettes, but still.
Some Indian food is pretty spicy, and India, as a whole, is not full of obese people. An awful lot of Indians are vegetarians though.
Wine/vodka here, but generally non-girly on the vodka. Beer is good, too.
Maybe I'm just a lush.
bg makes a good point about Indian food. French food is flavorful, but not very spicy, I don't think. I'm not sure I have anything intelligent to say about spicyness v. unspicyness.
Cala, do you drink vodka neat? If so, props.
Sometimes. Usually vodka tonics, which are not girly. I like the fizz.
What are the Thailand obesity statistics? Authentic (earnest?) Thai is damn spicy.
And thus we come full circle - spurning the bland canola science for the new south phuket diet developed by Cala and washerdreyer.
Is there a readily available source of quinine outside of tonic water?
I guess it's in Lillet and Dubonnet too. Outside of those also.
I decided to google quinine. One used to be able to get it in pill form to relieve muscle soreness, but no longer, due to side effects.
But in small doses, it is beneficial, and can forestall the onset of malaria.
Right. Which is why gin & tonics were invented.
And the gin kills bacteria in the water. It's really an all-in-one survival kit.
why don't people drink more gin? It tastes like flowers, and mixes perfectly with the tonic.
vodka is for taking shots, and for mixing into fruit punch for underage girls.
Man, what is with all the vodka hate around here. A vodka tonic with lemon (not lime) is among the most refreshing summer drinks know to man.
at the risk of sounding like a complete fruit, the Stoli Orange vodka goes particularly well with tonic, year round. Refreshing, but not cloyingly sweet.
No, it isn't, Chopper. A gin & tonic is more refreshing, as is tonic with lime and bitters (angostura or peach), as is campari and bitter lemon soda.
I do not hate on vodka, but wish it would stay in its own sphere, and not invade the gin sphere.
No, b-wo, I have objectively measured it using the Bell Labs' refreshometer I picked up at the black market science flea market. On the refreshometer, set (and tested) for summer conditions, a gin and tonic came in at around 7.237 Frescas. The vodka tonic with lemon came in at 7.483 Frescas under the same conditions, a difference of 246 milliFrescas.
The machine burnt out due to excessive twee in the intake filters when I tried the other drinks, so I couldn't get a precise measurement.