“Hacking the Set Point”

Ok, so what do I mean by that?

A few years ago I read a “short” story by Cory Doctorow: Ownz0red (you can read it here).  Essentially a computer programmer gets put into an experiment and his autonomic system is hooked up to a computer interface. “Big deal,” you say, but imagine if you could consciously control aspects of your body’s systems that currently you have no control over whatsoever, thing like your metabolism, heart rate, blood pressure. The story has some pretty cool parts (though young readers may want to watch out for less savory parts of the story - arguably it’s cleaner than “Brave New World” or that Ivan Denisovich book which we should have all read in High School).

Next thing: head off to Wikipedia and read about brown fat. “Brown adiopose tissue is highly specialized for this non-shivering thermogenesis” - well that sums it up! =) for those that forgot their high-school biology, here’s the short version: brown fat has lots of mitochondria compared to normal fat cells. Hibernating animals, small animals and human babies use them to convert stored fat directly into heat - no shivering or muscle movement required. By adulthood, the brown fat in most humans has converted to normal fat cells. Imagine if that wasn’t the case and you could simply jump into a tub of ice water and boil off some stored fat.

Anyway, back on topic. I have always thought wouldn’t it be cool to tell my body to drop weight somehow. Wiring us up to a computer control isn’t possible and the last time I swam at Camp Steiner ("The lake has a temperature that stays between 55 and 65 degrees fahrenheit during the summer. Passing the swim check is a rite of passage") I don’t remember dropping any weight so those two options are out, but what if someone could come up with a method to hack the body’s systems so one could control metabolism. The problem is how would you do it?

Something I had never considered was the possibility of gaining control over hunger and appetite. If you eat less than your body needs to maintain daily functions it will pull calories from stored resources. Traditionally that was done with a classic diet: just eat less and starve it out. That’s fine if you are anorexic but most normal people find the hunger drive too strong and most diets fail. The other traditional route is to exercise more. I started that and I’m going to attempt to continue because it’s a good idea no matter what. The problem is you are dealing with the results of too many calories by trying to burn them rather than just not taking them into the system in the first place. 1 pound of fat is the result of approximately 2500 extra calories. To gain a pound of fat you take in an extra 500 calories a day for a week. To lose a pound of fat you would deprive the system 500 calories a day for a week - either by eating less or exercising more. Burning off 500 calories by running would take about an hour a day (depending on your weight and pace) although the increased activity would raise your base metabolic rate and the system’s daily caloric requirements go up. In an ideal world exercise is the obvious answer - you just need to make sure you eat less than you need and you’re on your way.

Until you get a desk job, or get sick, or get busy and forget to do it for a while. Also, to implement a change like that you need to completely change your lifestyle and form new habits. So let’s try doing the additional exercise but we still need to reduce caloric intake. What if we could trick our bodies into believing we don’t have a refrigerator of food and a bag of chocolate in the cupboard. What if we could make our body think we were stuck in a famine and we needed to stop eating as much so we could give some of the food to our kids because we had stored fat during the “fat times” - sure the BMR will go down unless we keep it up there by exercising, but it won’t go down *that* much.

This is the premise of the “Shangri-La Diet” (which I think is a sucky name - even worse when contacted to SLD, sounds like SLI). You trick your appetite. You convince your body that there isn’t much food to go around so quit insisting on half a pizza, my cubs need to eat too. You eat less because you do not feel the need to do so, simple as that. Anecdotes describe a loss of desire for snacks, less eaten at meals and ultimately some forget to even eat for a meal or two. Eating is no longer a requirement but something you do on a limited basis because it tastes good and you need some nutrients and vitamins for essential processes. You aren’t worried about how many points you have had that day, how many calories are in the cheesecake or if it has carbs. You just eat until you are satisfied.

And how much would you pay for this miracle? “Can you overnight it to my house?” you might ask - there’s no need. Head down to your local supermarket, buy some measuring spoons, some Extra Light (tasting) Olive Oil (do not get virgin olive oil - it has too much flavor) and some table sugar, just grab a 10 pound bag of the cheap stuff. You may want to hit a sporting goods store and grab a nose plug but you don’t really *need* it (though I would recommend it). Now either order the book or grab it from your local library (though if you buy it you’ll be able to read it longer and lend it out - and you’re going to want to do both).

If you haven’t watched this video yet, the basic premise is: your brain uses the relative lack or abundance of flavoring to associate caloric intake with how bountiful food is and how hungry you should be. If food is easier to get because the hunters just killed some buffalo during the annual migration, then you should eat more and store up fat. If all you had for the last month is a paste of crushed wheat and some dried berries from the previous year - it’s time to eat less and burn off that fat we stored earlier. As your brain decides to eat less and your caloric intake goes down, so does your weight. The oil and sugar fit in by being “flavorless calories” - yes I know they have some flavor but none that you would associate unless you are me and associate the smell of the oil with cooking sweet and sour chicken, hence my need for a nose plug. The big promise is unlike diets based on eating one certain type of food or not eating a certain type of food (Atkins, I’m talking to *YOU*) this one is actually within the realm of sustainability. If you want to lose 20-40 pounds you would take in 2 tablespoons of olive oil along with 2 table spoons of sugar (usually dissolved in about 2 cups of water) in most cases splitting it up into two doses (a tablespoon of each in the morning, same thing at night) but making sure you don’t have anything with flavor an hour before and an hour after (not even gum or tooth brushing). Once you have lost the weight you want you cut back the flavorless calories so you maintain the illusion of a slight famine. The guy who came up with the diet tried it on himself and has a pretty little graph of the last 4 years maintaining his weight.

In the end, if it doesn’t work you’re only out a few bucks for some olive oil and a resolution to not drink olive oil again. If it works.... if it works.... well, I’ll leave that one to you.

Posted by on 10/04 at 10:04 PM

  1. Nicely said.

    Posted by Stephen M (Ethesis)  on  10/10  at  03:59 PM
    2. Page 1 of 1 pages

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