Month 3, day 2

It seems it has been a long time since I last posted here. Work has been heavy, and Gettting Things Done has redirected some of my priorities. My weight has stalled, but recently began to turn downwards. Lowest morning weight is 20 Stone 4.5, today I was 20 stone 5.5

My feelings about Getting Things Done are that its a good system, but quite rough around the edges. One could conceivably fill their entire day doing Getting things Done, and never actually DO anything. On the other hand, it is keeping large chunks of my life in check. Possibly I need to work more on becoming motivated to do things, and less on keeping track of the things I have to do.

In short, I'll be keeping up Getting things Done at least until the house move and the wedding are over, because it proves to be a good way of knowing what I haven't done yet.


On to Month 3.

In the last month I have felt stressed (because of the house move), frustrated (because of the house move, and because of the lawyers I'm using), dispondant (because the house move didn't happen when I was expecting it would), and annoyed at myself (because I hate making telephone calls, so I hated talking to some of the contractors and lawyers involved in frustrating and stressing me about the house move). The wedding isn't much better, but its further away, and the hotel people are very nice (if French railways would let me book train tickets more than 90 days in advance, everything would be perfect. Sort of.)

Most of this is the fault of other people. As Yoda might say "House moves lead to other people. Other people lead to stress. Stress leads to pain. Pain leads to suffering".

Does pain lead to suffering? According to the people behind ACT (Acceptance Commitment Therapy) apparently not. What ACT (pronounced "act" not "ay-see-tee") says is that while everyone feels pain (and that the pain can be useful in guiding us in our lives), we don't have to suffer. The techniques it uses are based on the far eastern technique of Mindfulness, but using short-cuts around some of the decades of meditation which Buddhist monks put in (if only those Buddhist monks knew about self-help books, they could spend their time doing useful things like kung-fu and, um, Falling long distances (near walls) without getting hurt. For shame, Buddhist monks!)

ACT is a genuine development of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy which is being developed by leading researchers right now. When I was last in Addenbrookes in Cambridge, I saw signs up on the walls talking about their mindfullness groups for psychiatric patients. So there could well be something in this, somewhere. But can a self-help book convey it all to me, and turn me into some sort of emotionally intelligent superhero? One month... lets see how it does.

Month 2, Day 19: Still here

Weight: 20 Stone 8.0 lbs
GTD: In 0, todo 70, Someday 45, Done 92

I missed the last few days of blogging. My weight has remained the same, but I managed to sort out a lot of the other issues that are on my plate, including getting quotes for work I need to do on the new house. I still don't have a moving date, but it can't be long now.

I have had several experiences of my appetite being reduced - or at least of feeling full far sooner than I would have done previously. So while I'm plateauing at the moment, my faith in the shangri-la diet is currently remaining.

I've noticed a flaw in GTD though. Some tasks simply are not getting done. I can't get motivated to do them, because they are so large (in particular processing rooms in my house). I'm probably going to change those tasks into projects, and choose particular areas which need to be processed, then set about them instead.

Month2, Day 15: Too much, too soon

Weight: 20 Stone 9 lb.
GTD: In 1, Processing 84, Done 76, Someday 44

Last night I ate too much. Or that is how it felt. In fact I only ate four slices of pizza. 12 hours later, and I'm still feeling satisfied. So for all I suggest that the Shangri-la diet isn't working any more, it clearly has some effect on my appetite, I'm just eating less than I w2as, so I don't notice. For reference, in the past, I could have wolfed down a large pizza and garlic bread and still debated about desert.

I also found a problem in how I am organising Getting Things Done. At Remember The Milk, you can set due dates for tasks. I'm using these as a sort of tickler / priority system, so things I have to do soon get nearer the top of the list. RTM also has a system whereby you can tell it a task repeats every week, month or year. When you complete the task, it then places a new one, due the requisite period of time later, at the appropriate place on the list. While this increases my number of done tasks, it doesn't remove things from my task list. As I add more and more annual tasks to my system, the number of due tasks will get greater and greater... And frankly, it isn't worth me knowing about things I need to do in a years time, it's just worth knowing they are safely recorded somewhere in my system.

So today I added a new list 'tickler' to RTM. Any task that has a next action which needs to be done after a due date more than 1 week in the future will go here, and only put back into rotation during my weekly review. Unlike someday/oneday, these tasks are next actions, and have definite dates attached to them.

This should mean my task lists fall in size quite a bit. But also that they become more useful.

Month 2, Day 14: Lovin' It

Weight: 20 Stone, 9lbs
GTD: In 0, Processing 78, Done 70, Someday 44

Actually I'm going to Pizza Hut tonight, not McDonalds, but it's all junk, and none of it will help my weight, which is making me feel down. My current feeling is the oil increase isn't helping, and might be getting in the way. I'll give 4 tablespoons until the end of February to convince me they are worth it, before reverting to 3, and seeing how that works.

GTD continues to work, and today it reminded me of something I had forgotten, which is good. At the moment, it makes sense to keep it up.

Month 2, Day 13: Getting Purer Things Done

Weight: 20 Stone 7.5 lb
GTD: In 3, Processing 72, Someday 51, Done 61

I didn't feel hungry yesterday, but did eat a large lunch (a steak sandwich and a beer, as a mini work celebration). With a Valentines meal tomorrow (quite why Herself chose Pizza Hut, I'll never understand, but its cheap... if you ignore the cost of me driving to and from Yarmouth to be there), its going to be a bad week for food. My body will be less of a temple, and more of a run down strip mall.

I discovered a 100 point check list of things to achieve if you are integrating GTD into your life. My initial urge was to treat is as a purity test (do people even know what purity tests are these days?) I'm current 33% of my way to being a GTD master. I jotted down some things I think I need to look up in order to improve:

Learn about Master Projects List
Instigate a waiting for list
Instigate a loaned/borrowed list
Check office supplies against list in book
Reread higher altitudes section of book
Reread natural planning model section
Reread 3fold model for evaluating daily work
Reread 4 crietrea model for choosing actions
Listen to 43 folders podacasts

These are all going onto my to do list.

Month 2, day 12

Weight: 20 stone 8 lbs
GTD: In 2, Processing 71, Someday 50, Done 50

This marks the first time I managed to get my number of processing tasks done. Mainly because i worked a lot over the keekend geting a work related project finished.

I've been feeling far more hungry than usual recently. The SLD seems to have stopped working, even with my higher oil intake. I'm now feeling quite hungry a lot of the time, and the appetite suppression that I noticed has gone: On Saturday I ate a whole baguette without problems. It is a bit disheartening. Still, GTD seems to be keeping me organised (despite the best efforts of certain conveyancing lawyers to overload me with stress due to their inability to do anything).

I'm going to keep on with the Shangri-la diet until the end of march, but currently it is falling out favour with me as a long term diet mechanism.

Month2, Day 11

Weight: 20 Stone 6.5 lb

Hungry, and stressed. Sometime I think self help doesn't work that well.

Month 2, Day 10

Weight 20 stone 6.5

I won't be measuring GTD stats over the weekends. Tts too complicated to fit into my routines at this stage.

Month 2, Day 9: Dontcha think?

Weight: 20 Stone 7.5 lbs
GTD: Inbox 3, Processing 81, Done 31, Someday 50

It occurs to me that it is slightly ironic that my postings are becoming later and later while I'm working my way through GTD. No excuses, except at the moment, this is slightly lower on my priority list than certain things at work. My task list seems to be growing at the moment. Hopefully it will drop once I have time to get a few things off my plate here. Moving house should really cut the list down.

Month 2 , Day 8: Oil Surplus

Weight: 20 Stone 7.5 lbs
GTD Inbox:3, Processing 78, Done 25, Someday/Oneday 50

I upped my oil intake to 4 tablespoons a day (starting from last night, I'll now take two tablespoons in the evening). So far I'm still on the hungry side of satisfied, although not crying out for food. We'll have to see how it goes over the next few days. I seem to be back on track losing weight, although my moving average remains below 3.5 lbs per week, and probably will until Sunday, I guess.

Yesterday I had an odd experience. A new coffee machine arrived at work, and i was one of the first to try it out. I currently limit myself to one instant coffee a day, but yesterday the new coffee machine meant I had a weak (half cup) espresso at about 2pm. By half past two, I was buzzing. While trying to draw a straight line, my hand wobbled vigorously. I was awake and active all afternoon and well into the evening. It was only about 9pm that I really came back to normal. All on one cup of coffee. I'm mentioning this more for reference both for the diet, and for getting things done, in case this experience is related to either one.

Month 2, Day 7: Working through things

Weight: 20 stone 8 lbs
GTD: In-box 2, processing 77, someday/oneday 47, Done 20

Despite the fact my weight has dropped to its lowest value since the diet began, and I broke through the barrier of 10% total body weight loss and 20% of target weight loss (since my target weight is pretty much half of my starting weight, it isn't too much of a shock to see them matching up so well), today also marks the day where my week on week moving average loss dropped below 3.5 lbs. As I previously stated, that means I'm going to attempt increasing my oil dosage and seeing how that affects my appetite. I've noticed in recent days that I have more of an appetite than a few weeks ago: not that I'm feeling hungry, but that I'm eating everything I prepare, feeling full less often, and possibly feeling more inclined to snack. So maybe my set point is plateauing, or has slowed in its decline.

In Getting Things Done news, I'm managing quite well, working through items on my lists and completing them. It certainly makes me feel more productive. Below I've added few thoughts I have had about how to improve my use of the system:

Last thing in the evening at work, decide where you are going to start tomorrow on each of your current work projects. make sure each of these next actions are in your work to-do list

Whenever you leave your desk, make sure your next action on your current task in in your work to-do list

Whenever you return to your desk, look at your next actions and start carrying one out.

Whenever you are working on a project and you can think of two different things to do next, add the one you are not going to do to your work to-do list. You can work on the other task now without adding it to your list (but see above if you don't complete it)

Don't be afraid to forget to mark things on your todo list as completed. When you look over your list on returning to your desk, or when deciding what to do next, you will notice these tasks are done and remove them then. Removing them when you are in a state of flow is just an interruption.

My lists are stored in rememberthemilk.com. I'm using the due dates to remind me of what has to be finished before the project is over, but also to prioritise. I often say "due today" for things I plan on working on in the next hour or so, which puts them at the top of the list.

Month 2, Day 6: Productivity Soars

Weight: 20 Stone 8.5 lb
GTD: Inbox 0, processing 71, someday/oneday 47, done 12

I'm still trying to come up with a good format for my GTD stats.

Last night I fully processed my home in-box. All that remains in there now are some things that I have definite actions for written in my task lists. At work, my desk is clear, as are my drawers. I still have a pile of things on the floor that needs processing, but given a few spare minutes, that will go too.

GTD seems to have a few advantages that I'm noticing. The first is that I'm sure I will at least continue to think about things that I need to do in the future, because they are written down, and I'm looking at them. The second is that I can now return to my desk, and know what the next thing I intended to do is straight away, rather than having to get up to speed again.

I'm feeling productive at the moment, even if I don't actually have that many results to show people. I know that I have completed 18 of the things I've set out to do in work, and that makes me feel good.

Processing: Getting Started, problems and solutions

The next phase of Getting Things Done I want to cover is processing. Processing is the art of taking things out of your in-box, examining them, and then deciding what to do about them. For my initial round of processing, I decided I would look only at my notebook. In my notebook, for every other thing I have identified as an in-box, I have added a to-do such as "process work desk in-box". As far as I am concerned, "process work in-box" is a single task, although you are not allowed to remove if from your processing list until it is completely empty.

Step one:

look at the first item in your in-box. Determine if you need to do anything about it. If you do need to do anything about it soon, go to step three otherwise go to step two.

Step two:

If you can just throw it away, chuck it in the bin.
If you need to do it at a particular time future, file it in your tickler system (I'll talk about my tickler system in the future)
If you want to do it sometime, but have no immediate plans as for when, put it into a someday/oneday list
If you might need to reference it, chuck it in a file

And it is dealt with. Remove it from your in-box and return to step one

Step three:

Work out what you must do next, in order to complete this task.
If one action will complete the whole task, go to step five.
If it will take multiple actions to complete the whole task, go to step four.

Step four:

Congratulations, you have a project. Add this project to your project list
Think of the first action, and go to step five. If you can think of other actions that need to be added to the system, follow step five for each of these

Step five:

If the next action can be done in 2 minutes, do it.
If the next action can be delegated, delegate it
Otherwise, add the next action to a to-do list.
You should have a to-do list for each context in which you can carry out tasks (for example, on the telephone, at a computer, at the shops). Add the action to the most appropriate context.
You are finished. Remove the item from your in-box and start again.


Problems and solutions:

Q: In step one, I say "If you do need to do anything about it soon, go to step three". What is soon?

A: For me, the definition of soon is "possibly within the next two weeks". Why? Because I review my system every week, and so have at least a weeks notice of anything I need to do something about. In fact, soon is a bit more complicated than that. Essentially, it is a question of whether you need to begin implementing the task now or not, but anything that needs doing within two weeks must be on a list.

Q: In Step five, I talk about contexts. As an IT professional, I never find myself in a situation where I don't have a phone or a net connected computer (in fact, my mobile phone is a net connected computer). What contexts should I use?

A: Just because I don't ever find myself without a phone or a computer, I keep these as contexts. I currently use contexts to describe the type of activity, not the physical location. In fact I have three physical locations: work, home and at the shops. I have another location 'elsewhere' which I use to fit in anything that doesn't fall within one of those locations. 'At the shops' covers anything I want to buy in the immediate future, and keeps these shopping list items away from everything else I may have to do.

I keep the contexts 'computer' and 'phone' because I may want to do these actions either at work (during lunch hours), or home (or indeed at the shops... as I said, my phone is net connected).

My elsewhere context is for things I need to do at miscellaneous locations. Because I manage my to-do lists using rememberthemilk.com, I can use their location options to assign them to specific places (such as a friends house, or the hotel where I am getting married)

Q: Some of the items on my to-do list happen so frequently, that the moment I process them I think they ought to wind up in my in-box again.

A: I've noticed this too. All these things are part of my daily or weekly routine. Every morning, for instance I brush my teeth, add my weight to a spreadsheet and eat a nutritious, wholesome, breakfast. Every evening, I talk to Herself on the phone. Every Thursday morning, I put the bin out, and every Monday at work, I attend a status meeting.

How do I handle these? I don't put them on my to-do lists at all. Instead I have daily planner cards, one for work, one for home.

These cards (held in portrait mode) have 3 horizontal lines drawn across them, breaking them into 4 sections. The two central sections have 4 vertical lines down them, giving me 5 columns.

In the top and bottom sections I place tasks which need to be done in the morning and evening every day (top for morning, bottom for evening). In the middle two sections I put tasks specific to a particular day, morning and evening (Monday on the left, Friday on the right, top for morning, bottom for afternoon). My daily cards don't have any space for weekends (which I tend not to try to structure), but 6 lines would give you seven (possibly too thin) sections, should you need them.

My explanation of these daily cards has been a bit rushed here, so I'll give them a full treatment in a few days time, providing some blanks and some examples - including a top trick which has made Herself much happier about how tidy our house is, with hardly any work on my part.

Month 2, Day 5: Actually doing something

Weight 20 stone 10.

Grrr.

GTD: I've actually begun doing some of the things on my todo list (actually, that's unfair... while I was processing my todo list I noticed some things I had already done as part of my regular weekly routine... more about routine later). But I've also managed to tackle a few tasks on my list.

Having the in-box around is turning out to be fantastic. I saw a sign today advertising mothers day specials (in a pub which I would never in a million years take my mother to). Straight away I thought "Oh yes, I have a mother. And there is a whole day for her in the future. In fact, on the 18th of March. I must remember that, and perhaps drop it into conversation around that date". Normally, I would then proceed to forget about it until the day before, then rush around getting a card, sending it a day after, and making phone calls saying "Wow, the postal service in Cambridge really is bad". Now it is in my todo list, ready to be processed. Who knows if my mum will actually receive a card and flowers... but she can be sure I thought about it almost a month in advance.

Month 2, Day 4: Processing away

21 Stone 10.

Don't talk about my weight. It will start falling again soon.

I managed to process all my tasks today (which isn't to say I actually started any of them, just that I took them out of my in-box notepad, and into nice lists stored on the internet. I'm currently using "remember the mil" to managed my next-action lists, with one list for each context. I'll talk about this more later, and my experiences with using it. I'm still not convinced its the best solution, and think that just a set of files on Google documents might be a better approach). I'm using Google calender for calendaring and some of my tickler file needs. I think its working

Month 2, Day 3: Ah, the weekend

21 stone, 9lbs.
I was meant to start processing. But I didn't. Not at all productive.

How many inboxes do I have?

Too many.

The process of collection in Getting Things Done is filling your personal in-box with every task you might want to do (be it buying a nail, or selling a house). In an ideal world, we would have one in-box, put everything we wanted to do in one place, and then (when it came to processing) work through things one step at a time.

The world (as you may have noticed) is far from ideal.

The perfect world's in-box would be able to accept physical things: not just the excessive bills that have been stuffed wantonly through my letterbox by greedy utilities companies, but also the ball left untidily on the lawn and the new set of body building weights which I havn't figured out where to store yet. It would also be with me at all times, so I could add a new idea the moment it popped into my little mind.

I don't really fancy dragging my new set of weights around with me.

The solution then, is to have multiple in-boxes. The ones which fit into my life are:

An in-box for papers which sits near the front door, and accepts all those bills.
A notepad which I write things down in, and carry around with me
A section of my desk at work, which I pile all sorts of things into, promising I'll do something with them one day. It currently contains a box of business cards showing my companies old name and a telephone extension that won't reach me since our internal exchange changed. A plastic bottle I use for water (or would do - it hasn't been filled up since before Christmas), and an ethernet card which doesn't work (along with a index card attached to it which says "this ethernet card doesn't work).

But this too is insufficient. The weights wouldn't fit into my paper in-box. They would probably make it crack under their weight. It's almost ready to crack under the weight of the bills (I wonder if red ink is lighter...)

And other people keep giving me new in-boxes. My answering machine is an in-box. So is my email in-box (in fact, there is a clue in its name). As a software engineer, I have to handle fixing bugs and adding feature requests. We manage this with a piece of software. This software is an in-box (and also sends emails to my email in-box). At home, all the bookcases containing books I haven't read are, in their own way in-boxes. When I arrive home in the evening, my doormat is an in-box (for the bills, which get opened and placed in a new in-box), for the free paper, which gets placed in black recycling out-box, and for the pizza delivery menus, which tempt me away from my diet.

In truth, everything that is disorganised in your life is an in-box. Everything that is untidy is an in-box.

GTD recommends making a note of all things too big to fit into your in-box and then processing them one at a time. But in order to decide what gets put into your paper in-box, you are already processing. Maybe making a decision about where to put the weights goes into my notepad in-box, but deciding whether to throw away that empty crisp packet on my lawn is a processing action: do I really need to log it in my in-box, or would it be better just to say "my lawn is untidy, it has become an in-box" and add the task of processing new next in-box to the never-ending list of things to do.

I think the latter is the more reasonable system.

Sure, I should aim to keep things down to 3 in-boxes, but I should use my eyes to notice when other in-boxes exist, and need managing!

Month 2, Day 2: Still Collecting

20 Stone 11 lbs. 114 collected, 0 processed, 0 projects, 0 complete

Yesterday I felt hungrier than I have since starting the diet. While I didn't snack a great deal, I did eat 2 slices of ham and a yogurt in addition to my normal tea.

I'm shocked at how many things I have that I know I have to do. 114 and counting. The list is tending towards shopping I need to do now, but still, I wouldn't be surprised to come up with another 50 or so today. Yesterday I was relaxed, happy and energetic, but not at my most productive (which seemed to me to be more related to the sort of work I was doing than my particular mood). I'm sure GTD has the potential to up my productivity by letting me discover small challenges to face, and by making bigger ones more approachable. Still, thats all going to begin on Monday, I guess.

Over the weekend, I'll try to start emptying my in-box.

Failure and Serendipity

The point of GTD collection is that you should always be able to do it, no stray thought should pass through your mind and if there is anything to do about it, not make it into your in-box. This is the reason I'm using a small notebook for all my collecting. Today on the way to work, a thought arose, so I pulled out my notebook and was about to jot it down when I noticed I had no pen.

Disaster.

A failure and I hadn't even arrived at work. I need a pen fast.

At that very moment, I was passing a bookmakers shop. My eyes were downcast, literally. But on the pavement, lying in a dirty puddle were five or six betting shop pens. It is rubbish collection day today, so I guess they were old pens being thrown out which had somehow missed the bin. These pens are idea, sized smaller than my notebook and easy to carry. the pen I picked up was not nice to write with, but it was sufficiently able to write to note my thoughts down.

The universe wants me to succeed with Getting Things Done.

Now I have a new task collected in my notebook: find out where to buy betting shop pens,a nd get some.... either that or go on the worlds most trivial crime spree in Argos.

Month 2, Day 1 : Getting things done : Collection

20 stone, 11 lbs...
but that's not important right now... because this is February.

My life is currently undergoing something of an upheaval. Work is frenetic, with deadlines coming up each week. Things are being thrown up in the air, and I'm trying to juggle most of them. Sometimes succeeding, sometimes going in to work on Saturdays to glue together the ones which smashed on hitting the floor. I'm getting married in June, and that seems to involve an endless stream of decisions and buying things. The whole process has to be choreographed perfectly, whether its getting Herself's family over from Romania or making a mix CD of the music we want played at various different times. And because work and love aren't stressful enough, I'm also moving house. The lawyers are stressing me, the things we need to do to the new house are stressing me. The fact that days go by when nobody tells me what the hell is taking so long are stressing me. And don't get me started about trying to write a blog article every day. Who had that stupid idea? Me? Oh right...

I need a holiday... But I've seen how much work is going in to planning the Honeymoon, and I can't be bothered with that right now.

Things can only get better. Either I'll discover some sort of wonderful cure for my total lack of organisation which lifts the cloud of stress and bathes me in the sunlight of relaxation, or I'll be committed. To a place which bans metaphors like "clouds of stress and sunlight of relaxation".

Being committed isn't an option. Asylums have warders: that's other people helping you (or at least collecting the pennies from the rich people who come to poke you with sticks). Justhelpmyself isn't about other people helping me. its about me helping me. With the aid of books. (granted, the books have been written by other people... but lets ignore that and assume I'm just such a good solipsist I can create books out of whole matter. Lets assume I'm one of the worlds' top ten solipsists)

So today I mark the next phase of Justhelpmyself. Today I start getting things done. Today I start Getting Things Done. A system of organisation and productivity by David Allen. There are about eleventy-million blogs about Getting Things Done (GTD) out there on the Internet. So what I'm going to do this month is take you through my process of starting up, and seeing what happens.

I've played with Getting Things Done before. Parts of it (the filing systems for instance) have stuck. Other parts I was bad at (The weekly review). Some parts didn't fit well with my life (contexts, projects). And some parts I never really bothered with (the full collection at the beginning, for instance). This time I'm going to try to play it by the rules and see what happens. Only if the rules stop working will I bend them to fit my life.

Collection

The first part of Getting Things Done is the collection phase. In this you write down everything you need to get done. Everything. From washing clothes to bringing about world peace. Mr Allen reckons it takes about 6 hours to do the initial collection. Six hours non-stop. I don't have six hours, but I have a plan.

The idea of collection is to get everything into your in-box. We have many in-boxes in our lives, and in this stage we try to reduce them to as few as possible. While I have a physical in-box that I use at home for papers, many of the things in my mind don't exist anywhere. Since Collection is something you need to do all the time, I resorted to using a pocket sized Black & Red notebook. I'm just jotting down 1 line summaries of things I need to do, with each page dated (GTD recommends dating everything you write, because occasionally its useful).

At work, as well as my mental in-box, I have a physical in-box (my desk) and an electronic in-box (email) I'm going to spend half an hour a day collecting these (and noting things down in my notepad if need be.)

While collection is something you always do, during the initial stage you are not meant to do any processing of your in-box (it distracts from the collection). All I can agree to do (since my employers won't like it if I stop working) is to not use the GTD methodology to process anything, and not to process during my assigned collection half hour.

Since this is day one, my stats:

inbox 0. next actions 0. projects 0. completed yesterday 0.

I also want to keep track of if I feel during the working day I was happy or unhappy, relaxed or stressed, motivated or procrastinating, energetic or tired. I might as well add full or hungry to keep track of the shangri-la diet. Finally I want to keep track of unexpected tasks, missed deadlines and tasks that vanished from under my feet.

Lose 22 pounds in 1 month, and take control of your eating by turning down your fat thermostat.

I began the Shangri-la diet on the 1st day of January 2007. I wanted to shed the extra pounds I gained over the Christmas holidays, and I wanted to shed a lot more weight I had put on over 28 years of eating. But most of all I wanted to test whether a seemingly impossible diet worked.

The diet has two simple rules:

Rule 1: Take between 1 and 4 tablespoons of flavourless oil (such as extra light olive oil or safflower oil) each day
Rule 2: Do not consume anything with any flavour for an hour before or after you take the the oil.

It shouldn't work. But over the last month I have followed it and had staggering results. As I followed the diet, I noticed it changing my appetite gradually, and blogged about the results. As the month came to a close, it seemed fitting that, rather than suggest people read my blog's day by day progress I try to summarize my discoveries and experiences. The weight loss isn't due to the diet, it is due to the fact I reduced the amount of food I eat. However, the Shangri-la diet, through reducing my appetite, has made dieting a cinch, and makes me feel full far sooner than I ever have before.

The Theory

The theory is that your body has a weight it wants to be, your set-point. If your body's weight falls below that set point, you get hungry. If your weight gets above the set point, you feel full. Its like a thermostat that keeps the room a set temperature by turning on and off radiators. What the diet does is lets you adjust the set point in a way which is almost as simple as twiddling a thermostat dial. If you eat food with a flavour your body associates with lots of calories, your body thinks 'food is plentiful, because I'm eating things I like. I had better stock up for the next time food is short' Your fat thermostat goes up, and you become hungrier until you have put on extra weight. If you eat food with low flavour, but still containing calories, you fill your body (because you provide it with enough food to keep it above the set-point), but your fat thermostat goes down because your body thinks 'there isn't much food around, no point in making me suffer, I'll just use the reserves I've built up'. For cavemen, with periods of plenty and periods of little, the fat thermostat works perfectly. but in the twenty-first century with McDonalds' burgers just waiting to cram themselves down your throat, periods of famine have become a distant memory. By drinking a few hundred calories of oil every day, you fool yourself into thinking there is less flavour, and thus less food around. Your fat thermostat gets turned down and you become less hungry. (This is an oversimplification, read the book and Seth Roberts' paper on what makes food fattening if you want to know the science behind the horribly mixed metaphor)

Whether this theory is correct or not, the effects I've experienced seem to fit in with what it predicts, each stage taking me a step closer to being thinner and healthier. It doesn't seem to work for everyone, but many people have had shocking results. It is so remarkable that if the diet works for you, you don't just want to lose more weight, you want to evangelize about it too!

Stage 1:
Each morning as soon as you wake up, take 2 tablespoons of safflower oil.
Do not consume any flavour for the next hour. In my case, this involved learning to wake up earlier on week days. Since toothpaste has flavour, there shall be no tooth brushing for an hour after consuming oil.
Each evening, you must not consume any flavour for the hour before you go to bed
Shortly before you go to bed, take one tablespoon of oil

Stage 2:
Return to work after a restful holiday
Substitute your regular lunch of a sandwich and peanuts with 3 chopped carrots, chopped celery or pepper, maybe a slice of ham and 4 Ryvitas
Continue with the oil. In the evenings, and weekends (outside of the flavourless hours which surround taking the oil) you may eat what you want

Stage 3:
Your appetite is reducing.
You begin to notice two new sensations: a sensation of warmth after eating (this can be uncomfortable, it is much like a hot flush, but it subsides into a nicer feeling after a week or so), and having an empty stomach without wanting to eat.
You decide the big meals you were having in the evening to counteract your hunger are now too much for you to eat. You cut them down in size, and start eating things with fewer calories.
I particularly like steamed vegetables on boiled brown rice, dowsed in soy sauce.
You also cut down the size of your breakfast, until it is more a symbolic gesture than a meal.
Continue with the oil

Stage 4:
At the weekends you find eating what you used to eat to be far too much.
Snacks you left in the fridge to fill a gap in your stomach go untouched and begin to pass their best by dates.
You realise you now have control over your appetite. It feels strange, supernatural almost, since it is something you have never before experienced.
Continue with the oil

Stage 5:
Your weight loss slows and plateaus for a few days, causing you concern.
You recall that a pint of water will add a pound to your weight.
You also notice a trend that your weight stays still for longer after eating starchy foods like white bread.
Your weight loss recovers after a few days
As you plateau, you find yourself getting hungrier. As you begin to descend again, the hunger decreases.
Continue with the oil

Stage 6:
Your weight loss is continuing. Taking the oil and eating less is integrated into your life. You notice more and more often how you are eating so much less than you did even one month before.
There is no reason not to stop the diet. It takes almost no effort and has fantastic results. The diet may well throw up more surprises, but you are ready for them!
Continue with the oil.

Tips and Tricks:

If I knew I was going somewhere where there would be food I didn't want to eat, I made sure I had my oil beforehand. Firstly, to give me a reason not to start eating, and secondly, so I would feel slightly more satisfied as the evening continued.

It is really comforting to cook a meal the size you would have eaten before the diet, and to realise there is no way you can finish it. Bonus points if you can't even bring yourself to serve the whole meal.

I chose my diet food to fit in with my lifestyle. I used to like to sit at work and munch my way through the packet of peanuts I bought for my lunch. These days instead I have a lunch of chopped carrots, peppers and celery. It allows my to nibble for the same length of time, but doesn't give me the calories.

As you see above, I take my oil first thing in the morning and last thing at night. This means I am asleep for two of my four flavourless hours.

Keep a blog where you track your progress, that way you'll have to think about the diet once a day, which means you won't forget about it or let it slip.

My progress on the Shangri-la diet

As promised, a spreadsheet chronicling my progress on the Shangri-la diet.

I noted a while ago that the Shangri-la diet might be making my stomach lighter, but it was keeping my wallet heavier. My weekday lunches were costing me substantially less than they had been before the diet began. I expected the same would hold true for my weekly grocery shopping. Well, the figures are in, and they are slightly unexpected:

The amount I have spent on groceries is in the middle of the range of the amount I usually spend on groceries. There has been no observable change.

My grocery shopping bill changes from month to month, so its hard to tell exactly what is happening in a given month. Possibly I have had an expensive month, but because the diet is cutting my bills, it only looks like an average month. This thought is supported by the fact my recent bills have been well below average: I have a couple of particularly high grocery bills at the beginning of the month. We'll see what happens next month.

I also notice that I haven't visited a cash machine once during the month of January. In a normal month, I seem to spend about £100 in cash. Also in a normal month my cash spending and grocery spending seem to add up to a figure which stays fairly constant from month to month. So in January, my total groceries + cash purchases have fallen by £100. Not an amount of money to sneeze at!

Why have my cash purchases fallen? Before starting the diet, I bought my lunch with cash. This meant I always had cash on hand - and that if I didn't, I would ask the cashpoint fairy to give me more. Now, my lunch money has moved onto the weekly grocery bill, and I have less incentive to leave my warm, cozy, office and brave the cruel Cambridge weather to refill my wallet. Which means anything else I would buy during the week (I often pop into a Co-op on my way home from work) is now on my debit card - hence included in my groceries bill.

Day 31

20 Stone 11.5 lbs.

I've no idea how much I weighed when I started the Shangri-la diet experiment, just 31 days ago. I've made guesses that range from 23 stone (which seems to be correct if you do some simple maths involving measuring how much my waist has depleted) to 22 stone and half a pound (if you think I was lazy for the first 5 days of the diet). For my own personal statistics, I'm assuming I weighed 22 stone 12. This implies quite a weight loss in the first week, but when you consider how quickly weight was falling off in the second week, that's not outside the realms of possibility. For a saner figure that I can back up with some degree of confidence, I will assume I lost as much in the first week as I did in the second: a pound a day, or 6 pounds over all. That would put me at 22 stone 5 and a half pounds. From this I can say that I have lost 1 stone 8 pounds. That's 22 pounds. That's 10 kilograms. That's over 7% of my total body weight!

So, a month later, does the Shangri-la diet work?

Well, eating less food is what caused the weight loss. But the Shangri-la diet certainly seems to have reduced my appetite, and taken away my desire to snack. For at least a period of 1 month, for me, the Shangri-la diet seems to work exactly as advertised.


Do I recommend it?

From what I've heard, not everyone has the success I've had, and my weight loss is high because I weighed a lot to begin with. That said, a lot of people have been shocked by the level of control the Shangri-la diet gives them over their eating.

I am a little concerned that I've suffered from two colds this month, whereas normally I'm healthy. There are a number of reasons that could contribute to this: the diet, the fact I've worked longer hours, the increasing levels of stress regarding my forthcoming house move and wedding. I think before I recommended the diet to anyone, I would warn them of the potential affect on their immune system, but tell them also that I might simply have been unlucky.

But other than that, yes. I can and would recommend the Shangri-la diet.

What next?

Well, tune in tomorrow to see what I'll be doing next month (hint: that stress I talked about earlier, that's what I'm aiming to fix).

The Shangri-la diet is fascinating and deserves longer term study. I will continue following it for another 2 months (at which point, I'll decide if I carry on with it for longer). I will continue with a daily report of my weight on this blog and I'll continue writing about it when there is something interesting I have to say (look for tags shangri-la and sld, if I ever remember to add them)

Later on today, I'll publish my month's weight loss spreadsheet and an article I've written which sums up the method I followed, and what I experienced along the way.

Weight Tracking Spreadsheet

As promised, blank spreadsheets for weight tracking. Ever use these in excel, or go to docs.google.com and upload them there.

Excel format weight tracking spreadsheet

Open Office format weight tracking spreadsheet

These are not identical to the spreadsheet I use for myself, but they contain all the numbers I have found to be useful so far.

My own copy comes after the month's final weigh-in tomorrow

Technorati Tags: spreadhseet, shangri-la, diet, sld

Day 30

20 Stone 12 lbs



One more day to go...





I seem to have come down with a cold. This is my second cold in one month. Normally I don't seem to be affected much by colds, so this is a bit of a worry. Is the Shangri-la diet affecting my health? Oddly, the oil I'm using claims to be "high in vitamin e" and resultantly "good for the immune system"



Meanwhile my weight is still plateauing. According to the numbers on my spreadsheet, it should start falling tomorrow.





Technorati Tags: diet shangri-la sld weightloss daily

Should I diet?

I don't think dieting, alone, is the key to inner happiness. Indeed, if it is, the next eleven months of this blog are going to be particularly tedious.



Before anyone begins a diet, they need to ask themselves "Why am I dieting?", and also "Why am I overweight now, and will dieting resolve this problem?". The Shangri-la diet solves the problem of my appetite, but doesn't appear to address problems of comfort eating.



I've just come across this article which says a lot about the relationship between food and happiness which I find rings true for me too. Read it, and think, before you proceed.

Day 29

20 Stone 12 lbs



As predicted yesterday.



Over the weekend I experienced two more instances of appetite reduction. On Saturday I sat down to a dinner of a jacket potato with steamed vegetables and low fat trust-me-I-can-believe-its-not-cheese-,-hell-it-isn't-even-cheez. It was a reasonably large potato, but it filled me up, to the point of wanting to sleep. All that on one jacket potato, something I would have thought of as a nice accompaniment to real food just one short month ago.



On Sunday, Herself forced me to give in to temptation. Force isn't actually the right word. More like she suggested I give into temptation, and I agreed willingly, having more or less decided to give into more or less the same temptation earlier in the day anyway. Two steaks were sitting in the fridge, and we decided to coat them generously with egg, flour, breadcrumbs and, most importantly, lashings of oil then fry them until they looked like a heart attack waiting to happen. I've got to say, my steak tasted gorgeous.



Now, prior to starting the diet, my appetite was every bit as large as Herself's (its true, she might have been a bit more of a snacker than me, but since diet experts say that fat bastards like myself underestimate how much they eat - diet experts rarely say "fat bastards", but that's what they're thinking - I'm happy to guess we ate about the same amount in total). On Sunday, when we ate, she not only had a whole plate size steak schnitzel, but also a side dish of rice. Me, I managed two thirds of one schnitzel, before declaring my belly was about to rupture, and wrapping the rest up for later.



I ate the other third of the schnitzel with a side order of cherry tomatoes and a pepper for tea. I think that means my total food content for the day (excluding my 'it's Sunday, I deserve a break' breakfast of a bagel) was the same as Herself's lunch.



(Incidentally, I have been consistently spelling schnitzel 'schnizzel' while typing this blog entry. Does following the Shangri-la diet encourage geeky white men to use ebonics? We still have a lot to learn!)

Day 28

20 Stone 12



I'm expecting a few days of plateau now!

6 blogs about the Shangri-la diet that caught my attention

I forget where I first heard about the Shangri-la diet. 2 sources are most likely. The first is



Aaron Swartz's Raw Thought, where he talks about The Miracle Diet and A Future Without Fat



Alternatively I learned about it from Freakanomics which not only first bought the diet to the public attention, it also let Seth Roberts guest blog.



Seth Roberts has his own blog, which makes fascinating reading as he develops his theories further. He also makes available articles on subjects close to the heart of JustHelpMyself including his theories on weight loss and self experimentation. His forums are also a place where many people get the support they need.



Other people blog about the Shangri-la diet. Possibly the most prolific is a guy known variously as Steven M or Ethesis. He has a number of posts, some of which I relate to and some I don't. Still, he lost 70 pounds, so he must be doing something that works for him.



There is also J Weighty's Shangri-la Diet blog. He has been trying to lose weight for the best part of a year now. First on the Shangri-la diet, then off. Just in case I sound too convinced that the diet is the answer to all of humanities problems, here is a large set of data that shows other people have other results.



Finally, there is David from Glasgow (the only other British Shangri-la blogger I've come across so far) has been following the diet for half a year now. He is down 24 pounds, and only a short distance from his target.





I hope you enjoy these. I'm off to drop more weight!

Day 27

20 Stone 13.5 lb



It seems odd to start writing one of these entries with the words 20 stone. But I've made a breakthrough and I'm still on the way down. Saturday is the day I compare my week on week weight loss, and this week I'm down 3 pounds. Which is enough for me to decide that I won't be increasing my oil intake.



Yesterday I published an essay about how I'm measuring my weight loss. From that it is probably clear that I'm not as impressed as I was with the week by week weight loss measurement, so, while I'll still keep an eye on it, I'm going to change one of my rules. I will increase my oil consumption if, on any day, my moving average week on week weight loss falls below 3lbs. I've also decided I'll decrease it it ever goes above 6.5lbs (not that that seems likely at the moment)



Just out of interest, the percentage of my target weight loss I am losing each week seems to be set at around 3% I'll be curious to see how or if that changes.

Why weight? A simple guide to measuring the ongoing effectiveness of your diet

Since the beginning of January I've been on a diet. I'm not new at this, I've dieted before, although I failed to hold the weight down over a long period of time. At heart, however, I'm a bit of a closet statistician. I always want to know how far I am, how far I have to go, and what happens next. I'm currently developing a method for tracking almost everything: this is my first guide.



Most diets say "Don't weight yourself more than once a week". There are good reasons for this: most people lose weight slowly, maybe a pound, maybetwo pounds every week at most. I disagree with these instructions. Partially this is because my weight loss if averaging around 3.5 pounds a week. I tend to think that the best way of encouraging yourself when you're on a diet is to see progress. On average I'm seeing half a pound of progress every day. Since my scales are accurate to the half pound, this is a good reason to make sure I see how I'm doing every morning. However the real reason is that weight fluctuates, and there isn't much you can do about it. Sometimes food sticks about in your body for a few days. Water weighs about 2 pounds a litre, that's about a pound a pint. If you drink a pint of water before you weigh yourself, that's a pound you're going to hate yourself for putting on. If you're only losing a pound a week, its quite possible you'll find yourself heavier one week than you were the week earlier, even if you've been sticking to the plan.



I have a different solution:

I weigh myself every day. And as I showed above I see progress everyday. Except I don't. Just like people who weigh themselves weekly, Is ee my weight stay the same from day to day, bob up or fall by several pounds at a time, even though my daily intake of food stays very similar, it certainly doesn't vary by more than 3500 calories each way in a given day. The solution isn't hard. Each day I take an average of my weight over the past week. 7 measurements should allow me to cancel out the worst of the errors. It also lets me cancel out the fact that my food consumption is different over the weekend than over the week.



However the weight this gives me is slightly wrong. Its out of date. This is the average of what I weighed 3 days ago. I don't know how I'm doing, but how I was doing 3 days ago. How do I know how I'm doing now? Well, what I can do is look at the weight I weighed this morning. If I'm sticking to the average, and I'm losing the 3 and a half pounds a week I expect, then I should be 1 and a half pounds lighter. But actually, my distance from the moving average varies. What I've noticed is that some times I'm a long way below the moving average, and some days I'm close to it. When I'm a long way below the moving average, I tend not to lose much weight over the next few days: looking at my daily weight measurements, you would think I was gaining weight, or plateauing. But I'm not. My moving average is still dropping, and as I get back to around 1 and a half pounds below, my weight begins to drop too.



I am interested in how much weight I lose over a week. But while looking at the difference from one week to the next makes more sense when you're losing weight at the rate I am, it doesn't make great sense. If I have a lot to drink (just water, naturally) on the night before the weigh-in, I may look like I've only lost a little. If some food just won't leave my body, again, my diet isn't doing as well as it was. So now, I'm taking the average of the last week and subtracting that from the average of the week before: the result, a far more consistent picture of day on day, week on week, weight loss.



Will this work for you? Well, lets assume you are only losing a little each week. In week one you weigh yourself and see on subsequent days



15.1, 15.1, 15.0, 15.1, 15.1, 15.1, 15.0



the next week you see



15.0, 15.1, 15.1, 15.0, 15.0, 15.1, 15.1



you begin to get disheartened. In the final week you see



15.0, 15.0, 15.0, 15.0, 15.0: a good start, but then disaster, 15.1, 15.2!



The diet isn't working. You give up and decide a career in sumo wresting is your only choice.



But using the moving average system we get the following measurements



15.07, 15.06, 15.06, 15.07, 15.06, 15.04, 15.04, 15.06, 15.06, 15.04, 15.03, 15.03, 15.03, 15.03, 15.04



Sure, you're wobbling, but the downward trend is clear: in fact you can see you're losing weight, when the numbers you see every morning just don't make it obvious at all.



Other top tricks



I measure lots of other things too. At first I was interested in measuring how much of my total body weight I've lost so far. Simple maths, not too interesting. Other measurements have occurred to me, so far the most useful is a measure of what percentage of my target weight loss I've achieved. My target weight is really quite a long way off, and after only less than a month, the figures I'm getting already look comforting.



I'm also measuring what percentage of the difference between my moving average weight and my target weight I am losing each week. As the gap between my target weight and my actual weight decreases, this should cause the number to rise, but as my weight decreases I expect to lose less each week. In theory, I guess these two issues will balance themselves out, more or less. So long as this percentage stays in the same ballpark (actually, I would expect a slight upward drift, otherwise I could never reach my target weight), I'm probably doing okay.



I'm playing around with other figures, figuring out statistics like my basal metabolic rate (BMR) every day. So far I'm not finding it that useful, and I have some tweaks to make (it assumes my age is constant, rather than getting higher every day). I also work out my weight in kilos, not because I care, but because my Fiancee is European, and thus incapable of using sensible units of measurement (my car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I like it). At the end of the month, I plan on publishing my spreadsheet, so you can see how I'm doing. I'll also put together a blank in case you don't know how to produce one myself.

Day 26

21 Stone



Just a quick note, to say "woohoo, 21 stone." Next step 20 stone!



I'm working on a couple of essays at the moment. One of them should arrive tonight, if I work hard. The other I'll publish on the 31st, to celebrate the end of JustHelpMyself's first month. I'll also put up a spreadsheet that I'm using to track my weight, and an empty one that you (yes, you!) can use for yourself.



And then we'll be onto the next self-help book. Which I'll reveal on the first of February. Oh the excitement.

Day 25

21 Stone 1 lb



Yesterday was a fairly normal day. No hunger, small portions, healthy food. The quantity of rice I want with my evening meal seems to be dropping, while the quantity of veg is rising slightly. Steamed leeks add a lot of flavour to my rice bowl. Now I think about it, I seem to recall onion doing the same last time I dieted. I should also probably investigate roasting vegetables to add some variety to my evening meals.



I'm sure I wouldn't believe what I am eating now, if I was told about it a month ago.



This morning I've been very hungry. I was perfectly satisfied after my normal breakfast, but by mid-morning my stomach was demanding more, and being satisfied by neither a normal cuppa (no sugar, semi-skimmed milk), nor my 'oh God I'm drinking a lot of caffine' alternative of nettle tea (which thankfully seems to have found its way out of health food shops and into Tesco in the last few weeks). I wolfed down my lunch (3 carrots, 1 pepper, 4 Ryvita), and I'm hoping that will keep me going 'till this evening.

Day 24

21 stone 2.5 lb



Not much to say, except I had a larger than normal tea last night (very filling, I didn't need to snack during role-playing, and all it consisted of was rice and steamed veg - although I added leeks, which made things taste superb), and was still feeling satisfied this morning (normally, I'm a bit hungry between my morning oil and breakfast. Today there was no hunger, and my cornflakes filled me up).



I'm still over 3lbs down on the week, but things will get harder over the next few days... heres hoping for a big weight loss tomorrow!

Day 23

21 Stone 1.5 lbs



I'm just noticed that the number of calories I seem to be consuming under my required amount, in order to account for my weight loss (assuming I lose a pound for every 3500 calories I am under) seems to be quite similar to my calculated Basal Metabolic Rate. I'm wondering if there is a connection... Probably not, but maybe worthy of investigation? How do I investigate this? Well, my weight should drop in direct proportion to my BMR. The amount of food I consume should stay the same, and I should not feel any increase or decrease in hunger.



I have plans for what self-help book to try next, and for how to measure progress, but beyond that I have no firm plans. Any thoughts?



The rules are:

• There must be a book / video / website that I consider to be the definitive set of rules I should try to follow.
  
  
• I shouldn't need to be taught anything by anyone: I should get everything from the book / video / website.
• I'm probably only going to spend around 30 minutes a day exclusively on the activity, although if it is fairly light weight - or provides obvious results, I might integrate it into my normal daily work too.
• I don't want to spend much money on accessing the book / video / website. So I'll buy a twenty quid self help book if it looks interesting, but I won't sign up for a 1000 pound email course on how to improve my life.
• I'll give anything to do with religion a miss.
• Anything I'm doing, where I'm happy with the progress, I'll keep doing. Because I have an interest in long term results, results that go on beyond a month, I'll be less willing to try something in the same area. So, assuming that on day 31, I decide I'll stick with Shangri-la for another month, that means I won't be picking up a diet book
  
  

Day 22

21 stone 3 lbs



I was a bit surprised by this morning's rise. I thought I had managed to be quite good yesterday, still I feel a little constipated this morning (am I sharing too much?) which might be the explanation.

Day 21

21 stone 2.5 lb



Yesterday evening didn't quite go as planned, and I wound up doing a 3 and a half hour round trip drive to rescue Herself, who was stuck away from home. As part of my rescue mission, I bought some sandwiches from a petrol station on the way. I ate one of these (which probably had more calories than I needed) before we left for home.



And then there is today...



I am in a foul mood. This is for reasons I hope are unrelated to the diet: specifically the lawyers managing the sale of my house have caused me a fairly major problem, and possibly set back the sale by a month in the process. I'm unhappy. It is the first time since I've been on the diet that I have had a major bout of unhappiness, and it is quite clear that while the diet might stop my general cravings, and might make me feel full earlier, it doesn't take away the urge to comfort eat. I'm controlling things the best I can, in the hope that things will seem brighter tomorrow.

A snapshot of the Shangri-la diet

Sometimes I wonder how effective the Shangri-la diet really is. After all, I'm eating healthy, low calorie foods: why shouldn't I be losing weight.



Today is a snapshot of how I've changed over the last twenty days:



I'm currently at work (its a Saturday, I know. Deadlines. I'm assuming the Shangri-la diet doesn't cause deadlines, although I've been in the office on Saturdays for two weeks now). Because managers like to get people do do extra work without paying them much more, my generous compensation for being in an office at the weekend is a free breakfast and lunch.



Because I was only going to show my face at 11 am, and I was up at 8am, I had my breakfast early: two-thirds of a cup of crunchy nut cornflakesa and a dash of milk. Before the diet, I would have had a bowl full of cornflakes, or a couple of thick slices of bread.



I arrived at work at 11, and breakfast (pastries and bagels) was still in the kitchen. I ignored it. I wasn't hungry and had no need for it. Now, I think ignoring the food was part of the "me being on a diet" mindset - I could easily have fitted them in, and they did hold some allure, but it certainly wouldn't have been common for me to pass them up, especially on such a small breakfast.



The free lunch was distributed at 12:30. It was a ham and cheese baguette, from a local sandwich shop. Before Christmas I was regularly eating sandwiches for lunch, and on special occasions (or when I felt like it) I would buy a baguette. I could finish one and still have room for a cake. Not today. By the end of eating it, I was stuffed. So stuffed that I still have a few mouthfuls of baguette lying it its long, brown, paper bag on the desk beside me.



I'm still full. More or less Christmas dinner full. What I want to do now is sleep. But I'm in the office. Never stopped me before...



Lets see how hungry I am, come 6pm.

Day 20

21 stone 2.5 lbs



Since I'm down 4 pounds on the week, my oil levels will remain the same (although I'll continue drinking them in water)

How to make money (while you) fast

Cost of the Shangri-la diet book: £10 (lets not bother counting the fact I don't remember what I paid for it 7 months ago in America... ten quid is about what Amazon UK says, and $20 is about what Amazon US says which works out to the same thing)



Cost of a bottle of safflower oil (about 1 weeks supply): £1.60 (actually I think this is more than I pay, but its the first price I could find online)



Cost of 2kg of carrots (about 1 weeks supply): £1.38



Cost of a pack of Ryvita (about 1 weeks supply): 50p



Cost of 2 bags of peppers (about 1 weeks supply): £2.68



Which means a weeks lunch costs: £4.56



add on £1.60 for oil and that is £6.16



Before I started this diet I was paying about £2.60 a day for sandwiches / drink / peanuts from the local Co-op. So that cost me £13 a week.



I'm saving £6.84 a week. And that's just work day lunches. I haven't even begun to consider how much cheaper my evening meals have become (must be a lot cheaper), or how much I'm saving by eating less breakfast. Or if I'm saving anything at all at the weekend. (I'll do some comparisons on shopping budgets when the month is over and I have some more useful figures).



But lets take a saving of £1.37 a day (for working days only). So far that is a saving of £19.18, so the Shangri-la diet has almost paid for itself twice over even when buying the oil is taken into consideration, and I'm not even 20 days in yet.



Or to put it another way, I'm saving pounds faster than I'm losing them!



Over a year of 230 working days, I will see a grand saving of £315 (£305 if we subtract the book). That, on its own, will be enough not only for me to pay for Herself's family to fly here from Romania for our wedding this summer, but also to allow me send them back home once I'm fed up having them around.



It isn't just a diet, its a financial booster shot too!

Day 19

21 Stone, 4 lbs



Today is the first day may week on week weight loss has dropped below 3 lbs. I have a sort-of goal of 3.5lbs per week (because, give or take some rounding errors - or nights down the pub as I call them - that works out as a stone a month).



Earlier I said that if I hadn't lost 3 pounds this week I would be upping my oil consumption. Just to clarify, that means if, when I weigh myself tomorrow (or at any following Saturday morning weigh-in while my weight is above 20 stone) I have not lost 3lbs from my weight the previous Saturday, I will start taking an extra tablespoon of oil in the evening.

Day 18

21 stone 5 lb



At last I'm making some progress in the weight loss stakes. I have changed how I consume my oil. Starting last night I'm now mixing it with half a pint of water.

Day 17

21 stone 6.5



Yesterday was the first time I got really hungry on this diet. Nevertheless I managed to control this hunger, and despite going to the snack heaven of a role-playing game managed to consume only a few peanuts and mini-cheddars.



Hopefully tomorrow we get back to losing weight!

Day 16

21 stone 7 lb



Halfway Point!



It is halfway through the challenge, and so far the diet is winning. Without a doubt, the shangri-la diet has affected my appetite, and is helping me lose weight. Would I be losing weight without dieting as well? The fact that I had what would have been less than an ordinary pre-diet-sized meal, and it filled me up so much suggests I would have been unable to continue to eat the quantities I was eating. Nevertheless, I think the diet has helped with my weight loss so far.



I'm currently experiencing my first real hump: 4 days now without weight loss. I'm heading back in the right direction without adjusting my eating habits though, so hopefully tomorrow morning, it will be over and I'll be back on track... I really don't want to increase my oil intake!



Unless something big happens, when the challenge is over, I will be continuing with the diet indefinitely, and I will be recommending this diet to anyone who needs to lose weight, or get in control of their relationship with food.

Day 15

21 Stone, 8.5 lb



2 lbs up! Yesterday I had a very big evening meal (so much so that I still feel totally satisfied this morning. last night I felt sick from eating too much... which given that it was a meal I have cooked many many times before in my life, and have usually had larger portions of indicates that the shangri-la diet is changing how I feel about eating)



I have a feeling that this weight gain is not something to be concerned about. I know I'm still eating well below the number of calories I need in a day: I just think this is a readjustment to cope with the huge weight loss of last week. Nevertheless I'll stick with the decision I made: If I don't lose more than 3lbs this week, I'll up my oil dose to 4lb.

Day 14

21 Stone 6.5 lb



No change

Day 13

Unlucky for some, no weight loss



21 Stone 6.5 lb

Move: 21 Stone 9.4 lb

Waist: 51.5"



I made a mistake this morning, and brushed my teeth shortly after taking the oil. We shall have to see what that means. I was feeling full after having the oil, now I'm getting hunger pangs.



Today will be part of a slightly unusual weekend, since I have to pop into the office and do some work (deadlines are approaching).

Day 12

21 Stone 6.5 lb



Today is the first day I can also keep track of a weekly moving average: 21 stone 10.4 lb



I've noticed that I need to increase what I eat slightly in order to avoid hunger pangs: Shangri-la theory says that my set point is now too far above my current weight (or still below, but not however-many-calories-a-day-fewer-than-the-amount-I-was-using below) That said, I still felt full eating a whole bowl of crunchy-nut cornflakes. I'm happy about a slight increase in what I eat and the associated decrease in the rate of losing weight, so I'll go with eating more for the time being. If this causes me to lose less than 3lbs next week, I'll increase my oil dosage to 4 tablespoons a day.

Day 11 - 2

By the end of the work day, I was feeling hungry. On the way home, to go with the stew I've been eating for the last two nights, I purchased two white rolls. I was so hungry that I dug into one of the rolls before tea was ready. Nevertheless, after eating a bowl of stew and one and three quarters of a roll I was stuffed. According to the shangri-la theory, my weight must have dropped below the fixed point, but not far below. So maybe within a few days my fixed point will fall to below what I've eaten... not that that is a good thing, given my concerns about how quickly I'm losing weight!

Day 11

21 stone 8 lb



My cold is still making it hard for me to judge exactly how the diet is making me feel. That said, I seem to be getting better, so in a few days I could be back on track, understanding what has happened. I think the most important thing I have realised recently is that I'm not hungry; I might be getting odd feelings in my stomach, but they don't translate into a desire for me to eat. I've had a chocolate bar in the lounge and cold meat in the fridge. In any other week, I would have snacked on these, but the thought hadn't really entered my head.



I'm a little concerned I might be losing weight too quickly. I'm not sure half a stone in a week (which looks like its a possibility) is really very good for me. At the moment, I'll let it happen, because half a stone off my weight has to be better for me than a week of malnutrition...



For the last two days, I have been far more able to concentrate and be productive at work. Three possibilities:



1 the diet has an odd sway over my work behavior

2 the multivitamin or the omega 3 fish oil tablets I've been taking this week are doing something

3 Being ill has concentrated some of my abilities (my mind) at the expense of others (my body)



My guess is fish oil, since I seem to recall studies where it was given to school children, and it helped them to concentrate. Nature's Ritalin? Time will tell.

Day 10 - 2

I'm still feeling ill. There is a bug going around the office, so my illness certainly can't be attributed to the diet (although perhaps a less effective immune system can).



All morning, I have felt what I thought was hunger. At midday I was ready to rip the lid off my lunch box and devour the contents. One carrot stick and two bits of celery in I was convinced I wasn't hungry at all. Could it be that I'm still full from breakfast (a single cup of crunchy nut cornflakes)?



When I started writing this blog, I was expecting to record all the tips and tricks I discovered to make the diet bearable. Now I'm a third of the way through the trial phase, substantially lighter, and I still don't really have any. It doesn't really need tips or tricks, just obedience to the rules. I do have lots of observations, and, like many bloggers whose work I read before I began this experiment, I have a strong desire to write purple prose about how weird, emotional and life changing this diet feels. I seem to have drunk the kool-aid (well, the oil...)

Day 10

21 stone 10 lb



Yesterday was an odd day. A couple things happened which might have made a difference to my diet:



1) A friend died. In my heart I knew it was coming, but it hit me for six

2) I was (and still am) ill. I have a chesty cough which is quite painful.



I felt weaker than normal yesterday (and do again today). It may well be this is related to the cold which has given me the cough, but the diet is another suspect. It is also possible that the cold is what is stopping me from wanting to eat. Further experiments are needed.



However, my diet did not fall by the wayside at all. I comfort eat (indeed, I'm noticing that the Shangri-la diet means I'm no longer self-medicating with food), but yesterday I was too full to want to consume more than the food I had prepared.



Also, despite feeling weak, I was very productive at work: less distracted and more motivated than usual.



I spent the evening playing a role-playing game with friends. These games are snack central. Last night I spotted crisps (2 big bads), chocolate chip cookies, a bar of dark chocolate and rice cakes. The only thing that tempted me was the bar of chocolate, and since that came out within an hour of when I was planning to take my next oil, I had to refuse that. I've dieted (with quite a high level of success) before, and on that diet I also avoided snacking during role-playing sessions: however, I always gave in a slight ammount, having one or two crisps just to get some flavour. Last night I had no desire to do this.

Day 9

21 Stone 10.5 lb



As of this morning, I have two theories: either the Shangri-la diet does exactly what it says on the tin, and cuts down your hunger to levels so low that the most flexible limbo dancer would have trouble limboing beneath them, or, hunger is related almost entirely to the amount you ate the day before (On Saturday I ate more than on previous days in the diet. I have already considered that a big tea the night before might be the secret to keeping the hunger pangs away)

Day 8

21 Stone 12.5 lb



I had oil at 6:15 and cereal at 7:15. The cereal was so filled me to such an extent that an hour later I was still feeling almost sick because I felt like I had eaten so much.



Likewise lunch was very filling: which for 4 Ryvitas, 3 carrots and a pepper is hugely surprising. I was expecting to be empty by tea time, but I was wrong. I was satisfied all afternoon, craving nothing except for cups of tea. By 6pm there was low level hunger, but nothing urgent. I decided to use up some chicken and made a stir-fry. I knew I was making a large meal, and decided not to put everything onto my plate: what happened amazed me, I was too full to continue before I finished the first plate full, let alone going back for seconds.



If this keeps up, I'm going to have to conclude not only that the shangri-la diet works, but also that it is going to change people's opinions about nutrition, and possibly change the world (or at least the obese western world)

Day 7

21 stone 12 lb

Day 6

Waist 51.0



And special bonus "I've hit my first target" measurement:

Weight 21 stone 13.5 lb

Day 5

Waist: 51.125



As if to prove me wrong, I woke up this morning at 6am, very hungry. Last night I had prepared a glass of oil for me to take first thing. I swallowed it (the taste doesn't get better... but if it did, the shangri-la diet says I would have to change oil). Over the next 20 minutes my hunger faded away. I guess this proves that either oil does satisfy hunger (albeit more slowly than food), or that my set point continued to decline. Or, of course, both.



The oil satisfied my hunger until past 8:00 when I arrived at work and was able to eat my fruit breakfast.



Sugar water at 10:40 did not cause my hunger to spike straight away



By 11:30, my hunger was noticeable. This could be due to sugar water, or might be due to my oil being an hour earlier this morning



Began eating a slow lunch at 12:00



By 4pm, I was seeing signs of hunger. I decided to see what another sugar-water would do. It looks like we need gaps of around an hour or so before we can determine the effect of food on hunger.

Day 4

Waist: 51.375



Another late start: today I was woken by my alarm clock at 7am. This has upset my finely tuned oil breakfast arrangement, so I'm trying something different today. I drank oil at 7, and am postponing breakfast 'till after I'm at work (I'll have an apple and grapes between 8 and 9)



This has so-far been effective. No hunger this morning at all. I plan to space my lunch out between 12:00 and 14:00 in order to see what happens



This is actually working quite well. No hunger yet (15:15), and I didn't stop enjoying my lunch (though I think I enjoyed it more at the beginning than the end)



Summary: I made several changes between yesterday and today

1) I had a large evening meal last night

2) I had oil first thing, followed by a later fruit breakfast

3) I ate my lunch over a longer period of time

4) I had no sugar water during the day.



To test this, I will change back one or two of the options tomorrow



By 6:15 I was getting hungry enough to want to snack while my evening meal was cooking. I ate my tea with gusto and found it very filling. I ate through the feeling of fullness, which was probably a bad idea.



Shortly after eating tea, I felt large pangs of hunger. They didn't last for too long, but they were certainly there. I'm beginning to come up with a theory:



Hunger is related to the set point. When I get strong flavour, the set point rises straight away. This means I am ready to eat shortly after a good meal. This hunger decreases over time, I guess as my system absorbs the food (note that I don't know what I'm talking about here.)



There is also a feeling of fullness which is physical, probably related to the rate at which I can digest things - this goes away fairly quickly.



Both of these feelings can probably be avoided by eating more slowly, or by eating smaller portions with a gap between them (less food means let set-point rise, so a shorter time for food-eaten to catch up and exceed it. I can then raise my set point by eating more food, this time without hunger as the food-eaten is already there)



As far as the options go: I rarely feel hungry first thing in the morning (I guess my set point drops over night). This means it is best to breakfast late on, and have oil early on [for some reason, oil doesn't seem to quench hunger as quickly as food]. It is also possible sugar water raised my set point, and was thus responsible for some of yesterday's hunger pangs. The slow lunch fits my theory well. The large meal doesn't really interact with this theory, other than helping me not to feel hungry first thing in the morning.



To see if it has an effect, sugar water looks like the most interesting thing to test.

Day 3

Waist 51.5



I slept in longer than normal this morning, failing to wake until 6:45. Unfortunately this threw off my schedule a little - I had planned to have breakfast and brush my teeth before that time. Instead everything was done in a rush. I found my bowl of cereal particularly filling, but guess this is as likely to do with my eating it so soon after I woke (which is a change from my previous routine) as it is to do with the new diet.



I took my oil only 40 or so minutes later, which is pushing the rules of the diet a little. By 8:15 I was still feeling full and uninterested in food.



By 10:30 I was feeling what I think is hunger (I'm confused about this there are several different feelings I associate with hunger, and while they can all be assuaged though eating I don't know if they are all the same thing... in particular the type of hunger today which I will call "under the ribs" hunger can often be solved by a cup of tea). At 11:00 I decided to have cup of sugar water, to see if it would cause the hunger to diminish. Indeed the hunger died down for an hour or so, although passing by the snacks in the kitchen I was tempted to (and indeed did) eat some of the fruit available there.



I'm becoming increasingly confused about what it is to be hungry. My lunchtime meal (at 1pm) became increasingly less appetizing, and after I ate it all, I felt satiated. However within 15 minutes or so, I began to get stomach pains similar to huger, both under my ribs, and in my gut. I will try some plain, cold water to see if it makes any difference.



I drank cold water and later at 15:00 hot sugar water. The sugar water made more of an impression, and tided me over until 16:00



I'm reasonably confident that I am hungry now. It isn't surprising, I've been eating far fewer calories than I normally, and especially more calories than I was eating over Christmas (in both cases, this is probably true even if you include the oil and sugar)



Given that I felt satiated after lunch, possibly I should break my lunch down into several smaller meals. It is also possible that because last night's pancetta chicken, despite being small, tasted so superb my set point was raised by too great an amount.



At 5:00 to tide me over to tea, I ate a banana and grapes, which satisfied the pangs.



I had a large tea at 7:00 and oil at 8. I havn't felt hungry since, which is a good sign.

Oil Depletion

One of the problems I am having with Shangri-la is scheduling when to take my oil. The following is my day plan:



6:30ish : Get up, brush teeth (toothpaste has flavour and so is out of bounds)

7:00ish : Breakfast

7:30: Leave for work

8:00: Arrive at work. Drink Coffee

11:00: On Tuesdays Cakes arrive

12:00-14:00: Have lunch somewhere around here

17:30: Go home

18:00: Arrive at home

18:30: Eat tea

20:00+: Sometimes meet up with friends. Often involves snacking.



The way I see it, If I drink fruit juice when I brush my teeth, I can replace breakfast with oil at 7:30. I can move back my coffee to 8:30 and have a snack then (fruit would be ideal).



I should also stop snacking post 20:00. This means that 20:00 or later would also be a good time for oil.



Both of these have the advantage that I'm at home.



During the day I could have a 12pm sugar water, and eat at 1pm.

Day 2

Waist 51.875



I've noticed that my waist measurements can vary slightly (by plus or minus half an inch), so while I'll take regular measurements, they can only be considered to give a vague impression of how my weight loss is doing.



Waking up at 6 AM, I wasn't very hungry. Looks like the late night oil may have had some affect.



I started my day with a bowl of cereal at 6:40, and by preparing a packed lunch. I'll have to have oil a bit closer to food this morning as I haven't figured out a vessel to take it to work in (my best idea so far has been a miniature whisky bottle, but it occurs to me that swigging from that might look a tad unprofessional)



At 11pm I ate a cake (one of the benefits of where I work, on tuesdays at least. Not eating the cake isn't an option, it is a social as well as gastronomic benefit). I wasn't hungry beforehand, and following it, I still am not hungry. This should tide me over until my planned 1pm lunch.



12:30: 1tsp sugar in boiling water. I wasn't hungry at the point of starting this



1:15: Came over in a bit of a hot flush. Feel very energetic



1:40: Wasn't particularly hungry. Ate lunch but actually felt full and totally out of desire to eat. The feeling came on very suddenly. It didn't diminish my desire for a cup of tea.



3pm: I am feeling a bit odd. I have felt excessively hot all afternoon, and my mind is buzzing away at a rate of knots. Sometimes I'm very happy, but at others I'm down in the mouth a little. Neither emotion lasts for long, I suspect I'm the victim of reintroducing lots of caffine into my diet following the Christmas break. From now on today, I'll stick to the decaf tea. (I'll also avoid flavour from 4 - 6, so I can have a 5pm sugar water). Another weird experience is that I don't know if I'm hungry or not: I'm feeling pangs which are the signs of hunger I'm used to, but I don't feel like eating - the thought of food is uninteresting. If this is the placebo effect, then I'm wondering why I havn't been perscribed placebos by my doctor - they are some sort of wonder drug.



5pm: Decided to have another cup of hot sugar water. Feeling alert and awake. My head is now clear from the fuzziness earlier. I'm still not hungry. If nothing else, the sugar water is going to cut down my caffeine intake fro normal work days, which has to be considered a plus!



By 6:45 I was ready to eat a meal. I made one of my favourite meals, chicken in pancetta, with leeks and white wine sauce. It was as tasty as ever, and, after I finished eating and licking my lips I was still hungry. I decided to eat the remnants of my lunch. By the time I finished them, once more I was no longer enjoying eating. Not enjoying eating is new for me. Normally, even when a meal fills me so much that I think I'll physically be sick, I still enjoy the flavours of the food; When I was chewing the remaining lunchtime vegetable sticks, no enjoyment whatsoever - it was just something I was doing. Within ten to fifteen minutes after eating, I began getting feelings of my stomach being full. If this diet makes me not want to eat before I get to be full, then again, it will be a huge success.



As I was about to retire for the evening, around 10pm, I began to feel peckish. A single piece of dry Ryvita was the solution.



In summary, I'm noticing some unusual things. I'm far more awake than normal: this could be due to it being my first day back after a holiday, or an increase in caffeine consumption after a week or two of very little. But there could be a link with the diet. The hot flushes are concerning: they began after I had my first cup of sugar water. The quantity of sugar is only what most people have in a cup of tea, so I assume it isn't a terrible danger. I have had the occasional, very slight, headache. These are not a problem at the moment. But my appetite seems lower than I would expect for the quantity of food I've consumed, and I have a new experience of not enjoying eating.

Day 1

My first discovery is that it is hard to have a period of two hours in which you have no flavour: no coffee, tea or anything other than water.

I should add a few notes about how I'm going to do this diet:

I will be adjusting what I eat. I will be trying to eat less. And I'll be trying to make what I eat healthier, which means essentially: less fried foods, less sugar, more veg with each meal.

But I'll be recording if I'm hungry or not. Lots of hunger when it isn't eating time means that shangri-la isn't working

I will be exercising. I don't know how much. It will be a slow work up to vigorous exercise

At 11 am I woke up and drank apple juice
At 12 pm I had my first oil (2 tablespoons washed down with a cup of hot sugar water, 1 teaspoon)
Straight after this I got very strong hunger pangs.
At 1 pm I ate lunch
At 2 pm I went out with herself for a vigorous walk
At 3pm we arrived home.
I was hungry again. But also had a curious full feeling
At 4pm I am still feeling buth hungry and full. Hunger is possibly winning.
Ate tea at 6pm. Didn't feel full
By 8.30 was feeling hungry again
oil at 10.30

The Scales Never Lie

But they do keep secrets.



I weighed myself today. Weight is sort of an important thing to know if you are going to keep track of how well a diet is doing. And weighing myself took planning: I had to free the scales from their hiding place behind the toilet, wash them )because they had been hiding behind the toilet) and find new batteries for them.



I took a deep breath. It was always possible that I was actually 12 stone and didn't need to do the diet thing at all.



I stepped forward. The weight shown on the little cracked liquid crystal began increasing. 18 stone. 20 stone. 21 stone. 21 stone 5 pounds. 21 stone 11 pounds. My heart was sinking fast. But the scales had heart. I might have wanted the truth, but the scales knew I couldn't handle the truth. All they would say is "OL". I hope thats and abbreviation for "Over Load" and not just that it can't fit "LOL" on the screen in on go.



Today I have resorted to a backup approach to measuring the effectiveness of the diet: Measuring my waist.



Today's result: 52.25 inches.

Surefire New Year's Hangover Cure

The story starts last February, when I plucked up the courage to ask Herself to marry me. She said yes, and we began the process of getting all shopkeepers everywhere to double their prices when they heard us say the words "wedding"



Fast forwards until December. It was becoming painfully clear that if Herself and I remained at our current weights, our combined mass may well cause a universe collapsing singularity to form seconds after I am told I may kiss the bride. Something had to be done, if not for our happiness, in order to save the world from imminent disaster. Also, herself told me that she was going o a diet and I bloody well had to follow suit.



I am a man of the world, and by world, I mean blogosphere; and by blogosphere, I mean "lets invent a new word to describe gazillions of people typing stuff that is of interest to only about five others, then sending down a bunch of bing pipes into the special magic computer at the heart of the internets". I had read about a fantastic new diet. Fantastic is defined as "unbeliveable, unreal, fictional, sort of like dragons, care bears and Charlton actually winning a game this season". The diet in question, the shangri-la diet, had a lot of buzz earlier in 2006 when the guys who wrote Freakanomics mentioned it on their blog. Ever interested in such things, I picked up a copy of the book during a junket... err, I mean important conference trip to the states. Its a good read, and an interesting theory. I don't think for one second that it actually has any chance of working, but if Herself thinks I am dieting, then it will be doing its job.



Last night, I was at a new year's party, and the subject of resolutions came up. I explained that I was going to be testing out the shangri-la diet and people appeared interested: not only in the fact that I had become conned by a diet author who would make Gillan McKeith seem to be qualified to talk about how to lose weight, but also because they wanted to know if it really worked. And they convinced me to blog about it.



I decided that a month would be a fair time to give the diet a chance, and that if it worked, I would keep it on. I also came up with the idea of trying other self-help ideas for a month at a time.



Just Help Myself was born.



Each day I'll tell you where I am, where things are going, and if these things actually help. I may well be a better man by the end of December 2007