One thing that I could never understand is the paradox as to why people who are barely eating and underweight actually lose their appetites completely. But, reading this now, it's finally clicking. Appetite is controlled by the reward center of the brain. Starving people, people not eating, stressed out people, depressed people, etc...they are serotonin dominant and dopamine suppressed. You cannot perceive or register pleasure when your brain is blitzed from serotonin, because that suppresses the activities of dopamine (which is what makes us feel good, and leads to impulsive pleasure seeking behavior like eating).
This is how you can be really underweight, yet truthfully and honestly have no appetite for food. Your body is, actually quite HUNGRY (and if you ever start to eat normally you'll soon figure that out)... but because your mind is addled from serotonin overload you have ZERO appetite for food, for pleasure, for anything really...

I have read the book and lost 5 pounds on the oil in 1.5 weeks. An added bonus it put me back to medium ketosis.
I have been out in binge hell for 8 months this brought me right back no cravings, decrease in appetite as you can tell I am a believer.
I have been on Atkins off and on since 1972 and this is the first time it feels good.
Pat S.

Lost another 1.2 pounds.

I feel calm and in control around food for the first time.

My dinner today (at a party) was incredibly pleasurable and I feel happy and satisfied.

Adding fat before your feedings has helped metabolism. Add vinegar and the results will be even more astounding.

I have been on the vinegar diet using bragge it didn't do a thing thing for me. I followed it to the letter using liquid vinegar then the pills when it upset my stomach so bad.

Pat S.

I am not familiar with the vinegar diet; if it is anything but a high fat very low carb diet, then you should not consider your results valid. Vinegar without plenty of fat and very low carbs is like putting a bandaid on a scrape while hacking off your other limb with a saw.

It is not possible vinegar didn't "work for you" (to reduce blood sugar and insulin). Vinegar, like the fat you are now eating, makes food "safer" for those of us with crazy metabolisms. It is scientifically valid and verifiable that vinegar delays gastric emptying, reduces glycemic load & insulin response to whatever you eat, promoting satiety and greater weight loss.

Is there a problem that I don't like the vinegar diet I was not trying to conduct an experiment to begin with I don't have the credentials. I haven't been here for a few months but I thought all our thoughts were welcome.
Pat S.

You are misunderstanding me. I'm not attacking you or what is working for you. My point is and always was that the drinking of fat before you eat helps because of what fat does to blood sugar and insulin levels (down down down). There is no magic to this diet, no appetite suppression because of "psychological conditioning" of the body. You simply drink a ton of oil, thus, delay gastric emptying, blood sugar response, insulin levels, and induce a strong lipolysis. Vinegar, which has a direct effect on the metabolism in a similar way, works in a similar fashion to fat.
It has always been metabolism, not the appetite, which controls weight and feeding on a continuum of time.

The larger point I'm making here is that it's not appetite which makes us fat, but metabolism. The major problem I have with this diet is it seems to not only ignore this truth, but, misleads people to buy the conventional lie that if they just liked (enjoyed) food less, if their appetite was "normal", then they would be thin. It's a lie. Normal people have healthy appetites and like to eat. Food is a pleasure, and it's normal to enjoy it... but obesity as a result is NOT, and implies imbalance in metabolism. Only sick people with diseased metabolisms become obese. Today at work a coworker noted that thin people always love food and eat so fast. Wonder why? Could it be that enjoying food is *normal* having a healthy appetite is *normal* and it is only we with diseased metabolisms (expressing obesity) who are shamed to fear our appetites?

If drinking oil before a meal works for you keep on it. I'm sure it does work! It's the theories and what I perceive to be dead ends that this diet leads people on that I have a problem with. Obesity is and always will be a metabolic disease, the appetite is just an expression of metabolism.

I agree with your thoughts on metabolism vs appetite surpression Woo.

I don't know about other people, but my sluggish metabolism began when I got hypothyroidism. Hypothyroidism is NOT caused by improper eating as others on this board have said. It is caused by a damaged thyroid---either from a birth defect, an auto-immune disease, injury or from excessive x-rays.

I could not possibly enjoy my food any more than I do. I am simply eating less of it because I'm less hungry. I have been enjoying my food all these months on lowcarb, but not losing any weight. Why? I was eating too much. Now I'm eating less of the same great foods, and losing weight.

Does this description really apply to what Roberts is doing? A tablespoon of oil, at least an hour before a meal, doesn't sound like a "ton" to me. I can't be certain, but I would imagine that such a small amount of oil would be long gone from the stomach an hour later, and therefore wouldn't affect the rate of gastric emptying at all. Fat consumed with a meal, or very shortly before the meal, would certainly slow the emptying of the stomach, but a tablespoon of oil an hour or more before the meal?



Indeed, and since appetite is an expression of metabolism, it is *not* irrelevant to obesity. Although I doubt that there is any single cause of obesity, in at least some cases I think it is a problem of appetite being out of synch with the actual metabolic situation. That certainly describes my own kind of obesity, to some extent. As a general thing, I am not satisfied with "normal" amounts of food, and if I don't restrain myself I will eat more than what other people eat. As we all know, lowcarb is a pretty effective way of *indirectly* restricting how much we eat, by restricting *what* we eat. For us, carbohydrate-laden foods push our appetite into the red zone and we tend to eat huge amounts of these foods.

It's not just a function of what we like and don't like. I like steak, and I can eat a generous portion of it, with no problem. Then I'm full and I stop. I like pizza too, but the difference is that I am easily capable of eating a *ridiculous* portion of it, without stopping until I'm physically uncomfortable. It's not that I like pizza more than I like steak, but pizza has an effect on my appetite that steak doesn't have--despite the fact that the pizza probably has more fat, which should theoretically blunt my appetite by delaying gastric emptying, than the steak has.

On kwikdriver's suggestion, I did a little reading about ghrelin, wondering if the simple ingestion of fat has any known effect on it. I found this interesting study: http://joe.endocrinology-journals.o...print/180/2/273 which involves measuring ghrelin response to both pure fat and pure fat plus "modified sham feeding", i.e., chewing and spitting out food, without swallowing. Sure enough, both protocols reduce production of ghrelin in the stomach. "We have demonstrated for the first time that plasma
ghrelin levels are significantly suppressed following oral
TG." Interestingly, the effect was stronger with the sham feeding protocol--do I sense another diet book in the making? How could one accomplish fat loading and sham feeding in a socially acceptable way? By chewing on a hunk of seal blubber an hour or so before a meal? Olive oil and bubble gum?

It may be that since 70% of ghrelin is produced in the stomach, the SLD works simply by downregulating ghrelin production, end of story.

Exactly. My "ton" of oil is actually one tablespoon, taken at 2pm. I usually don't eat dinner until at least 6.

Hi there is not a ton of oil unless you call the 2 TBS. a day a ton I wait an hour after eating breakfast then take 1 TBS ELOO wait another hour that is the morning ton. I do the same thing in the afternoon 1 hour with no food including coffee, tea, even gum then I take 1 TBS. wait another hour before I eat or drink anything but water.
Speaking of metabolisum I am 64 years old I have been dieting since I was 13 I am post menopausal, quit smoking and have arthrius. For the first time in my life I have an in control appetite, feeling good and am losing weight.
This doesn't work for everyone but for me and it sounds like HappyLC we are able to enjoy food without worrying about about cravings and overeating.
Pat S.

I was under the impression some of the oil was taken before eating.

Either way, this diet is working because of what it is doing to metabolism. Something cannot produce complete health and shut off appetite (an excessive one) without also restoring balance to metabolism. The foundation of the diet is false, even if it works. I agree that metabolism does affect appetite to a degree but the relationship isn't absolute meal to meal. Therefore, focusing only on your appetite is not reliable, and one should always try to understand (at least the gist) of the metabolic mechanisms underlying dietary modifications. It's like building a puzzle, you know, you have to *know* what you're doing if you can be confident there is logic to your choices. Because, eventually, weight loss stops - the gimmicks lose their appeal, you begin feeling curious to break out of your box when the appeal of another pound isn't there anymore. If you really logically understand why you must do the things you do, you will continue to make these good choices even when the hoopla and novelty and everything settles into stasis.
I firmly believe you have to really be well armed with knowledge to not only *lose* weight effectively, but to keep weight off. In the long term you cant get around the education, and that's another reason I don't like these kinds of "belief" type diets.

I do TOTALLY believe the oil is helping you guys eat less and your metabolisms burn fat better. I just don't believe in this diet and it's theories or approach.

BTW, ubizmo, interesting info on ghrelin. I do notice chewing gum majorly helps my appetite and allows me to under eat. I knew it really seemed to fool appetite and now I know why.

One thing that I suspect may be a factor here is that taking oil a few times a day is suppressing an overactive GNG in some people. If a diabetic fasts, or overexercises, they experience hyperglycemia. Hyperglycemia correlates with metabolic imbalance, thus weight loss resistance and excessive appetite. Obviously diabetes is not a polar state, but a continuum, and some of us - particularly older people - are further along there. Taking fat should prevent this metabolic imbalance by giving the body a catalyst for lipolysis, thus preventing hair trigger GNG and metabolic imbalances. This might be another reason young people find it easy to lose weight by pure CR, whereas older people do not find CR produces results equal to the restriction.

I wonder if people who find this regimen helps also tend to run higher fasting blood sugars? I know you said your blood sugars, fasting, tend to run higher right Ubizmo?

Me, personally, I am pretty young and reactive hypoglycemic; my blood sugar fasting tends to be hypoglycemic if anything, and when I don't eat much, I experience delicate sugar that can drop easily. My body doesn't make sugar easily, it seems, therefore the only impediment to metabolic balance for ME is carbos (and too much protein w/o fats ).

I don't want to entirely hijack this thread, but it is about appetite, so...

This article was written just before the discovery of obestatin, which is still too new for that much research to have been done on it, but it does a great job of laying out what was state-of-the-art knowledge about appetite and obesity in 2004, and it's written in such a way that even I could understand it. Bon appetit!

http://www.meadjohnson.com/professi...app/0300a3.html