Out of curiousity, on the specific subject of this diet: did you try blocking your sense of smell, preferably for the entire duration of the “no flavors” period?
As an enthusiastic home cook, the first thing that came to mind for me is that the vast majority of what we interpret as “flavor” is actually an interplay of taste and smell (hence why almost everything tastes like crap when you have nasal congestion). I recall that research has shown smell as having partiularly strong associative powers for memory, so it would not surprise me to find that it’s actually a smell-calorie association at work, totally independent of what you actually put in your mouth.
Ergo, I would predict that experiencing strong smells around the same time as taking the flavorless calories would sabotage the effect catastrophically. Unfortunately for the pursuit of science, I have a naturally and stubbornly low bodyweight set point, so I can’t test this personally.
That’s one of the alternative avenues that Seth Roberts recommends—basically wearing nose clips for the rest of your life. I didn’t actually try that, but maybe I’ll go ahead and give it a shot.
If it’s not too personal: Do you live with any other people, and would they have been commonly eating food within a few hours of the oil dose? Do you have a particularly acute sense of smell? Those seem like possible confounding factors for why some people get no benefit whatsoever, particularly the latter because it would be difficult to notice.
If you really want to do a trial by fire of the idea, taking a slightly larger dose of oil and then wearing nose clips for the entire morning ought to put the idea to rest one way or another...
I find even ELOO has flavor, so I would shoot it while holding my nose, then rinse my mouth out with water, then wait a bit. Even then, I would “taste” some flavor when I stopped holding my nose.
Out of curiousity, on the specific subject of this diet: did you try blocking your sense of smell, preferably for the entire duration of the “no flavors” period?
As an enthusiastic home cook, the first thing that came to mind for me is that the vast majority of what we interpret as “flavor” is actually an interplay of taste and smell (hence why almost everything tastes like crap when you have nasal congestion). I recall that research has shown smell as having partiularly strong associative powers for memory, so it would not surprise me to find that it’s actually a smell-calorie association at work, totally independent of what you actually put in your mouth.
Ergo, I would predict that experiencing strong smells around the same time as taking the flavorless calories would sabotage the effect catastrophically. Unfortunately for the pursuit of science, I have a naturally and stubbornly low bodyweight set point, so I can’t test this personally.
That’s one of the alternative avenues that Seth Roberts recommends—basically wearing nose clips for the rest of your life. I didn’t actually try that, but maybe I’ll go ahead and give it a shot.
If it’s not too personal: Do you live with any other people, and would they have been commonly eating food within a few hours of the oil dose? Do you have a particularly acute sense of smell? Those seem like possible confounding factors for why some people get no benefit whatsoever, particularly the latter because it would be difficult to notice.
If you really want to do a trial by fire of the idea, taking a slightly larger dose of oil and then wearing nose clips for the entire morning ought to put the idea to rest one way or another...
I find even ELOO has flavor, so I would shoot it while holding my nose, then rinse my mouth out with water, then wait a bit. Even then, I would “taste” some flavor when I stopped holding my nose.