It’s interesting that only people who travel to countries where people are thin lose weight. You went to France, where people are thin, and lost weight. I went to Thailand and lost weight, another thin country. It’s quite common for people to lose weight specifically on trips to France, if reports on the web are to be believed.
You conclude its’s the unfamiliar food, but nobody loses weight when traveling to England or Australia where the food is equally unfamiliar, so that doesn’t make sense. It seems far more likely that there are certain things about the eating habits of people in thin countries that have an effect even on visitors, causing them to eat less. It could be smaller portion sizes having a psychological effect – you feel weird eating so much more than the locals. It could be simply seeing so many thin people everywhere and becoming ashamed of your weight, or even aware for the first time that you are overweight (many Americans are shockingly delusional about this)
Nor are the people who live in these countries – who are thin – eating unfamiliar food. It seems far more likely that what is keeping French people thin begins to exert an effect on visitors – in other words it makes more sense that there is one common factor that explains both French people being thin and visitors to France lose weight, and that can’t be unfamiliar food.
I’m taking the commenter’s word for it about the effects of travel to various countries.
I like and respect Seth’s approach to self-experimentation. I consider his theories about and generalizations of his results to be extremely dubious.
I have absolutely no idea why the Shangri-La Diet produces such varied results except for the general principle that biology is complicated.
For one data point, when I studied one year in Ireland, I lost about 5 kilos over the first semester (ending up weighing as little as I ever have ever since puberty), gained back about 2 kilos as (ahem) ‘customary’ during the Christmas holidays back home in Italy, then gained about 6 kilos over the second semester ending up weighing as much as I ever had thus far (though I had started exercising on a regular basis and muscle is denser than fat, so that people back home thought I had lost weight). AFAICT, ‘at first I wasn’t used to the way people ate there, then I adapted’ would be a decent first-order approximation to what happened, though I’m leaving out lots of details.
Some arguments I find plausible against Seth’s theories:
I’m taking the commenter’s word for it about the effects of travel to various countries.
I like and respect Seth’s approach to self-experimentation. I consider his theories about and generalizations of his results to be extremely dubious.
I have absolutely no idea why the Shangri-La Diet produces such varied results except for the general principle that biology is complicated.
For one data point, when I studied one year in Ireland, I lost about 5 kilos over the first semester (ending up weighing as little as I ever have ever since puberty), gained back about 2 kilos as (ahem) ‘customary’ during the Christmas holidays back home in Italy, then gained about 6 kilos over the second semester ending up weighing as much as I ever had thus far (though I had started exercising on a regular basis and muscle is denser than fat, so that people back home thought I had lost weight). AFAICT, ‘at first I wasn’t used to the way people ate there, then I adapted’ would be a decent first-order approximation to what happened, though I’m leaving out lots of details.