In my travels on the Internet, I’ve discovered Seth Roberts, a professor in Animal Psychology (specializing in rats) at University of California Berkeley, who has spent 2 decades conducting self-experiments on two matters of concern to all of us: weight control and sleep quality. He has reached some remarkable conclusions, here are just a few:
- Watching faces on television in the morning upon waking causes a sense of well-being the next day.
- Standing for 8 hours or more deepens sleep that night.
- Eating breakfast several hours after awakening, prevents early awakening syndrome.
Read the abstract of his experimentations here.
The most exciting is his discovery of a unique method for effortless weight loss. His conclusions are relatively simple:
By ingesting flavorless foods (such as oil or sugar water) the body is fooled into lowering its set point and appetite is suppressed. One naturally eats less.
After experimenting with various substances (water, sushi, thick pasta) for over a decade, Seth discovered sugar water and/or vegetable oil (extra lite olive, canola or walnut are best) worked best. He came upon the ideal flavorless foods comcept accidentally while visiting
“The food was excellent. I wanted to eat three meals per day but to my surprise and disappointment I had little appetite, even though I felt fine and was walking a lot. I realized that the new weight-control theory suggested an explanation: It had been hot and I had drunk two or three sucrose-sweetened soft drinks each day. All of them had been new to me because they were brands not available at home. The novelty meant that their flavors were not yet associated with calories and therefore would not have raised my set point. They had been sweet, of course, a familiar flavor that presumably was associated with calories. But maybe sweetness was effectively a weak flavor, I thought, and what I had observed was another instance, similar to sushi, of [a] bland food reducing the set point.”
Moreover, his theory explains the fattening of not just our population over the past few decades. He explains what “ditto foods” are:
“Ditto foods are foods that taste exactly the same each time. Soft drinks. Breakfast cereals. Your favorite salami. Anything out of a package. Frozen foods. Anything from a mix. Chain-restaurant food. I introduced the term because I believe that ditto foods caused the obesity epidemic. Americans eat far more ditto food now than 20 years ago. Microwave ovens and chain restaurants have a lot to do with this.
“Back in the 1950’s, people were not eating a low-fat diet. They were not eating low-carb (avoiding sugar and bread). They were not trying to eat small portions. (And they were not getting much exercise, either.) Yet they were much thinner than us. The reason is that they ate much less ditto food, including less junk food and fast food, than we do.”
This is a simple, effective way to lower your weight. I urge you to check it out. You can see a 9-minute video on the diet on my myspace site here and there are also many audio and video clips you can find by googling “Seth Roberts.”
