I know the Shangri La did help me before, getting me down about 15 pounds, but after I realised I had drunk a 3 litre can of olive oil while doing so, I went off it. My weight stabilised and hit a plateau. Then I saw Joi Ito for the first time in months, and he looked very lean and fit, so on his advice I read 'Eat to Live' and started 'The China Study'. The key insight there is that you need to measure the proportion of calories you consume from various sources, not the fraction by weight. Animal foods and oil have huge numbers of calories per ounce, vegetables and fruit far less. Seeing the figures linking cancer and heart attacks to proportion of calories from animal sources really made me think. So I'm trying the Eat to Live diet of ginormous amounts of fruit and veg and beans, next to no meat, no oil or dairy or fruit juice, and small amounts of nuts and grains. I also gave up coffee and diet coke. So far I'm feeling good on it; we'll see how it goes.