The Blessings of Simplicity: October 21, 2012
The No S Diet:
Many different modifications over almost four years, especially one which allowed everything in front of me at one meal instead of one plateful at one meal.
(Month 1) Day 1 - Monday, September 8, 2008:
215.0
The Sustainable Diet:
Unrestricted eating every Saturday and Sunday.
On weekdays, no snacks or sweets; one plateful of food at each of three meals.
Variance from weekday restrictions (weekday S Days) should be identified before the first of the month and be justifiable.
Exercise is key.
I'm not perfect. I do my best and leave the rest to Go.
(Month 1) Day 1 - Day 1 – Sunday, October 21, 2012:
216.0
This Month's Category of Days:
Day 11 – Monday, October 1, 2012:
Fail
Day 12 – Tuesday, October 2, 2012:
Day 13 – Wednesday, October 3, 2012:
Fail
Day 14 – Thursday, October 4, 2012:
Day 1 – Friday, October 5, 2012:
Day 2 – Saturday, October 6, 2012:
S Day
Day 3 – Sunday, October 7, 2012:
S Day
Day 4 – Monday, October 8, 2012:
Day 5 – Tuesday, October 9, 2012:
Day 6 – Wednesday, October 10, 2012:
Day 7 – Thursday, October 11, 2012:
Day 8 – Friday, October 12, 2012:
Day 9 – Saturday, October 13, 2012:
S Day
Day 10 – Sunday, October 14, 2012:
S Day
Day 11 – Monday, October 15, 2012:
Day 12 – Tuesday, October 16, 2012:
Day 13 – Wednesday, October 17, 2012:
Day 14 – Thursday, October 18, 2012:
Day 15 – Friday, October 19, 2012:
Day 16 – Saturday, October 20, 2012:
S Day
Day 1 – Sunday, October 21, 2012:
S Day
Day 2 – Monday, October 22, 2012:
Day 3 – Tuesday, October 23, 2012:
Weekday S Day
Day 4 – Wednesday, October 24, 2012:
Day 5 – Thursday, October 25, 2012:
Day 6 – Friday, October 26, 2012:
Day 7 – Saturday, October 27, 2012:
S Day
Day 8 – Sunday, October 28, 2012:
S Day
Day 9 – Monday, October 29, 2012:
Day 10 – Tuesday, October 30, 2012:
Day 11 – Wednesday, October 31, 2012:
This Month's Weight:
Day 11 – Monday, October 1, 2012:
Day 12 – Tuesday, October 2, 2012:
Day 13 – Wednesday, October 3, 2012:
Day 14 – Thursday, October 4, 2012:
218.0
Day 1 – Friday, October 5, 2012:
216.0
Day 2 – Saturday, October 6, 2012:
Day 3 – Sunday, October 7, 2012:
Day 4 – Monday, October 8, 2012:
Day 5 – Tuesday, October 9, 2012:
Day 6 – Wednesday, October 10, 2012:
Day 7 – Thursday, October 11, 2012:
216.2
Day 8 – Friday, October 12, 2012:
215.4
Day 9 – Saturday, October 13, 2012:
214.6
Day 10 – Sunday, October 14, 2012:
Day 11 – Monday, October 15, 2012:
Day 12 – Tuesday, October 16, 2012:
215.6
Day 13 – Wednesday, October 17, 2012:
215.4
Day 14 – Thursday, October 18, 2012:
214.4
Day 15 – Friday, October 19, 2012:
214.4
Day 16 – Saturday, October 20, 2012:
214.4
Day 1 – Sunday, October 21, 2012:
216.0
Day 2 – Monday, October 22, 2012:
215.6
Day 3 – Tuesday, October 23, 2012:
214.8
Day 4 – Wednesday, October 24, 2012:
Day 5 – Thursday, October 25, 2012:
214.6
Day 6 – Friday, October 26, 2012:
214.6
Day 7 – Saturday, October 27, 2012:
214.6
Day 8 – Sunday, October 28, 2012:
215.6
Day 9 – Monday, October 29, 2012:
Day 10 – Tuesday, October 30, 2012:
215.4
Day 11 – Wednesday, October 31, 2012:
215.8
Description of S Events:
Day 11 – Monday, October 1, 2012:
S Event I had to interrupt dinner to get Katie to flute lessons and was really irritated that she left her flute at school for the second week in a row. She took her piccolo. When I got home, I had a gogurt bar. Was this justifiable or not? I don't know. I decided to further simplify my diet and just put down any variance as an S Event.
Journal:
Day 11 – Monday, October 1, 2012: I was flustered and nervous for about an hour and then started to see that this job is going to be so easy it is likely to be way beneath me in skills required. That's just fine because I will be moving my skills towards my goal of a business analyst in the Business Intelligence space and I have my hands full at home. Raising kids is what is difficult.
Day 12 – Tuesday, October 2, 2012: I got home from work to see Tommy and Ellie watching TV. He had not put the meal in the oven, so we had chicken pot pies and will have to wait until tomorrow to have him put it in the oven. I checked Tom's grades and he now has a D in an AP class. I watched my parents try to motivate an unmotivated son, and it did not work. My brother married a woman who is now the sole breadwinner in that household. There is nothing I can do about it, and Tom agrees. We have to let him fail. When Tom asked Tommy "What is your problem?", he said "You guys." No point in helping. I forced him through Kumon so he has an basic knowledge of math. I had him meet with a woman for study skills but he decided he didn't need it. Well, he certainly won't benefit unless he thinks he needs it.
What does this have to do with dieting? Nothing. Taking away dieting from life is like taking a bucket of sand away from a beach. The hole fills in quickly.
Day 13 – Wednesday, October 3, 2012: I love this ad because the best we can do for our kids is to set a good example for them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXy2UZPncrk
My perspective is very long-term. I don't really care if I have a healthy weight. I care that my kids do, and I concluded many years ago that the best I could do for them would be to model behavior I would like them to follow.
Day 13 – Wednesday, October 3, 2012:
NS Event Seriously stupid fail started during the presidential debates at about 8:30 PM and concluded after 10. What did I have? Two apples, two cups of Honey Nut Cheerios and two NutriGrain bars. Dumb. I think I need to distinguish between a social event and a non social event that results in breaking of N Day rules. Tonight, there was no socializing involved. I was just sneak eating while watching the debate, and I didn't even watch the first part!
Day 14 – Thursday, October 4, 2012:
218.0 Last night was a Fail. I think I need to classify it as such. Planned Social events are easy to justify because I am looking ahead. Unplanned are not. This is the heart of the problem. I woke up this morning with a bad leg cramp and now just looked on the Internet to see it is due to lack of physical exercise. Time to get some movement back into my life...
6 AM: Nosnos gave me a perspective that led to my deciding that there are two categories of S Events: Planned and Fail. I will plan at the start of the month along with planning S Days.
Also, I think this diet may not be enough. This week, I've had big meals at lunch because there is a Chinese hot meal area, and those meals have been good. They are also too much. Also, I stopped exercising when I focused on the basement. I need to get up early to exercise. The leg cramp this morning showed just how little I've been exercising. Either my health is a priority or it isn't.
7:50 AM: It may be that my body needs the certain knowledge that I will not eat at certain times so that the experience of hunger can be tuned out. The allowance for unplanned S Events is mucking things up for me. I need to dispense with them. The community days of fasting in medieval Europe is something that I think I need to replicate in my own life. I went down the rabbit trail of fasting whereas what I really needed to do was look at periods of time when I am certain I will not eat. My problem was not fasting. My problem was unplanned S Days.
8 PM: Today I realized that my binge was emotional. I had gone to Coldwater Creek to look for shells, and the woman helping me took me over to one area of the store. I wondered over to the other area and she directed me back to where I could find my size. I don't think of myself as fat even after all these years. Here I was being told that my size was this one little area of the store. I think I reacted by coming home and having all that food.
Day 1 – Friday, October 5, 2012:
216.0 I need the perfection of no unplanned S Days. It is exhausting to always be on the alert for whether or not this event qualifies as an exception. I am able to tune out a lot of food temptations because of this diet but there is still a sense of being on the alert due to those exceptions. They need to be eliminated.
While painting last week, I went through part of a course by David Allen called
Getting Things Done. He made the point that you need to write down everything that you have to do, not just most of it. If you only write down most of it, your mind is still going to be trying to figure out what is not on the list and the list will become much, much less effective. I think this is analogous to the diet. The rules need to be followed with perfection or I'll always be on the look out for those exceptions.
Of course, this idea is coming from a business analyst where ambiguity is dreaded more than anything else.
What I think in considering the idea of no unplanned S Days is "rest". My brain gets to rest from thinking about whether an unplanned S Day is justified.
Day 2 – Saturday, October 6, 2012:
S Day This is my current diet theory. Some people are blessed with a sensitivity to environmental cues such that they feel hungry when they are around food. In a world in which a species adapts to the environment, this would have been a positive trait: when food was scarce, people were not hungry and when food was plentiful, people were hungry. It was only in times of extreme famine that people actually felt hunger. Now, like in the High Middle Ages, food is always plentiful. My Catholic ancestors viewed gluttony as one of the seven deadly sins and kept in in check with a community-wide practice of fasting twice per week and fasting on other days as well. We need a different approach in today's non-religious, pluralistic, free market society. We need to set up our own rules to tune out hunger.
An alternate approach would be for the government to set rules following the advice of organization's like Yale's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. This group is run by Dr. Kelly Brownell, one of the foremost scholars on the impact of the environment on obesity. This man also happens to be morbidly obese. Just type Kelly Brownell into Google and select images.
Now I don't mine my Catholic bishops telling me what I should do, but there's a libertarian streak in me so I do mind a supermorbidly obese professor advising government to make rules we have to follow and suggesting taxes we have to pay. Dr. Brownell is behind the one cent per ounce of soda tax.
Reinhard has come up with a way for an American today to easily follow rules to tune out hunger during the work week when there is much less time for socializing. I think the idea is a great one, but it's just taken me a long, long time to realize that my personality does not allow for unplanned S Days.
This month is my birthday so I'll have an S Day on my birthday. Other than that, no S Days!
Day 3 – Sunday, October 7, 2012: I ate a lot yesterday, and last night I stank up the restroom at Kohls. Ick. This morning, I woke up with no interest in food. Being a morning person, I was awake at 5:30 or so but did not eat a thing until about 9 and only that early because I need to fast for an hour before communion. It's now about 1 PM, and I've had my share of doughnuts and cookies from doughnuts after church. I am not limiting myself at all, confident my body will do it for me. I think that there may be some sort of physical mechanism that prevents the body from having a big change in amount eaten. I am reminded that Holocaust survivors were fed steak dinners and died because their stomachs could not handle the food. In a much less dramatic way, my body cannot tolerate unlimited food on the weekend if food is limited during the week.
My school age kids are unhappy about changes in food rules at school especially for lunches. No more chicken tenders! My 13 year old brought in doughnuts on Friday and was given a list of "approved" snacks like fruit cups. Really? Fruit cups as a treat?
In the High Middle Ages, every Sunday was a Feast Day. The Church recognized the human need to celebrate and indulge. It has a lot more sense than Michelle Obama working with schools to keep doughnuts out of schools. I think this is going to backfire in a big way. Kids will get fatter because of a starvation mechanism that makes them want forbidden food even more.
I am continuing to read in Frederick Douglass' autobiography, and that man is in my judgment one of the greatest Americans who has ever lived. I have just been reading about how the South tried to impose on the North the idea that slaves were property and not men by having a Fugitive Slave Law which enabled "any two villians...to consign a free man to slavery for life" because these villains could swear that the free colored men were actually escaped slaves and "by the law the judge got ten dollars a head for all he could consign to slavery, and only five dollars apiece for any which he might adjudge free." The Fugitive Slave Law backfired in a big way because Northerners did not view either free colored men or escaped slaves as property. The law by mandating the view that colored men might be property appropriately returned to the property's owner simply fueled the fire of Northern disgust at this Southern institution.
According to Frederick Douglass, one way that the escaped slaves demonstrated that they were human and not property was by fighting back. I just finished reading how Frederick Douglass got three men on a boat to Canada after kidnappers tried to capture them and instead were killed. What did Frederick Douglass say about them? "I could not look upon them as murderers. To me, they were heroic defenders of the just rights of man against manstealers and murderers." (Quotes are from Chapter 8 of
The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass.)
You cannot mandate that kids view "fruit cups" as treats. How totally stupid. How stupid that men were viewed as property. Common sense eventually prevails.
I wonder what kids will do --
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IB7NDUSBOo
Day 4 – Monday, October 8, 2012: I got up at 5:15 AM and went on the exercise bike for more than 4 but fewer than 5 minutes. It was an achievement just to do that. I've figured out where to put my exercise clothes so Tom isn't disturbed. My routine before it was interrupted for painting was to bike so that I expended -- according to the bike -- 8 calories per minute to get to 230 calories total. Today I got above 30 calories. It's a start. Trying to exercise at night did not work at all.
Day 5 – Tuesday, October 9, 2012: My husband is blaming me for my son's poor grades because "he hasn't been trained". I'm not very happy about that. I did not take credit for Anne's success, and I'm not taking blame for Tommy's D in AP World History. Tom is taking Tommy to a college fair tonight. I don't see that much matters until Tommy becomes motivated to work hard. As I was driving him to school today, he told me he was not looking forward to participating in a book group tomorrow because he'll be in with all the annoying super-achiever girls. He needs the extra credit to bring up his current grade of D, but he is not looking forward to participating. I asked he what he wanted. He told me what he didn't want was to be a super-achiever. Fine. WHAT DO YOU WANT? The conversation was not negative at all. It ended because he had to get out of the van to go catch the bus. I will follow up with him. All I told him was that being able to slide by in life without working is simply not going to last.
How does this relate to dieting? Well, first and foremost, I and I alone am responsible for my weight problem. Sure I feel misled by all the diet experts out there who led me down the path of "portion control", but I still am the one who followed their advice. Second, the motivation to lose weight must be internal. No one can provide it to me. I am the one who needs to be motivated enough to get up at 5 to exercise and who arranges my schedule to take the dog for a walk before leaving for work. It's time for that dog's walk now!
Day 5 – Tuesday, October 9, 2012: I did exercise this morning -- all of ten minutes! It will get easier. I now have a hook for my exercise clothing.
9 PM: I got home at 6:15 PM and Katie had not yet made dinner, so I turned around and went out to do errands and got back at 7:15. I did not feel hungry. When I filled my plate, Ellie looked at it and commented, "Maybe we should have smaller plates." I got a chuckle out of that! Lunch had been a pathetic cup of chili because I got to the lunchroom late and there wasn't much choice. By the time I had dinner, I wanted a lot!
Day 7 – Thursday, October 11, 2012:
216.2 It is probably best for me to limit weighing myself, but I was curious this morning and so I weighed myself. There is a lot of variability in weight with this diet depending on day of week. Because it's a Thursday weight and I'm only .2 pound above last Friday's weight, I should weigh lower than last Friday's weight when I weigh myself tomorrow. Do I want to be occupying myself with evaluation of this? Not really. I do have a calendar that I bought specifically for recording my weight, and I possibly could use that if I do return to weighing myself daily. This part of the program I have not yet figured out.
Day 8 – Friday, October 12, 2012:
215.4 I am now .4 pounds above my starting weight.
Day 9 – Saturday, October 13, 2012:
214.6 Now I am .4 pound below my starting weight! What is even better is the fact that right now, at 7:30 AM, I have no desire to be gorging. Tom and I went out for coffee and bagels this morning, and that was a comfortable amount to eat. There would be zero pleasure -- in fact it would be painful -- for me to eat more. I like how I feel right now.
My problem has been my being open to taking an S Day at any time. Now that I am only allowing planned S Days, I can be much more relaxed about eating. I wish I could come up with an analogy in my own life, but what comes to mind for me is how it must have felt for people in London who, after years of having to be on the alert for bombings during World War II, were able to go outside for a long walk without having to worry about the location of the nearest bomb shelter. They were free!
I feel free of having to worry about social situations in which it would be awkward if I did not eat. What I can do, simply, is say, "Look. I weighed over 200 pounds for most of 10 years. What tripped me up was eating outside of scheduled times."
9 PM: Tom is at a volunteer event, and the kids are scattered so I am home alone. I've been listening to a youtube video with Jay Carney talking about the youtube video that he was blaming on the riots in the Mideast. Sick.
Well, I need to look in the mirror. I've spent way too much time focused on things outside of my control like this upcoming election. I made sure Anne and Tom got absentee ballots, and I will vote. That's most of what I can do. Why would I waste hours and hours on the computer listening to the debates and Congressional hearings?
I need to focus on what I can do.
Those years and years and years of bouncing around diet after diet after diet created a sense of helplessness in me. Failing with willpower was more painful than focusing on something like politics. With dieting, there was an illusion of control. With politics, there is no sense of control.
There is a seismic shift going on within me now, as I realize that my sense of being in control in my life has been destroyed by my fruitless efforts to lose weight.
My rambling diet journal was my attempt to record everything in hopes that I could look back and figure out what worked or didn't. Now I feel very set, very understanding of what has happened with dieting, and very in control with my eating, very confident that my weight will continue to drop to a healthy weight.
Now my focus is turning elsewhere in my life. Why waste time on what I cannot influence or control? Politics was a distraction from the painful sense of failure in dieting. Sometime many years ago I concluded that my problem was not willpower but instead was a bad assumption that made long term success impossible. I've now skunked out that assumption: "portion control" is the key to weight loss. Oh no it's not. Meal timing is. Giving your body a predictable break from eating is the key.
It's nice and a little frightening to be taking back control in my life. I wonder what else I'll realize has been a distraction and what I'll realize I have been neglecting. The next several months could be transformative and not just in terms of pounds lost. I'm going to have a whole new outlook on life and will keep this prayer in mind:
God grant me
the Serenity
to accept the things
I cannot change...
Courage to change
the things I can,
and Wisdom to know
the difference.
Day 10 – Sunday, October 14, 2012: I now realize what has happened. Weight loss went from a category of "possibly cannot to change" to "definitely can change". I see the path forward.
4 PM: I got up at 7:30, exercised, and then felt bad and went to bed. I ended up throwing up the coffee I had and staying in bed until just now when I got up and had some Cheerios. Why? It could be the flu. Still, I wonder if my body rebelled against my over the top eating from yesterday.
Day 12 – Tuesday, October 16, 2012:
215.6 It's only Tuesday, and I'm already this "low" of a weight. Of course, being sick on Sunday helped. That sickness was bizarre. Was is due to stress in dealing with Tommy? Was it my body's reaction to Saturday's over the top eating?
I wonder because my desire to eat less continued yesterday. I think those S Days need to be completely unrestricted so that my body can step in and say "Enough".
7:30 PM: The willpower required for me to follow this diet now is negligible. It is comparable to the willpower involved in flossing my teeth. I have to remember to buy floss when I run out, just like I have to update my monthly log. I'm not sure it makes much sense to continue writing except by way of encouragement to others.
I wish I could describe just how little I think about food these days. For lunch, I had a bowl of Minnesota wild rice soup and a roll. I ate with a guy who had that plus an entire plateful of food. Was I cutting back? Not at all. Not one tiny bit. I ate exactly what I wanted.
Later in the day, as I was slogging through doing something boring, I went down and got some orange juice which was what I wanted. I am eating what I want. What has happened, I think, is that I have tuned out hunger and only think about eating during mealtime. IT's really quite amazing.
Tom was going to go shopping, so I thought he wasn't going to eat, so we ate the dinner without him. He went to the store and brought home a Weight Watchers meal. I read the calorie count on the package and it was 260 calories. How can a grown man feel satisfied with 260 calories? It's silly. Will I tell him that? No. He's stood by as I tried all sorts of diets: the Novena Diet (over and over and over again), the Peanut Cluster Diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, the I Can Make You Thin Diet, .... ugh! It's painful to think about the time and expense that have been put towards the goal of losing weight.
What has occupied my thoughts today? The job, the presidential debate, the kids, Tom, Kumon, .... Eating? Weight? I've probably spent maybe 1/2 hour all day thinking about it, including writing here. It's no longer on my mind. I eat what I want. My body has been trained to not want food except at meals. Incredible!
Day 13 – Wednesday, October 17, 2012:
215.4 Maybe it's my personality, but tracking weight day to day is very time consuming because I don't just want to see the weight. I also want to see patterns in weight loss. I have to think about what I want to do about tracking weight. That part of this diet is still up in the air.
7 AM: I think I'm going to try tracking my weight on a calendar and then just updating my journal once per week, probably on Sunday. The highest compliment I can give this diet (other than the obvious that I'm actually losing weight) is that I don't need to pay much attention to it. I need to let time do its job. If I stick with the diet, I will lose weight not due to willpower but due to my not wanting to eat as much. The driving desire to eat now has been blunted by the assurance that I can eat as much as I want later.
10:30 PM: I had so little desire to eat today that I started wondering if there was something wrong with me. I just was not hungry.
Day 14 – Thursday, October 18, 2012:
214.4 I got up at 6 today, which is an hour later than usual, which is at least a partial explanation for the drop in weight from yesterday. The kids are home from school, and Tom is taking the day off so I'm the only one up.
Last night, I and the girls volunteered at the church nursery while a seminar was being held. Afterwards we went into the social hall, and Katie lunged at the cookies. I did not think about it until this morning but I did not use any willpower in resisting taking those cookies.
Why? Well, I'm listening to David Allen CDs while I'm exercising (writing this is my delay tactic for exercising), and he talked about brainstorming and how you have a tendency not to think of all the options. For example, he asked, how many people see roadkill and consider it as a dinner possibility. He then said there are lots of people in the world who would.
Well, I think what has happened is that I've filtered out snacks and sweets during the week like I filter out roadkill as a dinner possibility. There is no willpower involved.
As for exercise, yes, I had to debate about whether I was going to exercise. I am now dressed and need to go.
9 PM: I went to the mall tonight to try to find a sweater that fit me, and I did not succeed. As I was wandering around the mall, refusing to go to the women's area, I thought this was just a nightmare. A nightmare. It's over. I'm losing weight rapidly. That's the not real story. The real story is I don't feel very hungry at all. I eat what I want at mealtime and don't think about food other than that. Today, I again had soup and a roll for lunch.
I've had, for years and years and years, a constant feeling that I was starving, that my stomach was a bottomless pit, and the best I could do to diminish that hunger was to eat until I was stuffed. Nothing short of stuffed would do.
All of a sudden, it's gone like a wind suddenly dying. Silence. It's weird. It's beyond description. I had something in my life for decades and suddenly it is gone.
It was hunger that could not be satisfied, constant, unending hunger.
Day 15 – Friday, October 19, 2012:
214.4 Weighing myself daily keeps me focused on my weight and results in my being impatient. Why did I not lose weight since yesterday? I was hoping that I would lose a pound a week and here I am down only 1.6 pounds in two week. Oh no!
Don't I have anything more important to consider than this? I think this diet is best followed with minimal attention to it. It is slow. It does work. It works as my body learns to trust it will get food. All those tweaks were counter productive. Every time I changed the diet, my body was on the alert that something more drastic may be on the way -- fasting, the Novena Diet, etc. No wonder I developed binge behavior!
It's time to set this journal and the daily weighing aside and let the diet work.
I am thinking I may want to have the habit of looking at my weight and thinking about this diet once per week on Fridays. Fridays or Saturdays should be my low for the week. It would be Saturday except sometimes I'm eating at or after midnight.
I feel a certain amount of gratitude right now. Like Kelly Brownell, the hapless and obese Yale professor in charge of a center to develop social policies to address to obesity epidemic, I could have gone down rabbit trails for the rest of my life.
I'm not just grateful to Reinhard, either. Sure, he wrote the book, but I might never had known about it without my sister in law. I might never have persevered without the encouragement and advice of those here who read my journal.
And then there is God. I knew a benevolent God would not give us a part of our human nature which would result in our being tortured every day with that constant feeling of hunger. I also knew that human nature is a set thing -- that we moderns are not different from the humans that Aristotle addressed in his Ethics or the Catholic Church guided with fasting rules.
The consistent way across the centuries to deal with gluttony is to have pre-established rules regarding eating that are followed no matter what. What comes to mind are those Jews in concentration camps who honored God by fasting on Yom Kippur. What a tribute they gave to their love of God and their respect for His rules!
Our society suffers from the lack of rules surrounding eating, and that's why we're in the mess we are. A friend of mine told me the other night that car manufacturers are having trouble meeting mileage guidelines in part because the passengers in those cars have become so much heavier. I am one of those heavier people.
What to do? Create my own rules to follow and follow them with a religious intensity that is a glimmer of the religious intensity of those Jews starving to death who respected God's laws and did not eat on Yom Kippur.
What a gift I have been given!
Day 16 – Saturday, October 20, 2012:
214.4 Anne told me that, as of today, she has lost 20 pounds exactly following No S. How did she describe the diet? "Sustainable." She did say she found it necessary to exercise because she stopped exercising for two weeks and did not lose any weight in that time.
6 PM: I left about 1 1/2 loaves of fresh bread on the table, and we are dogsitting a golden retriever who ate the whole thing. I hope she doesn't get sick. Her name is Angel but she is not! I think that the more I weigh myself, the less I exercise. Maybe I should just track my weight and journal once per month.
Day 1 – Sunday, October 20, 2012:
216.0 Anne is doing great. She told me two things: that exercise is critical and that she was flexible when she took an S Day that turned out to be the wrong day. The problem with inflexibility is you keep starting over at Day 1. I think now I am learning from her, and that is good. I'm going to do my best, I'm going to make mistakes, and that is good. That's human. The general idea is to create an orderliness to meal times so that, at other times, you simply tune out hunger and give your body a rest from thinking about food.
With my parents in town and my getting together with a friend, I ate out three meals in a row: Friday dinner, Saturday breakfast, and Saturday lunch. I left food on my plate at all three meals. Why? I'm starting to recognize when eating more is no longer pleasurable.
Day 2 – Monday, October 22, 2012:
215.6 My weight went down after an S Day (yesterday). I believe that's a first.
Day 8 – Sunday, October 28, 2012:
215.6 My commitment to BrightAngel to not make any changes to my diet without reading the prior six months of my journal is a significant deterrent to my making impulsive changes.
Here is what I am thinking: I don't like to be at the mercy of the scale, to not have a good idea of how much I will lose or when. With The Novena Diet, I lost five pounds and then took a month to maintain the weight loss. That worked out well. How do I make use of the knowledge that my body needs to plateau and plan accordingly?
Here is what I am thinking of doing within the context of No S: Plan on losing one pound per week for five weeks and then maintaining that loss for five weeks and then repeating. That means I would lose an average of 1/2 pound per week. When you are 215 pounds, that means it will be a year before you are 190 pounds. That is a pathetically slow rate of loss. I am not much concerned about slow. I am concerned about sustainable.
What No S gave me was control over binges. I still binge but it is under my control because I choose the time (S Days).
This add on is a way to control the rate of loss while still respecting my body's need to plateau.
I got to below 215 pounds last week so I would go below 214 this week and so on until I was below 210. Then I would maintain that loss for five weeks, making sure each week I got below 210 pounds.
How would I do it? I think it might be good to estimate calories, and 1,500 calories/day to start could bring me below 214 fairly quickly.
I need to go back to the end of March and read my journal from then to today. I sure hope I don't have to reread about
I Can Make You Thin.
8 PM: I got to June in my journal and had had enough. I opened the Halloween candy and pigged out. Why? Because tomorrow would be a calorie counting day. At least I did this on an S Day.
Day 9 – Monday, October 29, 2012: Reading through June's description of what happened when I tried calorie restriction, combined with observing my over the top eating in anticipating of restricting eating starting today, was enough to change my mind. There is a salad bar at work, and I think I'll try to get into the habit of having salad with a roll at lunchtime. Also, maybe I could focus on exercise. Yesterday, I exercised. Last week, I exercised twice. I'm still trying to combine work with exercise. That is a much healthier approach than restricting calories and becoming obsessed with the scale.
Day 10 – Tuesday, October 30, 2012:
215.4 Today I register the damage from deciding on Sunday that I would start calorie counting on Monday and having a day-long binge on Sunday as a result. Done. Finis. I cannot go back in time. Last night, I went on the exercise bike. I had decided against going on at night, but I cannot seem to make it work to get up at 5 to go downstairs then. I'll have to adjust to going on it at night. My plan is to go on Sunday morning and then Monday, Wednesday, Friday night.
Day 11 – Wednesday, October 31, 2012:
215.8 I caved. I realized that the only way to have control over what I weigh is to manage my eating to the scale. Today I had 1,000 calories. My goal is to get below 214.0 this week. Looking back, I realize I've been drinking a lot of calories -- lattes, even some alcohol, even some pop. I tend to have ginger ale when I don't feel great, and I've had a 20 ounce bottle of ginger ale every day this week.
8 PM: There wasn't that much of a difference in how I felt today compared with yesterday or the day before when I was limiting myself to 1,000 calories per day. Why? I think it might be that this approach is so slow that it isn't triggering diet backlash. Who knows? On Monday, I'll count 1,000 calories per day to get below 213 pounds. Looking at the weekend of S Days, I think I'll be careful how much I eat just because I don't want to be spending several days having 1,000 calories per day. I like that I'm in control of the schedule for weight loss even though it is slow.
July -- my goal is to read the July journal tonight and then I'll turn the computer over to Tom.