When I was about 10 years old, my younger brother held me underwater at a pool. I was surprised by my strength as I pushed my way to the surface of the water. That same drive to survive is what is triggered when I diet. It results in overeating.
I look forward to the day when my body's survival mechanism is not routinely triggered.
Kathleen
The Blessings of Simplicity
Moderators: Soprano, automatedeating
Summary for September, 2008:
Goal is 100 % compliance with no seconds, no sweets, no snacks on N days.
DAY 1 - 9/8/08: FAILURE Starting Weight of 215 pounds
DAY 2 - 9/9/08: FAILURE
DAY 3 - 9/10/08: FAILURE 213.6
DAY 4 - 9/11/08: FAILURE
DAY 5 - 9/12/08: SUCCESS
DAY 6 - 9/13/08: S DAY
Day 7 - 9/14/08: S DAY
DAY 8 - 9/15/08: SUCCESS
DAY 9 - 9/16/08: SUCCESS (2)*
DAY 10 - 9/17/08: SUCCESS (2)
DAY 11 - 9/18/08: SUCCESS (2)
Day 12 - 9/19/08: SUCCESS (2)
Day 13 - 9/20/08: S DAY (2)
Day 14: 9/21/08: S DAY (2)
DAY 15 - 9/22/08: SUCCESS (2)
DAY 16 - 9/23/08: SUCCESS (2)
DAY 17 - 9/24/08: SUCCESS (2)
Day 18 - 9/25/08: SUCCESS (2)
Day 19 - 9/26/08: SUCCESS (2)
Day 20 - 9/27/08: S DAY (2)
Day 21 - 9/28/08: S DAY (2)
Day 22 - 9/29/08: SUCCESS (2) 212.4
Day 23 - 9/30/08: SUCCESS (2)
* A number in parentheses, like (2), refers to the number of Special Days which have accumulated. Special Days accumulate at a rate of two per month and must be used before an N Day is considered to be a failure. There are no other Special Days. There are other S-Days for Saturday, Sunday, Sick Days, and Surgery Days, but there are no other Special Days.
Day 20: A Haagen Dazs bar and a drumstick at 1 AM. The S Day starts at midnight! The rest of the day was certainly more eating than any N Day this week, but it was quite a lot less than last Saturday's excess to the extreme. I wore a pair of pants that are very tight but I haven't been able to wear for several months.
Day 21: If I have S Days every weekend plus earn two S Days every month, that means that I have a total of 104 weekend S Days and 24 weekday S Days. The total is 128 S Days per year, or about 35% of all days. Today, I'm eating more than on an N Day, but I'm not "pigging out". Why? I know I'll have another S Day in six days. There is no need for "Last Supper Eating" when your next Last Supper is in six days! One of the blogs that hasn't been updated in some time was from a person who didn't weigh herself until Christmas and then shortly afterwards she started having failures. I decided to weigh myself the first Friday or Saturday of the month. I want to get into a monthly review of this diet so that I don't have the potential problem of celebratory overeating after a four month gap between weigh-ins.
Day 22: First time weighing myself since Day 3. After reading some other blogs, I think I'll go back to my habit of weighing myself daily in the morning if I'm home. In that way, there won't be any surprises that could make me decide to take a break from this diet. I think I'd be disappointed by this weight except for the fact that it is the day after two S Days. As I weigh myself, my guess is my weight will drop a few pounds by Saturday and then come up to almost but not quite today's weight by next Monday. It may seem like two steps forward, one back, except that this is the reason why maintenance won't feel like a "starvation diet." I'm willing to take the time to lose weight this way so that I am not in agony when I am thin.
I can't find where I read about the idea of "perfect compliance" as a way to build habit, so I'll just have to refer to this idea, the equivalent of Reinhard's strictness. That's OK. I'm sick to death of trying to figure out how to diet. I got the book Slim in a Fat World, which is where I thought I read about "perfect compliance", and the book is a wonderful motivator for The No S Diet. It's all about following guidelines like waiting 10 minutes before an unplanned snack and always sitting at a table to eat. The word that comes to mind is "killjoy." I want to enjoy my food, not monitor it closely and count every point or calorie or carb.
Day 23: "A watched pot doesn't boil", so I'm going to not weigh myself until the end of October and instead focus on my meals being more of a normal size. I feel very comfortable with no snacks, no sweets, no seconds, so now I need to have no overflowing plates! Tonight, I passed the "Tommy test" for whether or not the meal was of normal size. Tommy is my 12 year old son who has made some amusing comments about the overflowing plates.
Kathleen
Goal is 100 % compliance with no seconds, no sweets, no snacks on N days.
DAY 1 - 9/8/08: FAILURE Starting Weight of 215 pounds
DAY 2 - 9/9/08: FAILURE
DAY 3 - 9/10/08: FAILURE 213.6
DAY 4 - 9/11/08: FAILURE
DAY 5 - 9/12/08: SUCCESS
DAY 6 - 9/13/08: S DAY
Day 7 - 9/14/08: S DAY
DAY 8 - 9/15/08: SUCCESS
DAY 9 - 9/16/08: SUCCESS (2)*
DAY 10 - 9/17/08: SUCCESS (2)
DAY 11 - 9/18/08: SUCCESS (2)
Day 12 - 9/19/08: SUCCESS (2)
Day 13 - 9/20/08: S DAY (2)
Day 14: 9/21/08: S DAY (2)
DAY 15 - 9/22/08: SUCCESS (2)
DAY 16 - 9/23/08: SUCCESS (2)
DAY 17 - 9/24/08: SUCCESS (2)
Day 18 - 9/25/08: SUCCESS (2)
Day 19 - 9/26/08: SUCCESS (2)
Day 20 - 9/27/08: S DAY (2)
Day 21 - 9/28/08: S DAY (2)
Day 22 - 9/29/08: SUCCESS (2) 212.4
Day 23 - 9/30/08: SUCCESS (2)
* A number in parentheses, like (2), refers to the number of Special Days which have accumulated. Special Days accumulate at a rate of two per month and must be used before an N Day is considered to be a failure. There are no other Special Days. There are other S-Days for Saturday, Sunday, Sick Days, and Surgery Days, but there are no other Special Days.
Day 20: A Haagen Dazs bar and a drumstick at 1 AM. The S Day starts at midnight! The rest of the day was certainly more eating than any N Day this week, but it was quite a lot less than last Saturday's excess to the extreme. I wore a pair of pants that are very tight but I haven't been able to wear for several months.
Day 21: If I have S Days every weekend plus earn two S Days every month, that means that I have a total of 104 weekend S Days and 24 weekday S Days. The total is 128 S Days per year, or about 35% of all days. Today, I'm eating more than on an N Day, but I'm not "pigging out". Why? I know I'll have another S Day in six days. There is no need for "Last Supper Eating" when your next Last Supper is in six days! One of the blogs that hasn't been updated in some time was from a person who didn't weigh herself until Christmas and then shortly afterwards she started having failures. I decided to weigh myself the first Friday or Saturday of the month. I want to get into a monthly review of this diet so that I don't have the potential problem of celebratory overeating after a four month gap between weigh-ins.
Day 22: First time weighing myself since Day 3. After reading some other blogs, I think I'll go back to my habit of weighing myself daily in the morning if I'm home. In that way, there won't be any surprises that could make me decide to take a break from this diet. I think I'd be disappointed by this weight except for the fact that it is the day after two S Days. As I weigh myself, my guess is my weight will drop a few pounds by Saturday and then come up to almost but not quite today's weight by next Monday. It may seem like two steps forward, one back, except that this is the reason why maintenance won't feel like a "starvation diet." I'm willing to take the time to lose weight this way so that I am not in agony when I am thin.
I can't find where I read about the idea of "perfect compliance" as a way to build habit, so I'll just have to refer to this idea, the equivalent of Reinhard's strictness. That's OK. I'm sick to death of trying to figure out how to diet. I got the book Slim in a Fat World, which is where I thought I read about "perfect compliance", and the book is a wonderful motivator for The No S Diet. It's all about following guidelines like waiting 10 minutes before an unplanned snack and always sitting at a table to eat. The word that comes to mind is "killjoy." I want to enjoy my food, not monitor it closely and count every point or calorie or carb.
Day 23: "A watched pot doesn't boil", so I'm going to not weigh myself until the end of October and instead focus on my meals being more of a normal size. I feel very comfortable with no snacks, no sweets, no seconds, so now I need to have no overflowing plates! Tonight, I passed the "Tommy test" for whether or not the meal was of normal size. Tommy is my 12 year old son who has made some amusing comments about the overflowing plates.
Kathleen
Last edited by Kathleen on Mon Oct 13, 2008 11:07 am, edited 27 times in total.
Summary for October, 2008:
DAY 24 - 10/1/08: SPECIAL DAY (3) - CELEBRATE OUR SON MAKING STAR RANK IN SCOUTS
DAY 25 - 10/2/08: SUCCESS (3)
DAY 26 - 10/3/08: SUCCESS (3)
DAY 27 - 10/4/08: S DAY (3)
DAY 28 - 10/5/08: S DAY (3)
DAY 29 - 10/6/08: SUCCESS (3)
Day 30 - 10/7/08: SUCCESS (3)
DAY 31 - 10/8/08: SUCCESS (3)
DAY 32 - 10/9/08: SUCCESS (3) 208.8
DAY 33 - 10/10/08: SUCCESS (3)
DAY 34 - 10/11/08: S DAY (3) 208.4
DAY 35 - 10/12/08: S DAY (3)
DAY 36 - 10/13/08: SUCCESS (3) 210.2 (Goal is 210, or one pound loss each week)
Day 37 - 10/14/08: SUCCESS (3) 209.8
DAY 38 - 10/15/08: SUCCESS (3) 208.6
DAY 39 - 10/16/08: SUCCESS (3) 206.0
DAY 40 - 10/17/08: SURGERY DAY (3)
DAY 41 - 10/18/08: SUCCESS (3) 205.6
Day 42 - 10/19/08: SUNDAY (3) 206.2
Day 43 - 10/20/08: SUCCESS (3) 207.2 (Goal is 209, or one pound loss each week)
Day 44 - 10/21/08: SUCCESS (3) 207.8
DAY 45 - 10/22/08: SUCCESS (3) 208.6
DAY 46 - 10/23/08: SPECIAL DAY (2) - MY BIRTHDAY 208.6
DAY 47 - 10/24/08: SUCCESS (2) 209.8
Day 48 - 10/25/08: SATURDAY (2) 208.0
Day 49 - 10/26/08: SUNDAY (2)
Day 50 - 10/27/08: SUCCESS (2) (Goal is 211.5, or one-half pound loss each week from start of diet)
Day 51 - 10/28/08: SUCCESS (2)
Day 52 - 10/29/08: SUCCESS (2) 207.2
Day 53 - 10/30/08: SUCCESS (2) 207.0
Day 54 - 10/31/08: SUCCESS (2)
Day 24: It is the start of a new month, so I accumulate two additional Special Days that can be used however I want. My plan was to use my first Special Day today to take the kids to TCBY on a Wednesday when there are discounts on cones. I have a job interview at 4, and I need to attend a parent meeting at 6:30, so I'll have to wait on this. There is no special occasion for going to TCBY. We could come up with a few -- celebrating my son making Star rank in Scouts, for example. What I am doing here with accumulating Special Days to be used for any reason is allowing myself a normalcy to eating. I can decide, just because, to make an exception. I just have a budget of two exceptions per month. There have been many diets blown by me because of a tempting taste test at the grocery store. Now I can decide to use a Special Day to have a taste test. There is no failure unless I use up all the Special Days and still make an exception. It's just a choice to use these allocated exceptions however I want.
In my 7 year old's class, the teacher asked kids to get up and say which day of their week was the favorite and why. My daughter said Saturday was her favorite because "My Mom put me on a diet, so I can only eat swets on Saturday and Sunday, and also because of cartoons." What's interesting about this is my daughter is thin. I needed to assure her that I don't think she is fat. I just think this is a healthy way to eat.
12:40 PM: I was contacted by the company to say my interview is delayed, so I can return to my original plan of taking my kids to TCBY for a yogurt cone after school. The glorious normalcy of this! I can eat a cone in the afternoon as a snack when I'm not hungry and just because I want to -- no special reason, no special anything. That's why The No Hassle Diet will work for me. What I most value is flexibility, and this diet gives flexibility with minimal accounting!
5 PM: I've planned this trip to TCBY for a few weeks, and it did not turn out to be pleasant at all. The kids fought over the dog. My oldest wanted something else. We were in a rush because my two older kids wanted to stay after school, so I had to pick them up, and then I have to go to a parent meeting tonight. Despite the disappointment over my much anticipated trip to TCBY, I think that the frequency of S Days in this diet makes the disappointment bearable. About 1/3 of all days are S Days. I can handle an S Day that isn't all that great. After the trip to TCBY, we went to the grocery store, I picked up a small bag of peanut clusters, I shared them with the kids, and I still threw out a couple of peanut clusters. What is special about special days is they aren't all that special because they occur so frequently.
Day 25: I woke up this morning just feeling sick. After two N Days, I had an S Day, and my body wasn't ready for it. In addition to yogurt, I ate caramels and peanut clusters and lots of food for dinner. Now my body wants an N Day, and the idea of a be-an-idiot S Day on Saturday is repulsive to me. I think this diet is working. It almost seems as if the diet gets easier over time, whereas with most diets it gets harder and harder and harder...
I'm still trying to figure out what to do about the scale. I may weigh myself only after 5 N Days. That would mean that the next possible weigh-in is on October 11.
Day 27: At 1 AM, I had a Haagen Dazs ice cream bar. At 6:30, I woke up for the day, and my stomach is just churning. I think I know why. My stomach does not want a repeat performance of how I have been handling S Days. It's too much! This is the exact opposite of a diet reaction, which is the overwhelming desire to eat as much as I can. Instaed, there is a revulsion at the thought of bingeing. At 1 PM, I am taking a nap, having used the bathroom several times. Two Haagen Dazs bars and several caramels have upset my stomach. This is amazing. I can eat what I want, but I can't tolerate anywhere near the level of sweets I could tolerate a month ago. At 7 PM, after a caramel apple and 4 Haagen Dazs bars today, I am ready for an N Day tomorrow! Even though tomorrow is an S Day, it may be a much more moderate one than today was. Did I fail? No. My body needed reassurance that I could eat what I want. I listened to the podcast "S Days gone wild", and it assured me that this is something that can happen especially with S Days at the beginning of The No S Diet. It seems very excessive to me to have 4 Haagen Dazs bars, but I still remember the embarassment when my husband calculated that I had had 9 ice cream bars in one day.
Day 28: I think that my efforts to have normal-sized meals may have resulted in my eating so much yesterday. It was a rough adjustment. I will be starting a part-time job on October 22. In the meantime, I'm on vacation -- a stay at home Mom with all kids in school. This is an ideal time to be making a radical adjustment to having normal-sized meals on N Days instead of meals that are plates with double-stacked food selections. Tonight, I had almost an entire bucket of caramel corn. That should help me get through a week of normal-sized meals. On this coming Saturday, I hope to have five consecutive N Days, and then I'll weigh myself to see how I'm doing. My family doesn't believe I'll lose weight because of how much I've eaten on S Days. We'll see. I may overeat on the weekend, but I am eating moderately during the week. That's an improvement from eating immoderately all week long.
Day 29: I feel as though I am caught between two incompatible ways of eating -- the frantic overeating which has become my norm because my body can no longer stand dieting and the fear of physical starvation which dieting triggers, and the normal eating of a thin person who eats for enjoyment. One will win out. I am focusing all my energy on keeping the N Days green and not concerning myself with S Days. I did, however, calculate how much caramel corn I had last night. There were nine servings of 130 calories each. I had about 8 1/2 servings. That would make approximately 1,100 calories of caramel corn which were consumed in less than 1 hour. I chuckle when I think of it. It sure looks like some sort of emotional problem, but I don't think it is. I think my problem is physical. My body has been subjected to dieting for so long that my body rebels. It is very reassuring to know that I can eat whatever I want on S Days. It makes N Days easy. Today I was in such a rush that I almost forgot to eat lunch! Because I have followed this diet with 100% success since the first week, I am no longer tempted by snacking. Tonight, I had two of our daughters at a engineering group for the older one. The younger one was there doing homework. Snacks were available. The younger one sat next to me and had pop and a lollipop and chips. I had no interest whatsoever. Part of the reason is I know I can always use one of my S Day exceptions to eat what I want. Last night's snack wasn't even close to worth using an exception so that I could have it. I didn't even consider the possibility of using an S Day exception to eat what was there. This diet has gotten downright easy. It may not stay that way, but today was easy. Of course, my body may be relieved that it won't be stuffed with 1,100 calories of caramel corn in an hour! I had a large dinner tonight because the diet is back to being hard.
Day 30: Everything was easy until about 6 PM, and now I want to eat. The great thing about this diet is I can tell myself I can eat anything I want and however much I want. All I have to do is wait until Saturday, which is just three days away. I'll wait. I can stand it. If I couldn't see an S Day in the near future, I'd be eating everything in sight NOW! I believe I will successfully lose weight and be able to maintain it because there is a world of difference between eating NOW and eating in three days.
Day 31: Back to easy for this diet. I am trying to exercise on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and I'm managing fairly well. If I miss a day, I miss a day. Today, I walked 1.7 miles. My goal is to increase the distance by .1 mile per week until I walk 3.2 miles in about 45 minutes. That's a very fast walk. Although I think exercise helps to manage weight, one bagel more than cancels out on any sort of exercise I would be willing to do. The real driver for weight loss is caloric intake, and I think The No S Diet is helping me to keep overall caloric intake down, despite the fact that I inhaled 1,100 calories worth of caramel corn in about 1 hour on Sunday night. I used to inhale food when I broke diets, and I would feel desperate and despondent. On Sunday, I felt amused -- and a little embarassed because my 14 year old was with me when I ate it while I was taking her on an errand for school.
Day 32: I decided to dispense with any sort of rules regarding weighing myself, and I was delighted to step on the scale and see 208.8. A real milepost for me will be to fall below 205 pounds, which was the starting point of my Peanut Cluster Diet on December 15, 2007. Before that date, I never weighed above 205. After it, I never weighed below 205. The evening was tough for me. I ended up eating an entire bowl of popcorn along with a large dinner, but it was all in front of me before I took one bite, so I have a success on my version of this diet. I stopped at the store and bought more caramel corn and some premium hot chocolate in anticipation of Saturday. One thing this diet does is cause me to consider what I actually like. With other diets, I just inhaled whatever was within reach when my diet ended.
Day 33: Fridays seem to be easiest for me because I'm planning my weekend S Days. Thursday night is hardest. I told my 9 year old last night that I am grumpy on Thursday nights because of this diet, so please don't try to negotiate with me. At 7 PM, I am now really interested in eating. I had an entire bowl of popcorn along with a plateful at dinner, but I still want to eat. What is keeping me going is the fact that I have only 5 hours until it is an S Day.
Day 34: I'm coming up on 5 weeks on No S with a weight loss of 6.4 pounds. I'm hoping that I can keep up an average of a one-pound weight loss per week at least until Christmas. That would put me at 200 pounds for Christmas. The last time I weighed below 200 pounds was on September 10, 2007, when I weighed 199.6 pounds. My real goal is to fall below 200 pounds before the end of this year and never, ever see 200 pounds again!!! I gained 15 pounds by following the Intuitive Eating approach ("unconditional permission to eat" at all times) and the Hunger Satisfaction Diet (a modification of The Weigh-Down Diet in which you give yourself "unconditional permission to eat" after a hunger growl). I believe in "unconditional permission to eat" but had to figure out that there need to be restrictions which are clear, like no sweets, seconds, or snacks on N Days! Actually, I didn't figure it out: Reinhard did. I was able to recognize that this was the diet I was trying to figure out!
Day 35: It's been at least 20 years since I woke up with a hangover, but this morning felt like one. I woke sick, dehydrated and disgusted. Too much food. I'm not putting any restrictions on S Days. The S Days will take care of themselves. Yesterday, I had only one Haagen Dazs bar, but I had a lot of chocolate chip bars. It was too much. Tonight, I ate almost all of a bag of peanut clusters and two Haagen Dazs bars. My body is beginning to look forward to N Days! I have a colonoscopy on Friday, and reading the instructions for food intake this week made me particularly vulnerable to eating everything in sight. I'm not going to have much of a chance to eat for three days before the procedure, which means I have to start changing my diet on Tuesday morning, and this is Sunday night. I'm hoping to view it as an N Day that is more restricted than usual.
Day 36: The temptation after weighing myself on a Monday is to work on the S Days. I think, however, that S Days are for sustainability, so I'm working on the N Days. I've decided to track my weight against a goal of one pound loss per week, with the goal to lose one pound per week until Christmas. After that, I hope to lose 1/2 pound per week. If I cannot sustain 1/2 pound loss per week, I'll tweak the diet. I am sick and tired of being so fat. Patience does not mean tolerance.
I got my written job offer today. It's one thing to have a verbal offer. It's quite another to have the offer in writing. I'm excited! I'm fascinated by the field, and I'm able to work flexible hours to accomodate my need to be available to our children on vacation days and when they are sick. I also can continue my volunteering at the school. The job itself will crowd out my blogging here, but I think I've reached a point where I have a plan that will work -- thanks to input from others and reviewing blogs! There may be some tweaking here and there, but basically now I wait for the pounds to drop away slowly over time. I let the N Days put downward pressure on the S Day overeating, with the overall effect of a lower weight. "A watched pot doesn't boil", so it is probably best that I limit my time here.
Day 37: After reading more blogs about people not losing weight while following this diet, I'm considering modifying it so that every Sunday is predictably an S Day but Saturdays are not. I'll increase the number of Special Days that I can accumulate. What I have found in my own situation is that I tend to really overeat on Saturday but not on Sunday. Maybe next month, I'll have five NWS and Sunday Special Days. Tweak, tweak, tweak...
Day 38: I was awake in the night and got up early to blog now. I concluded that my weight loss could end up being so slow that I get discouraged and quit. As a result, I decided to alter the diet by turning Saturdays into N Days. At this point, it is easy for me to follow the no seconds - no sweets - no snacks gudelines on N Days. I don't even think about it anymore. My S Days tend to be huge binges, and I think Sundays would be days when it is easier for me to give myself "unconditional permission to eat" and not end up eating 3,000 to 5,000 calories in one day. I like to watch the Sunday Morning political shows, and we go to church, and we try to spend the afternoon doing something fun together as a family. Saturdays are more chore days for me, so there is more incentive to eat rather than clean. On Sundays, I try to avoid work and just relax. My weight is coming down. It's just coming down slowly. I don't know that I could restrict myself more than this -- "unconditional permission to eat" on Sundays and an allocation of two Special Days per month plus sick days plus surgery days. If I restrict myself more than that, my guess is I would go into "diet backlash" -- my body would revolt at the restrictions and I would end up failing and gaining back weight. This diet is a wonderful template, but I think it does need individual customization.
Day 39: It's great to have a big drop in weight today. I had to cut way back on food yesterday and not have any solids today in preparation for a colonoscopy tomorrow, so I think my weight will bounce back a little. My husband told me this morning that he can tell I've lost weight. That's very encouraging!
Day 40: My colonoscopy was this morning, and I was told to come back in 10 years. Yesterday, I only had black coffee until I had to drink two liters of colon cleansing solution that actually made me vomit. After the colonoscopy, I had an escort to Starbucks where I had a frappachino and oatmeal. Then I went on a tour of architecture at the Mayo Clinic. My interest in overeating is nil. I have developed a certain amount of care in evaluating just how much I can overeat. I've had several instances of S Days Gone Wild which have resulted in feeling sick. Overeating is no longer what I desire. I'll suspect I'll eat more than on an N Day today, and I will snack, but the care I have taken to make the N Days greens is paying off. Tomorrow I plan to have another N Day because I have decided to make Saturdays N Days and only have Sundays as the reliable weekly S Day. This is surprisingly in keeping with my Catholic faith. The 40 days of Lent are all days of Lent except for Sunday. Whatever is given up during Lent can be enjoyed on Sundays. I have been considering the fasting traditions of some of the traditional faiths (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) and am struck by the fact that there is a practice of restraint that is requested to be practiced for a period of time rather than continuously. This No S Diet seems to be in alignment with what the Catholic Church considers to be "natural law."
Day 41: This is my first N Day on a Saturday. I'm happy I decided to turn Saturday into an N Day because my weight loss would be slower if I had both Saturdays and Sundays as S Days. Slow weight loss could lead to discouragement and quitting, and I don't want to quit! This modification is about as lean as I could tolerate -- every Sunday and two other days in the month as S Days. My weight dropped several pounds this week because of preparation for and going through a colonoscopy, but I expect the weight to go up in the next few days. I want to be comparing my Monday weight every week to my goal weight of 1 pound down each week from the start of this diet until Christmas and then, after that, 1/2 pound down until I stabilize at a weight I'm willing to accept. I'm no longer set on a weight that I want to maintain. Instead, what I want to maintain is the lifestyle of NO HASSLE. This diet seems like my best bet for getting out of diet jail.
Tonight was surprisingly tough. I made spaghetti and poured out the water before the noodles were done. It was very hard to reheat water and wait for the noodles to be done. I prepared for tomorrow's S Day by buying chocolate-covered pretzels. There may be a midnight snack in my future!
Day 42: Last night, the level of difficulty of this diet, on a scale from 1 to 10, rose to about an 8 or 9 -- for 15 minutes. This diet started out a difficulty of 10, and I now think the difficulty is at about a 2 with some peaks up to 8 or 9 for an hour or so a week. That's why I think this diet will work for me. The diet is getting easier over time.
Tonight, I ended up with a stomach ache because of overeating. I went to bed while my family played Monopoly. I think I need to not berate myself at all and just allow my body to figure out that overeating is not fun. I'm almost looking forward to the routine of N Days. This was my first weekend with only one S Day (Sunday), and I think part of my overeating came from concern that one S Day would not be enough to carry me through the week. At this point, I think it will be enough. I can still eat whatever I want one day a week, and -- if I run into trouble during the week -- I can plan for what I'll be enjoying on Sunday.
Day 43: My daughter calls this diet the Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions. It is an appropriate name for the diet. Reinhard calls it The No S Diet, but I think that what makes it special are the Special Days. As someone who has been overweight for years, I have felt guilty about indulging in anything. As a result, I have overeaten without really enjoying food. My 9 year old once said that the people who eat at McDonald's are overweight, but the people who eat McDonald's in their car are really overweigbt. It's true. I have observed this in myself and it seems to apply to others: those who are overweight don't ever allow themselves to enjoy food, so they have a tendency to inhale food while doing other things.
With this diet, there are Special Days where you have "unconditional permission to eat." This is a term taken from the book Intuitive Eating, which I think provides lots of good insight into overeating. The theory behind the Intuitive Eating approach is that people overeat because they are afraid of not eating enough. Dieting triggers a fear of starvation. The solution is to follow 10 guidelines that are in the book, including giving yourself "unconditional permission to eat." Over time, so the theory goes, your body will realize it will get fed, and you will lose the ravenous need for food because of the fear of starvation that was triggered by dieting. Once you lose that ravenous need for food, you will start to eat less and you will lose weight.
I started following this diet on December 15, 2007, when I had reached an all-time high of 205 pounds, after many, many attempts at dieting. My kids immediately nicknamed the diet The Peanut Cluster Diet. I gained weight eating bags and bags of peanut clusters, a food I had denied myself for 30 years.
During the summer, I decided that the concept of "unconditional permission to eat" was key to successful weight loss, but there needed to be some sort of on/off switch -- a time when you had "unconditional permission to eat", and a time when you did not. That's when I developed The Hunger Satisfaction Diet. The idea was that you did not eat at all until you experienced a hunger growl, and then you had "unconditional permission to eat" once you experienced a hunger growl. It was about one week before I had my first exception. My family was at my nephew's graduation on a beautiful Saturday morning in June, and a buffet lunch followed the ceremony. It was appropriate for me to eat lunch with my family rather than sit there and sip diet Coke.
Almost immediately, I started to realize that hunger growls were not necessarily easy to determine. The stomach makes all sorts of noises. Also, I noticed that my stomach would growl sooner after a heavy meal than after a light meal. After three months of this diet, I was rarely eating meals with my family and was eating enormous quantities of food at odd times.
I started to figure out that it was important to honor mealtimes. It was then that my sister in law mentioned The No S Diet. She had mentioned it earlier in the summer when I hadn't yet figured out the unintended consequences of The Hunger Satisfaction Diet. This time, I looked into The No S Diet.
Here was a diet that allowed "unconditional permission to eat" on specific days and provided a very simple formula for restricting foods on other days. My 14 year old daughter called it The Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions, and she's right. The beauty of this diet is not just the no-hassle factor involved in following the diet on N Days. It is also the "unconditional permission to eat" on Special Days. Now I can eat whatever I want and however I want on Special Days.
I started The No S Diet on September 8th at a weight of 215 pounds. It took four failure days before I had my first success. I modified the definition of S Days, eliminating Saturday as an S Day so that I could lose weight at an encouraging rate and changing the definition of Special Days (NWS) to an accumulation of two per month.
Today I weigh 207.2. It will be a real celebration for me to fall below the weight of 205, which is when I started The Peanut Cluster Diet. I appreciate why this diet works, and it is a diet that I think I can follow for the rest of my life.
Day 44: It's difficult to see a weight increase from one day to the next, even if it is from 207.2 to 207.8 and even if I am down from 210.2 eight days ago. I am thinking I need to back off on weighing myself so much. I keep on thinking of the saying, "A watched pot doesn't boil." By following this diet, I am hoping for a long-term weight that is lower and is easy to maintain, but I need to be patient and accept that the weight loss will be slow.
It is now night, and I keep thinking, "A watched pot never boils." It is time for me to put this program on autopilot. I had previously thought I would work on having meals that looked like they were of normal size, but I abandoned that idea because there is judgement involved. I want a habit that is easy to follow, and the no snacks -- no sweets -- no seconds guidelines are very easy to follow because they are so easily understood. I think I have this diet set, and now it is time to put it on autopilot to give my body time to lose weight.
Day 45: I blew it, and I immediately recognized that I blew it. Blueskighs' comments (from 10/21/08, later in this thread) helped me to recognize it and so did the fact that I was incredibly grumpy last night with my kids. I need two S Days a week, not one. Last night was Tuesday, and I had a huge dinner of two pot pies and one bowl of popcorn. Why? I think that the unintended consequence of only one S Day on the weekend is the drive to eat more during the week. This hampers my body's ability to adjust to less food. I am back to two S Days, not one.
My start date on my job was changed to Monday, or about five days from now. I want to have a diet that I can put on autopilot because I will be busy once I start working. I revised my diet description to the top of this page, and I want to stick with it through next summer, when I'll be home with the kids. I need patience most of all, patience to allow the weight to come off slowly and surely.
It is really, really hard to be this fat. I hate it. I have seen lots of people start weight loss programs with big restrictions on food intake and lots of exercise. The dramatic loss initially is wonderful to see, but it is sad to see a rebound in weight. Last night, I saw a picture on TV of Kirstie Alley, who was the spokesperson for Jenny Craig. I see in her a lot of willpower, a lot of drive to lose weight. She must have fought hard against her body's survival mechanism, but she lost.
I am trying to tolerate my current obese state while being patient enough to allow the pounds to slip away slowly. To help me in being patient, I have created a goal of one half pound of weight loss per week starting with the beginning weight of 215 pounds. At a rate of one half pound of weight loss, I will weigh 207 pounds by the New Year. It is very tempting to want to rush weight loss. After all, I weighed less than 207 pounds last week! The reason why I weighed less, however, is not because of dramatic weight loss on this diet. It's because I went through a colonoscopy, and I'm not supposed to go through one of them again for ten years!
Patience... I need patience. Right by the computer is a plaque of the Serenity Prayer which is given to our kids when the complete 6th grade at the elementary school:
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.
I look at that prayer and think that I am battling my body's survival mechanism when I try to lose weight fast with diets that do not have S Day type exceptions. This diet respects my body's will to survive. I cannot turn off that will to survive and lose weight quickly and maintain it unless I have the will of a person who can tolerate a state of starvation for the rest of their lives. I have to accept my body's limitations and the limitations of my willpower. What I can change is my approach to dieting so that I follow a diet which is respectful of my body, and I think I have found that diet right here.
So -- my plan is to put this diet on autopilot and only consider changing it if I do not meet or exceed my very modest goal of losing one half pound of weight per week.
Day 46: Today is my 50th birthday. I'm running from the time I bring my two older children to jazz band practice at 7 AM until I pick up my son from Boy Scouts at 8:45 PM. I hadn't planned on taking a Special Day, but Debs convinced me otherwise. Maybe with this diet Special Days aren't all that special -- they certainly come more frequently than a decade birthday! Once you figure out that about 35% of all days are S Days, you can give up the frantic overeating that typically characterizes overeating of a restrictive eater who isn't -- at that moment --following the rules of a diet. This diet provides a gentle downward pressure on eating. The N Days help you to adjust to a lower food intake, and the S Days give you an opportunity to be comfortable with that lower food intake. It's a very clever approach to dieting, one that doesn't trigger the starvation mechanism.
Having philosophized enough, I'm going to enjoy the day! My coffee is ready, and my bath is ready, and it's time to go!
Day 47: I enjoyed my birthday and now face a new decade. I started having weight problems when, in the spring of my senior year of high school, at age 17, I finally took seriously my father's concern that I was too fat. I was all of 132 pounds at a height of 5'6 1/2". I did get my weight down to 117 pounds by the time I entered college but was at about 150 pounds by the time I finished freshman year. My weight went up another 15 pounds through college and then I managed to get back to 132 and maintain that weight through restrictive eating -- a diet of nine days of eating 1,000 calories per day to get down to 132 whenever I drifted above it. When I got pregnant with my first child, in 1993, my weight skyrocketed. I did get down to 155 after the last child was born in 2001. After that, I was determined to lose weight. The more effort I put into losing weight, the more I gained. My all-time high was 216 pounds on 9/4/08.
Restrictive eating, I now realize, is necessary in order to lose weight, but this diet has such gentle restrictive eating that it doesn't trigger "diet backlash" once your body is assured that the restrictions are mild (only the 3S restrictions rather than drastic caloric restrictions) and there are two days per week where you are assured of "unconditional permission to eat." I get it.
The hard part with this diet is the recognition that it will take a long time to lose weight and I'll have to accept the weight I reach even if it isn't 132. I'm willing to accept those limitations.
To help me with the waiting, I think I'm going to have to change my focus to other things, especially to my new job which starts on Monday. It's only a two month assignment with potential for more work after the New Year, and I want to put a lot of effort into making sure the company is just thrilled with having hired me and wants me to continue after the New Year.
I'm not sure when I'll be updating my progress, but I think it would be better if it was only weekly or so. That won't mean I've given up on this diet. It will mean that I am being patient with myself and my body.
Day 51: I had training from 8 AM to 1:30 PM with 1/2 hour for lunch. I didn't have time to go out for lunch, and I had forgotten to bring my lunch. My lunch consisted of two vending machine servings of pretzels and a diet Coke. The two servings of pretzels were from the snacks which were provided to us during training. I lasted until 5 PM fairly well and then had a dinner which was one entire bowl of popcorn and spaghetti and an apple. I was not tempted to snack. Not at all. Yes, my stomach growled. I just tuned it out. I did not die. I was not in pain. My stomach growled a little. That's it. This society seems to teach us that hunger is a horrible, horrible agony. Not true. Besides, the training was fascinating. I am being introduced to how system development is done today.
Day 53: A disappointing .2 pound drop in weight in one day. This is part of the reason why I need to put this diet on autopilot. It is slow! Any decision to speed along the process, like my short-lived decision to have one weekend S Day rather than two, is likely to backfire. There was some difficulty for me in not snacking before dinner last night. I ate before the kids ate because I just had a sandwich at lunchtime and was hungry by dinner. The decision to follow these 3S rules has been made. Now I need to adjust other habits around this decision. For example, I need to make sure that my lunch is large enough that I won't be really hungry by dinnertime.
This afternoon, I took our kids to a Boo Blast at a local grocery store where the kids get treats. Caribou Coffee has a store there and was providing some sort of coffee treat. I was tempted, but then I thought -- why waste an S Day on a sample of the coffee. Why not wait and get an extra large? The willingness to wait is what allows me to lose weight. I don't wait out of some sort of herculean effort. I wait because I'd rather have an extra large coffee treat in 36 hours than have a 2 ounce sample right now.
Day 54: It is now 7:30 PM on Holloween. I am waiting until midnight to have Holloween candy! Waiting, waiting, waiting... It seems silly, but I really think that I am losing weight because of a willingness to wait even a few hours. It's an S Day in 4 1/2 hours, and I certainly don't want to spend a Special Day allocation on being able to eat Holloween candy now when I can eat all the Holloween candy I want tomorrow and the next day. This diet appeals to the glutton in me! I want to save the Special Days for something more worthwhile than a few candy bars!
Kathleen
DAY 24 - 10/1/08: SPECIAL DAY (3) - CELEBRATE OUR SON MAKING STAR RANK IN SCOUTS
DAY 25 - 10/2/08: SUCCESS (3)
DAY 26 - 10/3/08: SUCCESS (3)
DAY 27 - 10/4/08: S DAY (3)
DAY 28 - 10/5/08: S DAY (3)
DAY 29 - 10/6/08: SUCCESS (3)
Day 30 - 10/7/08: SUCCESS (3)
DAY 31 - 10/8/08: SUCCESS (3)
DAY 32 - 10/9/08: SUCCESS (3) 208.8
DAY 33 - 10/10/08: SUCCESS (3)
DAY 34 - 10/11/08: S DAY (3) 208.4
DAY 35 - 10/12/08: S DAY (3)
DAY 36 - 10/13/08: SUCCESS (3) 210.2 (Goal is 210, or one pound loss each week)
Day 37 - 10/14/08: SUCCESS (3) 209.8
DAY 38 - 10/15/08: SUCCESS (3) 208.6
DAY 39 - 10/16/08: SUCCESS (3) 206.0
DAY 40 - 10/17/08: SURGERY DAY (3)
DAY 41 - 10/18/08: SUCCESS (3) 205.6
Day 42 - 10/19/08: SUNDAY (3) 206.2
Day 43 - 10/20/08: SUCCESS (3) 207.2 (Goal is 209, or one pound loss each week)
Day 44 - 10/21/08: SUCCESS (3) 207.8
DAY 45 - 10/22/08: SUCCESS (3) 208.6
DAY 46 - 10/23/08: SPECIAL DAY (2) - MY BIRTHDAY 208.6
DAY 47 - 10/24/08: SUCCESS (2) 209.8
Day 48 - 10/25/08: SATURDAY (2) 208.0
Day 49 - 10/26/08: SUNDAY (2)
Day 50 - 10/27/08: SUCCESS (2) (Goal is 211.5, or one-half pound loss each week from start of diet)
Day 51 - 10/28/08: SUCCESS (2)
Day 52 - 10/29/08: SUCCESS (2) 207.2
Day 53 - 10/30/08: SUCCESS (2) 207.0
Day 54 - 10/31/08: SUCCESS (2)
Day 24: It is the start of a new month, so I accumulate two additional Special Days that can be used however I want. My plan was to use my first Special Day today to take the kids to TCBY on a Wednesday when there are discounts on cones. I have a job interview at 4, and I need to attend a parent meeting at 6:30, so I'll have to wait on this. There is no special occasion for going to TCBY. We could come up with a few -- celebrating my son making Star rank in Scouts, for example. What I am doing here with accumulating Special Days to be used for any reason is allowing myself a normalcy to eating. I can decide, just because, to make an exception. I just have a budget of two exceptions per month. There have been many diets blown by me because of a tempting taste test at the grocery store. Now I can decide to use a Special Day to have a taste test. There is no failure unless I use up all the Special Days and still make an exception. It's just a choice to use these allocated exceptions however I want.
In my 7 year old's class, the teacher asked kids to get up and say which day of their week was the favorite and why. My daughter said Saturday was her favorite because "My Mom put me on a diet, so I can only eat swets on Saturday and Sunday, and also because of cartoons." What's interesting about this is my daughter is thin. I needed to assure her that I don't think she is fat. I just think this is a healthy way to eat.
12:40 PM: I was contacted by the company to say my interview is delayed, so I can return to my original plan of taking my kids to TCBY for a yogurt cone after school. The glorious normalcy of this! I can eat a cone in the afternoon as a snack when I'm not hungry and just because I want to -- no special reason, no special anything. That's why The No Hassle Diet will work for me. What I most value is flexibility, and this diet gives flexibility with minimal accounting!
5 PM: I've planned this trip to TCBY for a few weeks, and it did not turn out to be pleasant at all. The kids fought over the dog. My oldest wanted something else. We were in a rush because my two older kids wanted to stay after school, so I had to pick them up, and then I have to go to a parent meeting tonight. Despite the disappointment over my much anticipated trip to TCBY, I think that the frequency of S Days in this diet makes the disappointment bearable. About 1/3 of all days are S Days. I can handle an S Day that isn't all that great. After the trip to TCBY, we went to the grocery store, I picked up a small bag of peanut clusters, I shared them with the kids, and I still threw out a couple of peanut clusters. What is special about special days is they aren't all that special because they occur so frequently.
Day 25: I woke up this morning just feeling sick. After two N Days, I had an S Day, and my body wasn't ready for it. In addition to yogurt, I ate caramels and peanut clusters and lots of food for dinner. Now my body wants an N Day, and the idea of a be-an-idiot S Day on Saturday is repulsive to me. I think this diet is working. It almost seems as if the diet gets easier over time, whereas with most diets it gets harder and harder and harder...
I'm still trying to figure out what to do about the scale. I may weigh myself only after 5 N Days. That would mean that the next possible weigh-in is on October 11.
Day 27: At 1 AM, I had a Haagen Dazs ice cream bar. At 6:30, I woke up for the day, and my stomach is just churning. I think I know why. My stomach does not want a repeat performance of how I have been handling S Days. It's too much! This is the exact opposite of a diet reaction, which is the overwhelming desire to eat as much as I can. Instaed, there is a revulsion at the thought of bingeing. At 1 PM, I am taking a nap, having used the bathroom several times. Two Haagen Dazs bars and several caramels have upset my stomach. This is amazing. I can eat what I want, but I can't tolerate anywhere near the level of sweets I could tolerate a month ago. At 7 PM, after a caramel apple and 4 Haagen Dazs bars today, I am ready for an N Day tomorrow! Even though tomorrow is an S Day, it may be a much more moderate one than today was. Did I fail? No. My body needed reassurance that I could eat what I want. I listened to the podcast "S Days gone wild", and it assured me that this is something that can happen especially with S Days at the beginning of The No S Diet. It seems very excessive to me to have 4 Haagen Dazs bars, but I still remember the embarassment when my husband calculated that I had had 9 ice cream bars in one day.
Day 28: I think that my efforts to have normal-sized meals may have resulted in my eating so much yesterday. It was a rough adjustment. I will be starting a part-time job on October 22. In the meantime, I'm on vacation -- a stay at home Mom with all kids in school. This is an ideal time to be making a radical adjustment to having normal-sized meals on N Days instead of meals that are plates with double-stacked food selections. Tonight, I had almost an entire bucket of caramel corn. That should help me get through a week of normal-sized meals. On this coming Saturday, I hope to have five consecutive N Days, and then I'll weigh myself to see how I'm doing. My family doesn't believe I'll lose weight because of how much I've eaten on S Days. We'll see. I may overeat on the weekend, but I am eating moderately during the week. That's an improvement from eating immoderately all week long.
Day 29: I feel as though I am caught between two incompatible ways of eating -- the frantic overeating which has become my norm because my body can no longer stand dieting and the fear of physical starvation which dieting triggers, and the normal eating of a thin person who eats for enjoyment. One will win out. I am focusing all my energy on keeping the N Days green and not concerning myself with S Days. I did, however, calculate how much caramel corn I had last night. There were nine servings of 130 calories each. I had about 8 1/2 servings. That would make approximately 1,100 calories of caramel corn which were consumed in less than 1 hour. I chuckle when I think of it. It sure looks like some sort of emotional problem, but I don't think it is. I think my problem is physical. My body has been subjected to dieting for so long that my body rebels. It is very reassuring to know that I can eat whatever I want on S Days. It makes N Days easy. Today I was in such a rush that I almost forgot to eat lunch! Because I have followed this diet with 100% success since the first week, I am no longer tempted by snacking. Tonight, I had two of our daughters at a engineering group for the older one. The younger one was there doing homework. Snacks were available. The younger one sat next to me and had pop and a lollipop and chips. I had no interest whatsoever. Part of the reason is I know I can always use one of my S Day exceptions to eat what I want. Last night's snack wasn't even close to worth using an exception so that I could have it. I didn't even consider the possibility of using an S Day exception to eat what was there. This diet has gotten downright easy. It may not stay that way, but today was easy. Of course, my body may be relieved that it won't be stuffed with 1,100 calories of caramel corn in an hour! I had a large dinner tonight because the diet is back to being hard.
Day 30: Everything was easy until about 6 PM, and now I want to eat. The great thing about this diet is I can tell myself I can eat anything I want and however much I want. All I have to do is wait until Saturday, which is just three days away. I'll wait. I can stand it. If I couldn't see an S Day in the near future, I'd be eating everything in sight NOW! I believe I will successfully lose weight and be able to maintain it because there is a world of difference between eating NOW and eating in three days.
Day 31: Back to easy for this diet. I am trying to exercise on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and I'm managing fairly well. If I miss a day, I miss a day. Today, I walked 1.7 miles. My goal is to increase the distance by .1 mile per week until I walk 3.2 miles in about 45 minutes. That's a very fast walk. Although I think exercise helps to manage weight, one bagel more than cancels out on any sort of exercise I would be willing to do. The real driver for weight loss is caloric intake, and I think The No S Diet is helping me to keep overall caloric intake down, despite the fact that I inhaled 1,100 calories worth of caramel corn in about 1 hour on Sunday night. I used to inhale food when I broke diets, and I would feel desperate and despondent. On Sunday, I felt amused -- and a little embarassed because my 14 year old was with me when I ate it while I was taking her on an errand for school.
Day 32: I decided to dispense with any sort of rules regarding weighing myself, and I was delighted to step on the scale and see 208.8. A real milepost for me will be to fall below 205 pounds, which was the starting point of my Peanut Cluster Diet on December 15, 2007. Before that date, I never weighed above 205. After it, I never weighed below 205. The evening was tough for me. I ended up eating an entire bowl of popcorn along with a large dinner, but it was all in front of me before I took one bite, so I have a success on my version of this diet. I stopped at the store and bought more caramel corn and some premium hot chocolate in anticipation of Saturday. One thing this diet does is cause me to consider what I actually like. With other diets, I just inhaled whatever was within reach when my diet ended.
Day 33: Fridays seem to be easiest for me because I'm planning my weekend S Days. Thursday night is hardest. I told my 9 year old last night that I am grumpy on Thursday nights because of this diet, so please don't try to negotiate with me. At 7 PM, I am now really interested in eating. I had an entire bowl of popcorn along with a plateful at dinner, but I still want to eat. What is keeping me going is the fact that I have only 5 hours until it is an S Day.
Day 34: I'm coming up on 5 weeks on No S with a weight loss of 6.4 pounds. I'm hoping that I can keep up an average of a one-pound weight loss per week at least until Christmas. That would put me at 200 pounds for Christmas. The last time I weighed below 200 pounds was on September 10, 2007, when I weighed 199.6 pounds. My real goal is to fall below 200 pounds before the end of this year and never, ever see 200 pounds again!!! I gained 15 pounds by following the Intuitive Eating approach ("unconditional permission to eat" at all times) and the Hunger Satisfaction Diet (a modification of The Weigh-Down Diet in which you give yourself "unconditional permission to eat" after a hunger growl). I believe in "unconditional permission to eat" but had to figure out that there need to be restrictions which are clear, like no sweets, seconds, or snacks on N Days! Actually, I didn't figure it out: Reinhard did. I was able to recognize that this was the diet I was trying to figure out!
Day 35: It's been at least 20 years since I woke up with a hangover, but this morning felt like one. I woke sick, dehydrated and disgusted. Too much food. I'm not putting any restrictions on S Days. The S Days will take care of themselves. Yesterday, I had only one Haagen Dazs bar, but I had a lot of chocolate chip bars. It was too much. Tonight, I ate almost all of a bag of peanut clusters and two Haagen Dazs bars. My body is beginning to look forward to N Days! I have a colonoscopy on Friday, and reading the instructions for food intake this week made me particularly vulnerable to eating everything in sight. I'm not going to have much of a chance to eat for three days before the procedure, which means I have to start changing my diet on Tuesday morning, and this is Sunday night. I'm hoping to view it as an N Day that is more restricted than usual.
Day 36: The temptation after weighing myself on a Monday is to work on the S Days. I think, however, that S Days are for sustainability, so I'm working on the N Days. I've decided to track my weight against a goal of one pound loss per week, with the goal to lose one pound per week until Christmas. After that, I hope to lose 1/2 pound per week. If I cannot sustain 1/2 pound loss per week, I'll tweak the diet. I am sick and tired of being so fat. Patience does not mean tolerance.
I got my written job offer today. It's one thing to have a verbal offer. It's quite another to have the offer in writing. I'm excited! I'm fascinated by the field, and I'm able to work flexible hours to accomodate my need to be available to our children on vacation days and when they are sick. I also can continue my volunteering at the school. The job itself will crowd out my blogging here, but I think I've reached a point where I have a plan that will work -- thanks to input from others and reviewing blogs! There may be some tweaking here and there, but basically now I wait for the pounds to drop away slowly over time. I let the N Days put downward pressure on the S Day overeating, with the overall effect of a lower weight. "A watched pot doesn't boil", so it is probably best that I limit my time here.
Day 37: After reading more blogs about people not losing weight while following this diet, I'm considering modifying it so that every Sunday is predictably an S Day but Saturdays are not. I'll increase the number of Special Days that I can accumulate. What I have found in my own situation is that I tend to really overeat on Saturday but not on Sunday. Maybe next month, I'll have five NWS and Sunday Special Days. Tweak, tweak, tweak...
Day 38: I was awake in the night and got up early to blog now. I concluded that my weight loss could end up being so slow that I get discouraged and quit. As a result, I decided to alter the diet by turning Saturdays into N Days. At this point, it is easy for me to follow the no seconds - no sweets - no snacks gudelines on N Days. I don't even think about it anymore. My S Days tend to be huge binges, and I think Sundays would be days when it is easier for me to give myself "unconditional permission to eat" and not end up eating 3,000 to 5,000 calories in one day. I like to watch the Sunday Morning political shows, and we go to church, and we try to spend the afternoon doing something fun together as a family. Saturdays are more chore days for me, so there is more incentive to eat rather than clean. On Sundays, I try to avoid work and just relax. My weight is coming down. It's just coming down slowly. I don't know that I could restrict myself more than this -- "unconditional permission to eat" on Sundays and an allocation of two Special Days per month plus sick days plus surgery days. If I restrict myself more than that, my guess is I would go into "diet backlash" -- my body would revolt at the restrictions and I would end up failing and gaining back weight. This diet is a wonderful template, but I think it does need individual customization.
Day 39: It's great to have a big drop in weight today. I had to cut way back on food yesterday and not have any solids today in preparation for a colonoscopy tomorrow, so I think my weight will bounce back a little. My husband told me this morning that he can tell I've lost weight. That's very encouraging!
Day 40: My colonoscopy was this morning, and I was told to come back in 10 years. Yesterday, I only had black coffee until I had to drink two liters of colon cleansing solution that actually made me vomit. After the colonoscopy, I had an escort to Starbucks where I had a frappachino and oatmeal. Then I went on a tour of architecture at the Mayo Clinic. My interest in overeating is nil. I have developed a certain amount of care in evaluating just how much I can overeat. I've had several instances of S Days Gone Wild which have resulted in feeling sick. Overeating is no longer what I desire. I'll suspect I'll eat more than on an N Day today, and I will snack, but the care I have taken to make the N Days greens is paying off. Tomorrow I plan to have another N Day because I have decided to make Saturdays N Days and only have Sundays as the reliable weekly S Day. This is surprisingly in keeping with my Catholic faith. The 40 days of Lent are all days of Lent except for Sunday. Whatever is given up during Lent can be enjoyed on Sundays. I have been considering the fasting traditions of some of the traditional faiths (Jewish, Christian, Muslim) and am struck by the fact that there is a practice of restraint that is requested to be practiced for a period of time rather than continuously. This No S Diet seems to be in alignment with what the Catholic Church considers to be "natural law."
Day 41: This is my first N Day on a Saturday. I'm happy I decided to turn Saturday into an N Day because my weight loss would be slower if I had both Saturdays and Sundays as S Days. Slow weight loss could lead to discouragement and quitting, and I don't want to quit! This modification is about as lean as I could tolerate -- every Sunday and two other days in the month as S Days. My weight dropped several pounds this week because of preparation for and going through a colonoscopy, but I expect the weight to go up in the next few days. I want to be comparing my Monday weight every week to my goal weight of 1 pound down each week from the start of this diet until Christmas and then, after that, 1/2 pound down until I stabilize at a weight I'm willing to accept. I'm no longer set on a weight that I want to maintain. Instead, what I want to maintain is the lifestyle of NO HASSLE. This diet seems like my best bet for getting out of diet jail.
Tonight was surprisingly tough. I made spaghetti and poured out the water before the noodles were done. It was very hard to reheat water and wait for the noodles to be done. I prepared for tomorrow's S Day by buying chocolate-covered pretzels. There may be a midnight snack in my future!
Day 42: Last night, the level of difficulty of this diet, on a scale from 1 to 10, rose to about an 8 or 9 -- for 15 minutes. This diet started out a difficulty of 10, and I now think the difficulty is at about a 2 with some peaks up to 8 or 9 for an hour or so a week. That's why I think this diet will work for me. The diet is getting easier over time.
Tonight, I ended up with a stomach ache because of overeating. I went to bed while my family played Monopoly. I think I need to not berate myself at all and just allow my body to figure out that overeating is not fun. I'm almost looking forward to the routine of N Days. This was my first weekend with only one S Day (Sunday), and I think part of my overeating came from concern that one S Day would not be enough to carry me through the week. At this point, I think it will be enough. I can still eat whatever I want one day a week, and -- if I run into trouble during the week -- I can plan for what I'll be enjoying on Sunday.
Day 43: My daughter calls this diet the Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions. It is an appropriate name for the diet. Reinhard calls it The No S Diet, but I think that what makes it special are the Special Days. As someone who has been overweight for years, I have felt guilty about indulging in anything. As a result, I have overeaten without really enjoying food. My 9 year old once said that the people who eat at McDonald's are overweight, but the people who eat McDonald's in their car are really overweigbt. It's true. I have observed this in myself and it seems to apply to others: those who are overweight don't ever allow themselves to enjoy food, so they have a tendency to inhale food while doing other things.
With this diet, there are Special Days where you have "unconditional permission to eat." This is a term taken from the book Intuitive Eating, which I think provides lots of good insight into overeating. The theory behind the Intuitive Eating approach is that people overeat because they are afraid of not eating enough. Dieting triggers a fear of starvation. The solution is to follow 10 guidelines that are in the book, including giving yourself "unconditional permission to eat." Over time, so the theory goes, your body will realize it will get fed, and you will lose the ravenous need for food because of the fear of starvation that was triggered by dieting. Once you lose that ravenous need for food, you will start to eat less and you will lose weight.
I started following this diet on December 15, 2007, when I had reached an all-time high of 205 pounds, after many, many attempts at dieting. My kids immediately nicknamed the diet The Peanut Cluster Diet. I gained weight eating bags and bags of peanut clusters, a food I had denied myself for 30 years.
During the summer, I decided that the concept of "unconditional permission to eat" was key to successful weight loss, but there needed to be some sort of on/off switch -- a time when you had "unconditional permission to eat", and a time when you did not. That's when I developed The Hunger Satisfaction Diet. The idea was that you did not eat at all until you experienced a hunger growl, and then you had "unconditional permission to eat" once you experienced a hunger growl. It was about one week before I had my first exception. My family was at my nephew's graduation on a beautiful Saturday morning in June, and a buffet lunch followed the ceremony. It was appropriate for me to eat lunch with my family rather than sit there and sip diet Coke.
Almost immediately, I started to realize that hunger growls were not necessarily easy to determine. The stomach makes all sorts of noises. Also, I noticed that my stomach would growl sooner after a heavy meal than after a light meal. After three months of this diet, I was rarely eating meals with my family and was eating enormous quantities of food at odd times.
I started to figure out that it was important to honor mealtimes. It was then that my sister in law mentioned The No S Diet. She had mentioned it earlier in the summer when I hadn't yet figured out the unintended consequences of The Hunger Satisfaction Diet. This time, I looked into The No S Diet.
Here was a diet that allowed "unconditional permission to eat" on specific days and provided a very simple formula for restricting foods on other days. My 14 year old daughter called it The Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions, and she's right. The beauty of this diet is not just the no-hassle factor involved in following the diet on N Days. It is also the "unconditional permission to eat" on Special Days. Now I can eat whatever I want and however I want on Special Days.
I started The No S Diet on September 8th at a weight of 215 pounds. It took four failure days before I had my first success. I modified the definition of S Days, eliminating Saturday as an S Day so that I could lose weight at an encouraging rate and changing the definition of Special Days (NWS) to an accumulation of two per month.
Today I weigh 207.2. It will be a real celebration for me to fall below the weight of 205, which is when I started The Peanut Cluster Diet. I appreciate why this diet works, and it is a diet that I think I can follow for the rest of my life.
Day 44: It's difficult to see a weight increase from one day to the next, even if it is from 207.2 to 207.8 and even if I am down from 210.2 eight days ago. I am thinking I need to back off on weighing myself so much. I keep on thinking of the saying, "A watched pot doesn't boil." By following this diet, I am hoping for a long-term weight that is lower and is easy to maintain, but I need to be patient and accept that the weight loss will be slow.
It is now night, and I keep thinking, "A watched pot never boils." It is time for me to put this program on autopilot. I had previously thought I would work on having meals that looked like they were of normal size, but I abandoned that idea because there is judgement involved. I want a habit that is easy to follow, and the no snacks -- no sweets -- no seconds guidelines are very easy to follow because they are so easily understood. I think I have this diet set, and now it is time to put it on autopilot to give my body time to lose weight.
Day 45: I blew it, and I immediately recognized that I blew it. Blueskighs' comments (from 10/21/08, later in this thread) helped me to recognize it and so did the fact that I was incredibly grumpy last night with my kids. I need two S Days a week, not one. Last night was Tuesday, and I had a huge dinner of two pot pies and one bowl of popcorn. Why? I think that the unintended consequence of only one S Day on the weekend is the drive to eat more during the week. This hampers my body's ability to adjust to less food. I am back to two S Days, not one.
My start date on my job was changed to Monday, or about five days from now. I want to have a diet that I can put on autopilot because I will be busy once I start working. I revised my diet description to the top of this page, and I want to stick with it through next summer, when I'll be home with the kids. I need patience most of all, patience to allow the weight to come off slowly and surely.
It is really, really hard to be this fat. I hate it. I have seen lots of people start weight loss programs with big restrictions on food intake and lots of exercise. The dramatic loss initially is wonderful to see, but it is sad to see a rebound in weight. Last night, I saw a picture on TV of Kirstie Alley, who was the spokesperson for Jenny Craig. I see in her a lot of willpower, a lot of drive to lose weight. She must have fought hard against her body's survival mechanism, but she lost.
I am trying to tolerate my current obese state while being patient enough to allow the pounds to slip away slowly. To help me in being patient, I have created a goal of one half pound of weight loss per week starting with the beginning weight of 215 pounds. At a rate of one half pound of weight loss, I will weigh 207 pounds by the New Year. It is very tempting to want to rush weight loss. After all, I weighed less than 207 pounds last week! The reason why I weighed less, however, is not because of dramatic weight loss on this diet. It's because I went through a colonoscopy, and I'm not supposed to go through one of them again for ten years!
Patience... I need patience. Right by the computer is a plaque of the Serenity Prayer which is given to our kids when the complete 6th grade at the elementary school:
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.
I look at that prayer and think that I am battling my body's survival mechanism when I try to lose weight fast with diets that do not have S Day type exceptions. This diet respects my body's will to survive. I cannot turn off that will to survive and lose weight quickly and maintain it unless I have the will of a person who can tolerate a state of starvation for the rest of their lives. I have to accept my body's limitations and the limitations of my willpower. What I can change is my approach to dieting so that I follow a diet which is respectful of my body, and I think I have found that diet right here.
So -- my plan is to put this diet on autopilot and only consider changing it if I do not meet or exceed my very modest goal of losing one half pound of weight per week.
Day 46: Today is my 50th birthday. I'm running from the time I bring my two older children to jazz band practice at 7 AM until I pick up my son from Boy Scouts at 8:45 PM. I hadn't planned on taking a Special Day, but Debs convinced me otherwise. Maybe with this diet Special Days aren't all that special -- they certainly come more frequently than a decade birthday! Once you figure out that about 35% of all days are S Days, you can give up the frantic overeating that typically characterizes overeating of a restrictive eater who isn't -- at that moment --following the rules of a diet. This diet provides a gentle downward pressure on eating. The N Days help you to adjust to a lower food intake, and the S Days give you an opportunity to be comfortable with that lower food intake. It's a very clever approach to dieting, one that doesn't trigger the starvation mechanism.
Having philosophized enough, I'm going to enjoy the day! My coffee is ready, and my bath is ready, and it's time to go!
Day 47: I enjoyed my birthday and now face a new decade. I started having weight problems when, in the spring of my senior year of high school, at age 17, I finally took seriously my father's concern that I was too fat. I was all of 132 pounds at a height of 5'6 1/2". I did get my weight down to 117 pounds by the time I entered college but was at about 150 pounds by the time I finished freshman year. My weight went up another 15 pounds through college and then I managed to get back to 132 and maintain that weight through restrictive eating -- a diet of nine days of eating 1,000 calories per day to get down to 132 whenever I drifted above it. When I got pregnant with my first child, in 1993, my weight skyrocketed. I did get down to 155 after the last child was born in 2001. After that, I was determined to lose weight. The more effort I put into losing weight, the more I gained. My all-time high was 216 pounds on 9/4/08.
Restrictive eating, I now realize, is necessary in order to lose weight, but this diet has such gentle restrictive eating that it doesn't trigger "diet backlash" once your body is assured that the restrictions are mild (only the 3S restrictions rather than drastic caloric restrictions) and there are two days per week where you are assured of "unconditional permission to eat." I get it.
The hard part with this diet is the recognition that it will take a long time to lose weight and I'll have to accept the weight I reach even if it isn't 132. I'm willing to accept those limitations.
To help me with the waiting, I think I'm going to have to change my focus to other things, especially to my new job which starts on Monday. It's only a two month assignment with potential for more work after the New Year, and I want to put a lot of effort into making sure the company is just thrilled with having hired me and wants me to continue after the New Year.
I'm not sure when I'll be updating my progress, but I think it would be better if it was only weekly or so. That won't mean I've given up on this diet. It will mean that I am being patient with myself and my body.
Day 51: I had training from 8 AM to 1:30 PM with 1/2 hour for lunch. I didn't have time to go out for lunch, and I had forgotten to bring my lunch. My lunch consisted of two vending machine servings of pretzels and a diet Coke. The two servings of pretzels were from the snacks which were provided to us during training. I lasted until 5 PM fairly well and then had a dinner which was one entire bowl of popcorn and spaghetti and an apple. I was not tempted to snack. Not at all. Yes, my stomach growled. I just tuned it out. I did not die. I was not in pain. My stomach growled a little. That's it. This society seems to teach us that hunger is a horrible, horrible agony. Not true. Besides, the training was fascinating. I am being introduced to how system development is done today.
Day 53: A disappointing .2 pound drop in weight in one day. This is part of the reason why I need to put this diet on autopilot. It is slow! Any decision to speed along the process, like my short-lived decision to have one weekend S Day rather than two, is likely to backfire. There was some difficulty for me in not snacking before dinner last night. I ate before the kids ate because I just had a sandwich at lunchtime and was hungry by dinner. The decision to follow these 3S rules has been made. Now I need to adjust other habits around this decision. For example, I need to make sure that my lunch is large enough that I won't be really hungry by dinnertime.
This afternoon, I took our kids to a Boo Blast at a local grocery store where the kids get treats. Caribou Coffee has a store there and was providing some sort of coffee treat. I was tempted, but then I thought -- why waste an S Day on a sample of the coffee. Why not wait and get an extra large? The willingness to wait is what allows me to lose weight. I don't wait out of some sort of herculean effort. I wait because I'd rather have an extra large coffee treat in 36 hours than have a 2 ounce sample right now.
Day 54: It is now 7:30 PM on Holloween. I am waiting until midnight to have Holloween candy! Waiting, waiting, waiting... It seems silly, but I really think that I am losing weight because of a willingness to wait even a few hours. It's an S Day in 4 1/2 hours, and I certainly don't want to spend a Special Day allocation on being able to eat Holloween candy now when I can eat all the Holloween candy I want tomorrow and the next day. This diet appeals to the glutton in me! I want to save the Special Days for something more worthwhile than a few candy bars!
Kathleen
Last edited by Kathleen on Sat Nov 01, 2008 12:30 am, edited 163 times in total.
Hi Kathleen, Thanks for checking in on me. I have been doing well. Other than the 1 red with the 2 cookies, I have had all green except for 1 planned yellow day. It has been tough I will say. I have been wanting sweets and some of my meals have been a bit big (1 or 2 dinners, still 1 plate but a FULL one) This is a rough time of year for me as I have S.A.D. but it usually passes by mid-October. In the past, one of my comforts has been eating. But, I am holding on and sticking to my N days.
Best of luck with continued success for you. Sounds like you are really doing well and embracing the lifestyle.
Best,
Melissa
Best of luck with continued success for you. Sounds like you are really doing well and embracing the lifestyle.
Best,
Melissa
Melissa,
I'm glad to hear from you and to hear you are doing well. I've been approaching this as an intellectual exercise, trying to figure out what separates those who succeed from those who eventually quit. Things have gotten really easy for me, and it's a good thing! I got a job offer yesterday and will start work on October 22nd, so my days of leisure at home are coming to an end.
Kathleen
I'm glad to hear from you and to hear you are doing well. I've been approaching this as an intellectual exercise, trying to figure out what separates those who succeed from those who eventually quit. Things have gotten really easy for me, and it's a good thing! I got a job offer yesterday and will start work on October 22nd, so my days of leisure at home are coming to an end.
Kathleen
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howfunisthat
- Posts: 605
- Joined: Mon Jul 28, 2008 12:35 am
- Location: New York
Melissa,
Thanks. I'm really happy about working. Last year, I couldn't work during the school year. In August, 2007, I was diagnosed and treated for a rare form of cancer that doesn't metastize so it won't kill you, but I went through five surgeries and had a bandage on my head from August through February. I'm through all that and now just have to return to the doctor twice a year for a check up to see if there is a recurrence, which the doctor - a Mayo Clinic surgeon -- thinks is very, very unlikely.
I have my life back. When I was home with a bandage on my head, I decided to keep a daily journal of research and personal experience about dieting. I had kept the journal for more than a year and had written over 200 pages when I learned about The No S Diet last month. What gives me a lot of confidence in this diet is that I understand how it manages to avoid the pitfall of "diet backlash" by allowing "unconditional permission to eat" on S Days. I found the book Intuitive Eating to be a very insightful book on weight loss, and it was from this book that I got the phrases "unconditional permission to eat" and "diet backlash". The problem with giving myself "unconditional permission to eat", which I tried for six months, was I gained 10 pounds, and my kids called it The Peanut Cluster Diet. My daughter calls this diet The Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions. Will it work? I think so. It's getting easier each week, AND I'm fitting into pants that I couldn't wear a month ago.
Once I start working, I won't have much time to be looking at my eating habits and trying to understand hunger and all that. I need to switch into unconscious eating behavior, and I think this diet comes as close as I'll ever come to the eating behavior of a naturally thin person. I won't have to spend much conscious thinking time in order to stay on this diet, and that's great! With four children at home, there's so much to enjoy in life that I don't want pushed aside because of dieting!
Kathleen
Thanks. I'm really happy about working. Last year, I couldn't work during the school year. In August, 2007, I was diagnosed and treated for a rare form of cancer that doesn't metastize so it won't kill you, but I went through five surgeries and had a bandage on my head from August through February. I'm through all that and now just have to return to the doctor twice a year for a check up to see if there is a recurrence, which the doctor - a Mayo Clinic surgeon -- thinks is very, very unlikely.
I have my life back. When I was home with a bandage on my head, I decided to keep a daily journal of research and personal experience about dieting. I had kept the journal for more than a year and had written over 200 pages when I learned about The No S Diet last month. What gives me a lot of confidence in this diet is that I understand how it manages to avoid the pitfall of "diet backlash" by allowing "unconditional permission to eat" on S Days. I found the book Intuitive Eating to be a very insightful book on weight loss, and it was from this book that I got the phrases "unconditional permission to eat" and "diet backlash". The problem with giving myself "unconditional permission to eat", which I tried for six months, was I gained 10 pounds, and my kids called it The Peanut Cluster Diet. My daughter calls this diet The Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions. Will it work? I think so. It's getting easier each week, AND I'm fitting into pants that I couldn't wear a month ago.
Once I start working, I won't have much time to be looking at my eating habits and trying to understand hunger and all that. I need to switch into unconscious eating behavior, and I think this diet comes as close as I'll ever come to the eating behavior of a naturally thin person. I won't have to spend much conscious thinking time in order to stay on this diet, and that's great! With four children at home, there's so much to enjoy in life that I don't want pushed aside because of dieting!
Kathleen
-
howfunisthat
- Posts: 605
- Joined: Mon Jul 28, 2008 12:35 am
- Location: New York
Janie --
Nothing is more motivating than to have a daughter who is overweight. I appreciate the negative impact on my life of years of restrictive eating that I could not keep up followed by a 60 pound weight gain in six years. I don't want my daughter to go through that. I don't want her to start dieting, like I did when I was a teenager. I don't want her to have times of starvation dieting to make up for weight increases. I don't want her body to simply refuse to follow these diets anymore.
I did actually do research thinking I could turn it into a book. My intended audience was this stunningly beautiful, smart and highly-motivated daughter who is just starting out on life, a daughter who last week brought home straight As yet again for mid-quarter grades at the start of 9th grade.
My journal certainly does a great job of describing the feelings of desperation that an obese person has in trying to lose weight and demonstrating that obese people are not lazy or self-indulgent or lacking in willpower. However, with one change (Special Days as two per month to be used whenever), I see this No S Diet as such a brilliant way to manage eating that I have no interest in trying to find a different way to lose weight. This approach will work because the S Days enable a person to lose weight without feeling like a concentration camp prisoner.
Kathleen
Nothing is more motivating than to have a daughter who is overweight. I appreciate the negative impact on my life of years of restrictive eating that I could not keep up followed by a 60 pound weight gain in six years. I don't want my daughter to go through that. I don't want her to start dieting, like I did when I was a teenager. I don't want her to have times of starvation dieting to make up for weight increases. I don't want her body to simply refuse to follow these diets anymore.
I did actually do research thinking I could turn it into a book. My intended audience was this stunningly beautiful, smart and highly-motivated daughter who is just starting out on life, a daughter who last week brought home straight As yet again for mid-quarter grades at the start of 9th grade.
My journal certainly does a great job of describing the feelings of desperation that an obese person has in trying to lose weight and demonstrating that obese people are not lazy or self-indulgent or lacking in willpower. However, with one change (Special Days as two per month to be used whenever), I see this No S Diet as such a brilliant way to manage eating that I have no interest in trying to find a different way to lose weight. This approach will work because the S Days enable a person to lose weight without feeling like a concentration camp prisoner.
Kathleen
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blueskighs
- Posts: 1787
- Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2008 4:11 am
- Location: California
"The Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions"
I love it
Blueskighs
I love it
Blueskighs
www.nosdiet.blogspot.com Where I blog daily about my No S journey
Blueskighs-
Yes, my fourteen year old is quite the WIT!!! I've always heard that it is tough to deal with teenagers, but I'm finding it quite a joy -- as they explore what they want and develop their own personal styles. I sure don't want to be wasting my time on dieting! My lowest recorded weight after starting The Peanut Cluster Diet on December 15, 2007 at 205 pounds was when I weighed in at 209 pounds on March 13, 2008. My husband promised a dinner for the entire family at the fanciest restaurant in town if I got below my starting weight on The Peanut Cluster Diet. I'm looking foward to it, although I think we'll try a restaurant like Red Lobster or Olive Garden that is noisy and accomodating of young children.
Kathleen
Yes, my fourteen year old is quite the WIT!!! I've always heard that it is tough to deal with teenagers, but I'm finding it quite a joy -- as they explore what they want and develop their own personal styles. I sure don't want to be wasting my time on dieting! My lowest recorded weight after starting The Peanut Cluster Diet on December 15, 2007 at 205 pounds was when I weighed in at 209 pounds on March 13, 2008. My husband promised a dinner for the entire family at the fanciest restaurant in town if I got below my starting weight on The Peanut Cluster Diet. I'm looking foward to it, although I think we'll try a restaurant like Red Lobster or Olive Garden that is noisy and accomodating of young children.
Kathleen
Last edited by Kathleen on Sat Nov 01, 2008 12:13 am, edited 4 times in total.
Hi Kathleen,
Thanks for checking in on me. I really appreciate that!
I had a rough week - My birthday was Tuesday but it seems I celebrated a bit every day last week. So, While I don't remember failing everyday, I gave myself reds for the week - except for on my birthday because I did plan ahead for a Special day that day.
My weight loss has been so slow, and I have been discouraged. The scale numbers aren't moving much in either direction (so that is good in a way) but my clothes do feel better than when I started. My cousin and my fiancee have both told me that I look like I have lost weight recently - again a good thing. I am basically comfortable with myself (5'3", 152.2 lbs) - other than my flabby arms which I want to tone up before I put on that wedding dress. But that will require strength training and I am, well, a bit lazy about exercise. So I need to focus on toning up. (I feel like I type that on these boards often but don't seem to follow through on it at all. Time to start!)
Sounds like you have really embraced the lifestyle and are doing great with it. I hope for continued success for you.
Best,
melissa
Thanks for checking in on me. I really appreciate that!
I had a rough week - My birthday was Tuesday but it seems I celebrated a bit every day last week. So, While I don't remember failing everyday, I gave myself reds for the week - except for on my birthday because I did plan ahead for a Special day that day.
My weight loss has been so slow, and I have been discouraged. The scale numbers aren't moving much in either direction (so that is good in a way) but my clothes do feel better than when I started. My cousin and my fiancee have both told me that I look like I have lost weight recently - again a good thing. I am basically comfortable with myself (5'3", 152.2 lbs) - other than my flabby arms which I want to tone up before I put on that wedding dress. But that will require strength training and I am, well, a bit lazy about exercise. So I need to focus on toning up. (I feel like I type that on these boards often but don't seem to follow through on it at all. Time to start!)
Sounds like you have really embraced the lifestyle and are doing great with it. I hope for continued success for you.
Best,
melissa
mel1974c,
Blueskighs observed that people tend to drop out because of disappointment at slow weight loss, and so I decided to go down to one S Day on the weekend (Sunday) when I didn't make this week's goal of one pound loss on average since the start of the diet.
My birthday is this week, and I'm hoping I manage OK through the week. This diet definitely takes some adjustment.
Please do stay in touch. It can be tough to accept that you didn't do as you had planned.
Kathleen
Blueskighs observed that people tend to drop out because of disappointment at slow weight loss, and so I decided to go down to one S Day on the weekend (Sunday) when I didn't make this week's goal of one pound loss on average since the start of the diet.
My birthday is this week, and I'm hoping I manage OK through the week. This diet definitely takes some adjustment.
Please do stay in touch. It can be tough to accept that you didn't do as you had planned.
Kathleen
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blueskighs
- Posts: 1787
- Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2008 4:11 am
- Location: California
Kathleen,Blueskighs observed that people tend to drop out because of disappointment at slow weight loss, and so I decided to go down to one S Day on the weekend (Sunday) when I didn't make this week's goal of one pound loss on average since the start of the diet.
did just want to clarify that my perception of people being disappointed with slower weight loss didn't mean that we need to hurry our weight loss along, I think the comment I was making was more that it is apparently difficult for us to be patient with ourselves while we go through this process.
When I started NO S I thought two S days a week was entirely too much and CERTAINLY I was NOT going to take any NWS days, but what I have found that OVER TIME, those two S days every week and the floating NWS days are the perfect amount to elminate what you have so astutely posted as "diet backlash".
The thought of reducing S days to once a week crossed my mind at one point but for me it would lend itself too easily to "last supper" eating, something as a restricter-dieter, binger I am all too familiar with. For me that extra S day ... two a week minimum, handily eliminates the "last supper" eating frenzy and justification that goes along with it.
Blueskighs
www.nosdiet.blogspot.com Where I blog daily about my No S journey
Blueskighs,
Thanks for your comment. I hesitated about dropping one of the weekend S Days because I do think that there would be more pressure on me to make sure the one remaining S Day was worth it! In other words, lots and lots of food - "Last Supper Eating."
The reason why I did had more to do with my personal situation which is that Saturday is more of a chore day and I have a tendency to eat as a way to procrastinate.
Yes, I agree with you that it is important to be patient in losing weight. It is really, really hard to be patient. I'm still trying to figure out a good approach. What I have done is set a goal of 1 pound per week until Christmas and then 1/2 pound per week after that. Even that goal, which doesn't seem very aggressive given shows like The Biggest Loser, may be too aggressive for this diet. "Slow and steady wins the race."
I'm thinking about just weighing myself once per week, but -- again -- all I know is that I haven't quite hit what will work for me in the long run. The basic idea of The No S Diet, I think, is sound, but I am tweaking away at it to find what would be ideal for me in the long run.
It's great to read your posts because this diet has clearly worked for you and so your insights are very valuable. I have tried to figure out why you succeeded and others possibly dropped out. What stands out in my mind is that you really relish those S Days.
Do you have any thoughts on what sets those who succeed apart from those who fail? Thanks.
Kathleen
Thanks for your comment. I hesitated about dropping one of the weekend S Days because I do think that there would be more pressure on me to make sure the one remaining S Day was worth it! In other words, lots and lots of food - "Last Supper Eating."
The reason why I did had more to do with my personal situation which is that Saturday is more of a chore day and I have a tendency to eat as a way to procrastinate.
Yes, I agree with you that it is important to be patient in losing weight. It is really, really hard to be patient. I'm still trying to figure out a good approach. What I have done is set a goal of 1 pound per week until Christmas and then 1/2 pound per week after that. Even that goal, which doesn't seem very aggressive given shows like The Biggest Loser, may be too aggressive for this diet. "Slow and steady wins the race."
I'm thinking about just weighing myself once per week, but -- again -- all I know is that I haven't quite hit what will work for me in the long run. The basic idea of The No S Diet, I think, is sound, but I am tweaking away at it to find what would be ideal for me in the long run.
It's great to read your posts because this diet has clearly worked for you and so your insights are very valuable. I have tried to figure out why you succeeded and others possibly dropped out. What stands out in my mind is that you really relish those S Days.
Do you have any thoughts on what sets those who succeed apart from those who fail? Thanks.
Kathleen
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blueskighs
- Posts: 1787
- Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2008 4:11 am
- Location: California
hmmm... why do people succeed?
Most likely DESPERATION
I would say that is the root of my success,
Blueskighs
Most likely DESPERATION
I would say that is the root of my success,
Blueskighs
www.nosdiet.blogspot.com Where I blog daily about my No S journey
-
blueskighs
- Posts: 1787
- Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2008 4:11 am
- Location: California
well Kathleen,
i suspect if you are like me and you believe that nothing else will work for you and you beleive this will ... if you keep those N days green by limiting food intake on those days to three one plate/bowl meals .... and you just keep doing that ... no matter what ...
it will work for you ...
I am certain,
but maybe the desperation is just the necessary ingredient to be fully committed ... for it is SIMPLE but not necessarily ALWAYS easy
Blueskighs
i suspect if you are like me and you believe that nothing else will work for you and you beleive this will ... if you keep those N days green by limiting food intake on those days to three one plate/bowl meals .... and you just keep doing that ... no matter what ...
it will work for you ...
I am certain,
but maybe the desperation is just the necessary ingredient to be fully committed ... for it is SIMPLE but not necessarily ALWAYS easy
Blueskighs
www.nosdiet.blogspot.com Where I blog daily about my No S journey
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gratefuldeb67
- Posts: 6256
- Joined: Thu Apr 21, 2005 9:26 pm
- Location: Great Neck, NY
Hi Kathleen, hope it's going well for you these days..
I wanted to add my two cents about the success factor..
I believe that the thing that is required to succeed is simply sticking to it, through the ups and downs and *never* giving up.
Also, from trying very hard to stay positive at all costs and not ruminating on negative body images or stuff like that.
I think, all joking aside, that desperation is only the factor that gets you to break the cycle initially.. That fed up feeling.. But long term, it's a negative motivator and the true success comes from hard work, self respect and self love.
Continued best wishes to you.
Debs
I wanted to add my two cents about the success factor..
I believe that the thing that is required to succeed is simply sticking to it, through the ups and downs and *never* giving up.
Also, from trying very hard to stay positive at all costs and not ruminating on negative body images or stuff like that.
I think, all joking aside, that desperation is only the factor that gets you to break the cycle initially.. That fed up feeling.. But long term, it's a negative motivator and the true success comes from hard work, self respect and self love.
Continued best wishes to you.
DebsThere is no Wisdom greater than Kindness
Debs,
Thank you for your thoughts. I have tweaked this diet to try to make it work better for me and so that my weight would drop faster, and I've continued the diet obsession which I began last August when I decided that, as long as I couldn't work, I would focus on weight loss.
Now, with a new job starting on Monday, I realized that I made a mistake in going from Saturday and Sunday as S Days to just Sundays as S Days. I decided to reset my expectations for weight loss to be one half pound of weight loss per week, which I think will be encouraging for me. For example, my weight today is 208.6, and my goal is to be 211.5 by Monday! I think I can make it!
There's a favorite saying of my father's: "Not failure, but low aim, is crime." It may seem like a crime to have such low aim of one half pound of weight loss per week. What I have learned over years and years of trying to lose weight is that diets tend to promote weight gain. This is a diet where weight loss, however slow, does seem acheiveable because, at base, the diet is respectful of the body's need to feed itself. The S Day is almost a pressure valve that allows N Day food restriction. Without S Days, there is the uncontrollable binge.
I did keep my idea of accumulating S Days at a rate of two per month to be used whenever I want. Tomorrow is my 50th birthday, and I'll be having lunch with my sister in law. My husband is on a business trip until 9 tomorrow night. I would like to avoid using an S Day for tomorrow; however, my sister in law is a terrific cook and may have prepared some special treat for my birthday. If she does, I will want to be polite and eat it. Also, she is a terrific cook so, if she prepared something, it's worth an S Day to eat! The flexibility I have in using S Days on the spur of the moment is useful in situations like these.
I'm a believer in this diet! Now I just need to be patient and to put this diet on autopilot!
Kathleen
Thank you for your thoughts. I have tweaked this diet to try to make it work better for me and so that my weight would drop faster, and I've continued the diet obsession which I began last August when I decided that, as long as I couldn't work, I would focus on weight loss.
Now, with a new job starting on Monday, I realized that I made a mistake in going from Saturday and Sunday as S Days to just Sundays as S Days. I decided to reset my expectations for weight loss to be one half pound of weight loss per week, which I think will be encouraging for me. For example, my weight today is 208.6, and my goal is to be 211.5 by Monday! I think I can make it!
There's a favorite saying of my father's: "Not failure, but low aim, is crime." It may seem like a crime to have such low aim of one half pound of weight loss per week. What I have learned over years and years of trying to lose weight is that diets tend to promote weight gain. This is a diet where weight loss, however slow, does seem acheiveable because, at base, the diet is respectful of the body's need to feed itself. The S Day is almost a pressure valve that allows N Day food restriction. Without S Days, there is the uncontrollable binge.
I did keep my idea of accumulating S Days at a rate of two per month to be used whenever I want. Tomorrow is my 50th birthday, and I'll be having lunch with my sister in law. My husband is on a business trip until 9 tomorrow night. I would like to avoid using an S Day for tomorrow; however, my sister in law is a terrific cook and may have prepared some special treat for my birthday. If she does, I will want to be polite and eat it. Also, she is a terrific cook so, if she prepared something, it's worth an S Day to eat! The flexibility I have in using S Days on the spur of the moment is useful in situations like these.
I'm a believer in this diet! Now I just need to be patient and to put this diet on autopilot!
Kathleen
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gratefuldeb67
- Posts: 6256
- Joined: Thu Apr 21, 2005 9:26 pm
- Location: Great Neck, NY
Kathleen, please!!! Enjoy your Birthday and don't make it an N day!!
Hahah
Of all days I'd say a Birthday, no less your 50th qualifies as special!!
And to me, half a pound a week doesn't sound like "low expectations"..
Wishing you success and congratulations on your new job
Debs
Hahah
Of all days I'd say a Birthday, no less your 50th qualifies as special!!
And to me, half a pound a week doesn't sound like "low expectations"..
Wishing you success and congratulations on your new job
DebsThere is no Wisdom greater than Kindness
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blueskighs
- Posts: 1787
- Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2008 4:11 am
- Location: California
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
HAPPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR KATHLEEN
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
AND MANY MORE .....
have a good one,
Blueskighs
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
HAPPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR KATHLEEN
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU
AND MANY MORE .....
have a good one,
Blueskighs
www.nosdiet.blogspot.com Where I blog daily about my No S journey
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gratefuldeb67
- Posts: 6256
- Joined: Thu Apr 21, 2005 9:26 pm
- Location: Great Neck, NY
Blueskighs,
Thanks for the birthday wishes! I expect to be about 20 pounds lighter this time next year!
Kathleen
Debs,
I am enjoying my birthday. I went to Trader Joe's and got a chocolate chocolate cake. My husband is out of town until tonight, so I thought I'd wait until the weekend for a cake. I decided two cakes were in order!
Kathleen
Thanks for the birthday wishes! I expect to be about 20 pounds lighter this time next year!
Kathleen
Debs,
I am enjoying my birthday. I went to Trader Joe's and got a chocolate chocolate cake. My husband is out of town until tonight, so I thought I'd wait until the weekend for a cake. I decided two cakes were in order!
Kathleen
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howfunisthat
- Posts: 605
- Joined: Mon Jul 28, 2008 12:35 am
- Location: New York
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blueskighs
- Posts: 1787
- Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2008 4:11 am
- Location: California
Sounds lovely!I thoroughly enjoyed two pieces of cake tonight at a belated party with my family.
Blueskighs
www.nosdiet.blogspot.com Where I blog daily about my No S journey
blueskighs,
It was a lovely night. All four of us who went to dinner (my brother in law, his wife, my husband, and myself) have weight problems. We chatted a little about this diet, and I told them I was quite happy to settle for approximately a two pound per month weight loss in exchange for a minimal amount of effort and little to no pain.
My sister in law had told me about this diet but had decided to follow a high protein diet instead. Not me! I want to eat what I want to eat! On this diet, what I have found is that there is a definite limit to how much I want to eat and how high a percent of my eating is of sweets. Tonight, I could have had caramel-dipped apples. Even though I won't be able to have caramel dip for five days, I wasn't interested. I bought the Haralson apples, but I just couldn't stomach the idea of caramel dip. Our children were at a Holloween party on Friday, and I had my share of their candy (with their permission). I have topped out on sweets! It will almost be a relief to return to N Day guidelines.
My adorable little 9 year old, Katie, once said what I consider to be the most honest words that could come out of a child's mouth. Three years ago, when she was in first grade, her teacher called me about two weeks into the school year to say she didn't think Katie would make it through first grade because she wasn't doing her morning work. I asked her what was going on, and Katie's reply was, "Mom, I just want to do what I want to do." Doesn't she speak for everyone? Katie did make it through first grade, and she's done just fine since then. All she needed was some rewards. On the morning after I talked with her teacher, I bribed her with an ice cream cone if she got her work that morning, and she went off to school saying, "I think I can. I think I can. I think I can." A few weeks later, she got her own pumpkin to carve. She got one more reward, and I don't even remember what it was, but she was set.
With this diet, we get a guaranteed reward of two days of "unconditional permission to eat" every week, and we can still watch the numbers on the scale slide downward! How terrific!
I am the only one in my family of origin with a weight problem, but everyone in my husband's family has a weight problem. It will be interesting to see when they notice that I've lost weight. That will be a great day!
Kathleen
It was a lovely night. All four of us who went to dinner (my brother in law, his wife, my husband, and myself) have weight problems. We chatted a little about this diet, and I told them I was quite happy to settle for approximately a two pound per month weight loss in exchange for a minimal amount of effort and little to no pain.
My sister in law had told me about this diet but had decided to follow a high protein diet instead. Not me! I want to eat what I want to eat! On this diet, what I have found is that there is a definite limit to how much I want to eat and how high a percent of my eating is of sweets. Tonight, I could have had caramel-dipped apples. Even though I won't be able to have caramel dip for five days, I wasn't interested. I bought the Haralson apples, but I just couldn't stomach the idea of caramel dip. Our children were at a Holloween party on Friday, and I had my share of their candy (with their permission). I have topped out on sweets! It will almost be a relief to return to N Day guidelines.
My adorable little 9 year old, Katie, once said what I consider to be the most honest words that could come out of a child's mouth. Three years ago, when she was in first grade, her teacher called me about two weeks into the school year to say she didn't think Katie would make it through first grade because she wasn't doing her morning work. I asked her what was going on, and Katie's reply was, "Mom, I just want to do what I want to do." Doesn't she speak for everyone? Katie did make it through first grade, and she's done just fine since then. All she needed was some rewards. On the morning after I talked with her teacher, I bribed her with an ice cream cone if she got her work that morning, and she went off to school saying, "I think I can. I think I can. I think I can." A few weeks later, she got her own pumpkin to carve. She got one more reward, and I don't even remember what it was, but she was set.
With this diet, we get a guaranteed reward of two days of "unconditional permission to eat" every week, and we can still watch the numbers on the scale slide downward! How terrific!
I am the only one in my family of origin with a weight problem, but everyone in my husband's family has a weight problem. It will be interesting to see when they notice that I've lost weight. That will be a great day!
Kathleen
I'm off to work in just an hour, so now begins the real test of this diet. It's going on autopilot! I won't have much time to pay attention to it. Either it works with minimal effort, or I try something else. I will follow this diet until the summer (when I won't be working because the kids will be home for summer vacation) and then evaluate.
Kathleen
Kathleen
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gratefuldeb67
- Posts: 6256
- Joined: Thu Apr 21, 2005 9:26 pm
- Location: Great Neck, NY
Kathleen, good luck with your job.
I'm sure you will find this not only effective in helping to slowly lose weight, but such a comfort because it is so simple.
The autopilot thing will take some time so don't expect that immediately, or you may be already setting yourself up for some disappointment and I don't wanna see you give up.
It took me a long time to get comfortable with certain rules the first year or so, but I just kept on saying whatever appropriate "No" (fill in the S,,, sweets, snacks, seconds) each time I was up against one. Now most days, most of the rules are pretty automatic but occasionally, I still have to repeat one of the rules.. But considering it's only two words you have to say to yourself, it's really not a big commitment of mental or spiritual energy, and *believe* me when I tell you that each time you say no during N days it's just like Reinhard describes.. It's like doing fifty Spiritual pushups!
No other diet will do this for you and none of them are as enjoyable and as you said in the past, hassle free.
This is a monumental plus to NoS you won't find elsewhere, and that's what makes it maintainable.
Let us know how it goes!
Debs
I'm sure you will find this not only effective in helping to slowly lose weight, but such a comfort because it is so simple.
The autopilot thing will take some time so don't expect that immediately, or you may be already setting yourself up for some disappointment and I don't wanna see you give up.
It took me a long time to get comfortable with certain rules the first year or so, but I just kept on saying whatever appropriate "No" (fill in the S,,, sweets, snacks, seconds) each time I was up against one. Now most days, most of the rules are pretty automatic but occasionally, I still have to repeat one of the rules.. But considering it's only two words you have to say to yourself, it's really not a big commitment of mental or spiritual energy, and *believe* me when I tell you that each time you say no during N days it's just like Reinhard describes.. It's like doing fifty Spiritual pushups!
No other diet will do this for you and none of them are as enjoyable and as you said in the past, hassle free.
This is a monumental plus to NoS you won't find elsewhere, and that's what makes it maintainable.
Let us know how it goes!
DebsThere is no Wisdom greater than Kindness
Debs,
The day went fine. I didn't think about food at all. I did think about the puppy stuck in her kennel from 8 AM until 2 PM! This diet has already gotten fairly automatic. The hardest part seems to be dealing with S Days, since I still eat so much that I am uncomfortably full. My body is giving me feedback, and eventually I won't eat so much just because I can!
Kathleen
The day went fine. I didn't think about food at all. I did think about the puppy stuck in her kennel from 8 AM until 2 PM! This diet has already gotten fairly automatic. The hardest part seems to be dealing with S Days, since I still eat so much that I am uncomfortably full. My body is giving me feedback, and eventually I won't eat so much just because I can!
Kathleen
Hi Kathleen,
Just read through your posts - what a lot of insights! I totally, totally agree about No-S giving permission to ENJOY food. What a gift!
Happy belated birthday, and best wishes for your continued success.
KCCC
PS - I did Weight Watchers at one point, and one of their saner guidelines was to focus on weight in 10% increments. So, if you started at 215, your first 10% would be 21.5 pounds. Then you set your next one, which is smaller, of course, and continue. You don't set your final goal until the 10% loss will put you in "healthy BMI range." And you celebrate every 10% goal achieved. It makes sense, because a loss of 10% results in real HEALTH benefits, and is noticeable... and is not so daunting as "all of it."
Just a thought - use what you can, let the rest go by.
Just read through your posts - what a lot of insights! I totally, totally agree about No-S giving permission to ENJOY food. What a gift!
Happy belated birthday, and best wishes for your continued success.
KCCC
PS - I did Weight Watchers at one point, and one of their saner guidelines was to focus on weight in 10% increments. So, if you started at 215, your first 10% would be 21.5 pounds. Then you set your next one, which is smaller, of course, and continue. You don't set your final goal until the 10% loss will put you in "healthy BMI range." And you celebrate every 10% goal achieved.
It makes sense, because a loss of 10% results in real HEALTH benefits, and is noticeable... and is not so daunting as "all of it." Just a thought - use what you can, let the rest go by.
KCCC,
Thanks for the idea about focusing on losing 10% of your weight. I like that idea!
Two years ago, I worked closely with a woman who had lost 40 pounds on Weight Watchers -- twice. She was working on her third try at losing the same 40 pounds. I really admired her iron will.
Who says overweight people have no willpower? I think that the obese are the ones who keep battling their own body's will to survive. With this diet, there is no battle like that. I'm finding it easier and easier to follow this diet. Now what I need to do is keep my weight loss goals modest and achievable.
I'll be happy when I fall below 205 pounds, which is the weight I was when I started the Peanut Cluster Diet on 12/15/07. That's my first real goalpost.
Then it can be 200 pounds.
Then it can be 21.5 pounds lost!
There's just a lot of joy in following this diet -- and, I can focus on a new job!
Kathleen.
Thanks for the idea about focusing on losing 10% of your weight. I like that idea!
Two years ago, I worked closely with a woman who had lost 40 pounds on Weight Watchers -- twice. She was working on her third try at losing the same 40 pounds. I really admired her iron will.
Who says overweight people have no willpower? I think that the obese are the ones who keep battling their own body's will to survive. With this diet, there is no battle like that. I'm finding it easier and easier to follow this diet. Now what I need to do is keep my weight loss goals modest and achievable.
I'll be happy when I fall below 205 pounds, which is the weight I was when I started the Peanut Cluster Diet on 12/15/07. That's my first real goalpost.
Then it can be 200 pounds.
Then it can be 21.5 pounds lost!
There's just a lot of joy in following this diet -- and, I can focus on a new job!
Kathleen.
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howfunisthat
- Posts: 605
- Joined: Mon Jul 28, 2008 12:35 am
- Location: New York
Hi Kathleen....just wanted to pop in and say, "You're doing great!" What a wonderful few weeks you've had.
How's your new job going? I hope it's a great position for you....and there's always that book to write when you get the opportunity!
Take care & have a great week...
janie
How's your new job going? I hope it's a great position for you....and there's always that book to write when you get the opportunity!
Take care & have a great week...
janie
Nothing worthwhile is ever easy...
Janie,
It's too soon to tell how the job will work out, but the set-up is ideal for me, and the hiring manager apparently went to some lengths to get approved a position that allows for a part time contractor. We have four children ages 7 - 14. I needed a position that would allow flexibility so that I could be home with them if they are sick or on school vacation, and I wanted to be able to pick them up after school and even continue volunteering for parent-led reading groups in 4th grade.
The company is involved in healthcare financing, which absolutely fascinated me, especially after my prolonged contact with the Mayo Clinic. I did some research over the summer on this topic, and there is a lot of effort -- and experiments going on -- to make healthcare affordable but also to move the public towards acceptance of the idea that part of the burden of healthcare costs needs to be shouldered by the patient. What amazes me is no one seems to look at the fact that the quality of healthcare is part of the reason why the cost has increased so much. My very unusual diagnosis was a form of cancer in my forehead that doesn't metastize so it won't kill you, but it could have spread to my nose, my eyes, my brain... My Mayo doctor thinks there is close to nil chance that I'll have a recurrence.
What is the result of diagnosis and treatment for me? Whether bangs are in style or not, I'm wearing them! I consider myself very, very lucky to live in this country and have access to the healthcare provided here. What I told my youngest is that I have an ugly forehead but I can still read "Green Eggs and Ham" with her.
My job is writing. Some people must write, and I'm one of them!
By the way, I am also stunned, literally stunned, by the effort put into finding a way to help people overcome obesity. Some of the smartest people in the country are working on this issue from all sorts of different angles -- trying to develop drugs, trying to change laws about what can be put in food, developing new diagnosis codes for mental disorders and ways to treat those new disorders, etc. As my sister in law and I were discussing on Saturday, it's funny that Reinhard -- who is a computer guy during the day -- has come up with something that addresses the dreaded "diet backlash" problem. I really believe he's solved the core problem, which is that the body reacts as if it is starving when it is on a diet, and the result is binge eating. As one of the authors of Intuitive Eating has put it, "dieting promotes weight gain." I think Reinhard hit a bulls-eye in addressing the problem of obesity. Now I just have to be patient, and see if I'm right in thinking he figured out the formula for easy but slow weight loss that is permanent and virtually effortless to maintain.
Kathleen
It's too soon to tell how the job will work out, but the set-up is ideal for me, and the hiring manager apparently went to some lengths to get approved a position that allows for a part time contractor. We have four children ages 7 - 14. I needed a position that would allow flexibility so that I could be home with them if they are sick or on school vacation, and I wanted to be able to pick them up after school and even continue volunteering for parent-led reading groups in 4th grade.
The company is involved in healthcare financing, which absolutely fascinated me, especially after my prolonged contact with the Mayo Clinic. I did some research over the summer on this topic, and there is a lot of effort -- and experiments going on -- to make healthcare affordable but also to move the public towards acceptance of the idea that part of the burden of healthcare costs needs to be shouldered by the patient. What amazes me is no one seems to look at the fact that the quality of healthcare is part of the reason why the cost has increased so much. My very unusual diagnosis was a form of cancer in my forehead that doesn't metastize so it won't kill you, but it could have spread to my nose, my eyes, my brain... My Mayo doctor thinks there is close to nil chance that I'll have a recurrence.
What is the result of diagnosis and treatment for me? Whether bangs are in style or not, I'm wearing them! I consider myself very, very lucky to live in this country and have access to the healthcare provided here. What I told my youngest is that I have an ugly forehead but I can still read "Green Eggs and Ham" with her.
My job is writing. Some people must write, and I'm one of them!
By the way, I am also stunned, literally stunned, by the effort put into finding a way to help people overcome obesity. Some of the smartest people in the country are working on this issue from all sorts of different angles -- trying to develop drugs, trying to change laws about what can be put in food, developing new diagnosis codes for mental disorders and ways to treat those new disorders, etc. As my sister in law and I were discussing on Saturday, it's funny that Reinhard -- who is a computer guy during the day -- has come up with something that addresses the dreaded "diet backlash" problem. I really believe he's solved the core problem, which is that the body reacts as if it is starving when it is on a diet, and the result is binge eating. As one of the authors of Intuitive Eating has put it, "dieting promotes weight gain." I think Reinhard hit a bulls-eye in addressing the problem of obesity. Now I just have to be patient, and see if I'm right in thinking he figured out the formula for easy but slow weight loss that is permanent and virtually effortless to maintain.
Kathleen
Last edited by Kathleen on Mon Mar 30, 2009 12:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
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blueskighs
- Posts: 1787
- Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2008 4:11 am
- Location: California
ABSOLUTELY!There's just a lot of joy in following this diet --
Blueskighs
www.nosdiet.blogspot.com Where I blog daily about my No S journey
Blueskighs,
I weighed 207.2 today. It is difficult to be patient when you have so much weight to lose. I'm 5 ' 6" tall and have very small bones. I'm not sure how much I should weigh now that I'm in my 50s, but I would guess that I would be most comfortable at around 140 pounds. I look in the mirror and just cannot believe that I dieted my way up to this weight.
Part of the joy of following this diet is the confidence I have that I will never, ever again see 210 pounds on the scale. Slowly but surely, the weight will come off and stay off.
Part of the difficulty in following this diet is that, at a rate of about 2 pounds per month, I'll be at 140 pounds in about 33 months -- almost 3 years. My 4th grader will be graduating from 6th grade in 2 years and 7 months, or about 31 months. What I need to picture in my mind is that I am very likely to be through the weight loss process at that point and very pleased with my weight.
Kathleen
I weighed 207.2 today. It is difficult to be patient when you have so much weight to lose. I'm 5 ' 6" tall and have very small bones. I'm not sure how much I should weigh now that I'm in my 50s, but I would guess that I would be most comfortable at around 140 pounds. I look in the mirror and just cannot believe that I dieted my way up to this weight.
Part of the joy of following this diet is the confidence I have that I will never, ever again see 210 pounds on the scale. Slowly but surely, the weight will come off and stay off.
Part of the difficulty in following this diet is that, at a rate of about 2 pounds per month, I'll be at 140 pounds in about 33 months -- almost 3 years. My 4th grader will be graduating from 6th grade in 2 years and 7 months, or about 31 months. What I need to picture in my mind is that I am very likely to be through the weight loss process at that point and very pleased with my weight.
Kathleen
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howfunisthat
- Posts: 605
- Joined: Mon Jul 28, 2008 12:35 am
- Location: New York
Kathleen....
I'm so glad you wrote up your kids' conversation....I LOVED it! We could have had that conversation in our car too! It was brilliant.
I'd love to read their conversation when they finally come to the conclusion that this is an absolutely "S"uccessful way of life!
Have a great day Kathleen...janie
I'm so glad you wrote up your kids' conversation....I LOVED it! We could have had that conversation in our car too! It was brilliant.
I'd love to read their conversation when they finally come to the conclusion that this is an absolutely "S"uccessful way of life!
Have a great day Kathleen...janie
Nothing worthwhile is ever easy...
Kathleen, hope your job goes well!Kathleen wrote:I'm off to work in just an hour, so now begins the real test of this diet. It's going on autopilot! I won't have much time to pay attention to it. Either it works with minimal effort, or I try something else. I will follow this diet until the summer (when I won't be working because the kids will be home for summer vacation) and then evaluate.
Kathleen
I actually find that No-S is much EASIER when I'm at work. I have lots of other things to think about and do! The structure of work goes well with No-S structure for me.
As long as I regard any snacks set out in the break room as "decoration" instead of food, I'm good.
The only potential issue is if you have a "food-pusher" co-worker, but even that can be handled with polite consistency.
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blueskighs
- Posts: 1787
- Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2008 4:11 am
- Location: California
Kathleen,
I hear what you are saying about the slowness of the weightloss ... 33 months does sound like a long time, at the same time you make a good point ... you "dieted" your're way up to where you are now. Dieting is really what got me setup for BED (binge eating disorder) when I was gaining weight through puberty.
Personally, I REALLY DO like the idea of having this whole weight gain/weight loss cycle BEHIND me, and I honestly don't see any other way to do it than STOP TRADITIONAL DIETS, stay on NO S, until the HABITS just become completely second nature.
The thought of not ever having to deal with WEIGHT GAIN again just is too fabulous for words.
The one nice thing about slow weight loss is you get to psychologically and emotionally integrate it is you go. I can't help but think from the posts on the boards by people who leave and come back ... its NO S or simply MORE OF THE SAME!
AND JUST THINK when you are looking BEHIND YOU from three years from now and how incredible THAT will be ... like having earned a bachelor's degree in permananent and sustainable weight loss! YOO HOO!
Blueskighs
I hear what you are saying about the slowness of the weightloss ... 33 months does sound like a long time, at the same time you make a good point ... you "dieted" your're way up to where you are now. Dieting is really what got me setup for BED (binge eating disorder) when I was gaining weight through puberty.
Personally, I REALLY DO like the idea of having this whole weight gain/weight loss cycle BEHIND me, and I honestly don't see any other way to do it than STOP TRADITIONAL DIETS, stay on NO S, until the HABITS just become completely second nature.
The thought of not ever having to deal with WEIGHT GAIN again just is too fabulous for words.
The one nice thing about slow weight loss is you get to psychologically and emotionally integrate it is you go. I can't help but think from the posts on the boards by people who leave and come back ... its NO S or simply MORE OF THE SAME!
AND JUST THINK when you are looking BEHIND YOU from three years from now and how incredible THAT will be ... like having earned a bachelor's degree in permananent and sustainable weight loss! YOO HOO!
Blueskighs
www.nosdiet.blogspot.com Where I blog daily about my No S journey
It's sad the terrible impact of excess weight. I don't want to be overweight one more minute, but I accept that this diet means slow but permanent weight loss. I need to live in the meantime, even if I am obese. Last night, I went to a store and bought a size 18 pair of pants. They were tight, but at least they fit. I spent all summer in one pair of size 18 pants from Talbots (the biggest size 18 of any I have tried), and I was just devastated when the dog chewed on my pants and made a hole in them. I continued to wear them because I couldn't fit into anything else!
I have in my mind a picture of the past -- of discovering that the dog had chewed on my pants while I was wearing them and distracted from blogging on the computer about my weight. I had nothing else to wear, so I wore pants with a hole chewed in the pant legs.
I also have in my mind a picture of the future -- of being at my daughter's sixth grade graduation and not feeling self-conscious. The elementary school is associiated with the church we attend, so we are part of a community of people who know each other well. I care about how other people in that community view me, and I am ashamed that my son entered kindergarten when I weighed about 155 and graduated from 6th grade when I weighed about 215. Katie entered kindergarten when I weighed about 190, and I'd like to be at least 50 pounds lighter when she graduates.
The year she finishes at the elementary school is the same year that my oldest daughter graduates from high school, and she is the one child with a weight problem. I hope that she witnesses my gradual but permanent weight loss. This observation that she would make of how I act and how I feel as I lose weight would be a gift greater than a college education. She has terrible eating habits from modeling my eating habits, and so I hope that she can gradually change how she eats from seeing what I am doing.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, is more motivating than to see your child going down the path you wish you had not taken.
Kathleen
PS. I'll definitely report more diet conversations between my two youngest children -- especially as they start to recognize success! We had a bet how much Mom would lose between the end of the Hunger Satisfaction Diet on August 28, 2008 (a weight of 212) and Christmas Day. The child who guessed the most weight loss was my 7 year old, and she guessed 4 pounds. As of today, I've lost 4.8 pounds, so she's in the lead to win $20. I am deliberately involving them in watching my weight because I want them to have some fun as they learn a serious lesson about how to lose weight and maintain a healthy weight.
I have in my mind a picture of the past -- of discovering that the dog had chewed on my pants while I was wearing them and distracted from blogging on the computer about my weight. I had nothing else to wear, so I wore pants with a hole chewed in the pant legs.
I also have in my mind a picture of the future -- of being at my daughter's sixth grade graduation and not feeling self-conscious. The elementary school is associiated with the church we attend, so we are part of a community of people who know each other well. I care about how other people in that community view me, and I am ashamed that my son entered kindergarten when I weighed about 155 and graduated from 6th grade when I weighed about 215. Katie entered kindergarten when I weighed about 190, and I'd like to be at least 50 pounds lighter when she graduates.
The year she finishes at the elementary school is the same year that my oldest daughter graduates from high school, and she is the one child with a weight problem. I hope that she witnesses my gradual but permanent weight loss. This observation that she would make of how I act and how I feel as I lose weight would be a gift greater than a college education. She has terrible eating habits from modeling my eating habits, and so I hope that she can gradually change how she eats from seeing what I am doing.
Nothing, and I mean nothing, is more motivating than to see your child going down the path you wish you had not taken.
Kathleen
PS. I'll definitely report more diet conversations between my two youngest children -- especially as they start to recognize success! We had a bet how much Mom would lose between the end of the Hunger Satisfaction Diet on August 28, 2008 (a weight of 212) and Christmas Day. The child who guessed the most weight loss was my 7 year old, and she guessed 4 pounds. As of today, I've lost 4.8 pounds, so she's in the lead to win $20. I am deliberately involving them in watching my weight because I want them to have some fun as they learn a serious lesson about how to lose weight and maintain a healthy weight.
My 14 year old daughter just told me that she decided to go on the No S Diet or, as she calls it, the Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions! She's going to have Fridays and Saturdays as S Days with two Special Days per month. She, more than anyone else or anything else, has been my motivation to lose weight. I don't want her to travel the path I have traveled with weight loss. I am just thrilled!!!
Kathleen
Kathleen
Last edited by Kathleen on Sat Nov 01, 2008 12:25 am, edited 4 times in total.
DAY 55 - 11/1/08: SATURDAY (4)
DAY 56 - 11/2/08: SUNDAY (4) (207.2)
DAY 57 - 11/3/08: SUCCESS (4) (Goal is 211.0) 209.4
DAY 58 - 11/4/08: SUCCESS (4) 208.0
DAY 59 - 11/5/08: SUCCESS (4) 207.6
DAY 60 - 11/6/08: SUCCESS (4) 206.8
Day 61 - 11/7/08: SUCCESS (4) 206.4
DAY 62 - 11/8/08: SATURDAY (4) 206.6
DAY 63 - 11/9/08: SUNDAY (4) 209.2
DAY 64 - 11/10/08: SUCCESS (4) 209.2
DAY 65 - 11/11/08: SUCCESS (4) 207.0
DAY 66 - 11/12/08: SUCCESS (4) 207.6
DAY 67 - 11/13/08: SUCCESS (4) 207.6
Day 68 - 11/14/08: SUCCESS (4) 207.0
DAY 69 - 11/15/08: SATURDAY 206.8
DAY 70 - 11/16/08: SUNDAY 209.4
DAY 71 - 11/17/08: SUCCESS (4) 210.6
DAY 72 - 11/18/08: SUCCESS (4) 208.6
Day 73 - 11/19/08: SUCCESS (4) 208.0
Day 74 - 11/20/08: SUCCESS (4) 206.6
Day 75 - 11/21/08: SUCCESS (4) 207.2
DAY 76 - 11/22/08: SATURDAY (4) 205.0
DAY 77 - 11/23/08: SUNDAY (4)
DAY 78 - 11/24/08: SUCCESS (4)
Day 79 - 11/25/08: SPECIAL DAY (3) - CELEBRATE 10 POUND WEIGHT LOSS
Day 80 - 11/26/08: SUCCESS (3)
Day 81 - 11/27/08: SUCCESS (3) - THANKSGIVING DAY (I MADE IT AN N DAY)
Day 82 - 11/28/08: SUCCESS (3)
Day 83 - 11/29/08: SATURDAY (3)
Day 84 - 11/30/08: SUNDAY (3)
Day 55: I'm stuffed. I got up at 1 AM and had almost an entire bucket of caramel corn (about 1,000 calories). In the morning, I had a lot of Holloween candy. Allowing myself as much as I want on the weekends is what gives me the ability to restrict during the week. My size 18 jeans are still really tight, but they definitely don't feel as tight as they have been. I'm feeling very good about this diet!
Day 56: I'm getting close to 10 pounds lost. When I reach 205 pounds, I'm going to post my success as a testimonial. Here is what I'll say: "My daughter calls this diet The Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions. I think of it as The Set Point Lowering Diet, but I find her name for this diet to be very charming. On December 15, 2007, at a weight of 205 pounds, I started a diet based on the concept from the book Intuitive Eating called "unconditional permission to eat." The theory behind the diet was that people are obese because they diet and their bodies feel like they are starving so they react to the self-imposed starvation of dieting by bingeing, and this leads to weight gain. The way to end the cycle of dieting and bingeing is to give yourself "unconditional permission to eat". My kids immediately called this diet The Peanut Cluster Diet because I started the diet by eating bags and bags of peanut clusters, a food I had denied myself for 30 years. My weight got up to 214 pounds before I gave up on the diet in June. I then tried an approach that I called the Hunger Satisfaction Diet, which was that had "unconditional permission to eat" but only after my stomach growled. What a dreadful, dreadful diet. I was skipping meals with my family and eating huge amounts of food the second my stomach made a noise. That was my diet through the summer. On September 8, 2008, at a weight of 215 pounds, I started the No S Diet which was also a diet based on the idea that there are times of "unconditional permission to eat" as well as times of restriction. Today is a significant day for me. Today I have lost 10 pounds on this diet. I have wiped out all the weight gain from The Peanut Cluster Diet. My 14 year old daughter, who is probably 25 pounds overweight and has observed years of diet failure on my part, has decided to follow this diet as well. It works. It is also easy. It's not as easy as The Peanut Cluster Diet, but it is easier than any other diet I've been on, and it actually results in weight loss!"
Day 57: I think my body is relieved that it's an N Day! I think that I'm overeating so much on the weekends because I'm used to eat-everything-in-sight when I'm not following dieting rules. It will take time to adjust to the fact that S Days predictably come two days per week, so I don't need to engage in what the authors of Intuitive Eating call "Last Supper" eating.
Day 58: I was up in the night worried about what number on the scale I would face this morning. Although I realize intellectually that this number will fluctuate and that I need to expect a higher number on Monday than I had on Saturday, I am still looking for a number that is always lower than any number I have had previously on this diet. It might be helpful for me to limit how often I step on the scale. I'm just not sure I can stick to any decision at this point, since I am so eager for the weight to come off. I'll have to think about what to do. After alll, the diet is about restricting food intake during the week. It's not about restricting how often you weigh yourself. My concern regarding the scale is that I can be checking back to see that I weighed less than today's weight in the recent past and to draw the conclusion that I have made no progress in the recent past. This constant evaluation of the number on the scale is a waste of time and can increase my impatience. I may try this week just not weighing myself or blogging about my diet until the weekend. I don't want to become someone who constantly talks about her weight and her diet success to the extreme boredom of those around her, and that is what is happening with my family. No one outside my family has yet noticed that I've lost weight, and I've lost so little weight that only my husband and 9 year old daughter can tell.
Day 59: My goal to not weigh myself and to not blog didn't last long. I need to keep to the essential goals of this diet, which is no sweets, no snacks, and no seconds on N Days. Last night, I was grumpy because I didn't eat as much as I wanted. This morning, I compared my weight this morning to my weight of exactly one week ago, and I'm up .4 pound. It was this sort of comparison that I thought would be discouraging, which is why I wanted to avoid weighing myself. Well, it's not going to happen. There is still effort required in following the N Day rules, so I want to see the results. The next best approach for me, I think, is to keep my expectations for weight loss realistic. My goal weight for this week is 211 pounds, and I'm under that.
Day 60: Today, I feel better because I'm under 207 pounds. This diet is working, albeit slowly. Last night, I wasn't particularly hungry. The night before, I was so hungry I was grumpy. I think it is taking time for my body adjust to less food, and I think this diet gives me a way to have my body adjust without a rebellion. I think I just need to stay the course.
Day 61: Yesterday was easy. I was busy. I didn't have time to think about dieting. The diet just went on autopilot. This was in contrast to happens when I'm other diets. The plan falls apart. I don't have time to count or write down or follow specific behavior guidelines, so I just grab everything in sight. In the book Intuitive Eating, the authors state that people who tune out their hunger signals start not to hear them. That is viewed as a bad thing, and what you want to do is tune them in. What I am finding with this diet is that I do tune them out. I eat to satisfaction at set times. I am starting to not even think about food at other times. Two days ago, I had lunch at 2 PM after having had breakfast at 6:30 AM. While I was eating lunch, I realized that I hadn't thought about food at all between breakfast and lunch.
It is now evening, and I am not looking forward to my two S Days. I realized that the reason why is the S is starting to stand for stomach ache!
Day 62: I waited up until midnight and had two cups of Snickers ice cream. It may seem silly to follow this diet, but the overall trend for weight is down. I just have to be patient. Meanwhile, my husband, who has followed the conventional wisdom of "eat less, exercise more", admitted yeterday that he seems to be following The Peanut Cluster Diet. I said nothing, but I think he's right. If you don't allow yourself controlled binges (S Days) when you are restricting food, eventually you'll have the uncontrolled binges that the book Intuitive Eating calls "diet backlash". I prefer my midnight snacks on Saturday at 12:01 AM.
It is now afternoon, and I am having an S Day gone wild. Three Haagen Dazs bars. Several cups of ice cream. An entire bowl of popcorn. Why? I think it may be my body rebelling against the N Day restrictions. Rather than feeling guilty about my eating, I'm curious. I do not intend to limit my eating at all. Somehow, I think that "unconditional permission to eat" at set times is what allows for long-term weight loss that is easy to maintain. I'm going with this theory at any rate. My objective is to put this diet on autopilot so I think I may try to limit my blogging to Sundays. Following this diet's rules is right at the top of my priority list. Below it is being able to exercise three times per week. Way down the list is blogging. I've used blogging to document my efforts so that my children can learn from me if they ever develop weight problems, and I've used blogging to help myself to develop modifications to this diet that will work for me. I think my second objective has been met, and my first objective would be met with a once a week blog.
Life is starting to be complicated and busy for me so that I really should cut back on blogging. I'm working at a job that seems pretty close to ideal, and my son needs some guidance in prioritizing math over Runescape. My husband also is objecting to the time I have spent on the computer, and I appreciate that this diet has taken up plenty of time already. With today's S Day gone wild, I've done little more than eat!
Day 63: Yesterday was definitely an S Day gone wild. I ate and ate and ate. The experience was very much reminiscent of the end of a diet when there was a reaction that seemed uncontrollable. It had a force that was similar in feeling to how I reacted when my brother held me under water when I was 10 years old. The question with this diet is simple: will I be able to lose weight if I simply allow binges on S Days and focus instead on following the 3S guidelines on N Days? I think it's my only shot at losing weight. I've tried for 30 years to control this reaction to food restriction, and it hasn't worked. With this diet, I accept the reaction. It's almost as if this diet has a pressure release that is the controlled binge -- controlled in that it is only permitted on S Days.
I'm not too concerned about this. First of all, I think the weight gain is about as permanent as the weight loss I experienced with the colonoscopy prep in mid-October. Second of all, I have no expectation that this sort of behavior is going to be a significant problem. I have started to associate "stomach ache" with "S Day". I thnk this sort of behavior could recur even with a few years on this diet but it would be very infrequent. Third of all, my objective is to keep on this diet until I have more time to think about dieting, which won't occur until the summer when the kids are off school, I'm off work, and I spend significant time at the pool reading. I think this situation of beingeing will play itself out over time, and so I need to wait and see what develops. It is disappointing, of course. To have your weight go up 2.6 pounds in one day when your goal is .5 pound weight loss makes it tempting to try to take away the concept of "unconditional permission to eat" from S Days, but I'm not going to do it. I think my body will eventually figure out that eating as much as I did ysterday has the unpleasant effect of not feeling very well the next day. Today, I feel nauseous, and I have a headache. It's a day of rest and play. I'd like to take my two younger children to a swimming pool, but I'm not sure I could manage. The way I feel now will affect how I eat in the future. With diets, you feel bad all while you are on the diet, and so you eventually go off your diet and binge. With this diet, the binge -- or at least the permission to binge -- is part of the diet (S Day), and you decide not to binge because you don't feel well. That's where I see long-term potential for this diet, enough for me to have a commitment to stay on it until June and see where I am then.
It is now noon, and I decided that I need to remove any expectation for how much weight I will lose between now and June. It doesn't matter how much I lose. I am sticking with this diet until June no matter what.
It is now 2 PM. If this was a weekday, I'd be taking a sick day. I'm having chicken noodle soup in bed because I have a stomach ache and a headache. The kids are outside with Dad raking leaves. I'm not sure if my sickness is due to my overeating yesterday, but it could be. With regular diets, restricting food feels bad. With this diet, the overeating of S Days feels bad. That's good. It means I'll move toward less overeating on S Days. Meanwhile, back to bed...
Day 65: My weight dropped down to 207.0 from 209.2 yesterday, which is encouraging, but I learned a valuable lesson. I'm not going to push myself anymore to eat less on N Days. I'm going to follow the rules, and that's it. Yesterday, I had three normal-sized meals instead of my normal, which might include an entire bowl of popcorn at dinner. Anyone my size (BMI of around 34) hasn't eaten normal meals in a long, long time. The result of my virtue was I was grumpy to my kids last night and didn't sleep well, although my 9 year old needing cough syrup at 1:30 AM also didn't help my sleep. I got my weight down a lot, but was it worth it? Is this approach to dieting sustainable? Am I to expect my kids to tolerate a mother who isn't interested in a game of Apples to Apples and who keeps herself awake with lots of coffee? No. I need to allow this diet to work on my body over a long period of time, gently but firmly lowering my set point.
There is a woman I know who leads our youth group at church. I do not know her well at all, but I admire her very much. She is a very caring person and very involved with the church. Two nights ago, she was in charge of a sleepover to show empathy for the homeless, and it was snowing so not many other adults joined her. She was an usher at church at 10:30 AM Mass yesterday after having gone home at 8:30 AM from the sleepover.
When I look at her, I see the person and not the physical shape. Yesterday, I noticed her limping.
She is obese. She lost a lot of weight a few years ago, and I asked her how she did it. She said she went through gastric bypass surgery -- it was a tough decision, but she wanted to be there for her kids. She also had knee problems which were caused in part by her weight. She has now regained a lot of the weight. I look at her and think that a woman like doesn't not eat out of a lack of willpower or self-indulgence. There is something else that is going on that is physical. I would guess that she has lots of willpower, and each diet that she tried added a few more pounds.
This diet results in weight loss, not weight gain. That's why I'm calling it The Set Point Lowering Diet. I'm no longer fighting with my body's desire for food.
Day 66: My weight went up .6 pound. I think that the lesson I'm learning from this is that I need to be patient and let my body lose weight at its own pace. It's going to take a long, long time.
Day 67: I am disappointed that my weight is stuck at 207.6 for a second day and that my weight is higher than it was one week ago, when it was 206.8. I need to look at the big picture. Last weekend was an S Day gone wild. I've been through uncontrolled eating experiences before. My most recent diet lasted all summer, and I went from 214 to 212 pounds. In six days, I was up to 216 pounds. More or less, what this diet is allowing is an outlet for overeating as a reaction to restriction. I think I need to allow myself to overeat even to that extent and even if my weight loss is dramatically slowed. The big picture is that I weighed 216 pounds on September 4, and today I weigh 207.6 pounds. Because of the weekend S Days, the weekday restrictions are sustainable. I learned from being grumpy two nights ago that I need to stay within the 3S guidelines but not try to restrict anymore. The book has you restrict your eating to one layer of food (no veritical stacking) on one plate. I'm too much accustomed to overeating to be able to tolerate that. I have one serving at meals. Last night, my dinner consisted of one entire bowl of popcorn plus one plateful of food.
My experience is why I consider this diet to be The Set Point Lowering Diet. In diet research, it is said that, once your set point goes up, the only way to maintain a lower weight is to maintain your eating habits in such a way that you constantly feel like you are starving. No thanks to that. This diet, I believe, will lower my set point over a long period of time without my feeling as though I am starving.
The moral of today's journal: focus on weight loss since the beginning (7.4 pounds since the start of this diet on 9/8 ) rather than weight gained in one week (.8 pounds since 11/6). Keep the "big picture" in mind.
Day 68: My favorite sentence from the book is "You're pre-disapproved." It's five hours until midnight and an S Day. I am now in the habit of waiting. Each time I succeed, the habit gets stronger.
Day 69: I have a much reduced desire to eat today compared with last Saturday, when I had two Haagen Dazs bars and two cups of icre cream by this time (6 AM) Saturday morning. Periodic restriction seems to lower the satiety point, which is why I think this diet lowers the set point. It's great to have no restrictions on two days per week. I just broke all the rules by having a Haagen Dazs bar in the bathtub at 6 AM!
It is now 5 PM, and it occurred to me this afternoon that I've had a running debate in my mind about when I taper off following these guidelines and tracking the number of Special Days that I have accumulated. Based on a post from a person who slacked off and regained his weight, I realized that the answer is -- never! I developed a simple system for tracking my weight week to week, and I can write down the number of accumulated Special Days since the number only changes on the first of the month (when I add two) and when I take a Special Day (when I substract one). I've needed to blog a lot to settle in my own mind what I am doing.
Day 70: My weight went up to 209.4, and I was quite dismayed. I had to rethink the plan. What could I change? I had already changed from two S Days to one S Day, and all that did was lead to much more eating on the one S Day. I am convinced that "unconditional permission to eat" at certain times is essential to any diet that won't lead to "diet backlash." That leads me to looking at my eating on N Days. I think I've been too lax. I've allowed one serving at meals instead of one plateful. If I had soup, I didn't want to put a bowl of soup on a plate so I could have fruit. I've had entire bowls of popcorn at dinner. It's time to pull back on what I eat on N Days. I know it will be hard. I've gotten very used to eating a lot, and I will be grumpy initially. I can look forward to S Days.
Day 71: My weight went up to 210.6 pounds from 206.8 two days ago. That's impressive! I had thought that the weekday restricitons would hinder me from significant overeating on the weekend, and it did for a time. My body, however, seems to have adjusted to the variation in food intake, and I have learned to really overeat on the weekend. I'm disappointed, but I think that "unconditional permission to eat" on S Days will have to go out the window. I'll need to consider that I can have a limited number of treats. I sitll like the idea of a difference between N Days and S Days. In my walking program, which was designed by a personal training, I walk laps at different speeds (startup of 3.5 mph and five lap cycles of 3 laps at 4.2 mph followed by 2 laps of 4.5 mph). If I fall behind in my time for walking, I can make up the time in the 4.2 mph laps. The key similarity here is that some laps are easier than others, just like some days (S vs. N) are easier than others. I have a whole week to try to figure this out. How the body likes to maintain or increase its weight!
Day 72: My weight is now down 2 entire pounds in one day after going up nearly four in two days. I'm not going to weigh myself on Sunday or Monday so I don't end up panicking on Monday. I need to trust the process. Thanks for the encouragement on the board!
It is now 8 PM, and I got through the day with three platefuls of food rather than three servings of food. I didn't like having an orange on a plate next to spaghetti, but I managed. I do feel a little grumpy, but I'll manage. It's nice that I'm not gaining weight, but I want to lose some!
Day 73: I listened to the "S Day Gone Wild" podcast -- twice!! My behavior is end of diet behavior, which is several hour binge behavior. I want to nip it in the bud, so I'm following two suggestions from the podcast. I'll still have meals, and I'll plan very special treats.
Day 74: I'm definitely grumpy tonight, so this is the limit of how quickly I can lose weight. I just have to accept that fact.
Day 76: I made it! I'm back to the start of the Peanut Cluster Diet. I lost 10 pounds. We are celebrating by going to Benihana at some point soon. It's the first day that snow is sticking on the ground, and it's the week before Christmas. It's my first big milepost on this diet.
Day 77: I didn't weigh myself today. I ate lots yesterday, and I enjoyed it!
Day 78: I went to bed early last night after two days of S Days Gone Wild. I did have three meals each day, but I still ate a lot. This morning, I woke up with a stomachache. I think this behavior is self-correcting because it's no fun to wake up with a stomachache. My plan is to try to move this diet more towards autopilot. I am thinking I may not want to weigh myself again until Christmas. It's painful to get on the scale and see it fluctuate, and it adds no value to this diet to be doing so. I want to follow the process and allow my body time to respond by eating less.
Day 79: We went to Benihana's to celebrate my 10 pound weight loss. I had thought that I could manage N Day rules, but that's not how Benihana's operates with its restaurants. We had drinks first and then soup and then the meal. Afterwards, we went to the store and got ice cream. I took full advantantage of the evening. If I hadn't had a mod of accumulating Special Days, this would have been a failure. How ironic! A failure on the day I celebrate a 10 pound weight loss! Instead of this dinner being a failure, it was a success! I don't feel as though I did anything wrong. There was no failure of willpower. There was no relaxation of N Day rules. There was no disruption of N Day habits. I just misjudged my ability to follow N Day rules at Benihana's, so I turned the celebration into a SPECIAL DAY! The dinner was planned, but turning the day into a SPECIAL DAY was not planned. And that's OK. It's a great use of a SPECIAL DAY. When we celebrate my 10% weight loss when I reach 193 pounds, I'm planning on making that day a SPECIAL DAY!
Day 80: I think I prefer how I feel on N Days. Yesterday, I was stuffed. Today, I feel light. I'm not sure I want to use a Special Day tomorrow, which is Thanksigiving. I may just pass on the desserts and wait until Saturday.
Day 81: Thanksgiving Day. I ate so much on Tuesday night that I wasn't interested in another S Day. I had a large plateful at Thanksgiving dinner and passed on the pumpkin pie. In the evening, I made myself a plateful of leftovers while everyone else snacked on bars and the rest of the pumpkin pie.
This diet is a very easy way to lose weight, but it is slow. I need patience, and I think I can be more patient if I simply avoid weighing myself much. If I look at my weigh-ins from the last month, my weight fluctuated significantly (up to four pounds in two days). It's hard for any one day's weight to mean much. My hope is that, by Christmas, I weigh 203 or lower to indicate a loss of at least two pounds from last Saturday. What is more indicative of the weight loss will be how much I weigh in 6 months. I don't think weighing myself is going to do much good for me and could affect my willingness to be patient, so why do it?
Day 83: Last night, I was counting the hours until midnight. I slept in this morning. Then I had two Caribou Coffee squares and three chocolates along with a breakfast of cereal and orange juice. Now I'm stuffed. Articles on Thanksgiving meals tend to focus on avoiding going overboard, but maybe that's what people need to do every once in a while. I can do it every weekend. I am thinking a good name for this diet might be "The Glutton's Diet"!
DAY 56 - 11/2/08: SUNDAY (4) (207.2)
DAY 57 - 11/3/08: SUCCESS (4) (Goal is 211.0) 209.4
DAY 58 - 11/4/08: SUCCESS (4) 208.0
DAY 59 - 11/5/08: SUCCESS (4) 207.6
DAY 60 - 11/6/08: SUCCESS (4) 206.8
Day 61 - 11/7/08: SUCCESS (4) 206.4
DAY 62 - 11/8/08: SATURDAY (4) 206.6
DAY 63 - 11/9/08: SUNDAY (4) 209.2
DAY 64 - 11/10/08: SUCCESS (4) 209.2
DAY 65 - 11/11/08: SUCCESS (4) 207.0
DAY 66 - 11/12/08: SUCCESS (4) 207.6
DAY 67 - 11/13/08: SUCCESS (4) 207.6
Day 68 - 11/14/08: SUCCESS (4) 207.0
DAY 69 - 11/15/08: SATURDAY 206.8
DAY 70 - 11/16/08: SUNDAY 209.4
DAY 71 - 11/17/08: SUCCESS (4) 210.6
DAY 72 - 11/18/08: SUCCESS (4) 208.6
Day 73 - 11/19/08: SUCCESS (4) 208.0
Day 74 - 11/20/08: SUCCESS (4) 206.6
Day 75 - 11/21/08: SUCCESS (4) 207.2
DAY 76 - 11/22/08: SATURDAY (4) 205.0
DAY 77 - 11/23/08: SUNDAY (4)
DAY 78 - 11/24/08: SUCCESS (4)
Day 79 - 11/25/08: SPECIAL DAY (3) - CELEBRATE 10 POUND WEIGHT LOSS
Day 80 - 11/26/08: SUCCESS (3)
Day 81 - 11/27/08: SUCCESS (3) - THANKSGIVING DAY (I MADE IT AN N DAY)
Day 82 - 11/28/08: SUCCESS (3)
Day 83 - 11/29/08: SATURDAY (3)
Day 84 - 11/30/08: SUNDAY (3)
Day 55: I'm stuffed. I got up at 1 AM and had almost an entire bucket of caramel corn (about 1,000 calories). In the morning, I had a lot of Holloween candy. Allowing myself as much as I want on the weekends is what gives me the ability to restrict during the week. My size 18 jeans are still really tight, but they definitely don't feel as tight as they have been. I'm feeling very good about this diet!
Day 56: I'm getting close to 10 pounds lost. When I reach 205 pounds, I'm going to post my success as a testimonial. Here is what I'll say: "My daughter calls this diet The Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions. I think of it as The Set Point Lowering Diet, but I find her name for this diet to be very charming. On December 15, 2007, at a weight of 205 pounds, I started a diet based on the concept from the book Intuitive Eating called "unconditional permission to eat." The theory behind the diet was that people are obese because they diet and their bodies feel like they are starving so they react to the self-imposed starvation of dieting by bingeing, and this leads to weight gain. The way to end the cycle of dieting and bingeing is to give yourself "unconditional permission to eat". My kids immediately called this diet The Peanut Cluster Diet because I started the diet by eating bags and bags of peanut clusters, a food I had denied myself for 30 years. My weight got up to 214 pounds before I gave up on the diet in June. I then tried an approach that I called the Hunger Satisfaction Diet, which was that had "unconditional permission to eat" but only after my stomach growled. What a dreadful, dreadful diet. I was skipping meals with my family and eating huge amounts of food the second my stomach made a noise. That was my diet through the summer. On September 8, 2008, at a weight of 215 pounds, I started the No S Diet which was also a diet based on the idea that there are times of "unconditional permission to eat" as well as times of restriction. Today is a significant day for me. Today I have lost 10 pounds on this diet. I have wiped out all the weight gain from The Peanut Cluster Diet. My 14 year old daughter, who is probably 25 pounds overweight and has observed years of diet failure on my part, has decided to follow this diet as well. It works. It is also easy. It's not as easy as The Peanut Cluster Diet, but it is easier than any other diet I've been on, and it actually results in weight loss!"
Day 57: I think my body is relieved that it's an N Day! I think that I'm overeating so much on the weekends because I'm used to eat-everything-in-sight when I'm not following dieting rules. It will take time to adjust to the fact that S Days predictably come two days per week, so I don't need to engage in what the authors of Intuitive Eating call "Last Supper" eating.
Day 58: I was up in the night worried about what number on the scale I would face this morning. Although I realize intellectually that this number will fluctuate and that I need to expect a higher number on Monday than I had on Saturday, I am still looking for a number that is always lower than any number I have had previously on this diet. It might be helpful for me to limit how often I step on the scale. I'm just not sure I can stick to any decision at this point, since I am so eager for the weight to come off. I'll have to think about what to do. After alll, the diet is about restricting food intake during the week. It's not about restricting how often you weigh yourself. My concern regarding the scale is that I can be checking back to see that I weighed less than today's weight in the recent past and to draw the conclusion that I have made no progress in the recent past. This constant evaluation of the number on the scale is a waste of time and can increase my impatience. I may try this week just not weighing myself or blogging about my diet until the weekend. I don't want to become someone who constantly talks about her weight and her diet success to the extreme boredom of those around her, and that is what is happening with my family. No one outside my family has yet noticed that I've lost weight, and I've lost so little weight that only my husband and 9 year old daughter can tell.
Day 59: My goal to not weigh myself and to not blog didn't last long. I need to keep to the essential goals of this diet, which is no sweets, no snacks, and no seconds on N Days. Last night, I was grumpy because I didn't eat as much as I wanted. This morning, I compared my weight this morning to my weight of exactly one week ago, and I'm up .4 pound. It was this sort of comparison that I thought would be discouraging, which is why I wanted to avoid weighing myself. Well, it's not going to happen. There is still effort required in following the N Day rules, so I want to see the results. The next best approach for me, I think, is to keep my expectations for weight loss realistic. My goal weight for this week is 211 pounds, and I'm under that.
Day 60: Today, I feel better because I'm under 207 pounds. This diet is working, albeit slowly. Last night, I wasn't particularly hungry. The night before, I was so hungry I was grumpy. I think it is taking time for my body adjust to less food, and I think this diet gives me a way to have my body adjust without a rebellion. I think I just need to stay the course.
Day 61: Yesterday was easy. I was busy. I didn't have time to think about dieting. The diet just went on autopilot. This was in contrast to happens when I'm other diets. The plan falls apart. I don't have time to count or write down or follow specific behavior guidelines, so I just grab everything in sight. In the book Intuitive Eating, the authors state that people who tune out their hunger signals start not to hear them. That is viewed as a bad thing, and what you want to do is tune them in. What I am finding with this diet is that I do tune them out. I eat to satisfaction at set times. I am starting to not even think about food at other times. Two days ago, I had lunch at 2 PM after having had breakfast at 6:30 AM. While I was eating lunch, I realized that I hadn't thought about food at all between breakfast and lunch.
It is now evening, and I am not looking forward to my two S Days. I realized that the reason why is the S is starting to stand for stomach ache!
Day 62: I waited up until midnight and had two cups of Snickers ice cream. It may seem silly to follow this diet, but the overall trend for weight is down. I just have to be patient. Meanwhile, my husband, who has followed the conventional wisdom of "eat less, exercise more", admitted yeterday that he seems to be following The Peanut Cluster Diet. I said nothing, but I think he's right. If you don't allow yourself controlled binges (S Days) when you are restricting food, eventually you'll have the uncontrolled binges that the book Intuitive Eating calls "diet backlash". I prefer my midnight snacks on Saturday at 12:01 AM.
It is now afternoon, and I am having an S Day gone wild. Three Haagen Dazs bars. Several cups of ice cream. An entire bowl of popcorn. Why? I think it may be my body rebelling against the N Day restrictions. Rather than feeling guilty about my eating, I'm curious. I do not intend to limit my eating at all. Somehow, I think that "unconditional permission to eat" at set times is what allows for long-term weight loss that is easy to maintain. I'm going with this theory at any rate. My objective is to put this diet on autopilot so I think I may try to limit my blogging to Sundays. Following this diet's rules is right at the top of my priority list. Below it is being able to exercise three times per week. Way down the list is blogging. I've used blogging to document my efforts so that my children can learn from me if they ever develop weight problems, and I've used blogging to help myself to develop modifications to this diet that will work for me. I think my second objective has been met, and my first objective would be met with a once a week blog.
Life is starting to be complicated and busy for me so that I really should cut back on blogging. I'm working at a job that seems pretty close to ideal, and my son needs some guidance in prioritizing math over Runescape. My husband also is objecting to the time I have spent on the computer, and I appreciate that this diet has taken up plenty of time already. With today's S Day gone wild, I've done little more than eat!
Day 63: Yesterday was definitely an S Day gone wild. I ate and ate and ate. The experience was very much reminiscent of the end of a diet when there was a reaction that seemed uncontrollable. It had a force that was similar in feeling to how I reacted when my brother held me under water when I was 10 years old. The question with this diet is simple: will I be able to lose weight if I simply allow binges on S Days and focus instead on following the 3S guidelines on N Days? I think it's my only shot at losing weight. I've tried for 30 years to control this reaction to food restriction, and it hasn't worked. With this diet, I accept the reaction. It's almost as if this diet has a pressure release that is the controlled binge -- controlled in that it is only permitted on S Days.
I'm not too concerned about this. First of all, I think the weight gain is about as permanent as the weight loss I experienced with the colonoscopy prep in mid-October. Second of all, I have no expectation that this sort of behavior is going to be a significant problem. I have started to associate "stomach ache" with "S Day". I thnk this sort of behavior could recur even with a few years on this diet but it would be very infrequent. Third of all, my objective is to keep on this diet until I have more time to think about dieting, which won't occur until the summer when the kids are off school, I'm off work, and I spend significant time at the pool reading. I think this situation of beingeing will play itself out over time, and so I need to wait and see what develops. It is disappointing, of course. To have your weight go up 2.6 pounds in one day when your goal is .5 pound weight loss makes it tempting to try to take away the concept of "unconditional permission to eat" from S Days, but I'm not going to do it. I think my body will eventually figure out that eating as much as I did ysterday has the unpleasant effect of not feeling very well the next day. Today, I feel nauseous, and I have a headache. It's a day of rest and play. I'd like to take my two younger children to a swimming pool, but I'm not sure I could manage. The way I feel now will affect how I eat in the future. With diets, you feel bad all while you are on the diet, and so you eventually go off your diet and binge. With this diet, the binge -- or at least the permission to binge -- is part of the diet (S Day), and you decide not to binge because you don't feel well. That's where I see long-term potential for this diet, enough for me to have a commitment to stay on it until June and see where I am then.
It is now noon, and I decided that I need to remove any expectation for how much weight I will lose between now and June. It doesn't matter how much I lose. I am sticking with this diet until June no matter what.
It is now 2 PM. If this was a weekday, I'd be taking a sick day. I'm having chicken noodle soup in bed because I have a stomach ache and a headache. The kids are outside with Dad raking leaves. I'm not sure if my sickness is due to my overeating yesterday, but it could be. With regular diets, restricting food feels bad. With this diet, the overeating of S Days feels bad. That's good. It means I'll move toward less overeating on S Days. Meanwhile, back to bed...
Day 65: My weight dropped down to 207.0 from 209.2 yesterday, which is encouraging, but I learned a valuable lesson. I'm not going to push myself anymore to eat less on N Days. I'm going to follow the rules, and that's it. Yesterday, I had three normal-sized meals instead of my normal, which might include an entire bowl of popcorn at dinner. Anyone my size (BMI of around 34) hasn't eaten normal meals in a long, long time. The result of my virtue was I was grumpy to my kids last night and didn't sleep well, although my 9 year old needing cough syrup at 1:30 AM also didn't help my sleep. I got my weight down a lot, but was it worth it? Is this approach to dieting sustainable? Am I to expect my kids to tolerate a mother who isn't interested in a game of Apples to Apples and who keeps herself awake with lots of coffee? No. I need to allow this diet to work on my body over a long period of time, gently but firmly lowering my set point.
There is a woman I know who leads our youth group at church. I do not know her well at all, but I admire her very much. She is a very caring person and very involved with the church. Two nights ago, she was in charge of a sleepover to show empathy for the homeless, and it was snowing so not many other adults joined her. She was an usher at church at 10:30 AM Mass yesterday after having gone home at 8:30 AM from the sleepover.
When I look at her, I see the person and not the physical shape. Yesterday, I noticed her limping.
She is obese. She lost a lot of weight a few years ago, and I asked her how she did it. She said she went through gastric bypass surgery -- it was a tough decision, but she wanted to be there for her kids. She also had knee problems which were caused in part by her weight. She has now regained a lot of the weight. I look at her and think that a woman like doesn't not eat out of a lack of willpower or self-indulgence. There is something else that is going on that is physical. I would guess that she has lots of willpower, and each diet that she tried added a few more pounds.
This diet results in weight loss, not weight gain. That's why I'm calling it The Set Point Lowering Diet. I'm no longer fighting with my body's desire for food.
Day 66: My weight went up .6 pound. I think that the lesson I'm learning from this is that I need to be patient and let my body lose weight at its own pace. It's going to take a long, long time.
Day 67: I am disappointed that my weight is stuck at 207.6 for a second day and that my weight is higher than it was one week ago, when it was 206.8. I need to look at the big picture. Last weekend was an S Day gone wild. I've been through uncontrolled eating experiences before. My most recent diet lasted all summer, and I went from 214 to 212 pounds. In six days, I was up to 216 pounds. More or less, what this diet is allowing is an outlet for overeating as a reaction to restriction. I think I need to allow myself to overeat even to that extent and even if my weight loss is dramatically slowed. The big picture is that I weighed 216 pounds on September 4, and today I weigh 207.6 pounds. Because of the weekend S Days, the weekday restrictions are sustainable. I learned from being grumpy two nights ago that I need to stay within the 3S guidelines but not try to restrict anymore. The book has you restrict your eating to one layer of food (no veritical stacking) on one plate. I'm too much accustomed to overeating to be able to tolerate that. I have one serving at meals. Last night, my dinner consisted of one entire bowl of popcorn plus one plateful of food.
My experience is why I consider this diet to be The Set Point Lowering Diet. In diet research, it is said that, once your set point goes up, the only way to maintain a lower weight is to maintain your eating habits in such a way that you constantly feel like you are starving. No thanks to that. This diet, I believe, will lower my set point over a long period of time without my feeling as though I am starving.
The moral of today's journal: focus on weight loss since the beginning (7.4 pounds since the start of this diet on 9/8 ) rather than weight gained in one week (.8 pounds since 11/6). Keep the "big picture" in mind.
Day 68: My favorite sentence from the book is "You're pre-disapproved." It's five hours until midnight and an S Day. I am now in the habit of waiting. Each time I succeed, the habit gets stronger.
Day 69: I have a much reduced desire to eat today compared with last Saturday, when I had two Haagen Dazs bars and two cups of icre cream by this time (6 AM) Saturday morning. Periodic restriction seems to lower the satiety point, which is why I think this diet lowers the set point. It's great to have no restrictions on two days per week. I just broke all the rules by having a Haagen Dazs bar in the bathtub at 6 AM!
It is now 5 PM, and it occurred to me this afternoon that I've had a running debate in my mind about when I taper off following these guidelines and tracking the number of Special Days that I have accumulated. Based on a post from a person who slacked off and regained his weight, I realized that the answer is -- never! I developed a simple system for tracking my weight week to week, and I can write down the number of accumulated Special Days since the number only changes on the first of the month (when I add two) and when I take a Special Day (when I substract one). I've needed to blog a lot to settle in my own mind what I am doing.
Day 70: My weight went up to 209.4, and I was quite dismayed. I had to rethink the plan. What could I change? I had already changed from two S Days to one S Day, and all that did was lead to much more eating on the one S Day. I am convinced that "unconditional permission to eat" at certain times is essential to any diet that won't lead to "diet backlash." That leads me to looking at my eating on N Days. I think I've been too lax. I've allowed one serving at meals instead of one plateful. If I had soup, I didn't want to put a bowl of soup on a plate so I could have fruit. I've had entire bowls of popcorn at dinner. It's time to pull back on what I eat on N Days. I know it will be hard. I've gotten very used to eating a lot, and I will be grumpy initially. I can look forward to S Days.
Day 71: My weight went up to 210.6 pounds from 206.8 two days ago. That's impressive! I had thought that the weekday restricitons would hinder me from significant overeating on the weekend, and it did for a time. My body, however, seems to have adjusted to the variation in food intake, and I have learned to really overeat on the weekend. I'm disappointed, but I think that "unconditional permission to eat" on S Days will have to go out the window. I'll need to consider that I can have a limited number of treats. I sitll like the idea of a difference between N Days and S Days. In my walking program, which was designed by a personal training, I walk laps at different speeds (startup of 3.5 mph and five lap cycles of 3 laps at 4.2 mph followed by 2 laps of 4.5 mph). If I fall behind in my time for walking, I can make up the time in the 4.2 mph laps. The key similarity here is that some laps are easier than others, just like some days (S vs. N) are easier than others. I have a whole week to try to figure this out. How the body likes to maintain or increase its weight!
Day 72: My weight is now down 2 entire pounds in one day after going up nearly four in two days. I'm not going to weigh myself on Sunday or Monday so I don't end up panicking on Monday. I need to trust the process. Thanks for the encouragement on the board!
It is now 8 PM, and I got through the day with three platefuls of food rather than three servings of food. I didn't like having an orange on a plate next to spaghetti, but I managed. I do feel a little grumpy, but I'll manage. It's nice that I'm not gaining weight, but I want to lose some!
Day 73: I listened to the "S Day Gone Wild" podcast -- twice!! My behavior is end of diet behavior, which is several hour binge behavior. I want to nip it in the bud, so I'm following two suggestions from the podcast. I'll still have meals, and I'll plan very special treats.
Day 74: I'm definitely grumpy tonight, so this is the limit of how quickly I can lose weight. I just have to accept that fact.
Day 76: I made it! I'm back to the start of the Peanut Cluster Diet. I lost 10 pounds. We are celebrating by going to Benihana at some point soon. It's the first day that snow is sticking on the ground, and it's the week before Christmas. It's my first big milepost on this diet.
Day 77: I didn't weigh myself today. I ate lots yesterday, and I enjoyed it!
Day 78: I went to bed early last night after two days of S Days Gone Wild. I did have three meals each day, but I still ate a lot. This morning, I woke up with a stomachache. I think this behavior is self-correcting because it's no fun to wake up with a stomachache. My plan is to try to move this diet more towards autopilot. I am thinking I may not want to weigh myself again until Christmas. It's painful to get on the scale and see it fluctuate, and it adds no value to this diet to be doing so. I want to follow the process and allow my body time to respond by eating less.
Day 79: We went to Benihana's to celebrate my 10 pound weight loss. I had thought that I could manage N Day rules, but that's not how Benihana's operates with its restaurants. We had drinks first and then soup and then the meal. Afterwards, we went to the store and got ice cream. I took full advantantage of the evening. If I hadn't had a mod of accumulating Special Days, this would have been a failure. How ironic! A failure on the day I celebrate a 10 pound weight loss! Instead of this dinner being a failure, it was a success! I don't feel as though I did anything wrong. There was no failure of willpower. There was no relaxation of N Day rules. There was no disruption of N Day habits. I just misjudged my ability to follow N Day rules at Benihana's, so I turned the celebration into a SPECIAL DAY! The dinner was planned, but turning the day into a SPECIAL DAY was not planned. And that's OK. It's a great use of a SPECIAL DAY. When we celebrate my 10% weight loss when I reach 193 pounds, I'm planning on making that day a SPECIAL DAY!
Day 80: I think I prefer how I feel on N Days. Yesterday, I was stuffed. Today, I feel light. I'm not sure I want to use a Special Day tomorrow, which is Thanksigiving. I may just pass on the desserts and wait until Saturday.
Day 81: Thanksgiving Day. I ate so much on Tuesday night that I wasn't interested in another S Day. I had a large plateful at Thanksgiving dinner and passed on the pumpkin pie. In the evening, I made myself a plateful of leftovers while everyone else snacked on bars and the rest of the pumpkin pie.
This diet is a very easy way to lose weight, but it is slow. I need patience, and I think I can be more patient if I simply avoid weighing myself much. If I look at my weigh-ins from the last month, my weight fluctuated significantly (up to four pounds in two days). It's hard for any one day's weight to mean much. My hope is that, by Christmas, I weigh 203 or lower to indicate a loss of at least two pounds from last Saturday. What is more indicative of the weight loss will be how much I weigh in 6 months. I don't think weighing myself is going to do much good for me and could affect my willingness to be patient, so why do it?
Day 83: Last night, I was counting the hours until midnight. I slept in this morning. Then I had two Caribou Coffee squares and three chocolates along with a breakfast of cereal and orange juice. Now I'm stuffed. Articles on Thanksgiving meals tend to focus on avoiding going overboard, but maybe that's what people need to do every once in a while. I can do it every weekend. I am thinking a good name for this diet might be "The Glutton's Diet"!
Last edited by Kathleen on Sun Nov 30, 2008 5:25 am, edited 120 times in total.
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howfunisthat
- Posts: 605
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Kathleen....this is just too cool!!! I know your concern for your daughter has been in the forefront of your mind so knowing she wants to be healthy has got to be just wonderful for you. You've just been doing what you needed to do and she can see what great benefits there are....it's terrific...it really is...
janie
janie
Nothing worthwhile is ever easy...
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gratefuldeb67
- Posts: 6256
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Fantastic! It's wonderful to get started on those habits soon and it's much nicer to do NoS as a family.Kathleen wrote:My 14 year old daughter just told me that she decided to go on the No S Diet or, as she calls it, the Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions! She's going to have Fridays and Saturdays as S Days with two Special Days per month. She, more than anyone else or anything else, has been my motivation to lose weight. I don't want her to travel the path I have traveled with weight loss. I am just thrilled!!!
Kathleen
There's no reason why she shouldn't eat like this. It's not weird dieting. It's a healthy diet.
Glad you have a built in partner Kathleen
Love
DebsThere is no Wisdom greater than Kindness
Debs and janie,
It is wonderful that my daughter Anne has decided to follow this diet. I told her it was the easiest diet I'd ever been on, and she said it wasn't. She said that the Peanut Cluster Diet was the easiest diet I'd ever been on. I agreed with her. The Peanut Cluster Diet was easier. The problem with that diet was that I gained 10 pounds! I'm just two pounds away from being at the starting weight for The Peanut Cluster Diet, which means that I have lost 8 pounds on this diet!
Kathleen
It is wonderful that my daughter Anne has decided to follow this diet. I told her it was the easiest diet I'd ever been on, and she said it wasn't. She said that the Peanut Cluster Diet was the easiest diet I'd ever been on. I agreed with her. The Peanut Cluster Diet was easier. The problem with that diet was that I gained 10 pounds! I'm just two pounds away from being at the starting weight for The Peanut Cluster Diet, which means that I have lost 8 pounds on this diet!
Kathleen
Sustainable--the biggest benefit!
Woo Hoo! What a shame we end up having to take off what we put on during what we thought was "the answer" to our weight! Been there-still getting those off"!!! I can point to my gain over the past few years to backlash from Atkins, Weight Watchers and Naturally Slim. . . It's so great we've found the SUSTAINABLE ANSWER that works... (those worked--short term but no way was is SUSTAINABLE!!!)
And how awesome for you and Anne to be partners in this life-altering adventure. Congrats!
And how awesome for you and Anne to be partners in this life-altering adventure. Congrats!
LA Loser. . . well on my way to becoming an LA Winner.
LA_Loser,
I concluded long ago that the best way I could help my daughter with her weight problem was to manage my own. She just decided to follow the diet, but she may not follow through. I need to be respectful of her, since she is now a teenager who can make decisions about her eating. My own parents set me on the path of restrictive eating out of a genuine concern that this was the best way to help me, and I gained a lot of weight in college. I weighed 117 at the start of my freshman year and 150 at the end of freshman year. By the end of senior year, I weighed 165. I thought it was stress. It wasn't. It was "diet backlash" from restrictive eating. With this diet, "diet backlash" is planned with S Days. I'll keep everyone updated...
Kathleen
I concluded long ago that the best way I could help my daughter with her weight problem was to manage my own. She just decided to follow the diet, but she may not follow through. I need to be respectful of her, since she is now a teenager who can make decisions about her eating. My own parents set me on the path of restrictive eating out of a genuine concern that this was the best way to help me, and I gained a lot of weight in college. I weighed 117 at the start of my freshman year and 150 at the end of freshman year. By the end of senior year, I weighed 165. I thought it was stress. It wasn't. It was "diet backlash" from restrictive eating. With this diet, "diet backlash" is planned with S Days. I'll keep everyone updated...
Kathleen
My daughter decided every day should be an S Day. Right. I tried that. That was The Peanut Cluster Diet. I said last night that the kitchen is closed after dinner. I'm going to move the entire family towards more of an eating style that is like the No S Diet. I've let the kids eat what they want, and the result has often been that little is eaten at dinner because lots was eaten at snack.
Kathleen
Kathleen
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resting52
- Posts: 445
- Joined: Mon Apr 07, 2008 11:59 pm
- Location: Between the mountains and the beach
Hey Kathleen,
You are so on the mark. Our children, especially the daughters, are continually obsessing about weight and weight loss even though they are maybe a size 6 or 8. I take full responsibility since I have dieted their entire lives. And yes, they know about NoS, but they want more control-or want to be more controlled. I'm hoping my success will lead them back to the sensibleness of NoS.
Resting
You are so on the mark. Our children, especially the daughters, are continually obsessing about weight and weight loss even though they are maybe a size 6 or 8. I take full responsibility since I have dieted their entire lives. And yes, they know about NoS, but they want more control-or want to be more controlled. I'm hoping my success will lead them back to the sensibleness of NoS.
Resting
Resting,
My daughter is a size 14 as a 14 year old. I am trying to impose more order in her life and the lives of her siblings by making slow changes away from the "eat when you're hungry" philosophy that I've followed for a few years. I want them to eat breakfast. I don't want snacks after dinner. Poor habits will take time to change. I'm so glad I found this diet.
Kathleen
My daughter is a size 14 as a 14 year old. I am trying to impose more order in her life and the lives of her siblings by making slow changes away from the "eat when you're hungry" philosophy that I've followed for a few years. I want them to eat breakfast. I don't want snacks after dinner. Poor habits will take time to change. I'm so glad I found this diet.
Kathleen
resting52,
Me, too. I was set on the path of restrictive eating when I was a teenager who weighed 132 and was 5'6" tall. My parents meant well. They were concerned about my weight, and their response made matters much worse. My life turned out in such a way that I spent an entire academic year unable to work and with all my kids in school. That year (September 2007 - June 2008) was well spent doing research on weight management. This diet is slow, slow, slow, but all my research and all my experiments with weight loss programs have convinced me that this idea of restrictive eating at specified times and "unconditional permission to eat" at other times (an on/off approach to weight loss) is what makes an end result of a person who weighs less and does not feel like a victim of starvation. I am glad that I can educate my children when they are teenagers because I think that the obesity epidemic will keep on claiming more victims until this knowledge is more widely disseminated.
My 9 year old daughter last night got on the phone to my parents and told them that she can tell I've lost weight because I'm not as wide around when she hugs me. The scale is one measurement tool, but a daughter's arms are another!
Kathleen
Me, too. I was set on the path of restrictive eating when I was a teenager who weighed 132 and was 5'6" tall. My parents meant well. They were concerned about my weight, and their response made matters much worse. My life turned out in such a way that I spent an entire academic year unable to work and with all my kids in school. That year (September 2007 - June 2008) was well spent doing research on weight management. This diet is slow, slow, slow, but all my research and all my experiments with weight loss programs have convinced me that this idea of restrictive eating at specified times and "unconditional permission to eat" at other times (an on/off approach to weight loss) is what makes an end result of a person who weighs less and does not feel like a victim of starvation. I am glad that I can educate my children when they are teenagers because I think that the obesity epidemic will keep on claiming more victims until this knowledge is more widely disseminated.
My 9 year old daughter last night got on the phone to my parents and told them that she can tell I've lost weight because I'm not as wide around when she hugs me. The scale is one measurement tool, but a daughter's arms are another!
Kathleen
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howfunisthat
- Posts: 605
- Joined: Mon Jul 28, 2008 12:35 am
- Location: New York
Janie,
I ate so much I felt sick and slept much of yesterday afternoon. I am hypothesizing that my overeating is a reaction to long-term dieting, and it will take time for me to get over it. Tonight, I feel grumpy because I cut back on what I ate today. I need to allow myself to eat meals that are as large as I like on N Days and eat whatever I want on S Days. Needless to say, I need to lower my expectations for weight loss.
On a cheerier note, I looked up The No S Diet on Amazon, and the book got a perfect five stars as a rating from 40 people. Despite that, the price dropped to a bargain price, so I bought two more -- one for my daughter and one for the first person who asks me how I lost weight.
Kathleen
I ate so much I felt sick and slept much of yesterday afternoon. I am hypothesizing that my overeating is a reaction to long-term dieting, and it will take time for me to get over it. Tonight, I feel grumpy because I cut back on what I ate today. I need to allow myself to eat meals that are as large as I like on N Days and eat whatever I want on S Days. Needless to say, I need to lower my expectations for weight loss.
On a cheerier note, I looked up The No S Diet on Amazon, and the book got a perfect five stars as a rating from 40 people. Despite that, the price dropped to a bargain price, so I bought two more -- one for my daughter and one for the first person who asks me how I lost weight.
Kathleen
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turtledove
- Posts: 29
- Joined: Mon Oct 27, 2008 4:16 pm
- Location: Washington
Turtledove,
I'm creating details in a future that isn't yet here!
What is exciting about today is that my daughter got through her first NWS day yesterday with a SUCCESS! We've been discussing the diet in private, and I just ordered a copy of the book for her. She was debating about whether or not cookies were sweets. She also thought that three S Days per week would be OK.
She has now decided to have two S Days -- Friday (because her homeroom has treats on that day) and Saturday. She took one of her two exceptions for the month yesterday because it was Doughnut Sunday at church. As a result, she started off her diet with three S Days in a row.
She has observed me dieting for as long as she can remember, and this is the first time she decided to try a diet I was following. Of course, it helps that I've actually lost weight on this diet!
Kathleen
I'm creating details in a future that isn't yet here!
What is exciting about today is that my daughter got through her first NWS day yesterday with a SUCCESS! We've been discussing the diet in private, and I just ordered a copy of the book for her. She was debating about whether or not cookies were sweets. She also thought that three S Days per week would be OK.
She has now decided to have two S Days -- Friday (because her homeroom has treats on that day) and Saturday. She took one of her two exceptions for the month yesterday because it was Doughnut Sunday at church. As a result, she started off her diet with three S Days in a row.
She has observed me dieting for as long as she can remember, and this is the first time she decided to try a diet I was following. Of course, it helps that I've actually lost weight on this diet!
Kathleen
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howfunisthat
- Posts: 605
- Joined: Mon Jul 28, 2008 12:35 am
- Location: New York
Kathleen....thanks for the heads-up on the book price at Amazon...I'm heading there to buy a copy to take with me to my next dr.'s appointment.
And you're doing wonderfully with your daughter...it's exciting to see her just naturally want to follow you since this is changing your life.
janie
And you're doing wonderfully with your daughter...it's exciting to see her just naturally want to follow you since this is changing your life.
janie
Nothing worthwhile is ever easy...
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resting52
- Posts: 445
- Joined: Mon Apr 07, 2008 11:59 pm
- Location: Between the mountains and the beach
Kathleen,
I look at your post about " I was set on the path of restrictive eating when I was a teenager who weighed 132 and was 5'6" tall. " Good Grief! I would love to be any where near that. Of course, when I was a teen, Twiggy was the model to model. How sick is that? I remember people dying.
Your year long diet discovery journey is very encouraging to me. Thanks for sharing it.
Resting
I look at your post about " I was set on the path of restrictive eating when I was a teenager who weighed 132 and was 5'6" tall. " Good Grief! I would love to be any where near that. Of course, when I was a teen, Twiggy was the model to model. How sick is that? I remember people dying.
Your year long diet discovery journey is very encouraging to me. Thanks for sharing it.
Resting
resting52,
I was 130 - 135 throughout most of high school. In spring of my senior year, I started dieting. I started college at 117, was 124 at Thanksgiving break, 132 at spring break and 148 at the end of freshman year. By the end of college, I weighed 165. I managed to get my weight back down to my high school weight with an on/off approach of 1000 calories per day for nine days followed by at least one month of not dieting.
What if I hadn't started dieting? I'll never know...
As I read this post, I think that I know my exact weight at many times in my life, but I doubt I remember the names of all my bosses, old telephone numbers, names of coworkers, etc. The agony of dieting is very real to me.
Kathleen
I was 130 - 135 throughout most of high school. In spring of my senior year, I started dieting. I started college at 117, was 124 at Thanksgiving break, 132 at spring break and 148 at the end of freshman year. By the end of college, I weighed 165. I managed to get my weight back down to my high school weight with an on/off approach of 1000 calories per day for nine days followed by at least one month of not dieting.
What if I hadn't started dieting? I'll never know...
As I read this post, I think that I know my exact weight at many times in my life, but I doubt I remember the names of all my bosses, old telephone numbers, names of coworkers, etc. The agony of dieting is very real to me.
Kathleen
Last edited by Kathleen on Wed May 27, 2009 1:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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resting52
- Posts: 445
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Oh MY! That quote puts me through the floor. I can remember (and not remember) the same things. Why we've spent so much life on these numbers is just more wrong than one can say.Kathleen wrote: As I read this post, I think that I know my exact weight at many times in my life, but I doubt I remember the names of all my bosses, old telephone numbers, names of coworkers, etc. The agony of dieting is very real to me.
Kathleen
Resting
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blueskighs
- Posts: 1787
- Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2008 4:11 am
- Location: California
Kathleen, me too!The agony of dieting is very real to me.
I think it is wonderful that your daughter is figuring out how to make No S work for her. What an incredible thing if she can "miss" expending her time, energy and talents on "dieting". How much more "life" she will be able to seize and live!
Blueskighs
www.nosdiet.blogspot.com Where I blog daily about my No S journey
resting52,
Yes, it is hard to face the reality of how much my life has been negatively impacted by my weight problem. I've noticed that this board tends to attract people who have had weight problems for years and years and years. We who have been at this for so long know the reality that the real problem is keeping the weight off, not getting it off.
Blueskighs,
Your comment brought tears to my eyes. This afternoon, when I picked up my daughter from the bus stop, she proudly showed me how she had brought home a cookie that had been handed out in her homeroom. She had decided to make Fridays and Saturdays her S Days because treats are given out on Fridays, and Saturday is a day home. The person who was supposed to bring treats on Friday forgot and brought them today, so Anne decided to not to eat it but to save it until Friday. We notified her three younger siblings that that cookie was not to be touched!
There is a special love that a mother has for her children. I was motivated this past year to find the path to a normal weight because I saw my daughter gaining weight and modeling my poor eating habits. It is wonderful to see that she has made the decision to follow this diet and to share with me her own successes.
Kathleen
Yes, it is hard to face the reality of how much my life has been negatively impacted by my weight problem. I've noticed that this board tends to attract people who have had weight problems for years and years and years. We who have been at this for so long know the reality that the real problem is keeping the weight off, not getting it off.
Blueskighs,
Your comment brought tears to my eyes. This afternoon, when I picked up my daughter from the bus stop, she proudly showed me how she had brought home a cookie that had been handed out in her homeroom. She had decided to make Fridays and Saturdays her S Days because treats are given out on Fridays, and Saturday is a day home. The person who was supposed to bring treats on Friday forgot and brought them today, so Anne decided to not to eat it but to save it until Friday. We notified her three younger siblings that that cookie was not to be touched!
There is a special love that a mother has for her children. I was motivated this past year to find the path to a normal weight because I saw my daughter gaining weight and modeling my poor eating habits. It is wonderful to see that she has made the decision to follow this diet and to share with me her own successes.
Kathleen
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blueskighs
- Posts: 1787
- Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2008 4:11 am
- Location: California
Oh my goodness Kathleen, that is just the sweetest thing. I will go to bed tonight with a smile on my face, give her a "hug" for me, you know, if its okay with her,This afternoon, when I picked up my daughter from the bus stop, she proudly showed me how she had brought home a cookie that had been handed out in her homeroom.
Blueskighs
www.nosdiet.blogspot.com Where I blog daily about my No S journey
Blueskighs,
It is very sweet. She would come home from school, head straight for the kitchen, and wolf down whatever was available. Now she is picky about what she eats. I told her that one of the side benefits of this diet is you start to think about what you really like. She asked for me to get her "Wheat Thins" for her to have at lunch at school, and I was happy to get them for her.
Kathleen
It is very sweet. She would come home from school, head straight for the kitchen, and wolf down whatever was available. Now she is picky about what she eats. I told her that one of the side benefits of this diet is you start to think about what you really like. She asked for me to get her "Wheat Thins" for her to have at lunch at school, and I was happy to get them for her.
Kathleen
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gratefuldeb67
- Posts: 6256
- Joined: Thu Apr 21, 2005 9:26 pm
- Location: Great Neck, NY
That is just fantastic news Kathleen!Kathleen wrote: This afternoon, when I picked up my daughter from the bus stop, she proudly showed me how she had brought home a cookie that had been handed out in her homeroom. She had decided to make Fridays and Saturdays her S Days because treats are given out on Fridays, and Saturday is a day home. The person who was supposed to bring treats on Friday forgot and brought them today, so Anne decided to not to eat it but to save it until Friday. We notified her three younger siblings that that cookie was not to be touched!
There is a special love that a mother has for her children. I was motivated this past year to find the path to a normal weight because I saw my daughter gaining weight and modeling my poor eating habits. It is wonderful to see that she has made the decision to follow this diet and to share with me her own successes.
Kathleen
I'm so happy you are now inspiring each other!
Such a lovely and touching story
Wishing you and your whole family the best.
Blessings
DebsThere is no Wisdom greater than Kindness
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blueskighs
- Posts: 1787
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- Location: California
Kathleen,
sounds like your daughter is really having a great experience with NO S, I am really so happy for her and for you getting to watch her go through it and share it with her,
Blueskighs
sounds like your daughter is really having a great experience with NO S, I am really so happy for her and for you getting to watch her go through it and share it with her,
Blueskighs
www.nosdiet.blogspot.com Where I blog daily about my No S journey
Blueskighs,
Yesterday, Tom got home from a business trip and brought five chocolates from the hotel. As the kids were going to bed, Anne proudly showed me hers -- she hadn't eaten it! She got through a first week of all greens, and she's happy. It may be that the diet is much easier for her than it has been for me because she doesn't have years of dieting behind her. I've always encouraged her not to diet because of my experience of "diet backlash", but a few weeks ago I encouraged her to try this approach. I'm really happy. All the effort I've put into trying to find a diet that works has paid off. I'm not sure I would have stuck with this diet had I not first gone through the experience of trying to let go of dieting altogether, with the result of a 10 pound weight gain. I'm now 2 pounds away from the starting weight for that diet, and the family is going to dinner to celebrate when I reach that very significant milepost.
Kathleen
Yesterday, Tom got home from a business trip and brought five chocolates from the hotel. As the kids were going to bed, Anne proudly showed me hers -- she hadn't eaten it! She got through a first week of all greens, and she's happy. It may be that the diet is much easier for her than it has been for me because she doesn't have years of dieting behind her. I've always encouraged her not to diet because of my experience of "diet backlash", but a few weeks ago I encouraged her to try this approach. I'm really happy. All the effort I've put into trying to find a diet that works has paid off. I'm not sure I would have stuck with this diet had I not first gone through the experience of trying to let go of dieting altogether, with the result of a 10 pound weight gain. I'm now 2 pounds away from the starting weight for that diet, and the family is going to dinner to celebrate when I reach that very significant milepost.
Kathleen
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howfunisthat
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howfunisthat
- Posts: 605
- Joined: Mon Jul 28, 2008 12:35 am
- Location: New York
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gratefuldeb67
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- Joined: Thu Apr 21, 2005 9:26 pm
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DAY 85 - 12/1/08: SUCCESS (5)
DAY 86 - 12/2/08: SUCCESS (5)
DAY 87 - 12/3/08: SUCCESS (5)
DAY 88 - 12/4/08: SUCCESS (5)
DAY 89 - 12/5/08: SUCCESS (5)
DAY 90 - 12/6/08: SATURDAY 204.8 A new low!
Day 91 - 12/7/08: SUNDAY
DAY 92 - 12/8/08: SUCCESS (5)
DAY 93 - 12/9/08: SUCCESS (5)
DAY 94 - 12/10/08: SUCCESS (5) 206.2
DAY 95 - 12/11/08: SUCCESS (5) 205.6
DAY 96 - 12/12/08: SUCCESS (5) 205.4
DAY 97 - 12/13/08: SATURDAY 205.0
Day 98 - 12/14/08: SUNDAY 207.2
DAY 99 - 12/15/08: SUCCESS (5) 208.8
DAY 100 - 12/16/08: SUCCESS (5) 206.8
DAY 101 - 12/17/08: SUCCESS (5) 206.2
DAY 102 - 12/18/08: SUCCESS (5) 206.2
Day 103 - 12/19/08: SUCCESS (5) 206.0
Day 104 - 12/20/08: SATURDAY 204.4 A new low!
Day 105 - 12/21/08: SUNDAY 205.0
DAY 106 - 12/22/08: SUCCESS (5) 206.0
DAY 107 - 12/23/08: SUCCESS (5) 205.6
DAY 108 - 12/24/08: SUCCESS (5) 204.2 A new low!
Day 109 - 12/25/08: SPECIAL DAY (4) - CHRISTMAS DAY 207.0
Day 110 - 12/26/08: SUCCESS (4) 207.0
Day 111 - 12/27/08: SATURDAY 205.4
Day 112 - 12/28/08: SUNDAY 207.6
Day 85: No stomach ache as a result of overeating on the weekend. That's a good sign. My body is learning when enough is enough! This diet is starting to seem as easy as brushing my teeth every morning, and I think the reason why may be that I have made a commitment to myself that I will follow it with "perfect compliance." I never go without brushing my teeth in the morning, so there is never a moment when I debate whether or not I should brush my teeth, and the same goes for this diet. I'm on it for life!
Because it is the first of the month, I get another two weekday Special Days to be used however I want. That means that I can have five Special Days in a row and still not blow my diet. I learned last week that my body isn't too interested in more than one Special Day in a week.
Day 86: I brought The No S Diet book to my in-laws so I could review it while I was visiting over Thanksgiving break, and I ended up giving the copy to my sister in law, who has also struggled with her weight for years. She's lost weight on Atkins, but she's never been able to keep it off. One problem with weighting yourself is that the focus becomes the number on the scale. I do have to make adjustments in my eating, and I could see how that worked over Thanksgiving, but I don't need to be so focused on this diet.
It's getting to be that this diet is as easy as brushing your teeth, and I now want to focus on other things. If I don't weigh myself until Christmas, then there's really nothing to discuss concerning it. It's just the way I eat.
I am thinking I may try to get in the habit of only weighing myself three times per year -- Christmas, our wedding anniversary on May 1, and my husband's birthday on September 1. My expectation is that I would lose 5 - 10 pounds per every time I weigh myself (every four months) and eventually I would reach a weight where I would stabilize. I think I want to accept whatever weight that is because dieting has consumed so much of my life and all it's done is make me fatter and fatter. The end of this year will be the first time since 2001 that I weigh less than I did in the prior year. In 2001, we had our last child, and what I did after that was make a commitment to dieting and weight loss. I remember at the beginning of 2002 weighing about 155. My incredible efforts to lose weight led to a 60 pound weight gain.
This last June, I had to get a physical because we needed physicals in order to go to the Family Camp, which is part of the Boy Scout camp. I had a blood sugar of 108 and a weight of 211, and the doctor told me to "eat less, excercise more" and return in three months for a recheck. Well, I didn't. In September, after spending three months on the Hunger Satisfaction Diet, I weighed 216. I was under 210 in October when I had my colonscopy for turning 50 years old, and my blood sugar level was measured at 97.
Still, I think about how I would feel if I had gone to the doctor in September weighing five pounds more than I had in June when she told me I risk development of full-blown diabetes if I don't lose weight. Does it sound in any way reasonable to a doctor that a patient who was told to lose weight for three months and return for a blood sugar test actually managed to gain more weight? What happens in those instances? Does the patient find a different doctor? Does the patient ever return and say "I tried"?
I have an appointment with the doctor today because I've had a cold for two months which I'm beginning to think might be allergies, and it will be nice to let her know that I've finally found a diet where I actually lose weight.
7 PM: It occurred to me this afternoon that I'm starting not to like S Days because I eat so much. It occurred to me that I can give myself permission to eat less because there's no starvation diet around the corner. This was the theory behind Intuitive Eating, but it didn't work out because my body seemed to want more and more. With this approach, I don't focus on internal hunger. I just eat a satisfactory amount that fits on one plate when it is mealtime. I had no desire whatsoever for a second hamburger tonight, even though a second hamburger could have fit on my plate.
Day 87: It's 6:30 AM, and my stomach growled. I wasn't in great pain. I didn't die. There's no crises here. Hunger is not a terrible, terrible thing, as one food shelf Web site put it.
It's 9:30 PM now. I worked several hours. I had two kids into the orthodontist and one with a friend over for dinner and one to a band concert and one to religious ed. I talked to my husband on the phone for 1/2 hour. My son is starting swim team at school, which means a drive to the school every day at 5 PM. He wasn't there tonight because of his ortho appointment. People are busy. I have flexible hours to a maximum of 80 per month, but I also have four active kids. When would I have time to prepare special meals or count carbs or write down everything I eat? Not only is there time involved in tracking but there is also time involved in suffering through starvation. This diet is so sane compared with what I have been doing. The weekend binges may start to be a thing of the past because I don't feel so great when I eat so much. This No S approach is very interesting. Prior to reading the book, I had already figured out the importance of mealtimes and the need for what I had termed "controlled binges", but it would have been a long time before I had developed something similar to The No S Diet. Now, instead of reading dieting books and researching studies on obesity, I'm sitting down for a few minutes to type out my thoughts. Food is no longer a constant obsession. As the book says, I'm "pre disapproved". I don't need to debate about whether to snack because the answer is no.
Day 88: It's a Thursday night, and I'm dreading an upcoming S Day. I haven't felt well on S Days because S has started to mean stomach ache. I may move towards N Day rules on S Days.
Day 89: Since I've started on this diet, Thursday night has been my most difficult night. Last night didn't seem difficult, but I had to apologize to my husband and oldest daughter for being short with them, and I still owe an apology to my middle daughter. I think that what this diet may do is gradually get me to adjust to lower food intake, but the adjustment has to be slow. Tomorrow's S Day needs to be a day of "unconditional permission to eat." At some point, my body will not want to end up with a stomach ache as a result, and I'll eat less than I have eaten.
Day 90: It's 1 AM on a Saturday, and I am awake because I am sneezing and sniffling. It may be that I have allergies, and I am trying to figure out what to change in my environment other than the puppy. I have absolutely no desire to eat anything. What I have most enjoyed on other S Days is the Saturday morning eating of a Haagen Dazs bar in the bathtub. Other memories of the weekend S Days are a blur of stuffing my face like I would at the end of a diet and feeling so sick I need to go and sleep. No thank you. I'm still giving myself "unconditional permission to eat", but I'm not interested in overeating to the point of not feeling well. The memories of feeling great on N Days are also influencing me. It may be that I'll continue to overeat significantly on S Days, but I think I'll eventually stop doing it simply because I don't want to feel bad. There is no willpower involved in stopping overeating. It's all about doing what makes me feel best. With normal diets, you feel miserable on the diet and great when you break it. With this diet, you feel great while on the diet and miserable when you "go wild" on S Days!
It is now noon on Saturday, and I decided to weigh myself this morning because I suspected I wasn't losing weight. It's true. I weigh a whole .2 pound less than I did two weeks ago. Am I upset? No. What I see is that the next step in this diet for me is to have S Days which are more normal than end of diet binge. This morning, I had a Haagen Daxs bar and some St. Nick Day candy. At a Santa's Breakfat at our church, a server added a pancake to my plate, and I wasn't interested in eating it. On the way home from the Santa's Breakfast, however, I stopped at Starbucks and got a Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha. Oh was it good!
What I am finding both with N Days and with S Days is that I am getting to be a more selective eater. The days of tasteless Lean Cuisine and rice cakes are over! So are the days of eating a pancake just because someone put it on my plate as I was saying I didn't want it. I got fat because I was willing to eat everything and anything, including extra pancakes and rice cakes. I'm not offended by what the server did. He's the father of someone who is the age of my daughter, and he's a very friendly person. Instead, I think it is very reasonable that he would have loaded up my empty plate with another pancake. Fat people generally aren't selective about what they eat, especially if they are breaking a diet, and I think part of the reason why is they have bought into the diet approach of restricting what is eaten to approved foods like rice cakes. If you are willing to eat rice cakes which taste like styrofoam, won't you be tempted by an extra pancake?
This diet is helping me to change long-standing habits about how I eat and what I eat. I didn't use to think I deserved to spend $3.58 on a Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha. Now I can spend the money and enjoy the drink.
2 PM: I haven't yet gone to exercise, and I feel somewhat ill because of overeating. My husband was irritated at me for overeating and told me not to complain if I'm sick because I ate too much. I am counting on the negative experience of how I feel after overeating to gradually decrease my desire to overeat. Overeating used to be a relief after the starvation effect of dieting. Now that I'm well fed on three meals per day, overeating has no benefit. It just makes me feel bad.
7 PM: I went to exercise and then came back and ate and ate and lay down because I had a stomach ache. I think I'm going to go through this process until I figure out there is no benefit to overeating. The memories of starving during dieting are still too strong. I remember reading somewhere that there was a high obesity percent in the population of those who had survived concentration camps. Well, I've survived 35 years of on and off again dieting. Starvation has always been just around the corner during those years. Consistent eating of three meals per day, combined with S Day permission to eat what I want, will eventuallly -- eventually -- result in my enjoying my food on S Days instead of just stuffing myself. My theory is that I don't need any willpower for this change and in fact should not use any willpower. I need to give myself "unconditional permission to eat" and wait for the day when I am not longer binge eating on S Days.
8:45 PM: What a day! I made an alteration to my post from the end of September when I laid out my modification of the No S Diet, and I logged how I felt at several times throughout the day. The N Day restrictions are no longer a problem. I find it easy to get through an N Day. My problem is moderation on S Days when I want to keep the "unconditional permission to eat." I think I just need to wait until my body revolts against overeating, and limiting weighing myself will help as will limiting my time journaling. This year will be the first year since 2001 that I weigh less at the end of the year than I did at the beginning. Although my weight loss is slow (10 pounds in 90 days), it is permanent. From my days in high school when I studied math, I remember that lines had a positive or negative slope and also were measured by steepness. What I need to do is celebrate that the slope of a graph with my weight on the X Axis and time on the Y Axis has a negative slope (is going down) and not worry too much that the slope of the line (how quickly I lose weight) is not so great. I've had steep losses for a few days and then rebounds. With this diet, I am confident that the weight is gone permanently.
Day 91: I'm stuffed and looking forward to five N Days.
Day 92: Oh, am I busy! Sometimes, people brag about being busy. I don't like being busy and, in fact, have told people my goal as a stay at home Mom has been to not be busy. It's Christmastime, and we need to make sure we get out Christmas cards and presents. My daughter has a medical problem, so I'm spending Friday with her at the Mayo Clinic. My son started swim team with daily practices that end at 5 PM, and I am working on setting up carpooling. My part time job takes far less less time than the time I spend chauffering kids around at night and taking care of dinner and laundry and grocery shopping. In the midst of this, I am so-so-so glad that my diet requires virtually no time. I seem to be able to shut off hunger completely. I left work at 1:30 PM and grabbed a sandwich which I ate on the way to run an errand before picking up my youngest child and the son of the Girl Scout leader and then going to pick up my oldest child and her friend to go home. And it's the first snow of the season, so it took about 1 hour 15 minutes to pick my son up from swim team. It's nice to sit down and think that I spent no time until right now thinking about dieting.
Day 94: I decided I can face that my weight on Saturday is lower than my weight will be earlier in the following week, and I can face that this diet will take a long, long time, but the weight loss will be permanent. I created a weight chart with weight by week, and now I can look back and compare today's weight of 206.2 to weights on other Wednesdays for a more appropriate comparison. Three Wednesdays ago, my Wedneday weight was 208. The prior two Wednesdays it was 207.6. I need to be realistic about just how much time it will take for me to lose weight. It reminds me of the story of 40 years in the desert! Until my body calms down on S Days and recognizes that I'm never ever going to starve it with Lean Cuisines, I'm just going to have to put up with slow weight loss. Yesterday, I was reading in a book ("The Instinct to Heal") by the author of the "Anitcancer: A New Way of Life" how there are two brains: the cognitive and the emotional brain. The emotional brain will hijack behavior, more or less shutting out input from the cognitive brain, when there is a sense that survival is at stake. That sounds like what happened when my brother held me under water when I was 10 years old. I didn't think about pushing myself to the surface of the water with great force. I just did it. That also sounds like a great description of my body reacting to food at the point that a diet fails. It also sounds like what happens on S Days. I just have to wait this out -- wait out "S Days Gone Wild". Eventually, and it may be months, my body will calm down. Since I've been starving it for years, this obese body is ever on the alert for restrictive eating. I seem to be fine on N Days, but S Days are now the problem. I am betting that this behavior will change over time and eventually I'll just take my time on S Days and enjoy a few treats instead of eating just a huge amount of food on those days. I'm not doing anything more on S Days than try to have three meals in addition to everything else I eat.
4:30 PM: My stomach started growling at about 11, and I was bothered for about 15 minutes. Then I got caught up in my work and nearly missed leaving on time to get home and get the dog before going to pick up the kids. I didn't eat until 2:15. That means that I lasted with not eating for three hours after my stomach growled. The Hunger Satisfaction Diet (eat only after a stomach growl) turned every stomach noise into a crises -- MUST - EAT - NOW! This diet makes me realize that some things are more important than eating at the first sign of hunger -- like getting your work done and taking care of the dog!
Day 95: I decided to add "A new low!" whenever I hit another low on this diet, as a way to encourage me and to reinforce the idea that not every day or even every week will produce "A new low!" weight. I marked last Saturday's 204.8 as "A new low!", which makes today's 205.4 more bearable. The virtue needed in this diet is patience!
Day 96: I prepared for tomorrow by getting different treats, including biscotti and a chocolate marble truffle cake that needs to be kept frozen so I think it will be quite yummy! I think that chocolate and coffee together in the morning is the consummate treat for me, so I am planning ahead to really enjoy that first taste of the morning.
Day 97: I'm unhappy with my weight being up almost a pound from last Saturday, but I think I've got to wait, wait, wait. My body is adjusting to a world in which there is no starvation. Now I'm reading a book on the Alan Keyes study of starvation from the 1940s. My emotional brain has suffered through 35 years of periods of starvation which were imposed by choices made by the cognitive brain, and it's going to take more than a few months for recovery. I did look back in my record of weight loss by week to see how my weight today compares with prior Saturday's weights, and I was amused to see a dip in weight around the time I had a colonoscopy two months ago. My weight today is the same as the first time I weighed myself after the colonoscopy. I had to chuckle about that. My weight loss then was due to severe and brief food restriction (much llike a diet, only for medical reasons), and the weight loss was as temporary as for any diet I've had. The weight may be the same today as it was two months ago, but this time the weight loss is permanent!
I think I just need to be patient with over the top eating on S Days and wait out the reaction.
10 AM: I was up at 5 this morning to pick up my son from an overnight event for teens, and I threw up in the car on the way to pick him up. I told him that when I picked him up, and he made some comment about my body not wanting another S Day! Now I'm up, and I lost .6 pound between 5 and 10 AM, so that's my weight for the day. My husband and I will go out for coffee this morning, and I already had two biscotti. What I crave is citrus fruit. How strange! I think the S Days of all peanut clusters and Haagen Dazs bars are over!
4 PM: I didn't get around to lunch. I almost forgot to get my youngest daughter to a birthday party at 11:15, and from there my husband and I went out for coffee. It was nice. I hope that we return to Saturday morning time together at Starbucks. When the weather was warmer, we would walk to Starbucks with our dog, but now it is too cold to take her for a walk that long, and I'm not interested in walking that far in cold weather, either! I did have a grapefruit. I've had many diets where grapefruit was a diet food, so maybe my desire for grapefruit is returning because I'm never again going to be forcing myself to eat food I don't want at the time.
Day 98: I tried to explain my theory of weight loss to my husband this morning, and he told me what I was saying was I had no control over my body. I told him I do have control, but no one has the control to drown themselves without a restraint because their body would force them to go to the surface of the water. I see that as analogous to a diet without S Days. I tried to have three meals on the weekend, and I didn't succeed yesterday. I am thinking what I need is patience, and how do I get that? Well, on September 4th, I weighed 216 pounds, my all-time high. I think I am going to post at the beginning of each month a weight I will never see again which is two pounds lower each month. If I make October as 214, November as 212, and December as 210, then the weight I will never see again as of 1/1/09 is 208. I'm posting that now. That will be my motivation to keep my N Days green and not worry about S Day behavior.
Noon: This diet is officially going on autopilot. I'm just too busy to figure out why I'm overeating so much on S Days. N Day habits are firmly entrenched. I'll stick with keeping the N Days green and worry about S Days next June. If I'm not losing weight and my S Days are still wild in seven months, then I'll know I have a problem that isn't going to go away.
Day 99: I decided I would mess up this entire diet if I tried to avoid being an idiot on S Days. S Days are for recovery from years of starvation rations when dieting. It's going to take time. I also realized that I am off two pounds in my assessment of where I should be with weight loss. I weighed 216 pounds on September 4, 2008. The goal for the beginning of October is to never, ever see 216 pounds again. For November, the goal is to never, ever see 214 pounds again. For December, it is 212 pounds. For January, it is 210 pounds.
7 PM: Tomorrow is Day 100. My goal for the first 100 days was to keep the N Days green. I think my goal for the second 100 days is to not worry about S Days. I'm reading a book on a study of starvation which was conducted by Ancel Keys on conscientious objectors during WW II. The effect of starvation is very similar to the effect of dieting. I just need to allow my body time to calm down after 35 years of dieting.
Day 100: I'm happy because this diet has become as much effort as brushing my teeth every morning. It's become a habit. Sure, I lose weight slowly, but the weight loss is permanent.
10 PM: The first snow of winter made driving long, and two kid activities plus having to pick up some medicine meant I had a Subway sandwich in the car for lunch at 2:30 and a chicken pot pie at 5. I was grumpy. I seem to get grumpy if I don't eat enough, so I think I just need to allow my body to slowly lose weight. I do feel calmer now that I have resolved to make S Days completely and totally days in which there are no rules, no guidelines, not attempts to do anything. I'll eat what I want on those days.
Day 101: When I told my mother that I had had four Haagen Dazs bars in one day, she told me I needed to "use a little common sense." Well, when you are dealing with the irrational fears of the emotional brain, I don't think common sense is useful. I think what I need to do is just let myself eat whatever I want on S Days. I started out with N Days having meals that were "one sitting" rather than "one plate" and that included an entire bowl of popcorn. Those days are gone. My son hasn't stared at my overflowing plate in weeks because there haven't been overflowing plates. I got used to three meals, and now it is a habit. It has become normal for me. Now, with S Days, I think that my body is getting feedback of "this is no fun" when I eat so much I don't feel well. I'm giving this approach time. It's been 35 years of on again off again dieting. It will take time for me to become comfortable with this diet. "Common sense", in this case, I believe, is to have the patience to wait for my body to calm down and realize that there will not be more starvation diets.
7:30 AM: Well, I am testing the effectiveness of this diet with the conscious decision not to use common sense. In the description of the cognitive brain and the emotional brain, the cognitive brain appears to be the place where common sense rules. I've tried all sorts of diets, including sensible diets like "portion control" and "moderate exercise." They just did not work for me. I am now allowing my emotional brain total control over S Days.
What will happen? Well, I think it is already happening -- I'm not eating enough on the weekend to sustain my weight when I'm following N Day guidelines.
Here are three weekends Saturday - Monday weights:
11/8 206.6 - 209.2
11/15 206.8 - 210.6
12/13 205 - 208.8
I had my peanut cluster phase before starting this diet. I've been on a Haagen Dazs phase. Last weekend was all about biscotti.
Anyone looking at the results of my dieting would feel pretty uninterested in a diet in which a weight on one day - Friday 11/8 at 206.6 - is lower than a weight more than one month later - Monday 12/15 at 208.8.
What I see is a very gradual decline in weight with a diet that has gotten as habitual as brushing my teeth in the morning. Today is a Wednesday, and my weight is 206.2. The weights that I recorded on Wednesdays in November were 207.5, 207.6, and 208.
Unless you've suffered through diet after diet, you may not find this diet very attractive. I have suffered enough. I was ready for it.
7 PM: I had an overloaded plate at dinner. The reason why is that I ate a sandwich at 11 when I brought my son home from school because he didn't feel well, and I returned to work. I ate the sandwich in the car. I am working more hours so far this month because the kids are on vacation the next two weeks, and I need to work about 80 hours per month. It will be nice to have a saner schedule.
Day 102: My body won't give up its extra weight easily, and so I have to be patient. Last night, I had a large meal, and I was grumpy. This is a sign to me that I am losing the weight, but it just isn't reflected on the scale yet. I am tempted to cut back on my meals on N Days, but I don't think that would be a sustainable effort. Yesterday, I lasted on N Day meals because I knew I could have a large dinner.
6:20 AM: I just ate breakfast, and I am still hungry. What a pain. I'm not losing weight, and I feel hungry. That is the double whammy that occurs at the end of a diet. That is the point at which I give up on the diet and go find something else to try. This time around, though, I think I have a diet in which less and less effort needs to be expended, and weight continues to drop. I'll never know if this is true if I fiddle with the diet by adding new rules or drop it altogether. I want to last until at least day 200 before I do an evaluation. That puts me out to 3/26/09.
8 PM: I don't know why, but tonight I felt very hungry and had a large meal -- two turkey burgers, a cereal bar, walnuts, an entire grapefruit, and milk. Why? I am focusing on following N Day rules. All that fit on one plate, and that's what matters. I need to ride through this sense of feeling ravenous. On the way back from dropping my son off at Boy Scouts, I stopped at the store and got some Breyer's coffee ice cream -- an S Day is in sight in 28 hours!
Day 103: I'm eating a lot. Sure, there's stress in my life, but I don't think this is emotional eating. I think it is more the body trying to defend its current weight (set point). I have three choices: change my approach to S Days, change my approach to N Days, or wait. The saying "The definition of an insane person is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results." Well, I disagree. I have been sneezing and sniffling for three months and finally went to the doctor who suggested I try Claretin and then, if that didn't work, get allergy testing. My sister, who is into alternative health approaches, suggested I replace my pillows and get dust mite protector pillow protectors. I did that on Monday. No change Monday night. Imperceptible change Tuesday. Today I woke up and had to blow my nose, but it wasn't the first thing I had to do this morning. I am feeling quite a bit better. It took time. In that case, it took several nights. With No S, it make take months. I'm waiting. If I try to add rules, I think I risk not being able to follow this diet for the rest of my life. What is most encouraging to me is the confidence that I can follow current rules for the rest of my life.
7 PM: I do not understand it, but I am absolutely ravenous. Why? Before dinner, my stomach growled a deep hunger growl. At dinner, I wolfed down a large plateful of chili with rice. I also had an orange and a cereal bar. There was no dent in my hunger. Sometimes, I have had a weird feeling in my face when I am hungry, and I feel that now. Why is this happening? I am not trying to survive on 1,000 calories per day. Instead, I'm eating three normal to large meals per day. Why am I so hungry? All I can speculate is that my body is somehow making an adjustment. I am wondering if my S Day eating own't be less because my N Day eating has been more. I'll see at the end of the weekend. Instead of worrying about losing weight, I'm going to focus on tracking my high weights. It might be that the high end of the weight range comes down first and then the low end follows.
My husband has seen this development a number of times over the course of our marriage. I stop losing weight, I'm hungry, and I end the diet with an all out eating binge. He told me tonight I won't stick with this approach to weight loss. Well, if there were no S Days, he'd be right. Instead of having to tolerate this ravenous feeling for what could be the rest of my life, I know all I have to do is last until midnight and then I can eat what I want for two days. Even if I don't lose weight for a period of time, I'm sticking with this diet. At least I am not gaining weight. I'll weigh just a little less at the end of this year than I did at the end of last year. The weight gain has been halted.
8 PM: I'm going to bed early to avoid eating before midnight. This diet has been easy, but I've encountered a rough spot. I'll take care of myself as best I can until I get through it.
Day 104: A new low! This morning, I don't feel much like ovvereating. My body has learned that significant overeating is not fun. I may have a biscotti with coffee before we take our two younger girls to soccer tryouts. I don't have the desire to overeat right now.
1 PM: My husband gave me a lecture this morning on how I need to "exercise reason and sound judgement" in deciding not to have four Haagen Dazs bars in one day. I said I didn't want to exercise reason and sound judgment but instead let my body decide when enough is enough. He then said this all goes back to Plato -- how the will and reason need to control emotions. I think that, when it comes to weight management, you need times when you can absolutely stuff yourself. I'm reading a book now on Ancel Key's starvation experiment -- how he got conscientious objectors to starve and lose 25% of their weight as a way for there to be scientific evaluation of starvation so that the Allies could better take care of Europeans who had starved during WW II. The book has descriptions of starvation that are very familiar to me. I think I've starved so many times that I react to any sort of restriction. This diet allows me to stuff myself on the weekend, and I need that reassurance. It's very gratifying to have today be a new low. No matter how slowly I lose weight, I know the weight is gone for good -- and that in itself is a wonderful feeling!
3 PM: The kids have gone sledding with their dad, and I'm home with the dog to reflect a little on this diet. When I went to bed last night, I took with me, "The Great Starvation Experiment: Ancel Keys and the Men Who Starved for Science" by Todd Tucker. The conscientious objectors, all men who volunteered to undergo this experiment as a substitute for serving in the armed services, were allowed to participate only if Keys thought they had the physical and emotional stamina to endure the starvation. Here is something from pages 129 - 130 of the book:
"Weygandt finished his paperwork early and waited for the clock to strike nine. He sat peacefully on his stool behind the counter...Weygandt suddenly realized that his hand held a cookie. He looked down. His hand was moving of its own independent will. He was helpless to stop it. He shoved the cookie in his mouth. It tasted wonderful. He shoved two more cookies in his mouth. A sack of popcorn was also within reach and he ate that next. Finally, he ate two overripe bananas that he had been planning to throw in the trash on his way out the door. With a final swallow of gooey brown banana, Weygandt regained control of himself, and again looked at the Regulator clock. Just three minutes had passed."
How painfully familiar this sounds. Eating at the end of a diet is not about pleasure. It is about speed. The emotional brain hijacks the cognitive brain and shoves whatever food it can into the mouth as quickly as possible. I know too well what was described above.
I got O magazine and read Oprah's analysis of why she has regained weight. She thinks it's because of lack of self care. I really doubt it. I think she has the same problem as Weygandt. Constant restrictive dieting doesn't work, except for a very few people who manage to focus their lives on keeping their weight low, who have the psychological profile of people like Weygandt. For the rest of us, and I suspect Oprah is among the rest of us, starvation can be tolerated for a time but not for a lifetime. "Portion control" sounds so reasonable, but a person who constantly exercises "portion control" is always dissatisfied. Ugh!
7:45 PM: I ate too much. I don't feel well.
Day 105: I didn't gain that much weight from yesterday's overeating because I had a stomach ache and had to go to bed. Following the N Day rules, I believe, means that my body no longer can tolerate large quantities of food. In addition, I simply don't enjoy the experience of significantly overeating because it is becoming closely associated with not feeling well. Couldn't "reason and sound judgment", as my husband puts it, be used to put restrictions on overeating so that I don't feel sick at the end of an S Day? Yes, it could. I choose not to exercise "reason and sound judgement" because I think the experience of not feeling well is a better teacher. I no longer choose not to overeat. Instead, I do what I want, which I believe will eventually mean I don't overeat significantly because I don't like getting a stomach ache.
I'm somewhat irked at Tom. After all, I weighed what he weighed back in September, and now I've lost 10 pounds. "Portion control" sounds so reasonable, but it doesn't work for a lifetime. I bit my tongue because I'm confident that I will continue to lose weight. I estimate that I'll lose about 20 pounds per year -- 185 at the end of 2009, 165 at the end of 2010, 145 at the end of 2011, and my stable weight by the end of 2012. I won't get down to 125. After our last child was born in 2001, my weight got down to 155. Tom was chuckling yeterday because I told Tom and our two younger kids that I now weighed 205, and the youngest (Elizabeth) asked if I had ever weighed less than 205. Tom thought it was funny because that child has never known Mom as anything but really fat. Ha. Ha. The last laugh will be on me. I recognize that there are some problems with this diet, including that I had to go to bed early for the last two days because of not feeling well, but this diet all in all takes less time and effort than any other diet except for The Peanut Cluster Diet ("give yourself unconditional permission to eat"). The Peanut Cluster Diet was easy to follow but it resulted in a 10 pound weight gain. I started the Peanut Cluster Diet on 12/15/07 when I was at an all-time high weight of 205. This morning I weighed exactly 205. I wish I'd known about this diet last year, but perhaps I had to learn the hard way that no restrictions at all does not lead to weight loss. It is the contract between restrictions (N Days) and no restrictions (S Days) that leads to weight loss (from the N Day restrictions) that is sustainable (from the S Day allowances which keep you from feeling like you are starving all the time.)
I gained so much weight from 2001 because I was determined to lose weight after our last child was born, and what happened time after time after time is that I'd lose weight and the regain all of it plus some more. It was very, very frustrating. I started having visions of being 300 or 400 pounds. An aunt of mine passed away this year. When she got married 50+ years ago, she was of normal weight to thin. I have seen pictures of her on her wedding day. When she was middle-aged, she was my weight or less. She was definitely overweight to obese. By the time she died, she was huge. Huge. I bet she weighed over 300 pounds, perhaps over 400. She also was mentally incapacitated, and her husband had to use a lift to get her to the bathroom, since he could not lift her up himself. That was the path I was on, and I knew it. It wasn't lack of willpower that drove me to gain weight, since it takes a lot of willpower to keep trying to lose weight and have failure after failure after failure. No, it was lack of knowledge. I didn't know how to lose weight and keep it off.
The many diets I have tried have taught me what didn't work. By the time I read about The No S Diet, I had come to realize that:
- there need to be times of unrestricted eating
- there need to be times of restriced eating
- meatimes are an important structure in eating
- no foods should be forbidden
- using internal cues for eating can encourage self-delusion
- what drives overeating in dieting is a fear of starvation
- the key to making a diet effortless is "perfect compliance" with the rules of the diet: as Reinhard put it, "You're pre-disapproved." I never did find what book I read that contained the words "perfect compliance" as it related to dieting.
- whatever diet is chosen must be a diet that can be followed for life
- managing to a set weight is going to lead to disappointment and discouragement; what is important is to manage to a set of behaviors.
After a rocky first week, I have followed this diet (with the modification of having an accumulation of two Special Days per month and no other Special Days) with "perfect complliance." The diet isn't effortless. What I am finding is that there are episodes of temptation. I just went through temptation on Friday. All in all, though, this diet is easy and one I can follow for the rest of my life. I am willing to settle for whatever weight results from it.
I have the patience to wait for weight loss because I am happy that I have stopped the weight gain. I will weigh at the end of this year less than I did at the end of last year. That in itself is a success.
9 PM: I went through my closet this afternoon and pulled out clothes I cannot wear to put in buckets to go in the storage closet. I found two pair of pants that I now can wear. It is painful for me to consider the effects of weight gain. I have spent years not buying nice clothes for myself because I'm going to lose weight. I have nightgowns that are shredded. I have underwear that has elastic coming off. Why? I don't want to buy the current size to replace what is worn out. I hold off. This is part of the problem of putting your life on hold until you lose weight. Now I have taken all clothes except those in my current size (size 18 ) and put them in buckets to go downstairs. I have also included some summer clothes and clothes I don't like that I got as gifts or bought and then decided made me look really fat. It's like taking off a backpack to pull out these thinner clothes from my closet because it means that I accept that this diet will take a long time. I accept that I will be fat for a long time. I am starting to notice the decreased weight. My size 18 jeans are not as tight. I can fit in a jacket that I haven't worn in two years. It feels good.
Day 106: (206) I woke up with a stomach ache and a headache. I have no idea why my weight did not increase that much after two S Days gone wild. Yesterday, I had chocolate cheesecake and biscotti and coffee ice cream.
11:15: I have kids at home who want to use the computer, so this will be short. For some reason which I cannot fathom, my weight has really dropped. Last Monday, I weighed 208.8. Why is it only 206 today? Last week, I felt all week as thought I was heaping food on my three plates per day. On Saturday, I felt so sick from everything I ate that I went to bed early. Yesterday, I ate so many sweets that I didn't want dinner. I stopped at the grocery store on the way home from dropping off a child for a playdate, and I ate a Snickers bar and a box of Dots in the van before I got home. Yesterday, I also had an entire bowl of popcorn. When I stepped on the scale this morning, it occurred to me that my weight may have skyrocketed up above 210. Instead, it was at 206. I was puzzled.
This morning, I was running so late I didn't have breakfast until I got back from picking up my son and a friend from swim team practice. I didn't eat until 10:30 and didn't feel the least bit hungry. I ate only because I knew I hadn't eaten earlier, and now I feel quite full.
What's interesting to me about writing this down is the observation that there doesn't seem to be much of a correlation among these three factiors: how much I eat, how hungry I feel, and how much I weigh. The regulation of three meals per day on N Days is a steadying influence on me despite the surprising results of my weight staying steady for about a month and then suddenly dropping and despite the fact that I felt very hungry last week but not at all hungry this morning. I'm eating by the clock rather than by feelings or by number on the scale.
1:30 PM: OK. I'm irritated. Maybe I'm so irritated because of the change in my eating, but I'm irritated. Tom suggested I might have been sniffling and sneezing for the last few months because the humidifier isn't working. He checked it, and it wasn't turned on and he didn't want to turn it on because he wanted to make sure the filter was good. I called the furnace cleaning people and was told that the humidifier is now an additional charge and I had not opted for it. What lousy customer service. I didn't even know there was a humidifier attached to the furnace. I explained to the woman that we get their service so I don't have to worry about the furnace. She explained that the furnace can run without the humidifier. I then had her check the records for our home, and the humidifier filter had been changed two years ago. The company had switched from having the humidifier as part of the furnace cleaning service to having it as an option.
To me, this isn't about the humidifier. It's about managing customer expectations. I told her that, when I take the van to the Toyota dealership, I don't say: please check the battery; please change the oil; etc. Instead, I drive the van there and ask them to take care of it. I asked the woman to please look at our furnace and see what else is now an option and not part of the furnace service.
Why am I bringing this up here? Well, I've gone a month with virtually no change in my weight. I had set up the expectation to myself that I would lose 2 pounds per month on average, and so a weight on 11/2 of 207.2 and a weight on 12/15 of 208.8 is not a cause for concern because my expectation is that I'll be below 212 as of December 1. As long as I am keeping to my 2 pound per month weight loss, I don't mind that my weight might go up and stay up for a few weeks.
One of the diets I tried was to keep to 1/2 pound per week weight loss. One day my weight went up four pounds from the day before. What was I to do with that? That was eight weeks' worth of weight loss up in smoke in one day.
The weight loss weight for this diet is 2 pounds per month, so it is at the same rate as the 1/2 pound per week weight loss, but there is a lot more flexibility built into it. I don't have to be evaluating each week's weight.
Managing expectations... I just experienced the importance of managing expectations this morning. I see it as a "critical success factor" with this diet. I won't be thin next summer or the summer after that, but -- with patience -- I will be thin again!
Day 107: (205.6) Yesterday was an easy weight loss day. I had a sandwich for lunch and realized later that I wasn't loading up a plate of food because I was assured of eating dinner. I finished the Todd Tucker book on Ancel Keys' starvation experiment, and the "unrestrictive rehabililation" stage sounds a lot like S Days gone wild:
"During the first unrestricted week, twelve very hungry young men were unloosed on the Twin Cities. They each consumed on average 5,219 calories per day. Most commented that even when they were stuffed to the point that they couldn't eat any more, they still felt hungry. Psychological aftereffects were also noted. There was a seldom-verbalized irrational fear among them that food might again be taken away. Periodic uncontrolled gorging was common." (p. 214).
These men were put on starvation diets of 1,570 calories per day. My standard diet was 1,000 calories per day. No wonder my standard diet became intolerable. The difference between me and these men is that I am obese and they were well below a normal weight. The similarity is only in the psychological aftereffects -- for me, a fear of the next diet meant gorging now.
With The No S Diet, I limit gorging to the weekend and only restrict to the 3S guidelines on N Days. The fear of starvation will dissapate and with it will go the reason for S Days gone wild. If I try to control S Days, I think the result will be not being able to manage N Day rules -- with the result of rebound weight gain.
I'm still over 200 pounds, but I'm well below my starting weight of 215 pounds.
Day 108; 204.4 A new low!: This diet is glacially slow. I think I've come to an understanding of why I overeat so much on S Days. If my theory is right, ony time will solve the problem. Over time, my emotional brain will come to realize that a starvation diet is not around the corner, that S Days predictably come every Saturday and Sunday, and that I don't have to stuff myself today in preparation for starvation tomorrow.
2 PM: I wolfed down lunch while reading the paper and ignoring the kids. Tom got upset with me, and I left to do my exercising. It is impossible to explain that I am having to endure a feeling of being famished for a time, and I think one of the greatest gifts I can give our children is to learn how to maintain a normal weight so they can as well. Tom doesn't understand. I understand why he doesn't understand. Why would I feel famished when I just wolfed down a huge lunch? It doesn't make sense to him. I think I'm beginning to make sense of it, but the logic is that I am still experiencing a feeling of being famished from years of restrictive dieting.
For some reason, following this diet has become hard again. I would estimate that, if the start was a 10 difficulty level on a scale from 1 (easy) to 10 (very hard), the time since about week 3 has been a level 2 - 5. The last week or so has been about a 7. Today is a 7. I am determined to stick with it, but I'm doing things like reading the paper and ignoring the kids to get through this feeling of being absolutely famished. I know I'm not famished. For lunch, I had a cup of soup with a lot of crackers on it. The cup was on a plate with a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich, 1/2 grapefruit, and a healthy serving of challah bread. I am convinced that I am experiencing what the men at the end of the starvation experiment experienced. I am physically full, but the terror of starvation is with me and makes me feel famished. Here is another sentence from page 214 of Todd Tucker's book: "The doctors noted with awe that Richard Mundy, on one Saturday in November, managed to consume 11,500 calories." Think of that. 11,500 calories. I am thinking that there is a lag in time between the end of starvation and the sense of security which comes from knowing that food is always available. The mild restrictions of N Days trigger the sense of being famished. I just have to endure this until my body comes to recognize that I am not going on starvation diets again -- except, perhaps, for a few days before another colonoscopy. There won't be extended periods of time in which I am greatly reducing my caloric intake. Instead, I am accepting slow weight loss and sanity!
4 PM: One of the biggest challenge of following this diet is the slow weight loss. I am thinking I should turn my attention to other health matters rather than focus on S Days gone wild and slow weight loss. I went on Amazon and looked up books written by Ancel Keys, the scientist who ran the starvation experiment. He wrote two cookbooks, both are out of print, and I was able to order both of them through Amazon vendors. One benefit I am finding from this diet is that I am more willing to try healthful foods on N Days because I am assured of being able to eat whatever I want on S Days. I want to start reading about nutrition.
Another focus I would like to have is on posture. Over the years, I have gone to different personal trainers who taught me to stand straight. I even took a posture class a few years ago. During the last year, I went searching for posture books and found one which had a completely different approach. It is called 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. I don't have back pain, although my husband does. Even though I have no back pain, I tried following suggestions in the book and have been amazed by how much better I feel. I never did go through the entire book or follow through on how you are supposed to adjust posture in standing, sitting, sleeping, and walking. Instead, I skimmed through and picked out some ideas. I'd like to go back now and thoroughly read the book. I think that following the advice in the book is going to have a more positive impact on my health than would losing 50 pounds. I believe that following this approach to posture also makes it more uncomfortable to be overweight because you stand with your stomach out. This is the exact opposite of the conventional approach of having your belly button as close to your spine as possible. Turning my attention to other health matters -- namely, posture and nutrition -- will help me to accept the slow weight loss. This isn't a sprint. This isn't a marathon. This is a way of life. I will accept the weight that results from this diet, but I need to accept that it will be more than two years before I reach that weight. In the meantime, life goes on. I don't want this diet to be the focus of my life, so I need to consciously choose other areas of focus, and other areas of focus in reading about health would be easiest for me to choose.
Day 109: (207.0): Why the jump in weight after an N Day? I have no idea why. I am hoping that keeping my focus on a monthly drop of 2 pounds will help me to not be concerned about the weight fluctuations I am experiencing.
Back in late August, when I weighed 212 pounds, I made a bet with the children. The child who guessed closest to the amount of weight I would lose between then and Christmas Day would get $20. Our 7 year old guessed the most amount of weight loss, and her guess was 4 pounds. She'll get $20 as well as gifts from Santa and her family.
I told the kids they can make a new bet for $30 for weight lost between today and May 1, our wedding anniversary.
Why am I doing this? I think that my ability to manage my weight is a crtitical part of parenting in this obesity epidemic. I want the kids to be aware of what I am doing. If they go on to become obese, at least I have shown them a path to normal weight.
My daughter is trying to follow this diet now, but she is not succeeding. She's having a lot of failures, and she appears to be continuing to gain weight. Am I concerned? Not really. She hasn't had the experience of diet failure after diet failure to educate her on the futility of the conventional wisdom of "eat less, exercise more." I'd rather have her failing on this diet than succeeding on conventional diets. After all, I managed to return to my high school weight after college and maintain that weight until my first pregnancy more than 10 years later. It looked like I had found a method of weight loss that would last for life. The problem was that it got to a point where I simply could not stand going on that diet anymore. Restrictive eating lasts for a time but not a lifetime. This diet can last for a lifetime.
8 AM: Elizabeth won the bet, even though the weight on the scale went up almost three pounds from yesterday. My weight today is still five pounds less than my weight of 212 from the end of August. That was the last day of the Hunger Satisfaction Diet, as I called it, and in six days my weight was up to 216 pounds (on September 4). I started this diet on September 8 at 215 pounds.
Today, at 207 pounds, I asked the kids for a guess for my weight loss by May 1. Katie (9 years old) wanted to know the day of the week (that's showing knowledge of this diet!), and I told her it was a Friday.
Here are the weight loss estimates:
Tom (age 12): loss of 1 pound, putting me at 206 pounds
Katie (age 9): loss of 5 pounds, putting me at 202 pounds
Anne (age 14): loss of 6 pounds, putting me at 201 pounds
Elizabeth (age 7): loss of 7 pounds, putting me at 200 pounds
The winner of this contest gets $30 on May 1. While it is no doubt unusual to have weight loss guesses with payments attached, I am doing this so that my kids understand this diet. Katie did show understanding by wanting to know the day of the week for our next ending date for the weight loss contest.
I think that, in this society with two overweight parents, our kids are at extremely high risk for obesity. Sure, we have them in activities. Our oldest isn't too interested in exercise, but the other three are in sports (Tom in swim team, and Katie and Elizabeth in soccer). What matters most, I believe, is not the amount of exercise but rather the amount of food consumed.
I have become so focused on this diet that I'm not going to last if this continues. I looked at the posture book, and there are 8 lessons. I'll take one week for each lesson, so I am deliberately choosing to make posture my focus rather than this diet. Also, I think I need to limit my weighing myself. I think I'll try to weigh myself only on a Saturday after five N Days. I'm committed to weighing myself on May 1 as well. I have made a lifelong commitment to this diet, but it still is not a firmly entrenched habit, so it's nice to have interim goals. My interim goal is to continue until May 1 with the goal of taking care of the N Days and letting the S Days take care of themselves.
8 PM: I am stuffed, and that's OK. I think I need to get stuffed as a way to be reassured that I can eat as much as I want on S Days. Eventually, this will get old.
8:20 PM: I took a bath, a nice soothing bath for my body which is groaning with too much food. I thought about today. The best gift I got was a wool coat from my mother. I like classic styles, with a preference for Talbots rather than Lands End. My jacket is a Lands End jacket from several years ago. One of the tragedies of being overweight is the tendency to put your life on hold. I have been a stay at home mother with no need for good quality clothing and less money overall. Money has gone for children's activities and for my husband's clothing and for tuition at the Catholic school. My clothing budget has been a low priority for me since I don't look good in anything. Also, I refused to go into women's sizes.
The Lands End jacket I have been wearing has held up well since I bought it perhaps three years ago. I used to wear wool coats and even have one hanging in the closet that I haven't been able to wear for at least five years. My mother got me a nice wool coat in a size XL. Yes, I look big in it, but it feels so nice to be back in a wool coat. I may even go out and buy leather gloves to wear as well. While I own gloves, I don't wear them. I just alternate putting hands in my pocket. My preference is for leather gloves or nothing, and leather gloves do not go with jackets.
It's hard to describe how I feel as I write this, but it's almost like novacaine wearing off. I have spent years just numb to the reality of how much my weight problem has affected me. Now, with the possibility that I will lose weight, I can stand to look at the reality with all its grimness.
Another gift I got was a beautiful bathrobe from my sister. I look absolutely huge in it. It is comfortable, but I look huge. I looked at myself in the mirror and decided -- I love it! As I lose weight, I won't look so huge. I'm willing to consider my own comfort in what I wear.
I am preparing a graph so that I can track weight from Saturday to Saturday. This diet has had a big impact on me psychologically even though it has had minimal impact so far physically. I at last have hope that I can return to a normal weight and maintain that weight for the rest of my life.
Christmas is a time of gift-giving, and I think that one of the greatest gifts I will give my children is the knowledge of how to maintain a normal weight. They are much loved. They have seen me spend so much time researching weight loss methods and trying to lose weight with crazy approaches that took time and money and sometimes stunk up the house -- The Cabbage Soup Diet comes to mind when thinking of smell!
I am happy that they will still be living at home as they see me lose weight. They are old enough to remember their mother was once obese and to see their mother losing weight and becoming thin. Nothing is more motivating than to want my children to avoid the pain I have experienced.
Day 110: 207: I decided to continue weighing myself and blogging because it helps me to think about the impact of weight on my life. I simply cannot believe that I am this fat. It's all a mistake. It's not who I am. I've carried more than 200 pounds on my body for about four years, but this is all a big mistake. It's temporary. It will come off without any effort on my part. That's what I've been telling myself. Now, with this diet, I am facing the reality that the weight will come off with effort and a plan.
DAY 86 - 12/2/08: SUCCESS (5)
DAY 87 - 12/3/08: SUCCESS (5)
DAY 88 - 12/4/08: SUCCESS (5)
DAY 89 - 12/5/08: SUCCESS (5)
DAY 90 - 12/6/08: SATURDAY 204.8 A new low!
Day 91 - 12/7/08: SUNDAY
DAY 92 - 12/8/08: SUCCESS (5)
DAY 93 - 12/9/08: SUCCESS (5)
DAY 94 - 12/10/08: SUCCESS (5) 206.2
DAY 95 - 12/11/08: SUCCESS (5) 205.6
DAY 96 - 12/12/08: SUCCESS (5) 205.4
DAY 97 - 12/13/08: SATURDAY 205.0
Day 98 - 12/14/08: SUNDAY 207.2
DAY 99 - 12/15/08: SUCCESS (5) 208.8
DAY 100 - 12/16/08: SUCCESS (5) 206.8
DAY 101 - 12/17/08: SUCCESS (5) 206.2
DAY 102 - 12/18/08: SUCCESS (5) 206.2
Day 103 - 12/19/08: SUCCESS (5) 206.0
Day 104 - 12/20/08: SATURDAY 204.4 A new low!
Day 105 - 12/21/08: SUNDAY 205.0
DAY 106 - 12/22/08: SUCCESS (5) 206.0
DAY 107 - 12/23/08: SUCCESS (5) 205.6
DAY 108 - 12/24/08: SUCCESS (5) 204.2 A new low!
Day 109 - 12/25/08: SPECIAL DAY (4) - CHRISTMAS DAY 207.0
Day 110 - 12/26/08: SUCCESS (4) 207.0
Day 111 - 12/27/08: SATURDAY 205.4
Day 112 - 12/28/08: SUNDAY 207.6
Day 85: No stomach ache as a result of overeating on the weekend. That's a good sign. My body is learning when enough is enough! This diet is starting to seem as easy as brushing my teeth every morning, and I think the reason why may be that I have made a commitment to myself that I will follow it with "perfect compliance." I never go without brushing my teeth in the morning, so there is never a moment when I debate whether or not I should brush my teeth, and the same goes for this diet. I'm on it for life!
Because it is the first of the month, I get another two weekday Special Days to be used however I want. That means that I can have five Special Days in a row and still not blow my diet. I learned last week that my body isn't too interested in more than one Special Day in a week.
Day 86: I brought The No S Diet book to my in-laws so I could review it while I was visiting over Thanksgiving break, and I ended up giving the copy to my sister in law, who has also struggled with her weight for years. She's lost weight on Atkins, but she's never been able to keep it off. One problem with weighting yourself is that the focus becomes the number on the scale. I do have to make adjustments in my eating, and I could see how that worked over Thanksgiving, but I don't need to be so focused on this diet.
It's getting to be that this diet is as easy as brushing your teeth, and I now want to focus on other things. If I don't weigh myself until Christmas, then there's really nothing to discuss concerning it. It's just the way I eat.
I am thinking I may try to get in the habit of only weighing myself three times per year -- Christmas, our wedding anniversary on May 1, and my husband's birthday on September 1. My expectation is that I would lose 5 - 10 pounds per every time I weigh myself (every four months) and eventually I would reach a weight where I would stabilize. I think I want to accept whatever weight that is because dieting has consumed so much of my life and all it's done is make me fatter and fatter. The end of this year will be the first time since 2001 that I weigh less than I did in the prior year. In 2001, we had our last child, and what I did after that was make a commitment to dieting and weight loss. I remember at the beginning of 2002 weighing about 155. My incredible efforts to lose weight led to a 60 pound weight gain.
This last June, I had to get a physical because we needed physicals in order to go to the Family Camp, which is part of the Boy Scout camp. I had a blood sugar of 108 and a weight of 211, and the doctor told me to "eat less, excercise more" and return in three months for a recheck. Well, I didn't. In September, after spending three months on the Hunger Satisfaction Diet, I weighed 216. I was under 210 in October when I had my colonscopy for turning 50 years old, and my blood sugar level was measured at 97.
Still, I think about how I would feel if I had gone to the doctor in September weighing five pounds more than I had in June when she told me I risk development of full-blown diabetes if I don't lose weight. Does it sound in any way reasonable to a doctor that a patient who was told to lose weight for three months and return for a blood sugar test actually managed to gain more weight? What happens in those instances? Does the patient find a different doctor? Does the patient ever return and say "I tried"?
I have an appointment with the doctor today because I've had a cold for two months which I'm beginning to think might be allergies, and it will be nice to let her know that I've finally found a diet where I actually lose weight.
7 PM: It occurred to me this afternoon that I'm starting not to like S Days because I eat so much. It occurred to me that I can give myself permission to eat less because there's no starvation diet around the corner. This was the theory behind Intuitive Eating, but it didn't work out because my body seemed to want more and more. With this approach, I don't focus on internal hunger. I just eat a satisfactory amount that fits on one plate when it is mealtime. I had no desire whatsoever for a second hamburger tonight, even though a second hamburger could have fit on my plate.
Day 87: It's 6:30 AM, and my stomach growled. I wasn't in great pain. I didn't die. There's no crises here. Hunger is not a terrible, terrible thing, as one food shelf Web site put it.
It's 9:30 PM now. I worked several hours. I had two kids into the orthodontist and one with a friend over for dinner and one to a band concert and one to religious ed. I talked to my husband on the phone for 1/2 hour. My son is starting swim team at school, which means a drive to the school every day at 5 PM. He wasn't there tonight because of his ortho appointment. People are busy. I have flexible hours to a maximum of 80 per month, but I also have four active kids. When would I have time to prepare special meals or count carbs or write down everything I eat? Not only is there time involved in tracking but there is also time involved in suffering through starvation. This diet is so sane compared with what I have been doing. The weekend binges may start to be a thing of the past because I don't feel so great when I eat so much. This No S approach is very interesting. Prior to reading the book, I had already figured out the importance of mealtimes and the need for what I had termed "controlled binges", but it would have been a long time before I had developed something similar to The No S Diet. Now, instead of reading dieting books and researching studies on obesity, I'm sitting down for a few minutes to type out my thoughts. Food is no longer a constant obsession. As the book says, I'm "pre disapproved". I don't need to debate about whether to snack because the answer is no.
Day 88: It's a Thursday night, and I'm dreading an upcoming S Day. I haven't felt well on S Days because S has started to mean stomach ache. I may move towards N Day rules on S Days.
Day 89: Since I've started on this diet, Thursday night has been my most difficult night. Last night didn't seem difficult, but I had to apologize to my husband and oldest daughter for being short with them, and I still owe an apology to my middle daughter. I think that what this diet may do is gradually get me to adjust to lower food intake, but the adjustment has to be slow. Tomorrow's S Day needs to be a day of "unconditional permission to eat." At some point, my body will not want to end up with a stomach ache as a result, and I'll eat less than I have eaten.
Day 90: It's 1 AM on a Saturday, and I am awake because I am sneezing and sniffling. It may be that I have allergies, and I am trying to figure out what to change in my environment other than the puppy. I have absolutely no desire to eat anything. What I have most enjoyed on other S Days is the Saturday morning eating of a Haagen Dazs bar in the bathtub. Other memories of the weekend S Days are a blur of stuffing my face like I would at the end of a diet and feeling so sick I need to go and sleep. No thank you. I'm still giving myself "unconditional permission to eat", but I'm not interested in overeating to the point of not feeling well. The memories of feeling great on N Days are also influencing me. It may be that I'll continue to overeat significantly on S Days, but I think I'll eventually stop doing it simply because I don't want to feel bad. There is no willpower involved in stopping overeating. It's all about doing what makes me feel best. With normal diets, you feel miserable on the diet and great when you break it. With this diet, you feel great while on the diet and miserable when you "go wild" on S Days!
It is now noon on Saturday, and I decided to weigh myself this morning because I suspected I wasn't losing weight. It's true. I weigh a whole .2 pound less than I did two weeks ago. Am I upset? No. What I see is that the next step in this diet for me is to have S Days which are more normal than end of diet binge. This morning, I had a Haagen Daxs bar and some St. Nick Day candy. At a Santa's Breakfat at our church, a server added a pancake to my plate, and I wasn't interested in eating it. On the way home from the Santa's Breakfast, however, I stopped at Starbucks and got a Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha. Oh was it good!
What I am finding both with N Days and with S Days is that I am getting to be a more selective eater. The days of tasteless Lean Cuisine and rice cakes are over! So are the days of eating a pancake just because someone put it on my plate as I was saying I didn't want it. I got fat because I was willing to eat everything and anything, including extra pancakes and rice cakes. I'm not offended by what the server did. He's the father of someone who is the age of my daughter, and he's a very friendly person. Instead, I think it is very reasonable that he would have loaded up my empty plate with another pancake. Fat people generally aren't selective about what they eat, especially if they are breaking a diet, and I think part of the reason why is they have bought into the diet approach of restricting what is eaten to approved foods like rice cakes. If you are willing to eat rice cakes which taste like styrofoam, won't you be tempted by an extra pancake?
This diet is helping me to change long-standing habits about how I eat and what I eat. I didn't use to think I deserved to spend $3.58 on a Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha. Now I can spend the money and enjoy the drink.
2 PM: I haven't yet gone to exercise, and I feel somewhat ill because of overeating. My husband was irritated at me for overeating and told me not to complain if I'm sick because I ate too much. I am counting on the negative experience of how I feel after overeating to gradually decrease my desire to overeat. Overeating used to be a relief after the starvation effect of dieting. Now that I'm well fed on three meals per day, overeating has no benefit. It just makes me feel bad.
7 PM: I went to exercise and then came back and ate and ate and lay down because I had a stomach ache. I think I'm going to go through this process until I figure out there is no benefit to overeating. The memories of starving during dieting are still too strong. I remember reading somewhere that there was a high obesity percent in the population of those who had survived concentration camps. Well, I've survived 35 years of on and off again dieting. Starvation has always been just around the corner during those years. Consistent eating of three meals per day, combined with S Day permission to eat what I want, will eventuallly -- eventually -- result in my enjoying my food on S Days instead of just stuffing myself. My theory is that I don't need any willpower for this change and in fact should not use any willpower. I need to give myself "unconditional permission to eat" and wait for the day when I am not longer binge eating on S Days.
8:45 PM: What a day! I made an alteration to my post from the end of September when I laid out my modification of the No S Diet, and I logged how I felt at several times throughout the day. The N Day restrictions are no longer a problem. I find it easy to get through an N Day. My problem is moderation on S Days when I want to keep the "unconditional permission to eat." I think I just need to wait until my body revolts against overeating, and limiting weighing myself will help as will limiting my time journaling. This year will be the first year since 2001 that I weigh less at the end of the year than I did at the beginning. Although my weight loss is slow (10 pounds in 90 days), it is permanent. From my days in high school when I studied math, I remember that lines had a positive or negative slope and also were measured by steepness. What I need to do is celebrate that the slope of a graph with my weight on the X Axis and time on the Y Axis has a negative slope (is going down) and not worry too much that the slope of the line (how quickly I lose weight) is not so great. I've had steep losses for a few days and then rebounds. With this diet, I am confident that the weight is gone permanently.
Day 91: I'm stuffed and looking forward to five N Days.
Day 92: Oh, am I busy! Sometimes, people brag about being busy. I don't like being busy and, in fact, have told people my goal as a stay at home Mom has been to not be busy. It's Christmastime, and we need to make sure we get out Christmas cards and presents. My daughter has a medical problem, so I'm spending Friday with her at the Mayo Clinic. My son started swim team with daily practices that end at 5 PM, and I am working on setting up carpooling. My part time job takes far less less time than the time I spend chauffering kids around at night and taking care of dinner and laundry and grocery shopping. In the midst of this, I am so-so-so glad that my diet requires virtually no time. I seem to be able to shut off hunger completely. I left work at 1:30 PM and grabbed a sandwich which I ate on the way to run an errand before picking up my youngest child and the son of the Girl Scout leader and then going to pick up my oldest child and her friend to go home. And it's the first snow of the season, so it took about 1 hour 15 minutes to pick my son up from swim team. It's nice to sit down and think that I spent no time until right now thinking about dieting.
Day 94: I decided I can face that my weight on Saturday is lower than my weight will be earlier in the following week, and I can face that this diet will take a long, long time, but the weight loss will be permanent. I created a weight chart with weight by week, and now I can look back and compare today's weight of 206.2 to weights on other Wednesdays for a more appropriate comparison. Three Wednesdays ago, my Wedneday weight was 208. The prior two Wednesdays it was 207.6. I need to be realistic about just how much time it will take for me to lose weight. It reminds me of the story of 40 years in the desert! Until my body calms down on S Days and recognizes that I'm never ever going to starve it with Lean Cuisines, I'm just going to have to put up with slow weight loss. Yesterday, I was reading in a book ("The Instinct to Heal") by the author of the "Anitcancer: A New Way of Life" how there are two brains: the cognitive and the emotional brain. The emotional brain will hijack behavior, more or less shutting out input from the cognitive brain, when there is a sense that survival is at stake. That sounds like what happened when my brother held me under water when I was 10 years old. I didn't think about pushing myself to the surface of the water with great force. I just did it. That also sounds like a great description of my body reacting to food at the point that a diet fails. It also sounds like what happens on S Days. I just have to wait this out -- wait out "S Days Gone Wild". Eventually, and it may be months, my body will calm down. Since I've been starving it for years, this obese body is ever on the alert for restrictive eating. I seem to be fine on N Days, but S Days are now the problem. I am betting that this behavior will change over time and eventually I'll just take my time on S Days and enjoy a few treats instead of eating just a huge amount of food on those days. I'm not doing anything more on S Days than try to have three meals in addition to everything else I eat.
4:30 PM: My stomach started growling at about 11, and I was bothered for about 15 minutes. Then I got caught up in my work and nearly missed leaving on time to get home and get the dog before going to pick up the kids. I didn't eat until 2:15. That means that I lasted with not eating for three hours after my stomach growled. The Hunger Satisfaction Diet (eat only after a stomach growl) turned every stomach noise into a crises -- MUST - EAT - NOW! This diet makes me realize that some things are more important than eating at the first sign of hunger -- like getting your work done and taking care of the dog!
Day 95: I decided to add "A new low!" whenever I hit another low on this diet, as a way to encourage me and to reinforce the idea that not every day or even every week will produce "A new low!" weight. I marked last Saturday's 204.8 as "A new low!", which makes today's 205.4 more bearable. The virtue needed in this diet is patience!
Day 96: I prepared for tomorrow by getting different treats, including biscotti and a chocolate marble truffle cake that needs to be kept frozen so I think it will be quite yummy! I think that chocolate and coffee together in the morning is the consummate treat for me, so I am planning ahead to really enjoy that first taste of the morning.
Day 97: I'm unhappy with my weight being up almost a pound from last Saturday, but I think I've got to wait, wait, wait. My body is adjusting to a world in which there is no starvation. Now I'm reading a book on the Alan Keyes study of starvation from the 1940s. My emotional brain has suffered through 35 years of periods of starvation which were imposed by choices made by the cognitive brain, and it's going to take more than a few months for recovery. I did look back in my record of weight loss by week to see how my weight today compares with prior Saturday's weights, and I was amused to see a dip in weight around the time I had a colonoscopy two months ago. My weight today is the same as the first time I weighed myself after the colonoscopy. I had to chuckle about that. My weight loss then was due to severe and brief food restriction (much llike a diet, only for medical reasons), and the weight loss was as temporary as for any diet I've had. The weight may be the same today as it was two months ago, but this time the weight loss is permanent!
I think I just need to be patient with over the top eating on S Days and wait out the reaction.
10 AM: I was up at 5 this morning to pick up my son from an overnight event for teens, and I threw up in the car on the way to pick him up. I told him that when I picked him up, and he made some comment about my body not wanting another S Day! Now I'm up, and I lost .6 pound between 5 and 10 AM, so that's my weight for the day. My husband and I will go out for coffee this morning, and I already had two biscotti. What I crave is citrus fruit. How strange! I think the S Days of all peanut clusters and Haagen Dazs bars are over!
4 PM: I didn't get around to lunch. I almost forgot to get my youngest daughter to a birthday party at 11:15, and from there my husband and I went out for coffee. It was nice. I hope that we return to Saturday morning time together at Starbucks. When the weather was warmer, we would walk to Starbucks with our dog, but now it is too cold to take her for a walk that long, and I'm not interested in walking that far in cold weather, either! I did have a grapefruit. I've had many diets where grapefruit was a diet food, so maybe my desire for grapefruit is returning because I'm never again going to be forcing myself to eat food I don't want at the time.
Day 98: I tried to explain my theory of weight loss to my husband this morning, and he told me what I was saying was I had no control over my body. I told him I do have control, but no one has the control to drown themselves without a restraint because their body would force them to go to the surface of the water. I see that as analogous to a diet without S Days. I tried to have three meals on the weekend, and I didn't succeed yesterday. I am thinking what I need is patience, and how do I get that? Well, on September 4th, I weighed 216 pounds, my all-time high. I think I am going to post at the beginning of each month a weight I will never see again which is two pounds lower each month. If I make October as 214, November as 212, and December as 210, then the weight I will never see again as of 1/1/09 is 208. I'm posting that now. That will be my motivation to keep my N Days green and not worry about S Day behavior.
Noon: This diet is officially going on autopilot. I'm just too busy to figure out why I'm overeating so much on S Days. N Day habits are firmly entrenched. I'll stick with keeping the N Days green and worry about S Days next June. If I'm not losing weight and my S Days are still wild in seven months, then I'll know I have a problem that isn't going to go away.
Day 99: I decided I would mess up this entire diet if I tried to avoid being an idiot on S Days. S Days are for recovery from years of starvation rations when dieting. It's going to take time. I also realized that I am off two pounds in my assessment of where I should be with weight loss. I weighed 216 pounds on September 4, 2008. The goal for the beginning of October is to never, ever see 216 pounds again. For November, the goal is to never, ever see 214 pounds again. For December, it is 212 pounds. For January, it is 210 pounds.
7 PM: Tomorrow is Day 100. My goal for the first 100 days was to keep the N Days green. I think my goal for the second 100 days is to not worry about S Days. I'm reading a book on a study of starvation which was conducted by Ancel Keys on conscientious objectors during WW II. The effect of starvation is very similar to the effect of dieting. I just need to allow my body time to calm down after 35 years of dieting.
Day 100: I'm happy because this diet has become as much effort as brushing my teeth every morning. It's become a habit. Sure, I lose weight slowly, but the weight loss is permanent.
10 PM: The first snow of winter made driving long, and two kid activities plus having to pick up some medicine meant I had a Subway sandwich in the car for lunch at 2:30 and a chicken pot pie at 5. I was grumpy. I seem to get grumpy if I don't eat enough, so I think I just need to allow my body to slowly lose weight. I do feel calmer now that I have resolved to make S Days completely and totally days in which there are no rules, no guidelines, not attempts to do anything. I'll eat what I want on those days.
Day 101: When I told my mother that I had had four Haagen Dazs bars in one day, she told me I needed to "use a little common sense." Well, when you are dealing with the irrational fears of the emotional brain, I don't think common sense is useful. I think what I need to do is just let myself eat whatever I want on S Days. I started out with N Days having meals that were "one sitting" rather than "one plate" and that included an entire bowl of popcorn. Those days are gone. My son hasn't stared at my overflowing plate in weeks because there haven't been overflowing plates. I got used to three meals, and now it is a habit. It has become normal for me. Now, with S Days, I think that my body is getting feedback of "this is no fun" when I eat so much I don't feel well. I'm giving this approach time. It's been 35 years of on again off again dieting. It will take time for me to become comfortable with this diet. "Common sense", in this case, I believe, is to have the patience to wait for my body to calm down and realize that there will not be more starvation diets.
7:30 AM: Well, I am testing the effectiveness of this diet with the conscious decision not to use common sense. In the description of the cognitive brain and the emotional brain, the cognitive brain appears to be the place where common sense rules. I've tried all sorts of diets, including sensible diets like "portion control" and "moderate exercise." They just did not work for me. I am now allowing my emotional brain total control over S Days.
What will happen? Well, I think it is already happening -- I'm not eating enough on the weekend to sustain my weight when I'm following N Day guidelines.
Here are three weekends Saturday - Monday weights:
11/8 206.6 - 209.2
11/15 206.8 - 210.6
12/13 205 - 208.8
I had my peanut cluster phase before starting this diet. I've been on a Haagen Dazs phase. Last weekend was all about biscotti.
Anyone looking at the results of my dieting would feel pretty uninterested in a diet in which a weight on one day - Friday 11/8 at 206.6 - is lower than a weight more than one month later - Monday 12/15 at 208.8.
What I see is a very gradual decline in weight with a diet that has gotten as habitual as brushing my teeth in the morning. Today is a Wednesday, and my weight is 206.2. The weights that I recorded on Wednesdays in November were 207.5, 207.6, and 208.
Unless you've suffered through diet after diet, you may not find this diet very attractive. I have suffered enough. I was ready for it.
7 PM: I had an overloaded plate at dinner. The reason why is that I ate a sandwich at 11 when I brought my son home from school because he didn't feel well, and I returned to work. I ate the sandwich in the car. I am working more hours so far this month because the kids are on vacation the next two weeks, and I need to work about 80 hours per month. It will be nice to have a saner schedule.
Day 102: My body won't give up its extra weight easily, and so I have to be patient. Last night, I had a large meal, and I was grumpy. This is a sign to me that I am losing the weight, but it just isn't reflected on the scale yet. I am tempted to cut back on my meals on N Days, but I don't think that would be a sustainable effort. Yesterday, I lasted on N Day meals because I knew I could have a large dinner.
6:20 AM: I just ate breakfast, and I am still hungry. What a pain. I'm not losing weight, and I feel hungry. That is the double whammy that occurs at the end of a diet. That is the point at which I give up on the diet and go find something else to try. This time around, though, I think I have a diet in which less and less effort needs to be expended, and weight continues to drop. I'll never know if this is true if I fiddle with the diet by adding new rules or drop it altogether. I want to last until at least day 200 before I do an evaluation. That puts me out to 3/26/09.
8 PM: I don't know why, but tonight I felt very hungry and had a large meal -- two turkey burgers, a cereal bar, walnuts, an entire grapefruit, and milk. Why? I am focusing on following N Day rules. All that fit on one plate, and that's what matters. I need to ride through this sense of feeling ravenous. On the way back from dropping my son off at Boy Scouts, I stopped at the store and got some Breyer's coffee ice cream -- an S Day is in sight in 28 hours!
Day 103: I'm eating a lot. Sure, there's stress in my life, but I don't think this is emotional eating. I think it is more the body trying to defend its current weight (set point). I have three choices: change my approach to S Days, change my approach to N Days, or wait. The saying "The definition of an insane person is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results." Well, I disagree. I have been sneezing and sniffling for three months and finally went to the doctor who suggested I try Claretin and then, if that didn't work, get allergy testing. My sister, who is into alternative health approaches, suggested I replace my pillows and get dust mite protector pillow protectors. I did that on Monday. No change Monday night. Imperceptible change Tuesday. Today I woke up and had to blow my nose, but it wasn't the first thing I had to do this morning. I am feeling quite a bit better. It took time. In that case, it took several nights. With No S, it make take months. I'm waiting. If I try to add rules, I think I risk not being able to follow this diet for the rest of my life. What is most encouraging to me is the confidence that I can follow current rules for the rest of my life.
7 PM: I do not understand it, but I am absolutely ravenous. Why? Before dinner, my stomach growled a deep hunger growl. At dinner, I wolfed down a large plateful of chili with rice. I also had an orange and a cereal bar. There was no dent in my hunger. Sometimes, I have had a weird feeling in my face when I am hungry, and I feel that now. Why is this happening? I am not trying to survive on 1,000 calories per day. Instead, I'm eating three normal to large meals per day. Why am I so hungry? All I can speculate is that my body is somehow making an adjustment. I am wondering if my S Day eating own't be less because my N Day eating has been more. I'll see at the end of the weekend. Instead of worrying about losing weight, I'm going to focus on tracking my high weights. It might be that the high end of the weight range comes down first and then the low end follows.
My husband has seen this development a number of times over the course of our marriage. I stop losing weight, I'm hungry, and I end the diet with an all out eating binge. He told me tonight I won't stick with this approach to weight loss. Well, if there were no S Days, he'd be right. Instead of having to tolerate this ravenous feeling for what could be the rest of my life, I know all I have to do is last until midnight and then I can eat what I want for two days. Even if I don't lose weight for a period of time, I'm sticking with this diet. At least I am not gaining weight. I'll weigh just a little less at the end of this year than I did at the end of last year. The weight gain has been halted.
8 PM: I'm going to bed early to avoid eating before midnight. This diet has been easy, but I've encountered a rough spot. I'll take care of myself as best I can until I get through it.
Day 104: A new low! This morning, I don't feel much like ovvereating. My body has learned that significant overeating is not fun. I may have a biscotti with coffee before we take our two younger girls to soccer tryouts. I don't have the desire to overeat right now.
1 PM: My husband gave me a lecture this morning on how I need to "exercise reason and sound judgement" in deciding not to have four Haagen Dazs bars in one day. I said I didn't want to exercise reason and sound judgment but instead let my body decide when enough is enough. He then said this all goes back to Plato -- how the will and reason need to control emotions. I think that, when it comes to weight management, you need times when you can absolutely stuff yourself. I'm reading a book now on Ancel Key's starvation experiment -- how he got conscientious objectors to starve and lose 25% of their weight as a way for there to be scientific evaluation of starvation so that the Allies could better take care of Europeans who had starved during WW II. The book has descriptions of starvation that are very familiar to me. I think I've starved so many times that I react to any sort of restriction. This diet allows me to stuff myself on the weekend, and I need that reassurance. It's very gratifying to have today be a new low. No matter how slowly I lose weight, I know the weight is gone for good -- and that in itself is a wonderful feeling!
3 PM: The kids have gone sledding with their dad, and I'm home with the dog to reflect a little on this diet. When I went to bed last night, I took with me, "The Great Starvation Experiment: Ancel Keys and the Men Who Starved for Science" by Todd Tucker. The conscientious objectors, all men who volunteered to undergo this experiment as a substitute for serving in the armed services, were allowed to participate only if Keys thought they had the physical and emotional stamina to endure the starvation. Here is something from pages 129 - 130 of the book:
"Weygandt finished his paperwork early and waited for the clock to strike nine. He sat peacefully on his stool behind the counter...Weygandt suddenly realized that his hand held a cookie. He looked down. His hand was moving of its own independent will. He was helpless to stop it. He shoved the cookie in his mouth. It tasted wonderful. He shoved two more cookies in his mouth. A sack of popcorn was also within reach and he ate that next. Finally, he ate two overripe bananas that he had been planning to throw in the trash on his way out the door. With a final swallow of gooey brown banana, Weygandt regained control of himself, and again looked at the Regulator clock. Just three minutes had passed."
How painfully familiar this sounds. Eating at the end of a diet is not about pleasure. It is about speed. The emotional brain hijacks the cognitive brain and shoves whatever food it can into the mouth as quickly as possible. I know too well what was described above.
I got O magazine and read Oprah's analysis of why she has regained weight. She thinks it's because of lack of self care. I really doubt it. I think she has the same problem as Weygandt. Constant restrictive dieting doesn't work, except for a very few people who manage to focus their lives on keeping their weight low, who have the psychological profile of people like Weygandt. For the rest of us, and I suspect Oprah is among the rest of us, starvation can be tolerated for a time but not for a lifetime. "Portion control" sounds so reasonable, but a person who constantly exercises "portion control" is always dissatisfied. Ugh!
7:45 PM: I ate too much. I don't feel well.
Day 105: I didn't gain that much weight from yesterday's overeating because I had a stomach ache and had to go to bed. Following the N Day rules, I believe, means that my body no longer can tolerate large quantities of food. In addition, I simply don't enjoy the experience of significantly overeating because it is becoming closely associated with not feeling well. Couldn't "reason and sound judgment", as my husband puts it, be used to put restrictions on overeating so that I don't feel sick at the end of an S Day? Yes, it could. I choose not to exercise "reason and sound judgement" because I think the experience of not feeling well is a better teacher. I no longer choose not to overeat. Instead, I do what I want, which I believe will eventually mean I don't overeat significantly because I don't like getting a stomach ache.
I'm somewhat irked at Tom. After all, I weighed what he weighed back in September, and now I've lost 10 pounds. "Portion control" sounds so reasonable, but it doesn't work for a lifetime. I bit my tongue because I'm confident that I will continue to lose weight. I estimate that I'll lose about 20 pounds per year -- 185 at the end of 2009, 165 at the end of 2010, 145 at the end of 2011, and my stable weight by the end of 2012. I won't get down to 125. After our last child was born in 2001, my weight got down to 155. Tom was chuckling yeterday because I told Tom and our two younger kids that I now weighed 205, and the youngest (Elizabeth) asked if I had ever weighed less than 205. Tom thought it was funny because that child has never known Mom as anything but really fat. Ha. Ha. The last laugh will be on me. I recognize that there are some problems with this diet, including that I had to go to bed early for the last two days because of not feeling well, but this diet all in all takes less time and effort than any other diet except for The Peanut Cluster Diet ("give yourself unconditional permission to eat"). The Peanut Cluster Diet was easy to follow but it resulted in a 10 pound weight gain. I started the Peanut Cluster Diet on 12/15/07 when I was at an all-time high weight of 205. This morning I weighed exactly 205. I wish I'd known about this diet last year, but perhaps I had to learn the hard way that no restrictions at all does not lead to weight loss. It is the contract between restrictions (N Days) and no restrictions (S Days) that leads to weight loss (from the N Day restrictions) that is sustainable (from the S Day allowances which keep you from feeling like you are starving all the time.)
I gained so much weight from 2001 because I was determined to lose weight after our last child was born, and what happened time after time after time is that I'd lose weight and the regain all of it plus some more. It was very, very frustrating. I started having visions of being 300 or 400 pounds. An aunt of mine passed away this year. When she got married 50+ years ago, she was of normal weight to thin. I have seen pictures of her on her wedding day. When she was middle-aged, she was my weight or less. She was definitely overweight to obese. By the time she died, she was huge. Huge. I bet she weighed over 300 pounds, perhaps over 400. She also was mentally incapacitated, and her husband had to use a lift to get her to the bathroom, since he could not lift her up himself. That was the path I was on, and I knew it. It wasn't lack of willpower that drove me to gain weight, since it takes a lot of willpower to keep trying to lose weight and have failure after failure after failure. No, it was lack of knowledge. I didn't know how to lose weight and keep it off.
The many diets I have tried have taught me what didn't work. By the time I read about The No S Diet, I had come to realize that:
- there need to be times of unrestricted eating
- there need to be times of restriced eating
- meatimes are an important structure in eating
- no foods should be forbidden
- using internal cues for eating can encourage self-delusion
- what drives overeating in dieting is a fear of starvation
- the key to making a diet effortless is "perfect compliance" with the rules of the diet: as Reinhard put it, "You're pre-disapproved." I never did find what book I read that contained the words "perfect compliance" as it related to dieting.
- whatever diet is chosen must be a diet that can be followed for life
- managing to a set weight is going to lead to disappointment and discouragement; what is important is to manage to a set of behaviors.
After a rocky first week, I have followed this diet (with the modification of having an accumulation of two Special Days per month and no other Special Days) with "perfect complliance." The diet isn't effortless. What I am finding is that there are episodes of temptation. I just went through temptation on Friday. All in all, though, this diet is easy and one I can follow for the rest of my life. I am willing to settle for whatever weight results from it.
I have the patience to wait for weight loss because I am happy that I have stopped the weight gain. I will weigh at the end of this year less than I did at the end of last year. That in itself is a success.
9 PM: I went through my closet this afternoon and pulled out clothes I cannot wear to put in buckets to go in the storage closet. I found two pair of pants that I now can wear. It is painful for me to consider the effects of weight gain. I have spent years not buying nice clothes for myself because I'm going to lose weight. I have nightgowns that are shredded. I have underwear that has elastic coming off. Why? I don't want to buy the current size to replace what is worn out. I hold off. This is part of the problem of putting your life on hold until you lose weight. Now I have taken all clothes except those in my current size (size 18 ) and put them in buckets to go downstairs. I have also included some summer clothes and clothes I don't like that I got as gifts or bought and then decided made me look really fat. It's like taking off a backpack to pull out these thinner clothes from my closet because it means that I accept that this diet will take a long time. I accept that I will be fat for a long time. I am starting to notice the decreased weight. My size 18 jeans are not as tight. I can fit in a jacket that I haven't worn in two years. It feels good.
Day 106: (206) I woke up with a stomach ache and a headache. I have no idea why my weight did not increase that much after two S Days gone wild. Yesterday, I had chocolate cheesecake and biscotti and coffee ice cream.
11:15: I have kids at home who want to use the computer, so this will be short. For some reason which I cannot fathom, my weight has really dropped. Last Monday, I weighed 208.8. Why is it only 206 today? Last week, I felt all week as thought I was heaping food on my three plates per day. On Saturday, I felt so sick from everything I ate that I went to bed early. Yesterday, I ate so many sweets that I didn't want dinner. I stopped at the grocery store on the way home from dropping off a child for a playdate, and I ate a Snickers bar and a box of Dots in the van before I got home. Yesterday, I also had an entire bowl of popcorn. When I stepped on the scale this morning, it occurred to me that my weight may have skyrocketed up above 210. Instead, it was at 206. I was puzzled.
This morning, I was running so late I didn't have breakfast until I got back from picking up my son and a friend from swim team practice. I didn't eat until 10:30 and didn't feel the least bit hungry. I ate only because I knew I hadn't eaten earlier, and now I feel quite full.
What's interesting to me about writing this down is the observation that there doesn't seem to be much of a correlation among these three factiors: how much I eat, how hungry I feel, and how much I weigh. The regulation of three meals per day on N Days is a steadying influence on me despite the surprising results of my weight staying steady for about a month and then suddenly dropping and despite the fact that I felt very hungry last week but not at all hungry this morning. I'm eating by the clock rather than by feelings or by number on the scale.
1:30 PM: OK. I'm irritated. Maybe I'm so irritated because of the change in my eating, but I'm irritated. Tom suggested I might have been sniffling and sneezing for the last few months because the humidifier isn't working. He checked it, and it wasn't turned on and he didn't want to turn it on because he wanted to make sure the filter was good. I called the furnace cleaning people and was told that the humidifier is now an additional charge and I had not opted for it. What lousy customer service. I didn't even know there was a humidifier attached to the furnace. I explained to the woman that we get their service so I don't have to worry about the furnace. She explained that the furnace can run without the humidifier. I then had her check the records for our home, and the humidifier filter had been changed two years ago. The company had switched from having the humidifier as part of the furnace cleaning service to having it as an option.
To me, this isn't about the humidifier. It's about managing customer expectations. I told her that, when I take the van to the Toyota dealership, I don't say: please check the battery; please change the oil; etc. Instead, I drive the van there and ask them to take care of it. I asked the woman to please look at our furnace and see what else is now an option and not part of the furnace service.
Why am I bringing this up here? Well, I've gone a month with virtually no change in my weight. I had set up the expectation to myself that I would lose 2 pounds per month on average, and so a weight on 11/2 of 207.2 and a weight on 12/15 of 208.8 is not a cause for concern because my expectation is that I'll be below 212 as of December 1. As long as I am keeping to my 2 pound per month weight loss, I don't mind that my weight might go up and stay up for a few weeks.
One of the diets I tried was to keep to 1/2 pound per week weight loss. One day my weight went up four pounds from the day before. What was I to do with that? That was eight weeks' worth of weight loss up in smoke in one day.
The weight loss weight for this diet is 2 pounds per month, so it is at the same rate as the 1/2 pound per week weight loss, but there is a lot more flexibility built into it. I don't have to be evaluating each week's weight.
Managing expectations... I just experienced the importance of managing expectations this morning. I see it as a "critical success factor" with this diet. I won't be thin next summer or the summer after that, but -- with patience -- I will be thin again!
Day 107: (205.6) Yesterday was an easy weight loss day. I had a sandwich for lunch and realized later that I wasn't loading up a plate of food because I was assured of eating dinner. I finished the Todd Tucker book on Ancel Keys' starvation experiment, and the "unrestrictive rehabililation" stage sounds a lot like S Days gone wild:
"During the first unrestricted week, twelve very hungry young men were unloosed on the Twin Cities. They each consumed on average 5,219 calories per day. Most commented that even when they were stuffed to the point that they couldn't eat any more, they still felt hungry. Psychological aftereffects were also noted. There was a seldom-verbalized irrational fear among them that food might again be taken away. Periodic uncontrolled gorging was common." (p. 214).
These men were put on starvation diets of 1,570 calories per day. My standard diet was 1,000 calories per day. No wonder my standard diet became intolerable. The difference between me and these men is that I am obese and they were well below a normal weight. The similarity is only in the psychological aftereffects -- for me, a fear of the next diet meant gorging now.
With The No S Diet, I limit gorging to the weekend and only restrict to the 3S guidelines on N Days. The fear of starvation will dissapate and with it will go the reason for S Days gone wild. If I try to control S Days, I think the result will be not being able to manage N Day rules -- with the result of rebound weight gain.
I'm still over 200 pounds, but I'm well below my starting weight of 215 pounds.
Day 108; 204.4 A new low!: This diet is glacially slow. I think I've come to an understanding of why I overeat so much on S Days. If my theory is right, ony time will solve the problem. Over time, my emotional brain will come to realize that a starvation diet is not around the corner, that S Days predictably come every Saturday and Sunday, and that I don't have to stuff myself today in preparation for starvation tomorrow.
2 PM: I wolfed down lunch while reading the paper and ignoring the kids. Tom got upset with me, and I left to do my exercising. It is impossible to explain that I am having to endure a feeling of being famished for a time, and I think one of the greatest gifts I can give our children is to learn how to maintain a normal weight so they can as well. Tom doesn't understand. I understand why he doesn't understand. Why would I feel famished when I just wolfed down a huge lunch? It doesn't make sense to him. I think I'm beginning to make sense of it, but the logic is that I am still experiencing a feeling of being famished from years of restrictive dieting.
For some reason, following this diet has become hard again. I would estimate that, if the start was a 10 difficulty level on a scale from 1 (easy) to 10 (very hard), the time since about week 3 has been a level 2 - 5. The last week or so has been about a 7. Today is a 7. I am determined to stick with it, but I'm doing things like reading the paper and ignoring the kids to get through this feeling of being absolutely famished. I know I'm not famished. For lunch, I had a cup of soup with a lot of crackers on it. The cup was on a plate with a ham and Swiss cheese sandwich, 1/2 grapefruit, and a healthy serving of challah bread. I am convinced that I am experiencing what the men at the end of the starvation experiment experienced. I am physically full, but the terror of starvation is with me and makes me feel famished. Here is another sentence from page 214 of Todd Tucker's book: "The doctors noted with awe that Richard Mundy, on one Saturday in November, managed to consume 11,500 calories." Think of that. 11,500 calories. I am thinking that there is a lag in time between the end of starvation and the sense of security which comes from knowing that food is always available. The mild restrictions of N Days trigger the sense of being famished. I just have to endure this until my body comes to recognize that I am not going on starvation diets again -- except, perhaps, for a few days before another colonoscopy. There won't be extended periods of time in which I am greatly reducing my caloric intake. Instead, I am accepting slow weight loss and sanity!
4 PM: One of the biggest challenge of following this diet is the slow weight loss. I am thinking I should turn my attention to other health matters rather than focus on S Days gone wild and slow weight loss. I went on Amazon and looked up books written by Ancel Keys, the scientist who ran the starvation experiment. He wrote two cookbooks, both are out of print, and I was able to order both of them through Amazon vendors. One benefit I am finding from this diet is that I am more willing to try healthful foods on N Days because I am assured of being able to eat whatever I want on S Days. I want to start reading about nutrition.
Another focus I would like to have is on posture. Over the years, I have gone to different personal trainers who taught me to stand straight. I even took a posture class a few years ago. During the last year, I went searching for posture books and found one which had a completely different approach. It is called 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back. I don't have back pain, although my husband does. Even though I have no back pain, I tried following suggestions in the book and have been amazed by how much better I feel. I never did go through the entire book or follow through on how you are supposed to adjust posture in standing, sitting, sleeping, and walking. Instead, I skimmed through and picked out some ideas. I'd like to go back now and thoroughly read the book. I think that following the advice in the book is going to have a more positive impact on my health than would losing 50 pounds. I believe that following this approach to posture also makes it more uncomfortable to be overweight because you stand with your stomach out. This is the exact opposite of the conventional approach of having your belly button as close to your spine as possible. Turning my attention to other health matters -- namely, posture and nutrition -- will help me to accept the slow weight loss. This isn't a sprint. This isn't a marathon. This is a way of life. I will accept the weight that results from this diet, but I need to accept that it will be more than two years before I reach that weight. In the meantime, life goes on. I don't want this diet to be the focus of my life, so I need to consciously choose other areas of focus, and other areas of focus in reading about health would be easiest for me to choose.
Day 109: (207.0): Why the jump in weight after an N Day? I have no idea why. I am hoping that keeping my focus on a monthly drop of 2 pounds will help me to not be concerned about the weight fluctuations I am experiencing.
Back in late August, when I weighed 212 pounds, I made a bet with the children. The child who guessed closest to the amount of weight I would lose between then and Christmas Day would get $20. Our 7 year old guessed the most amount of weight loss, and her guess was 4 pounds. She'll get $20 as well as gifts from Santa and her family.
I told the kids they can make a new bet for $30 for weight lost between today and May 1, our wedding anniversary.
Why am I doing this? I think that my ability to manage my weight is a crtitical part of parenting in this obesity epidemic. I want the kids to be aware of what I am doing. If they go on to become obese, at least I have shown them a path to normal weight.
My daughter is trying to follow this diet now, but she is not succeeding. She's having a lot of failures, and she appears to be continuing to gain weight. Am I concerned? Not really. She hasn't had the experience of diet failure after diet failure to educate her on the futility of the conventional wisdom of "eat less, exercise more." I'd rather have her failing on this diet than succeeding on conventional diets. After all, I managed to return to my high school weight after college and maintain that weight until my first pregnancy more than 10 years later. It looked like I had found a method of weight loss that would last for life. The problem was that it got to a point where I simply could not stand going on that diet anymore. Restrictive eating lasts for a time but not a lifetime. This diet can last for a lifetime.
8 AM: Elizabeth won the bet, even though the weight on the scale went up almost three pounds from yesterday. My weight today is still five pounds less than my weight of 212 from the end of August. That was the last day of the Hunger Satisfaction Diet, as I called it, and in six days my weight was up to 216 pounds (on September 4). I started this diet on September 8 at 215 pounds.
Today, at 207 pounds, I asked the kids for a guess for my weight loss by May 1. Katie (9 years old) wanted to know the day of the week (that's showing knowledge of this diet!), and I told her it was a Friday.
Here are the weight loss estimates:
Tom (age 12): loss of 1 pound, putting me at 206 pounds
Katie (age 9): loss of 5 pounds, putting me at 202 pounds
Anne (age 14): loss of 6 pounds, putting me at 201 pounds
Elizabeth (age 7): loss of 7 pounds, putting me at 200 pounds
The winner of this contest gets $30 on May 1. While it is no doubt unusual to have weight loss guesses with payments attached, I am doing this so that my kids understand this diet. Katie did show understanding by wanting to know the day of the week for our next ending date for the weight loss contest.
I think that, in this society with two overweight parents, our kids are at extremely high risk for obesity. Sure, we have them in activities. Our oldest isn't too interested in exercise, but the other three are in sports (Tom in swim team, and Katie and Elizabeth in soccer). What matters most, I believe, is not the amount of exercise but rather the amount of food consumed.
I have become so focused on this diet that I'm not going to last if this continues. I looked at the posture book, and there are 8 lessons. I'll take one week for each lesson, so I am deliberately choosing to make posture my focus rather than this diet. Also, I think I need to limit my weighing myself. I think I'll try to weigh myself only on a Saturday after five N Days. I'm committed to weighing myself on May 1 as well. I have made a lifelong commitment to this diet, but it still is not a firmly entrenched habit, so it's nice to have interim goals. My interim goal is to continue until May 1 with the goal of taking care of the N Days and letting the S Days take care of themselves.
8 PM: I am stuffed, and that's OK. I think I need to get stuffed as a way to be reassured that I can eat as much as I want on S Days. Eventually, this will get old.
8:20 PM: I took a bath, a nice soothing bath for my body which is groaning with too much food. I thought about today. The best gift I got was a wool coat from my mother. I like classic styles, with a preference for Talbots rather than Lands End. My jacket is a Lands End jacket from several years ago. One of the tragedies of being overweight is the tendency to put your life on hold. I have been a stay at home mother with no need for good quality clothing and less money overall. Money has gone for children's activities and for my husband's clothing and for tuition at the Catholic school. My clothing budget has been a low priority for me since I don't look good in anything. Also, I refused to go into women's sizes.
The Lands End jacket I have been wearing has held up well since I bought it perhaps three years ago. I used to wear wool coats and even have one hanging in the closet that I haven't been able to wear for at least five years. My mother got me a nice wool coat in a size XL. Yes, I look big in it, but it feels so nice to be back in a wool coat. I may even go out and buy leather gloves to wear as well. While I own gloves, I don't wear them. I just alternate putting hands in my pocket. My preference is for leather gloves or nothing, and leather gloves do not go with jackets.
It's hard to describe how I feel as I write this, but it's almost like novacaine wearing off. I have spent years just numb to the reality of how much my weight problem has affected me. Now, with the possibility that I will lose weight, I can stand to look at the reality with all its grimness.
Another gift I got was a beautiful bathrobe from my sister. I look absolutely huge in it. It is comfortable, but I look huge. I looked at myself in the mirror and decided -- I love it! As I lose weight, I won't look so huge. I'm willing to consider my own comfort in what I wear.
I am preparing a graph so that I can track weight from Saturday to Saturday. This diet has had a big impact on me psychologically even though it has had minimal impact so far physically. I at last have hope that I can return to a normal weight and maintain that weight for the rest of my life.
Christmas is a time of gift-giving, and I think that one of the greatest gifts I will give my children is the knowledge of how to maintain a normal weight. They are much loved. They have seen me spend so much time researching weight loss methods and trying to lose weight with crazy approaches that took time and money and sometimes stunk up the house -- The Cabbage Soup Diet comes to mind when thinking of smell!
I am happy that they will still be living at home as they see me lose weight. They are old enough to remember their mother was once obese and to see their mother losing weight and becoming thin. Nothing is more motivating than to want my children to avoid the pain I have experienced.
Day 110: 207: I decided to continue weighing myself and blogging because it helps me to think about the impact of weight on my life. I simply cannot believe that I am this fat. It's all a mistake. It's not who I am. I've carried more than 200 pounds on my body for about four years, but this is all a big mistake. It's temporary. It will come off without any effort on my part. That's what I've been telling myself. Now, with this diet, I am facing the reality that the weight will come off with effort and a plan.
Last edited by Kathleen on Sun Dec 28, 2008 2:20 pm, edited 7 times in total.
Day 113 - 12/29/08: SUCCESS (4) 207.0
Day 114 - 12/30/08: SUCCESS (4) 206.0
Day 115 - 12/31/08: S DAY (3) - NEW YEAR'S EVE
Day 113: Yesterday's S Day "starvation effect eating" didn't start until about noon. I consider this an improvement over waiting until midnight on S Days so I could have Haagen Dazs bars!
Day 114: I'm not sure if I'm taking another S Day for the New Year. My body isn't yet recovered from a Thursday S Day (Christmas) and the weekend.
Day 114 - 12/30/08: SUCCESS (4) 206.0
Day 115 - 12/31/08: S DAY (3) - NEW YEAR'S EVE
Day 113: Yesterday's S Day "starvation effect eating" didn't start until about noon. I consider this an improvement over waiting until midnight on S Days so I could have Haagen Dazs bars!
Day 114: I'm not sure if I'm taking another S Day for the New Year. My body isn't yet recovered from a Thursday S Day (Christmas) and the weekend.
Last edited by Kathleen on Sat Jan 03, 2009 3:05 am, edited 8 times in total.
Resting52,
Thank you. It's helped me to put my thoughts down. I wrote so much that I exceeded the limit for one post for my December post, and now everything else is truncating!
I once read a very honest and tortuous confession of the impact on weight of how you view yourself by a guy by the name of Martin Seligman, who wrote several books on happiness, including Learned Optimism. There's so much focus on the physical problems associated with weight problems, and there is so much on how to lose weight and why you are fat, but there is very little on how fat makes you feel. I think conventional wisdom is dead wrong here: it's not emotional and psychological problems that cause weight problems. Instead, weight problems cause problems because you change your behavior -- not looking in the mirror, delaying in buying clothes, standing way back when pictures are taken, or avoiding pictures altogether...
Kathleen
Thank you. It's helped me to put my thoughts down. I wrote so much that I exceeded the limit for one post for my December post, and now everything else is truncating!
I once read a very honest and tortuous confession of the impact on weight of how you view yourself by a guy by the name of Martin Seligman, who wrote several books on happiness, including Learned Optimism. There's so much focus on the physical problems associated with weight problems, and there is so much on how to lose weight and why you are fat, but there is very little on how fat makes you feel. I think conventional wisdom is dead wrong here: it's not emotional and psychological problems that cause weight problems. Instead, weight problems cause problems because you change your behavior -- not looking in the mirror, delaying in buying clothes, standing way back when pictures are taken, or avoiding pictures altogether...
Kathleen
-
BrightAngel
- Posts: 2093
- Joined: Wed Apr 09, 2008 4:22 pm
- Location: Central California
- Contact:
I am inspired by your Efforts,
and find your journal entries interesting.
Even before I read Reinhard, I had learned it is necessary to:
and find your journal entries interesting.
Even before I read Reinhard, I had learned it is necessary to:
- Focus on Behavior, instead of on Results.
The timing of the number on the scale is Results.
What we put in our mouths is Behavior.
Last edited by BrightAngel on Sun Dec 28, 2008 3:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
BrightAngel - (Dr. Collins)
See: DietHobby. com
See: DietHobby. com
resting52,
I've had some emotional ups and downs in my life to be sure -- including having a rare type of cancer all over my forehead which required five operations and a bandage on my head (which I covered with a scarf) from August, 2007 to February, 2008. I didn't think it likely I could be hired as a contractor wearing that!
Still, I think emotional eating is identified as the cause of binge eating disorder, and I think a more appropriate name for eating everything in sight -- or, as my husband puts it, "a feeding frenzy" -- is starvation recovery eating.
The emotional brain hijacks the cognitive brain and a person eats an incredible amount of food in a few minutes. I had quoted this before from Todd Tucker's book on the WW II starvation experiment in which Dr. Ancel Keys got conscientious objectors to agree to starve for six months:
"Weygandt finished his paperwork early and waited for the clock to strike nine. He sat peacefully on his stool behind the counter...Weygandt suddenly realized that his hand held a cookie. He looked down. His hand was moving of its own independent will. He was helpless to stop it. He shoved the cookie in his mouth. It tasted wonderful. He shoved two more cookies in his mouth. A sack of popcorn was also within reach and he ate that next. Finally, he ate two overripe bananas that he had been planning to throw in the trash on his way out the door. With a final swallow of gooey brown banana, Weygandt regained control of himself, and again looked at the Regulator clock. Just three minutes had passed."
Last night, on the Internet, I read about a national program on obesity prevention, and here in the Twin Cities a doctor is taking obese veterans and starting them off on a weight reduction program at 800 calories per week. Well, in the Ancel Keys experiment, the men got something like 1,570 calories per day.
Weygandt sure sounds like me on S Days -- only, with the assurance of two S Days per week, I think that I'll gradually not eat so much. It is now 9:35 AM, and I've had a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee. I'm not interested in anything sweet.
I'll see how my theory plays out over time, since I am determined not to apply common sense to S Day eating and just allow myself to eat whatever I want and however much I want. The question is: will I stop eating so much if I know that I will be able to eat whatever I want on two days per week?
Kathleen
I've had some emotional ups and downs in my life to be sure -- including having a rare type of cancer all over my forehead which required five operations and a bandage on my head (which I covered with a scarf) from August, 2007 to February, 2008. I didn't think it likely I could be hired as a contractor wearing that!
Still, I think emotional eating is identified as the cause of binge eating disorder, and I think a more appropriate name for eating everything in sight -- or, as my husband puts it, "a feeding frenzy" -- is starvation recovery eating.
The emotional brain hijacks the cognitive brain and a person eats an incredible amount of food in a few minutes. I had quoted this before from Todd Tucker's book on the WW II starvation experiment in which Dr. Ancel Keys got conscientious objectors to agree to starve for six months:
"Weygandt finished his paperwork early and waited for the clock to strike nine. He sat peacefully on his stool behind the counter...Weygandt suddenly realized that his hand held a cookie. He looked down. His hand was moving of its own independent will. He was helpless to stop it. He shoved the cookie in his mouth. It tasted wonderful. He shoved two more cookies in his mouth. A sack of popcorn was also within reach and he ate that next. Finally, he ate two overripe bananas that he had been planning to throw in the trash on his way out the door. With a final swallow of gooey brown banana, Weygandt regained control of himself, and again looked at the Regulator clock. Just three minutes had passed."
Last night, on the Internet, I read about a national program on obesity prevention, and here in the Twin Cities a doctor is taking obese veterans and starting them off on a weight reduction program at 800 calories per week. Well, in the Ancel Keys experiment, the men got something like 1,570 calories per day.
Weygandt sure sounds like me on S Days -- only, with the assurance of two S Days per week, I think that I'll gradually not eat so much. It is now 9:35 AM, and I've had a bowl of cereal and a cup of coffee. I'm not interested in anything sweet.
I'll see how my theory plays out over time, since I am determined not to apply common sense to S Day eating and just allow myself to eat whatever I want and however much I want. The question is: will I stop eating so much if I know that I will be able to eat whatever I want on two days per week?
Kathleen
BrightAngel,
Yes, I think one of Reinhard's insights is that the key to permanent weight loss is to focus on behaviorial habits, not on the number on the scale. Following this diet is resulting in a lower weight, but I do not have the ability to look in the future and see what weight will result from following the 3S guidelines on N Days, giving myself "unconditional permission to eat" on S Days, and giving mysellf "unconditional permission to eat" on an accumulation of two additional weekdays per month. The eating behaviors have been selected, I am committed to following them, and I am willing to accept whatever weight results. I am relieved that I am no longer gaining weight! Six years of really trying to lose weight had netted me sixty extra pounds, and now ten of the pounds are gone for good!
Kathleen
Yes, I think one of Reinhard's insights is that the key to permanent weight loss is to focus on behaviorial habits, not on the number on the scale. Following this diet is resulting in a lower weight, but I do not have the ability to look in the future and see what weight will result from following the 3S guidelines on N Days, giving myself "unconditional permission to eat" on S Days, and giving mysellf "unconditional permission to eat" on an accumulation of two additional weekdays per month. The eating behaviors have been selected, I am committed to following them, and I am willing to accept whatever weight results. I am relieved that I am no longer gaining weight! Six years of really trying to lose weight had netted me sixty extra pounds, and now ten of the pounds are gone for good!
Kathleen
As of 1/1/09, I will never again weigh more than 210 pounds.
DAY 116 - 1/1/09: SUCCESS (5)
DAY 117 - 1/2/09: SUCCESS (5)
DAY 118 - 1/3/09: SATURDAY 205.6
DAY 119 - 1/4/09: SUNDAY 207.0
DAY 120 - 1/5/09: SUCCESS (5) 209.2
DAY 121 - 1/6/09: SUCCESS (5) 207.6
Day 122 - 1/7/09: SPECIAL DAY (4) - BAD BREATH 205.2
DAY 123 - 1/8/09: 206.2
DAY 124 - 1/9/09: 205.4
DAY 125 - Saturday, January 10, 2009: 202.8 A new low!
DAY 126 - Sunday, January 11, 2009: 204.8.
DAY 127 - Monday, January 12, 2009: 206.4.
DAY 128 - Tuesday, January 13, 2009: 204.4
DAY 129 - Wednesday, January 14, 2009: 203.6
DAY 130 - Thursday, January 15, 2009: 202.2. A new low!
Saturday, January 3, 2009: (205.6). I made it through a visit with my in laws while keeping to this diet. I had given a copy of the book to a sister in law who decided to follow it. She loaned it to another sister in law who read part of it and told me it was just common sense and she would lose weight faster than I will because of the diet she is following. I told her I'm not looking for quick weight loss: I'm looking for permanent weigbt loss. The book is now with a third sister in law, the one who recommended this book to me in the first place but never bought the book or followed the diet. A fourth sister in law lost 20 pounds on Weight Watchers in the spring and is hanging in there with that program.
It can be discouraging to look at the scale and see that I have not lost weight in the last month. I am thinking that there may well be plateaus in this diet as I adjust to lower food intake. If I cannot sustain a two pound per month weight loss, I may want to try to make my N Day meals somewhat more normal-looking in size, but I am not changing the philosophy of "unconditional permission to eat" on S Days. To me, that is a guarantee of satisfaction that allows me to stay on this diet for life.
I can look at the start of this month and see that I will never ever be 210 pounds again and then compare to today's weight to that and see that progress has been made.
6:30 PM: I went to the grocery store after exercising, and I bought three packages of Haagen Dazs bars – four bars for me, and one bar each for everyone else. I ate two in the car and another one within the hour. How did I feel? Great! The overindulging that has been characteristic of other S Days didn’t start until mid-afternoon with this S Day. I do see progress in this. Other than the Haagen Dazs bars, all I’ve had was a Snickers bar. I like having a weight ceiling each month. For this month, it is 210 pounds. If I exceed 210 pounds, then I’ll try to change the program, but I like the program the way it is now. I did make one small modification in the last week, which was to add regular soda as an allowed drink on S Days. The amount of soda I drink in a year is very small – perhaps about 25 cans per year. What I found this week was that drinking pop could help tide me over to a late meal, which is something that happened at my in law’s house. At least when we are there, it is permasnacking both at my mother in law’s house and at my sister in law’s house. My mother in law wanted us to have leftover steaks from dinner the night before, and it was really late before we had them. Meanwhile, we were sitting around talking. Having pop in that situation helped me to wait for the steaks instead of snacking on the sweets or deciding that I would prefer a sandwich now to a steak later. I appreciate the danger in complacency eroding the diet, but I think this is more about surviving visits to my in law’s than it is about adding something I don’t really like anyway as a regular part of my N Day diet.
7:15 PM: Except for 1,120 calories of Haagen Dazs bars (four), the S Day was a relatively calm day, with only a Snickers bar at noon and a few extra rolls outside of moderate breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I had all four Haagen Dazs bars after exercising which ended at 5 PM and now. I’m stuffed. I don’t feel very well. My body is an excellent teacher. This doesn’t feel good. Will I do it again? Maybe. I didn’t think I’d have four Haagen Dazs bars after the last time I did this, but I repeated the performance today.
I am in no way, shape, or form disappointed, disgusted, or feeling guilty. Instead, I’m somewhat amused. Those years of dieting have led to bizarre bingeing behavior that I think has nothing whatsoever to do with emotional reactions of boredom or stress or fear or anything else. I eat because I can. With dieting, I always ate right up to the limit of what I was allowed to eat. It’s difficult adjusting to the idea of “unconditional permission to eat†because I’ve lived with one restriction after another since I was a teenager.
Sunday, January 4, 2009: (207.0). I got up late and had my first bite of food when it was almost 9:30 AM. I had cereal and a Clementine for breakfast. There is no desire for anything like a sweet. I am trying to observe my reaction to overeating as if I am observing someone else, and it appears to me that this approach is appropriate. If I follow the concept of cognitive brain and emotional brain, then it was the emotional brain that made the decision to wolf down four Haagen Dazs bars in less than two hours. The dieter who fails again and again, like me prior to this diet, is all upset about this out of control eating behavior. With this current diet, I simply observe it and accept it as long as the behavior occurs on an S Day. This morning, as I was thinking about what happened last night, I was considering the religious festivals that allowed out of control eating behavior. For me as a Catholic, the best example is Mardi Gras. As Lenten rules became diluted and ended up just being that meat cannot be eaten on Fridays, the need for Mardi Gras also declined. I just remember as a child making German doughnuts that were eaten on Mardi Gras. There is something about this concept of a feast before fasting that is very much like this diet – there is a time of “unconditional permission to eat†and there is a time of eating restriction. I keep on trying to understand why this diet works, and I think that one key reason is that the diet isn’t constantly “onâ€. There are times when it is “on†and times when it is “offâ€, so the dieter who is hungry can wait for the time when eating to satisfaction is permitted.
2:30 PM: On the way to church this morning, my 10 year old daughter said that all I ever do is talk about my diet. Oh, how sad! I said that this diet is getting to be as easy as brushing my teeth, and I won’t talk about it as much. I still felt very bad. It has been hard to start this diet, but now I’m in a mode in which it should just become part of my life, like brushing my teeth or putting on makeup or taking a bath. I’m not sure if journaling helps or hurts. I am very excited that I have found the key to permanent weight loss. Still, that doesn’t matter so much to my husband or children or dog. I need to be less focused on me and my weight and more focused on being with my family and doing a good job at work. I think my New Year’s resolution will be to record when I talk about my weight so that I can cut down on boring those around me!
6:30 PM: I’m thinking I should just update this journal once per week and weigh myself once per week. My number one priority is to follow this diet, but I don’t need to be spending so much time thinking about why I ate four Haagen Dazs bars in less than two hours. All I have to do is follow the diet.
Monday, January 5, 2009: (209.2). I am quite disappointed by today’s weight on the scale and am beginning to wonder if I can sustain a two pound per month weight loss with this approach. What do I do? I think I continue. Weight loss or not, this approach provides some sanity for my eating. I am hoping that the S Day eating calms down, but I will let it occur as it does. I won’t try to apply any common sense at all to my desires and instead will make sure that N Days stay green. Maybe journaling is necessary for me as I work through this process. I don’t want to be talking about my diet all the time but instead will write, write, write…
7 PM: I felt like throwing in the towel with this diet, but instead I threw in the towel about having any expectation about rate of weight loss. This is my chosen way to eat regardless of ending weight. I am sick and tired of going from diet to diet and gaining weight. At least with this diet, my weight has not gone up. It’s even gone down.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009: (207.6). It’s only Tuesday, and I’m already exhausted. I started our two younger girls in soccer training, and now it is 8:30 PM and they have yet to change. I need to get them in bed. I haven’t had time to think about diet or eating all day. What’s nice about this diet is it can go into autopilot when I’m busy. With other diets, the diet ended with permasnacking when I got busy.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009: (205.2). I’m pleased with today’s weight. I think that things will settle down for me with this diet now that I have decided to throw out any expectations of weight loss and just be content with my weight today. My weight was trending up a dramatic 10 pounds per year, and this diet put a stop to that trend. Now I need to accept the weight that results from following the three S guidelines on all N Days. It’s simple. It’s boring. It’s easy.
9 PM: One of the perks of my job is access to free Caribou Coffee. I had so much that I couldn't stand my own breath. I evaluated whether it was worth it to spend an S Day allocation on a pack of Certs, and I knew it was worth it. Just now, I had two Clementines and a cereal bar, but other than that I followed the N Day rules. There are so many S Days in this diet that I can use up one for something as minor as mints for bad breath.
Thursday, January 8, 2009: (206.2). It is late afternoon. I did not go to work. I did volunteer in the school, have lunch with a friend, and exercise at the gym, so I just got home for about 30 minutes before I have to leave to pick up the kids from school. While I was walking at the gym, I thought about something that happened last night. I told the kids that I had made yesterday a Special Day because I had bad breath and decided to buy some mints. My seven year old told me it was already a special day because it was her First Confession last night. How sad. Dieting can just take over your life, and I had made the day special because of wanting mints instead of because it was my daughter’s First Confession. We did make the day special for her in that she got dressed up and we had dinner out, but my thoughts were on it being a special day because of food. I don’t want to call it a special day when there are no eating rules. I want to call it an exception. Two exceptions per month plus weekends off.
Friday, January 9, 2009: (205.4). At this point, I think I can simplify my recordkeeping for this diet. I can just record my weight and assume that I had a success on an N Day unless I mark the day as an exception. The only record I really need for this diet is the tracking of the number of available exceptions. For Saturday and Sunday, there is nothing to track because both days are exceptions always. My week was so busy that last night I collapsed at about 9 PM. Two kids are in soccer, and one is in swim team. I quit work to stay home with the kids and made the deliberate decision that I would not be busy. Now I need to look at my commitments and figure out how to cut out lower priority tasks so that I have more time. Simplifying my recordkeeping for this diet is one way to reduce time. I’m past the point where I’m going to quit the diet. Now all I need is a way to stay on it so I don’t slip into all days being exceptions.
Saturday, January 10, 2009 (202.8 ). A new low! I got home yesterday from work and was so exhausted that I went straight to bed. My husband took care of dinner for the kids. There were several extra activities this week, and I was just overwhelmed. One extra activity was a two hour company meeting on Tuesday afternoon. At the end of the meeting, everyone was given a very nice Land’s End spring jacket. There wasn’t one for me at the meeting, but the HR Director told me she wanted me to have one and would get one to me later in the week. Yesterday, by email, I was asked what size I wanted. I replied: 14 – 16. The admin dropped off two jackets, a Large (14 – 16) and an XL (18 ). I tried on the Large, and it was small on me! It was a high quality jacket that could last several years. I figured I might be able to fit into it by spring but certainly by fall, so I kept the large and told the admin that it was a little small but I was keeping it! She got a chuckle out of that. Many years ago, I told myself I would not buy clothes unless I could fit into them that day. I have too many clothes that are nice and I have never worn because I was too big to fit into them when I bought them and never did lose weight. This diet is different, though. I’ve already lost 10 pounds. There is no danger of rebound weight gain because the rebound is every weekend. It will be a memorable day for me when I can wear that jacket!
Sunday, January 11, 2009: (204.8 ). I decided that what is special about a day is not whether or not you follow eating rules, so I decided to call weekday S Days by a new term: E Days for Exception Days. Exception Days are also days when I am sick or need to fast prior to a surgery.
It may be that I didn’t feel well on Friday because of too much coffee. At my company, Caribou Coffee is available free of charge about 30 feel from my cube, and I’ve taken full advantage of it. Yesterday, instead of coffee, I had green tea, since it is supposed to be good for you. I felt fine and more or less permansnacked all day. In the evening, I had several Caribou Coffee chocolate ice cream squares and a Haagen Dazs bar. I had one Haagen Dazs bar. The memory of how I felt after having four last Saturday has stayed with me. It is an unusual approach I am taking to not apply any common sense to how I eat on E Days or S Days, but it seems to be working. It’s not that I told myself I shouldn’t have three more Haagen Dazs bars. I simply didn’t want any more. I felt revolted by the idea of eating more.
Monday, January 12, 2009: 206.4. I woke up and felt nauseous. My stomach is bloated. I just plain don’t feel well. Why? Could it be because I stuffed myself with two more Haagen Dazs bars yesterday? It occurred to me that, in conventional diets, you restrict food until there is a revolt by the body that leads to bingeing behavior. In this diet, you stuff yourself so that there is a revolt by your body that leads to normal eating. I’m glad it’s an N Day.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009: 204.4. Yesterday, it snowed, and the traffic was bad. I didn’t get home in time to eat before picking up the kids from school, so I stopped at a Subway at about 2:20 PM to get something to eat. Normally, I get a 12 inch Subway. I didn’t feel like one. Instead, I got a 6 inch Subway. It must be that following these rules is helping me to want to eat less. This morning, I noticed that my stomach seemed to be smaller. When I was single, I had a 24 inch waist. My waist has been at high as 38 or 39 inches when I measured it. This morning, I had a 36 inch waist. I was happy about that. It’s progress. I asked Tom on Sunday if he could tell if I had lost weight, and he said, “Not really.†Well, I couldn’t really, either. This is the first time that my body seemed smaller to me.
9 PM: As I was preparing the kids for bed, it occurred to me that I definitely was not stuffed and yet I did not want to eat. I figured out some time ago that the result of dieting is that I always want to eat to the point of being stuffed because starvation was right around the corner. It must be that I am beginning to trust that food will always be right around the corner. Why eat now, just before bed, when I know I can have a huge plateful of food at breakfast?
Wednesday, January 14, 2009: 203.6. I’m missing something I’ve had for so long that I thought was just the way I am, and what I am missing is the frantic need to stuff myself. Last night, I felt about food the way I remember feeling long ago, which is the pleasant sensation of having eaten to the point where I am satisfied. This is wonderful. I’m wondering if this diet will allow me to lose weight at a faster pace than 2 pounds per month. I’m well below the ceiling weight for this month, which is 210 pounds. My little fourth grader graduates from her elementary school in 29 months, and it would be just wonderful if I was no longer overweight then.
Thursday, January 15, 2009: 202.2. A new low! A sudden shift has occurred. I thought that my attitude toward stuffing myself would gradually change, but instead there’s been a sudden shift. According to the book Intuitive Eating, you stop stuffing yourself if you give yourself “unconditional permission to eat†when you give up dieting. The cause of stuffing yourself is the visceral fear of starvation because dieting means food restriction. To prepare for food restriction, you overeat. Well, I tried the approach of “unconditional permission to eat†for six months, and I ended up 10 pounds heavier. With this approach, I have been experiencing a contrast between moderate eating (N Days) and significant overeating (S Days and E Days). I’ve come to dread non-N Days because I have been feeling sick after them. Last Saturday, I had four Haagen Dazs bars in less than two hours. I didn’t feel all that great.
Now what? Now, all of a sudden, I’m not interested in eating the maximum allowed. What might be termed an “unintended consequence†for diets has been my drive to eat as much as possible because periodic diets have created in me a terrible fear of hunger. That fear, all of a sudden, is gone. Why overeat? Why shovel as much food in my mouth in as quickly as possible with little or now enjoyment? It does make sense in the context of a life in which suddenly food is severely restricted. I can rationalize all I want that this is a country of abundance and I will never starve, but the reality experienced by my body has been that there are frequent periods of severe food restriction. My emotional brain took over, and the result has been what my husband ungraciously but accurately has termed a “feeding frenzy.â€
This diet simply provides a contrast between how you feel with normal eating and how you feel with significant overeating, and over time the question comes to mind: Why overeat so you feel bad? Why overeat so fast you don’t enjoy it? My N Day eating behavior has suddenly changed. No more plates with food shaped like a small mountain. It remains to be seen how my eating will change on non-N Days.
2 PM: I had an interesting experience that seems analogous to my experience of this diet. My teeth have gotten more and more discolored over time, and several years ago I spent $500 on teeth whitening from my dentist. Over the past year or so, I have noticed that my teeth are now even more discolored, to the point that I feel self-conscious. I bought teeth whitening toothpaste and saw fairly quickly that the enamel in my teeth was being destroyed. What to do? I talked to my dentist, and he said the solution would be caps on my six front teeth which would be very expensive. I thanked him but decided to start trying to figure out what to do with my teeth. Then I started reading about nutrition and learned that certain types of green tea are very, very good for your health. One of my January goals was to start drinking green tea every day, which I have been doing. My teeth quickly showed the results of daily green tea consumption. It was time for a google search: teeth whitening home remedies. Someone had posted that her grandmother taught her to mix 1 t. baking soda with a little salt and add a few drops of white vinegar so it fizzes, make a paste, and brush her teeth with the mixture. She said she'd been doing that for forty years. I tried it a few times, and my teeth look whiter. I asked my mother, who has a B.A. in chemistry, what she thought. She said it sounded good and she might try it herself! She did suggest I only use the teeth whitening paste at the end of the day, then rinse my mouth and brush my teeth to get rid of the paste.
How is this teeth whitening approach similar to this diet? Well, first of all, the dentist is my expert, and his suggestion is a very expensive one of putting caps on six teeth. He's been my dentist for 18 years and is terrific. I doubt very much he is looking for business and decided that is how he can earn more money. I have a cap on one tooth, and it kept chipping until he was able to get me in a nightguard since I had ground down my front teeth. The chips were fixed free of charge because that's just how he operates. The advise I get from him, I am quite confident, is what he thinks is in my best interest.
I think that the experts in the field of weight management also usually have our best interest in mind. Kelly Brownell of Yale University has dedicated his career to weight management and produces podcasts that are free of charge for people to hear. Why? It's hard for me to believe that that sort of approach to a problem is completely self-serving.
No, I think the experts have our best interest in mind, but the approach is one in which there is a lot of expense and agony. This diet is just too simple and inexpensive for a professional to think would be a good idea and actually work.
My journaling about my dieting is for one main purpose, and it is to educate my beloved oldest child, who is about 5'5" and 150 pounds. Oh, I want her to avoid all the professional advise that got me into so much trouble!
DAY 116 - 1/1/09: SUCCESS (5)
DAY 117 - 1/2/09: SUCCESS (5)
DAY 118 - 1/3/09: SATURDAY 205.6
DAY 119 - 1/4/09: SUNDAY 207.0
DAY 120 - 1/5/09: SUCCESS (5) 209.2
DAY 121 - 1/6/09: SUCCESS (5) 207.6
Day 122 - 1/7/09: SPECIAL DAY (4) - BAD BREATH 205.2
DAY 123 - 1/8/09: 206.2
DAY 124 - 1/9/09: 205.4
DAY 125 - Saturday, January 10, 2009: 202.8 A new low!
DAY 126 - Sunday, January 11, 2009: 204.8.
DAY 127 - Monday, January 12, 2009: 206.4.
DAY 128 - Tuesday, January 13, 2009: 204.4
DAY 129 - Wednesday, January 14, 2009: 203.6
DAY 130 - Thursday, January 15, 2009: 202.2. A new low!
Saturday, January 3, 2009: (205.6). I made it through a visit with my in laws while keeping to this diet. I had given a copy of the book to a sister in law who decided to follow it. She loaned it to another sister in law who read part of it and told me it was just common sense and she would lose weight faster than I will because of the diet she is following. I told her I'm not looking for quick weight loss: I'm looking for permanent weigbt loss. The book is now with a third sister in law, the one who recommended this book to me in the first place but never bought the book or followed the diet. A fourth sister in law lost 20 pounds on Weight Watchers in the spring and is hanging in there with that program.
It can be discouraging to look at the scale and see that I have not lost weight in the last month. I am thinking that there may well be plateaus in this diet as I adjust to lower food intake. If I cannot sustain a two pound per month weight loss, I may want to try to make my N Day meals somewhat more normal-looking in size, but I am not changing the philosophy of "unconditional permission to eat" on S Days. To me, that is a guarantee of satisfaction that allows me to stay on this diet for life.
I can look at the start of this month and see that I will never ever be 210 pounds again and then compare to today's weight to that and see that progress has been made.
6:30 PM: I went to the grocery store after exercising, and I bought three packages of Haagen Dazs bars – four bars for me, and one bar each for everyone else. I ate two in the car and another one within the hour. How did I feel? Great! The overindulging that has been characteristic of other S Days didn’t start until mid-afternoon with this S Day. I do see progress in this. Other than the Haagen Dazs bars, all I’ve had was a Snickers bar. I like having a weight ceiling each month. For this month, it is 210 pounds. If I exceed 210 pounds, then I’ll try to change the program, but I like the program the way it is now. I did make one small modification in the last week, which was to add regular soda as an allowed drink on S Days. The amount of soda I drink in a year is very small – perhaps about 25 cans per year. What I found this week was that drinking pop could help tide me over to a late meal, which is something that happened at my in law’s house. At least when we are there, it is permasnacking both at my mother in law’s house and at my sister in law’s house. My mother in law wanted us to have leftover steaks from dinner the night before, and it was really late before we had them. Meanwhile, we were sitting around talking. Having pop in that situation helped me to wait for the steaks instead of snacking on the sweets or deciding that I would prefer a sandwich now to a steak later. I appreciate the danger in complacency eroding the diet, but I think this is more about surviving visits to my in law’s than it is about adding something I don’t really like anyway as a regular part of my N Day diet.
7:15 PM: Except for 1,120 calories of Haagen Dazs bars (four), the S Day was a relatively calm day, with only a Snickers bar at noon and a few extra rolls outside of moderate breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I had all four Haagen Dazs bars after exercising which ended at 5 PM and now. I’m stuffed. I don’t feel very well. My body is an excellent teacher. This doesn’t feel good. Will I do it again? Maybe. I didn’t think I’d have four Haagen Dazs bars after the last time I did this, but I repeated the performance today.
I am in no way, shape, or form disappointed, disgusted, or feeling guilty. Instead, I’m somewhat amused. Those years of dieting have led to bizarre bingeing behavior that I think has nothing whatsoever to do with emotional reactions of boredom or stress or fear or anything else. I eat because I can. With dieting, I always ate right up to the limit of what I was allowed to eat. It’s difficult adjusting to the idea of “unconditional permission to eat†because I’ve lived with one restriction after another since I was a teenager.
Sunday, January 4, 2009: (207.0). I got up late and had my first bite of food when it was almost 9:30 AM. I had cereal and a Clementine for breakfast. There is no desire for anything like a sweet. I am trying to observe my reaction to overeating as if I am observing someone else, and it appears to me that this approach is appropriate. If I follow the concept of cognitive brain and emotional brain, then it was the emotional brain that made the decision to wolf down four Haagen Dazs bars in less than two hours. The dieter who fails again and again, like me prior to this diet, is all upset about this out of control eating behavior. With this current diet, I simply observe it and accept it as long as the behavior occurs on an S Day. This morning, as I was thinking about what happened last night, I was considering the religious festivals that allowed out of control eating behavior. For me as a Catholic, the best example is Mardi Gras. As Lenten rules became diluted and ended up just being that meat cannot be eaten on Fridays, the need for Mardi Gras also declined. I just remember as a child making German doughnuts that were eaten on Mardi Gras. There is something about this concept of a feast before fasting that is very much like this diet – there is a time of “unconditional permission to eat†and there is a time of eating restriction. I keep on trying to understand why this diet works, and I think that one key reason is that the diet isn’t constantly “onâ€. There are times when it is “on†and times when it is “offâ€, so the dieter who is hungry can wait for the time when eating to satisfaction is permitted.
2:30 PM: On the way to church this morning, my 10 year old daughter said that all I ever do is talk about my diet. Oh, how sad! I said that this diet is getting to be as easy as brushing my teeth, and I won’t talk about it as much. I still felt very bad. It has been hard to start this diet, but now I’m in a mode in which it should just become part of my life, like brushing my teeth or putting on makeup or taking a bath. I’m not sure if journaling helps or hurts. I am very excited that I have found the key to permanent weight loss. Still, that doesn’t matter so much to my husband or children or dog. I need to be less focused on me and my weight and more focused on being with my family and doing a good job at work. I think my New Year’s resolution will be to record when I talk about my weight so that I can cut down on boring those around me!
6:30 PM: I’m thinking I should just update this journal once per week and weigh myself once per week. My number one priority is to follow this diet, but I don’t need to be spending so much time thinking about why I ate four Haagen Dazs bars in less than two hours. All I have to do is follow the diet.
Monday, January 5, 2009: (209.2). I am quite disappointed by today’s weight on the scale and am beginning to wonder if I can sustain a two pound per month weight loss with this approach. What do I do? I think I continue. Weight loss or not, this approach provides some sanity for my eating. I am hoping that the S Day eating calms down, but I will let it occur as it does. I won’t try to apply any common sense at all to my desires and instead will make sure that N Days stay green. Maybe journaling is necessary for me as I work through this process. I don’t want to be talking about my diet all the time but instead will write, write, write…
7 PM: I felt like throwing in the towel with this diet, but instead I threw in the towel about having any expectation about rate of weight loss. This is my chosen way to eat regardless of ending weight. I am sick and tired of going from diet to diet and gaining weight. At least with this diet, my weight has not gone up. It’s even gone down.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009: (207.6). It’s only Tuesday, and I’m already exhausted. I started our two younger girls in soccer training, and now it is 8:30 PM and they have yet to change. I need to get them in bed. I haven’t had time to think about diet or eating all day. What’s nice about this diet is it can go into autopilot when I’m busy. With other diets, the diet ended with permasnacking when I got busy.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009: (205.2). I’m pleased with today’s weight. I think that things will settle down for me with this diet now that I have decided to throw out any expectations of weight loss and just be content with my weight today. My weight was trending up a dramatic 10 pounds per year, and this diet put a stop to that trend. Now I need to accept the weight that results from following the three S guidelines on all N Days. It’s simple. It’s boring. It’s easy.
9 PM: One of the perks of my job is access to free Caribou Coffee. I had so much that I couldn't stand my own breath. I evaluated whether it was worth it to spend an S Day allocation on a pack of Certs, and I knew it was worth it. Just now, I had two Clementines and a cereal bar, but other than that I followed the N Day rules. There are so many S Days in this diet that I can use up one for something as minor as mints for bad breath.
Thursday, January 8, 2009: (206.2). It is late afternoon. I did not go to work. I did volunteer in the school, have lunch with a friend, and exercise at the gym, so I just got home for about 30 minutes before I have to leave to pick up the kids from school. While I was walking at the gym, I thought about something that happened last night. I told the kids that I had made yesterday a Special Day because I had bad breath and decided to buy some mints. My seven year old told me it was already a special day because it was her First Confession last night. How sad. Dieting can just take over your life, and I had made the day special because of wanting mints instead of because it was my daughter’s First Confession. We did make the day special for her in that she got dressed up and we had dinner out, but my thoughts were on it being a special day because of food. I don’t want to call it a special day when there are no eating rules. I want to call it an exception. Two exceptions per month plus weekends off.
Friday, January 9, 2009: (205.4). At this point, I think I can simplify my recordkeeping for this diet. I can just record my weight and assume that I had a success on an N Day unless I mark the day as an exception. The only record I really need for this diet is the tracking of the number of available exceptions. For Saturday and Sunday, there is nothing to track because both days are exceptions always. My week was so busy that last night I collapsed at about 9 PM. Two kids are in soccer, and one is in swim team. I quit work to stay home with the kids and made the deliberate decision that I would not be busy. Now I need to look at my commitments and figure out how to cut out lower priority tasks so that I have more time. Simplifying my recordkeeping for this diet is one way to reduce time. I’m past the point where I’m going to quit the diet. Now all I need is a way to stay on it so I don’t slip into all days being exceptions.
Saturday, January 10, 2009 (202.8 ). A new low! I got home yesterday from work and was so exhausted that I went straight to bed. My husband took care of dinner for the kids. There were several extra activities this week, and I was just overwhelmed. One extra activity was a two hour company meeting on Tuesday afternoon. At the end of the meeting, everyone was given a very nice Land’s End spring jacket. There wasn’t one for me at the meeting, but the HR Director told me she wanted me to have one and would get one to me later in the week. Yesterday, by email, I was asked what size I wanted. I replied: 14 – 16. The admin dropped off two jackets, a Large (14 – 16) and an XL (18 ). I tried on the Large, and it was small on me! It was a high quality jacket that could last several years. I figured I might be able to fit into it by spring but certainly by fall, so I kept the large and told the admin that it was a little small but I was keeping it! She got a chuckle out of that. Many years ago, I told myself I would not buy clothes unless I could fit into them that day. I have too many clothes that are nice and I have never worn because I was too big to fit into them when I bought them and never did lose weight. This diet is different, though. I’ve already lost 10 pounds. There is no danger of rebound weight gain because the rebound is every weekend. It will be a memorable day for me when I can wear that jacket!
Sunday, January 11, 2009: (204.8 ). I decided that what is special about a day is not whether or not you follow eating rules, so I decided to call weekday S Days by a new term: E Days for Exception Days. Exception Days are also days when I am sick or need to fast prior to a surgery.
It may be that I didn’t feel well on Friday because of too much coffee. At my company, Caribou Coffee is available free of charge about 30 feel from my cube, and I’ve taken full advantage of it. Yesterday, instead of coffee, I had green tea, since it is supposed to be good for you. I felt fine and more or less permansnacked all day. In the evening, I had several Caribou Coffee chocolate ice cream squares and a Haagen Dazs bar. I had one Haagen Dazs bar. The memory of how I felt after having four last Saturday has stayed with me. It is an unusual approach I am taking to not apply any common sense to how I eat on E Days or S Days, but it seems to be working. It’s not that I told myself I shouldn’t have three more Haagen Dazs bars. I simply didn’t want any more. I felt revolted by the idea of eating more.
Monday, January 12, 2009: 206.4. I woke up and felt nauseous. My stomach is bloated. I just plain don’t feel well. Why? Could it be because I stuffed myself with two more Haagen Dazs bars yesterday? It occurred to me that, in conventional diets, you restrict food until there is a revolt by the body that leads to bingeing behavior. In this diet, you stuff yourself so that there is a revolt by your body that leads to normal eating. I’m glad it’s an N Day.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009: 204.4. Yesterday, it snowed, and the traffic was bad. I didn’t get home in time to eat before picking up the kids from school, so I stopped at a Subway at about 2:20 PM to get something to eat. Normally, I get a 12 inch Subway. I didn’t feel like one. Instead, I got a 6 inch Subway. It must be that following these rules is helping me to want to eat less. This morning, I noticed that my stomach seemed to be smaller. When I was single, I had a 24 inch waist. My waist has been at high as 38 or 39 inches when I measured it. This morning, I had a 36 inch waist. I was happy about that. It’s progress. I asked Tom on Sunday if he could tell if I had lost weight, and he said, “Not really.†Well, I couldn’t really, either. This is the first time that my body seemed smaller to me.
9 PM: As I was preparing the kids for bed, it occurred to me that I definitely was not stuffed and yet I did not want to eat. I figured out some time ago that the result of dieting is that I always want to eat to the point of being stuffed because starvation was right around the corner. It must be that I am beginning to trust that food will always be right around the corner. Why eat now, just before bed, when I know I can have a huge plateful of food at breakfast?
Wednesday, January 14, 2009: 203.6. I’m missing something I’ve had for so long that I thought was just the way I am, and what I am missing is the frantic need to stuff myself. Last night, I felt about food the way I remember feeling long ago, which is the pleasant sensation of having eaten to the point where I am satisfied. This is wonderful. I’m wondering if this diet will allow me to lose weight at a faster pace than 2 pounds per month. I’m well below the ceiling weight for this month, which is 210 pounds. My little fourth grader graduates from her elementary school in 29 months, and it would be just wonderful if I was no longer overweight then.
Thursday, January 15, 2009: 202.2. A new low! A sudden shift has occurred. I thought that my attitude toward stuffing myself would gradually change, but instead there’s been a sudden shift. According to the book Intuitive Eating, you stop stuffing yourself if you give yourself “unconditional permission to eat†when you give up dieting. The cause of stuffing yourself is the visceral fear of starvation because dieting means food restriction. To prepare for food restriction, you overeat. Well, I tried the approach of “unconditional permission to eat†for six months, and I ended up 10 pounds heavier. With this approach, I have been experiencing a contrast between moderate eating (N Days) and significant overeating (S Days and E Days). I’ve come to dread non-N Days because I have been feeling sick after them. Last Saturday, I had four Haagen Dazs bars in less than two hours. I didn’t feel all that great.
Now what? Now, all of a sudden, I’m not interested in eating the maximum allowed. What might be termed an “unintended consequence†for diets has been my drive to eat as much as possible because periodic diets have created in me a terrible fear of hunger. That fear, all of a sudden, is gone. Why overeat? Why shovel as much food in my mouth in as quickly as possible with little or now enjoyment? It does make sense in the context of a life in which suddenly food is severely restricted. I can rationalize all I want that this is a country of abundance and I will never starve, but the reality experienced by my body has been that there are frequent periods of severe food restriction. My emotional brain took over, and the result has been what my husband ungraciously but accurately has termed a “feeding frenzy.â€
This diet simply provides a contrast between how you feel with normal eating and how you feel with significant overeating, and over time the question comes to mind: Why overeat so you feel bad? Why overeat so fast you don’t enjoy it? My N Day eating behavior has suddenly changed. No more plates with food shaped like a small mountain. It remains to be seen how my eating will change on non-N Days.
2 PM: I had an interesting experience that seems analogous to my experience of this diet. My teeth have gotten more and more discolored over time, and several years ago I spent $500 on teeth whitening from my dentist. Over the past year or so, I have noticed that my teeth are now even more discolored, to the point that I feel self-conscious. I bought teeth whitening toothpaste and saw fairly quickly that the enamel in my teeth was being destroyed. What to do? I talked to my dentist, and he said the solution would be caps on my six front teeth which would be very expensive. I thanked him but decided to start trying to figure out what to do with my teeth. Then I started reading about nutrition and learned that certain types of green tea are very, very good for your health. One of my January goals was to start drinking green tea every day, which I have been doing. My teeth quickly showed the results of daily green tea consumption. It was time for a google search: teeth whitening home remedies. Someone had posted that her grandmother taught her to mix 1 t. baking soda with a little salt and add a few drops of white vinegar so it fizzes, make a paste, and brush her teeth with the mixture. She said she'd been doing that for forty years. I tried it a few times, and my teeth look whiter. I asked my mother, who has a B.A. in chemistry, what she thought. She said it sounded good and she might try it herself! She did suggest I only use the teeth whitening paste at the end of the day, then rinse my mouth and brush my teeth to get rid of the paste.
How is this teeth whitening approach similar to this diet? Well, first of all, the dentist is my expert, and his suggestion is a very expensive one of putting caps on six teeth. He's been my dentist for 18 years and is terrific. I doubt very much he is looking for business and decided that is how he can earn more money. I have a cap on one tooth, and it kept chipping until he was able to get me in a nightguard since I had ground down my front teeth. The chips were fixed free of charge because that's just how he operates. The advise I get from him, I am quite confident, is what he thinks is in my best interest.
I think that the experts in the field of weight management also usually have our best interest in mind. Kelly Brownell of Yale University has dedicated his career to weight management and produces podcasts that are free of charge for people to hear. Why? It's hard for me to believe that that sort of approach to a problem is completely self-serving.
No, I think the experts have our best interest in mind, but the approach is one in which there is a lot of expense and agony. This diet is just too simple and inexpensive for a professional to think would be a good idea and actually work.
My journaling about my dieting is for one main purpose, and it is to educate my beloved oldest child, who is about 5'5" and 150 pounds. Oh, I want her to avoid all the professional advise that got me into so much trouble!
Last edited by Kathleen on Thu Jan 15, 2009 10:26 pm, edited 3 times in total.
DAY 131 - Friday, January 16, 2009: 202.2.
DAY 132 - Saturday, January 17, 2009: 202.4.
DAY 133 - Sunday, January 18, 2009: 202.8
Day 134 - Monday, January 19, 2009: 206.6.
Day 135 - Tuesday, January 20, 2009: 205.2.
Day 136 - Wednesday, January 21, 2009: 204.2.
DAY 137 - Thursday, January 22, 2009: 203.6
DAY 138 - Friday, January 23, 2009: 202.0 A new low!
DAY 139 - Saturday, January 24, 2009: 204.0
Day 140 - Sunday, January 25, 2009:
Day 141 - Monday, January 26, 2009:
Day 142 - Tuesday, January 27, 2009: (3E)
Day 143 - Wednesday, January 28, 2009:
Day 144 - Thursday, January 29, 2009:
Day 145 - Friday, January 30, 2009: 204.4
Day 146 - Saturday, January 31, 2009: 203.6
Saturday, January 17, 2009: 202.4. Last night, I was grumpy, so grumpy I went to bed at about 8:30 and didn’t even clean up the kitchen. Why? Well, we had a hectic night. My oldest daughter was babysitting, and I had planned to join my husband and daughter at my son’s swim meet. Our two youngest daughters, however, didn’t want to go to another swim meet. I ended up letting my husband see this once, and I took them grocery shopping. In our household, there is now a big difference between shopping on a Friday and shopping during the week. They wanted “S Day†food. We were at the store nearly 90 minutes. By the time we got home and unpacked groceries, it was almost 7. Then they ate while I talked with a prospective French horn instructor for my youngest. I ate at 7:30, and I was hungry.
Was this a crises? No. Did I recover from it last night? No. I finally had the girls shower and go to bed to read. I flat out told them I was grumpy. They knew why, too. We talk about my diet, especially when we are grocery shopping. My 9 year old even said she figured out why it worked – which is that your body gets used to how you eat on N Days so it doesn’t want to eat a super large amount on S Days.
Now it is about 7:30 in the morning and I’ve already had a Haagen Dazs bar, a Snickers ice cream bar,and several peanut clusters. I’ve only been up about 15 minutes and haven’t even had coffee. Am I distressed by this start to my S Day? No. I’m just happy I got through last night. What I am observing about myself is that I have periods of time when it is difficult to make it through an N Day. The whole week before Christmas was difficult, and last night was difficult. Usually, though, this diet is easy. What makes it easy for me, I think, is that I really mean it that I allow myself to eat whatever I want on S Days or E days.
Sunday, January 18, 2009: 202.8. I ate a lot yesterday and went to bed early because I wasn’t feeling very well. When I stepped on the scale, I guessed a weight of 206.4 and got 202.8. Why? No idea. The weight gain will probably be reflected tomorrow. It’s no doubt bad for my body that I have these dramatic increases in food intake on the weekend, but I think that it won’t last. I get immediate negative feedback in the form of a stomach ache. I think I need to stick to the idea of “unconditional permission to eat†and just wait out the problem of overeating. I didn’t do anything to change the amount of food that I put on my plate on N Days, but over time I just stared to eat a more normal amount. Now it is quite unusual for me to have a plateful that is shaped like Mount Olympus. I hope that the change in my behavior on the weekend comes sooner rather than later. What I have noticed is that I tend to be somewhat burned out on sweets by Sunday so I tend to eat less on Sundays.
7 PM: There is one more Haagen Dazs bar in the freezer, and I just plain don’t want it. The kids were surprised when I turned down the Haagen Dazs bar that Dad said he didn’t want. I said, “I’m topped out.†My son quipped that those were new words in my vocabulary. I brought up that I want to celebrate getting below 200 pounds. I also went back in my journal to see when it was that my husband weighed less than I did. On July 9, 2008, I recorded that Tom had told me he weighed 211, and on that day I weighed 212.2. Since then, Tom’s weight has gone up to 225, but mine is down to 202.8 (as of this morning). I can no sooner convince him to follow this diet than I can convince my daughter. All I can do is follow it myself. My son thought I’d just regain this weight if I went off the diet, and I agreed and told him I plan to be on it for life.
Monday, January 19, 2009: 206.6. This diet is a waiting game. I need to wait for my body not to want binges on the weekend. I think that this may happen more quickly the less I focus on the diet, my eating, and my weight. I may just want to weigh myself and journal once per month. I’ve tried backing off on journaling before, but it hasn’t worked. Maybe I’m ready now.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009: 205.2. I got up this morning and decided I wanted to see how much I weigh. Whether I weigh myself or not, whether I write about how I feel or not – that is not what is important. What is important is whether I follow the diet or not. I was working on something so tedious this morning that I felt like I was going to fall asleep, and I was happy to escape at 1 and come home to a houseful of kids – two who had the day off school and two who were home because they were sick yesterday. I ate lunch, and now I need to turn my attention to getting the house cleaned. There isn’t much time to be thinking about dieting. That’s what’s nice about this diet. There’s no need to think. I ate a meal that I thought was satisfying, and now I won’t eat again until dinner. At dinner, I’ll decide how much to eat. Some nights, I pile the plate with food, and other nights I eat a normal amount.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009: 204.2. My weight just clings to me. I think I’m going to modify my weekly weight tracking chart so that I can see the infinitesimal movement downward from week to week. I’ll take an average of each week’s weight numbers so that I see that the average is moving downward.
Thursday, January 22, 2009: 203.6. Here are my weekly averages for all the weeks, since the start of the diet, that I weighed myself every day from Sunday through Saturday:
Week of 10/19/08: 208.
Week of 11/2/08: 207.4.
Week of 11/9/08: 207.8.
Week of 11/22/08: 207.9.
Week of 12/14/08: 206.5.
Week of 12/21/08: 205.7.
Week of 1/4/09: 206.3.
Week of 1/11/09: 203.9.
Looking at this information, it is no wonder to me that I am discouraged and feel like I am not losing weight. My weights are in a significant range from a high on Saturday (after two S Days) to a low on Saturday. The weight loss is so slow that my low on a Saturday can be greater than my low on a Monday two or three months later.
Seeing a weekly average is much more encouraging. I see that I am losing weight, but the weight loss is very variable. Given my history of gaining more weight at the end of a diet than I had lost during it, I am willing to settle for very slow weight loss.
8:30 AM: Last night, I had a victory of sorts. I went to the store and bought a pair of size 18 Liz Claiborne jeans. I have size 18 Liz Claiborne jeans that I have worn infrequently at home. I made a resolution that I would never ever go into women’s sizes, and size 18 is the top size in “normal†sizes. In many stores, “normal†sizes end at size 16, so I had to find the stores which carried size 18 as a non-women’s size. Even in size 18, the only jeans that I could zip up were Liz Claiborne jeans. They have been so tight that the stitching has actually come loose. The pair of jeans that I bought last night fit just fine. I came home from the store and promptly threw out the two pair of jeans that were worn out and had lines across the jeans because of the tightness in the thigh area. Today, I will be running a fourth grade reading group, and I will be wearing the new jeans. It is the first time I have been in jeans in public since the summer.
7 PM: I had a pleasant and productive day. Other than my standard 2 mile walk at the gym and leading a fourth grade reading group (which is a lot of fun), all I did was clean in the house – finish the laundry, wash all the floors, do some vacuuming. It is now after dinner, and my husband will be returning with our son from a Boy Scout meeting in the next half hour or so. I took a break to read, and I realized that I felt hungry – not famished but hungry. I certainly had a good sized meal. I had the meal (a slice of beef from a roast, a potato, and broccoli) plus yogurt, cottage cheese, and a Clementine. All of it fit on my plate. When I feel hungry, I feel my face tighten. I want to eat, but I’m not going to eat. It’s as simple as that. Instead, I’m going to spend the rest of the evening relaxing!
Friday, January 23, 2009: 202.0. A new low! I like recording “A new low!†It’s very reassuring when the weight loss is soooooooo slow. If I knew in early September that I would be at this weight today, I would be happy. It has been several years since I have been able to lose weight and keep it off more than a week. My body simply rebelled against dieting. I see that same rebellion in S Day behavior, but I think that the S Day behavior will change over time. I’m not going to be on any more starvation diets, so there is no longer the need to overeat in preparation for the coming famine.
4 PM: I didn’t eat lunch until ½ hour ago, and now I don’t feel all that great. I want to eat more, and lunch is over. How I feel is that my face is taut and I didn’t get enough to eat. It’s only two hours until dinner, and it’s only eight hours until an S Day. The freezer has 9 Haagen Dazs bars in it – four for me and one each for the other five people in the family. It is really tough sometimes to endure the feeling I have now, which is that I am not stuffed. The way I endure it is by looking forward to the next S Day.
11:30 PM: There are times when this diet is uncomfortable, and tonight has been one of them. I decided to go to bed early, and now I am up waiting for midnight so I can eat. I feel underfed, which is a terrible feeling especially when you are dieting and think it will never end. At least with this diet, I know the end is in sight in exactly 26 minutes. Tonight, at dinner, my husband said that he wasn’t going to have seconds because he was going on the S Day diet (my nine year old’s label for the diet, with its emphasis on eating really yummy foods on the weekend!) I got a chuckle out of that. I said that there’s a fine line between the Peanut Cluster Diet and this diet, but I was happy he was going on it. I have recorded in my journal for one day in July, 2008, that he told me he weighed 211 and I weighed 212.2 that day. Now I am at 202, and he came home from a physical last week to say he weighed 225. Anyway, after dinner, he gave the kids Skittles and popped several in his mouth. I bit my tongue. He’s still on the Peanut Cluster Diet!
Saturday, January 24, 2009: 204.0 (Morning Weight). It is now 12:30 AM. At 11:59 PM, I was standing in the kitchen with a Haagen Dazs bar in my hand, waiting for midnight. Since then, I’ve had two Haagen Dazs bars, bread, a slice of Swiss cheese, and an entire bowl of popcorn. I’m ready for bed. The feeling I had this past evening, the feeling of not being satisfied, is what destroys diets. With this diet, there is comfort in knowing that S Days mean satisfaction. I’ve had so many diets which have ended because I just couldn’t stand feeling hungry, constantly feeling hungry. Carnie Wilson wrote a book called “I’m Still Hungryâ€, and I just read it in the last month. It’s about the willful determination to use gastric bypass surgery to be able to deal with hunger. I prefer using S Days as a way to deal with N Day hunger. Back to sleep….
8:35 AM: I just had my third Haagen Dazs bar of the day. I am stuffed. Why? I think that what may have happened is the feeling of hunger triggered the “diet backlash†overeating that has characterized the end of my diets for years. What’s great about this diet is that the diet didn’t end. It continues. This overeating is part of the process of learning to enjoy food. I wish it wouldn’t take so long for me to recover from dieting, but I have been dieting for more than 35 years, and I just have to let this process of overeating take its course.
7 PM: Food. Food. Food. Food. That was my focus today. Somehow, in the haze of it all, we took our two youngest children to soccer, I took one of them for pictures, and I took another for a flute lesson. Activities with my family were simply the backdrop to food. I am sick of that. For dinner, I had popcorn. I did not eat with my family. It’s time for a change in outlook. I can still keep the concept of “unconditional permission to eat†on non-N Days, but I think I need to deliberately choose to turn my attention elsewhere and let following this diet produce the results it will over time. Maybe I shouldn’t journal so much or obsessively weigh myself every morning. Maybe I need to have other goals. This has been my number one priority since September. It can still be my number one priority without it being such a big deal. I just don’t want to repeat today’s performance.
7:40 PM: I took some time to think about what I was doing here, and I decided that it is just fun and easy to think about a problem that has already been solved. This diet will take me to a weight that will be acceptable and easy to maintain. I’m not going off it. My focusing on this diet adds no value. It’s time to turn my attention to other things, like making sure my 9 year old doesn’t fail band because she hasn’t handed in practice sheets since mid-quarter. I think I’ll try to give a monthly update. I do need to track the number of exception days, and the number increments by two every first of the month. Other than that, there isn’t really much that I need to do.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009: My resolve not to journal didn’t last long, but I have stayed off the scale. Last night, I was talking with my mother in law, and she brought up that my sister in law (who decided to follow this diet) has gained a noticeable amount of weight. I felt so bad. First of all, I understand the anguish of my mother in law because I feel so bad about my daughter’s weight. The other day, I brought my daughter to buy some black pants for a band concert tonight, and she fit easily into a size 12. She had bought size 13/14 American Eagle jeans in the fall, so I was very happy about this. She doesn’t appear to be gaining weight and may even be losing some. As for my sister in law, now in her late 50s, what is to explain that her going on this diet has led to weight gain? I think the reason may be that she has spent many years, like me, starving herself to lose weight and the “unconditional permission to eat†of S Days was a “feeding frenzy.†I went through six months of The Peanut Cluster Diet (“unconditional permission to eat†every day) and gained 10 pounds as a result. When I got to this diet, I understood that there is a fine line between The Peanut Cluster Diet, which leads to weight gain at least for a time, and The Set Point Lowering Diet, which can mean slow weight loss in a fairly short period of time. Had I not been on The Peanut Cluster Diet first, I may not have seen positive results so soon. I don’t know. I feel bad. I’m glad that my daughter is happy with her diet, and I’m looking forward to her annual physical in March so I can see how her weight percentile has changed, but I feel bad about my sister in law. It’s hard to describe just how kind she is.
One thing I have noticed about very overweight people is that they tend to be very giving. A person who is willing to diet enough that they experience significant “diet backlash†seems to me to have traits of being willing to put off self-gratification in the care of others. This is just the opposite of the conventional perception that overweight people are gluttons who have no self-control. I knew a woman at my old job who was on Weight Watchers for the third time. She was back to losing the same forty pounds. What a huge amount of willpower that involves. My sister in law is now the primary caregiver for my mother in law, who had a stroke last July. She is incredibly thoughtful, always thinking of little gifts for our kids and reading and playing with them when we visit. She’s a gem. Why is it that she is so overweight? She just plain is not self-indulgent. I think the weight problem comes from the willingness to diet at a level that triggers the body’s survival mechanism and the persistence to continue despite failure after failure after failure.
This diet requires patience and trust, but it does not require painful endurance. I am so glad I found it, and I am so glad my daughter is following it with success. At some point, I hope I can talk with my sister in law and encourage her to stick with this diet and not worry too much about early weight gain or S Days gone wild.
7:15 AM: I’m taking an Exception Day, so now my number of weekday exceptions that are left is 3. Why an E Day? I was sitting at the table eating breakfast when my son, who was playing with a tall candle, knocked it over. There was at least one glass shard. I told him not to eat anything that was on the table. Then I looked at my cereal bowl. I’d had maybe five bites of cereal. What to do? I could add it to my list of exceptions as “If the food that was selected for the meal is discovered not to be eatable, then you can get a different plateful.†The danger there is that I might add “if the food is not tasty.†I decided to take an exception day. After all, this is an exception. I wanted more cereal, so I got myself another bowl of cereal. There is nothing special about my son breaking a candle on the table while I’m eating breakfast. It’s an exception for the one plateful rule, so it deserves an E Day. I think this diet is one in which you can violate the spirit of the diet all you want so long as you follow the letter of the diet. I’m following the letter of the diet and allowing the letter to put me in the spirit of the diet.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009: I woke up this morning already full from last night’s eating. I met a friend for coffee and forgot to have breakfast. On the way home from work at 2:30 PM, I realized that I had not eaten all day and had not thought about food all day. I had three things to do with the kids – pick up the two kids at elementary school, drive over to where my daughter is starting to babysit so I made sure that she got off at the right stop, and take my youngest to trumpet lessons. I told the two youngest kids that I hadn’t had breakfast or lunch, and the youngest gave me her snack from school and said I could have that as breakfast. I then had lunch about 4:30 PM.
What is truly amazing about this is I didn’t even realize until 2:30 PM that I hadn’t eaten all day. With other diets, I have been so focused on food that I knew when I ate, how I ate, how many calories were in the food I ate, etc. This diet is much saner than that approach. I told my kids that, with conventional diets, you starve until you can’t stand it so you overeat whereas with this diet, you overeat on non N Days and it makes you feel worse than eating on N Days so you end up shifting to N Day eating patterns. I still have some time to go before that is the case with me. I’m still really overeating on the weekend, and even yesterday’s Exception Day led to this morning’s stomach ache.
Thursday, January 29, 2009: Last night, I was calculating how much I would weigh at the sixth grade graduation of our fourth grader. At a rate of two pounds per month, I would be down about 55 pounds or somewhere in the 140s. That’s still more than I weighed before I had children! Part of this diet is accepting slow weight loss, and it is difficult. I asked a favor of someone with whom I worked more than 10 years ago, and she was willing to do it – she’ll be allowing my 14 year old to shadow her during Career Day, a day in the school year in which 9th graders are supposed to learn about a business that interests them. This is a very warm person, and I asked her if Anne could spend the day with her because I am protective of Anne and know that she would take good care of her. I also thought about the fact that she is going to see me at this weight. With the expectation that this diet will take a long, long time, I’m just not willing to put off living until I am thinner. I am willing to see this former colleague. I am willing to buy clothes. I am willing to accept my body today and accept the results of following this diet even if it means I’ll never see 132 again. I know that I’ll be close to 132 with this diet than with any other diet, so I am willing to follow it.
Friday, January 30, 2009: 204.4. I decided that perhaps I could weigh myself once per week, and I weighed myself this morning. My weight was up. So what. I think that it may be good to have a goal and just compare my current weight with my goal. At a goal of losing two pounds per month, my goal is to be under 210 this month. If I compare 204.4 to 210, I can say I succeeded. My goal for February is to be under 208, and I think I am in good shape for making that goal. My weight first dipped to 205 on 11/22/08, which was day 76, so it can be a little frustrating to be looking at 204.4 when it is now day 145.
My son is convinced I’ll get discouraged and move on to another diet. I don’t feel in much danger of going off this diet because of slow weight loss. Instead, I am happy with how I feel – being able to enjoy food, not being so focused on food on N Days, and stopping the 10 pound per year weight gain I’ve been having for the last several years.
Saturday, January 31, 2009: 203.6. In sharp contrast to last Saturday, when I was in the kitchen with an unwrapped Haagen Dazs bar in my hand waiting for the digit clock to show midnight, this morning I just want some coffee before I have a bath. Last night, my stomach was growling because the pizza, chips, and pink lemonade from Family Fun Night didn’t fill me up. I find it very interesting that I am not all that hungry this morning.
This morning what I am is thoughtful. I have spent so much time on dieting and weight management that it has almost been a hobby. Why? Because I know it is important. What this diet does is normalize eating, and weight loss follows. How is eating normalized? You stick with three meals per day with no sweets or seconds on N Days. I’ve read lots of novels, and looking back what strikes me is the absence of discussion about hunger. People didn’t used to focus on hunger. One result of this diet, I bet, is the dwindling interest in hunger.
I asked myself this morning, “What is the minimum I need to do to stay on this diet?†With the way I have it set up, the absolute minimum is to follow N Day rules and track number of Exception Days. That’s it. I don’t have to worry about weighing myself. I don’t have to journal. I don’t have to do anything else.
Tomorrow is a new month, and I want to move towards doing the minimum with this diet. I’ve had my years of evaluating my eating habits, trying to understand emotional eating, trying to eat different foods to minimize hunger, trying to develop ways of eating that encourage less eating (I still have the little diet fork), and on and on and on. All I need to do here is follow some clear rules and track Exception Days. I can violate the spirit of the diet all I want if I just follow the letter of the diet. That means that why I do something doesn’t much matter. What matters is that I follow these rules. Over time and even occasionally now, I’m going to lose weight.
3 PM: I ate so much that I had to lie down at about 12:45 because my stomach hurt so much. I was sick of Haagen Dazs bars, but I had almost an entire package of Hershey kisses and three PayDays. I got off to a slow start with overeating this morning. I didn’t each much other than cereal until 10 AM. That’s encouraging. Even so, here it is mid-afternoon, and I’m not feeling so great because I ate so much. I keep on thinking that the less time I spend thinking about this diet, the better it will go. I told my husband that I’d like to plan something special for when I fall below 200 pounds. We are going to spend a weekend at a hotel in Rochester in early April. I was 203.6 this morning and 200 earlier this month, so I think it is realistic to expect that I’ll be below 200 by then. I keep on thinking it is time for me to stop focusing on this diet and just switch to a maintenance mentality as if I had already lost all the weight I wanted. It seems strange to still be above 200 pounds and yet want to switch away from thinking about dieting.
I have had to honestly ask myself this question: If I never lose another pound, would I still stay on this diet? The answer is yes. I am not comparing my current weight to the fantasy of finding a different diet which will allow me to return to high school weight of 132. Instead, I am comparing my current weight of 200 – 205 to the weight of my aunt who died last year at age 74 and probably weighed between 350 and 400 pounds. For me, this diet has achieved a lot by simply stopping the weight gain that resulted from other diets. I found a way to normalize eating, at least on N Days. This morning’s normal eating prior to 10 AM was also encouraging. I guess I’m not debating anymore with myself about whether to reign in S Day eating or whether to add to N Day rules or make additional allowances on N Days. My approach to this diet has stabilized, and now it is time to wait and wait and wait and wait and wait for the pounds to come off slowly, if they come off at all. The less time I spend journaling and the fewer times I stand on the scale, the better for me because I will be less focused on my weight.
DAY 132 - Saturday, January 17, 2009: 202.4.
DAY 133 - Sunday, January 18, 2009: 202.8
Day 134 - Monday, January 19, 2009: 206.6.
Day 135 - Tuesday, January 20, 2009: 205.2.
Day 136 - Wednesday, January 21, 2009: 204.2.
DAY 137 - Thursday, January 22, 2009: 203.6
DAY 138 - Friday, January 23, 2009: 202.0 A new low!
DAY 139 - Saturday, January 24, 2009: 204.0
Day 140 - Sunday, January 25, 2009:
Day 141 - Monday, January 26, 2009:
Day 142 - Tuesday, January 27, 2009: (3E)
Day 143 - Wednesday, January 28, 2009:
Day 144 - Thursday, January 29, 2009:
Day 145 - Friday, January 30, 2009: 204.4
Day 146 - Saturday, January 31, 2009: 203.6
Saturday, January 17, 2009: 202.4. Last night, I was grumpy, so grumpy I went to bed at about 8:30 and didn’t even clean up the kitchen. Why? Well, we had a hectic night. My oldest daughter was babysitting, and I had planned to join my husband and daughter at my son’s swim meet. Our two youngest daughters, however, didn’t want to go to another swim meet. I ended up letting my husband see this once, and I took them grocery shopping. In our household, there is now a big difference between shopping on a Friday and shopping during the week. They wanted “S Day†food. We were at the store nearly 90 minutes. By the time we got home and unpacked groceries, it was almost 7. Then they ate while I talked with a prospective French horn instructor for my youngest. I ate at 7:30, and I was hungry.
Was this a crises? No. Did I recover from it last night? No. I finally had the girls shower and go to bed to read. I flat out told them I was grumpy. They knew why, too. We talk about my diet, especially when we are grocery shopping. My 9 year old even said she figured out why it worked – which is that your body gets used to how you eat on N Days so it doesn’t want to eat a super large amount on S Days.
Now it is about 7:30 in the morning and I’ve already had a Haagen Dazs bar, a Snickers ice cream bar,and several peanut clusters. I’ve only been up about 15 minutes and haven’t even had coffee. Am I distressed by this start to my S Day? No. I’m just happy I got through last night. What I am observing about myself is that I have periods of time when it is difficult to make it through an N Day. The whole week before Christmas was difficult, and last night was difficult. Usually, though, this diet is easy. What makes it easy for me, I think, is that I really mean it that I allow myself to eat whatever I want on S Days or E days.
Sunday, January 18, 2009: 202.8. I ate a lot yesterday and went to bed early because I wasn’t feeling very well. When I stepped on the scale, I guessed a weight of 206.4 and got 202.8. Why? No idea. The weight gain will probably be reflected tomorrow. It’s no doubt bad for my body that I have these dramatic increases in food intake on the weekend, but I think that it won’t last. I get immediate negative feedback in the form of a stomach ache. I think I need to stick to the idea of “unconditional permission to eat†and just wait out the problem of overeating. I didn’t do anything to change the amount of food that I put on my plate on N Days, but over time I just stared to eat a more normal amount. Now it is quite unusual for me to have a plateful that is shaped like Mount Olympus. I hope that the change in my behavior on the weekend comes sooner rather than later. What I have noticed is that I tend to be somewhat burned out on sweets by Sunday so I tend to eat less on Sundays.
7 PM: There is one more Haagen Dazs bar in the freezer, and I just plain don’t want it. The kids were surprised when I turned down the Haagen Dazs bar that Dad said he didn’t want. I said, “I’m topped out.†My son quipped that those were new words in my vocabulary. I brought up that I want to celebrate getting below 200 pounds. I also went back in my journal to see when it was that my husband weighed less than I did. On July 9, 2008, I recorded that Tom had told me he weighed 211, and on that day I weighed 212.2. Since then, Tom’s weight has gone up to 225, but mine is down to 202.8 (as of this morning). I can no sooner convince him to follow this diet than I can convince my daughter. All I can do is follow it myself. My son thought I’d just regain this weight if I went off the diet, and I agreed and told him I plan to be on it for life.
Monday, January 19, 2009: 206.6. This diet is a waiting game. I need to wait for my body not to want binges on the weekend. I think that this may happen more quickly the less I focus on the diet, my eating, and my weight. I may just want to weigh myself and journal once per month. I’ve tried backing off on journaling before, but it hasn’t worked. Maybe I’m ready now.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009: 205.2. I got up this morning and decided I wanted to see how much I weigh. Whether I weigh myself or not, whether I write about how I feel or not – that is not what is important. What is important is whether I follow the diet or not. I was working on something so tedious this morning that I felt like I was going to fall asleep, and I was happy to escape at 1 and come home to a houseful of kids – two who had the day off school and two who were home because they were sick yesterday. I ate lunch, and now I need to turn my attention to getting the house cleaned. There isn’t much time to be thinking about dieting. That’s what’s nice about this diet. There’s no need to think. I ate a meal that I thought was satisfying, and now I won’t eat again until dinner. At dinner, I’ll decide how much to eat. Some nights, I pile the plate with food, and other nights I eat a normal amount.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009: 204.2. My weight just clings to me. I think I’m going to modify my weekly weight tracking chart so that I can see the infinitesimal movement downward from week to week. I’ll take an average of each week’s weight numbers so that I see that the average is moving downward.
Thursday, January 22, 2009: 203.6. Here are my weekly averages for all the weeks, since the start of the diet, that I weighed myself every day from Sunday through Saturday:
Week of 10/19/08: 208.
Week of 11/2/08: 207.4.
Week of 11/9/08: 207.8.
Week of 11/22/08: 207.9.
Week of 12/14/08: 206.5.
Week of 12/21/08: 205.7.
Week of 1/4/09: 206.3.
Week of 1/11/09: 203.9.
Looking at this information, it is no wonder to me that I am discouraged and feel like I am not losing weight. My weights are in a significant range from a high on Saturday (after two S Days) to a low on Saturday. The weight loss is so slow that my low on a Saturday can be greater than my low on a Monday two or three months later.
Seeing a weekly average is much more encouraging. I see that I am losing weight, but the weight loss is very variable. Given my history of gaining more weight at the end of a diet than I had lost during it, I am willing to settle for very slow weight loss.
8:30 AM: Last night, I had a victory of sorts. I went to the store and bought a pair of size 18 Liz Claiborne jeans. I have size 18 Liz Claiborne jeans that I have worn infrequently at home. I made a resolution that I would never ever go into women’s sizes, and size 18 is the top size in “normal†sizes. In many stores, “normal†sizes end at size 16, so I had to find the stores which carried size 18 as a non-women’s size. Even in size 18, the only jeans that I could zip up were Liz Claiborne jeans. They have been so tight that the stitching has actually come loose. The pair of jeans that I bought last night fit just fine. I came home from the store and promptly threw out the two pair of jeans that were worn out and had lines across the jeans because of the tightness in the thigh area. Today, I will be running a fourth grade reading group, and I will be wearing the new jeans. It is the first time I have been in jeans in public since the summer.
7 PM: I had a pleasant and productive day. Other than my standard 2 mile walk at the gym and leading a fourth grade reading group (which is a lot of fun), all I did was clean in the house – finish the laundry, wash all the floors, do some vacuuming. It is now after dinner, and my husband will be returning with our son from a Boy Scout meeting in the next half hour or so. I took a break to read, and I realized that I felt hungry – not famished but hungry. I certainly had a good sized meal. I had the meal (a slice of beef from a roast, a potato, and broccoli) plus yogurt, cottage cheese, and a Clementine. All of it fit on my plate. When I feel hungry, I feel my face tighten. I want to eat, but I’m not going to eat. It’s as simple as that. Instead, I’m going to spend the rest of the evening relaxing!
Friday, January 23, 2009: 202.0. A new low! I like recording “A new low!†It’s very reassuring when the weight loss is soooooooo slow. If I knew in early September that I would be at this weight today, I would be happy. It has been several years since I have been able to lose weight and keep it off more than a week. My body simply rebelled against dieting. I see that same rebellion in S Day behavior, but I think that the S Day behavior will change over time. I’m not going to be on any more starvation diets, so there is no longer the need to overeat in preparation for the coming famine.
4 PM: I didn’t eat lunch until ½ hour ago, and now I don’t feel all that great. I want to eat more, and lunch is over. How I feel is that my face is taut and I didn’t get enough to eat. It’s only two hours until dinner, and it’s only eight hours until an S Day. The freezer has 9 Haagen Dazs bars in it – four for me and one each for the other five people in the family. It is really tough sometimes to endure the feeling I have now, which is that I am not stuffed. The way I endure it is by looking forward to the next S Day.
11:30 PM: There are times when this diet is uncomfortable, and tonight has been one of them. I decided to go to bed early, and now I am up waiting for midnight so I can eat. I feel underfed, which is a terrible feeling especially when you are dieting and think it will never end. At least with this diet, I know the end is in sight in exactly 26 minutes. Tonight, at dinner, my husband said that he wasn’t going to have seconds because he was going on the S Day diet (my nine year old’s label for the diet, with its emphasis on eating really yummy foods on the weekend!) I got a chuckle out of that. I said that there’s a fine line between the Peanut Cluster Diet and this diet, but I was happy he was going on it. I have recorded in my journal for one day in July, 2008, that he told me he weighed 211 and I weighed 212.2 that day. Now I am at 202, and he came home from a physical last week to say he weighed 225. Anyway, after dinner, he gave the kids Skittles and popped several in his mouth. I bit my tongue. He’s still on the Peanut Cluster Diet!
Saturday, January 24, 2009: 204.0 (Morning Weight). It is now 12:30 AM. At 11:59 PM, I was standing in the kitchen with a Haagen Dazs bar in my hand, waiting for midnight. Since then, I’ve had two Haagen Dazs bars, bread, a slice of Swiss cheese, and an entire bowl of popcorn. I’m ready for bed. The feeling I had this past evening, the feeling of not being satisfied, is what destroys diets. With this diet, there is comfort in knowing that S Days mean satisfaction. I’ve had so many diets which have ended because I just couldn’t stand feeling hungry, constantly feeling hungry. Carnie Wilson wrote a book called “I’m Still Hungryâ€, and I just read it in the last month. It’s about the willful determination to use gastric bypass surgery to be able to deal with hunger. I prefer using S Days as a way to deal with N Day hunger. Back to sleep….
8:35 AM: I just had my third Haagen Dazs bar of the day. I am stuffed. Why? I think that what may have happened is the feeling of hunger triggered the “diet backlash†overeating that has characterized the end of my diets for years. What’s great about this diet is that the diet didn’t end. It continues. This overeating is part of the process of learning to enjoy food. I wish it wouldn’t take so long for me to recover from dieting, but I have been dieting for more than 35 years, and I just have to let this process of overeating take its course.
7 PM: Food. Food. Food. Food. That was my focus today. Somehow, in the haze of it all, we took our two youngest children to soccer, I took one of them for pictures, and I took another for a flute lesson. Activities with my family were simply the backdrop to food. I am sick of that. For dinner, I had popcorn. I did not eat with my family. It’s time for a change in outlook. I can still keep the concept of “unconditional permission to eat†on non-N Days, but I think I need to deliberately choose to turn my attention elsewhere and let following this diet produce the results it will over time. Maybe I shouldn’t journal so much or obsessively weigh myself every morning. Maybe I need to have other goals. This has been my number one priority since September. It can still be my number one priority without it being such a big deal. I just don’t want to repeat today’s performance.
7:40 PM: I took some time to think about what I was doing here, and I decided that it is just fun and easy to think about a problem that has already been solved. This diet will take me to a weight that will be acceptable and easy to maintain. I’m not going off it. My focusing on this diet adds no value. It’s time to turn my attention to other things, like making sure my 9 year old doesn’t fail band because she hasn’t handed in practice sheets since mid-quarter. I think I’ll try to give a monthly update. I do need to track the number of exception days, and the number increments by two every first of the month. Other than that, there isn’t really much that I need to do.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009: My resolve not to journal didn’t last long, but I have stayed off the scale. Last night, I was talking with my mother in law, and she brought up that my sister in law (who decided to follow this diet) has gained a noticeable amount of weight. I felt so bad. First of all, I understand the anguish of my mother in law because I feel so bad about my daughter’s weight. The other day, I brought my daughter to buy some black pants for a band concert tonight, and she fit easily into a size 12. She had bought size 13/14 American Eagle jeans in the fall, so I was very happy about this. She doesn’t appear to be gaining weight and may even be losing some. As for my sister in law, now in her late 50s, what is to explain that her going on this diet has led to weight gain? I think the reason may be that she has spent many years, like me, starving herself to lose weight and the “unconditional permission to eat†of S Days was a “feeding frenzy.†I went through six months of The Peanut Cluster Diet (“unconditional permission to eat†every day) and gained 10 pounds as a result. When I got to this diet, I understood that there is a fine line between The Peanut Cluster Diet, which leads to weight gain at least for a time, and The Set Point Lowering Diet, which can mean slow weight loss in a fairly short period of time. Had I not been on The Peanut Cluster Diet first, I may not have seen positive results so soon. I don’t know. I feel bad. I’m glad that my daughter is happy with her diet, and I’m looking forward to her annual physical in March so I can see how her weight percentile has changed, but I feel bad about my sister in law. It’s hard to describe just how kind she is.
One thing I have noticed about very overweight people is that they tend to be very giving. A person who is willing to diet enough that they experience significant “diet backlash†seems to me to have traits of being willing to put off self-gratification in the care of others. This is just the opposite of the conventional perception that overweight people are gluttons who have no self-control. I knew a woman at my old job who was on Weight Watchers for the third time. She was back to losing the same forty pounds. What a huge amount of willpower that involves. My sister in law is now the primary caregiver for my mother in law, who had a stroke last July. She is incredibly thoughtful, always thinking of little gifts for our kids and reading and playing with them when we visit. She’s a gem. Why is it that she is so overweight? She just plain is not self-indulgent. I think the weight problem comes from the willingness to diet at a level that triggers the body’s survival mechanism and the persistence to continue despite failure after failure after failure.
This diet requires patience and trust, but it does not require painful endurance. I am so glad I found it, and I am so glad my daughter is following it with success. At some point, I hope I can talk with my sister in law and encourage her to stick with this diet and not worry too much about early weight gain or S Days gone wild.
7:15 AM: I’m taking an Exception Day, so now my number of weekday exceptions that are left is 3. Why an E Day? I was sitting at the table eating breakfast when my son, who was playing with a tall candle, knocked it over. There was at least one glass shard. I told him not to eat anything that was on the table. Then I looked at my cereal bowl. I’d had maybe five bites of cereal. What to do? I could add it to my list of exceptions as “If the food that was selected for the meal is discovered not to be eatable, then you can get a different plateful.†The danger there is that I might add “if the food is not tasty.†I decided to take an exception day. After all, this is an exception. I wanted more cereal, so I got myself another bowl of cereal. There is nothing special about my son breaking a candle on the table while I’m eating breakfast. It’s an exception for the one plateful rule, so it deserves an E Day. I think this diet is one in which you can violate the spirit of the diet all you want so long as you follow the letter of the diet. I’m following the letter of the diet and allowing the letter to put me in the spirit of the diet.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009: I woke up this morning already full from last night’s eating. I met a friend for coffee and forgot to have breakfast. On the way home from work at 2:30 PM, I realized that I had not eaten all day and had not thought about food all day. I had three things to do with the kids – pick up the two kids at elementary school, drive over to where my daughter is starting to babysit so I made sure that she got off at the right stop, and take my youngest to trumpet lessons. I told the two youngest kids that I hadn’t had breakfast or lunch, and the youngest gave me her snack from school and said I could have that as breakfast. I then had lunch about 4:30 PM.
What is truly amazing about this is I didn’t even realize until 2:30 PM that I hadn’t eaten all day. With other diets, I have been so focused on food that I knew when I ate, how I ate, how many calories were in the food I ate, etc. This diet is much saner than that approach. I told my kids that, with conventional diets, you starve until you can’t stand it so you overeat whereas with this diet, you overeat on non N Days and it makes you feel worse than eating on N Days so you end up shifting to N Day eating patterns. I still have some time to go before that is the case with me. I’m still really overeating on the weekend, and even yesterday’s Exception Day led to this morning’s stomach ache.
Thursday, January 29, 2009: Last night, I was calculating how much I would weigh at the sixth grade graduation of our fourth grader. At a rate of two pounds per month, I would be down about 55 pounds or somewhere in the 140s. That’s still more than I weighed before I had children! Part of this diet is accepting slow weight loss, and it is difficult. I asked a favor of someone with whom I worked more than 10 years ago, and she was willing to do it – she’ll be allowing my 14 year old to shadow her during Career Day, a day in the school year in which 9th graders are supposed to learn about a business that interests them. This is a very warm person, and I asked her if Anne could spend the day with her because I am protective of Anne and know that she would take good care of her. I also thought about the fact that she is going to see me at this weight. With the expectation that this diet will take a long, long time, I’m just not willing to put off living until I am thinner. I am willing to see this former colleague. I am willing to buy clothes. I am willing to accept my body today and accept the results of following this diet even if it means I’ll never see 132 again. I know that I’ll be close to 132 with this diet than with any other diet, so I am willing to follow it.
Friday, January 30, 2009: 204.4. I decided that perhaps I could weigh myself once per week, and I weighed myself this morning. My weight was up. So what. I think that it may be good to have a goal and just compare my current weight with my goal. At a goal of losing two pounds per month, my goal is to be under 210 this month. If I compare 204.4 to 210, I can say I succeeded. My goal for February is to be under 208, and I think I am in good shape for making that goal. My weight first dipped to 205 on 11/22/08, which was day 76, so it can be a little frustrating to be looking at 204.4 when it is now day 145.
My son is convinced I’ll get discouraged and move on to another diet. I don’t feel in much danger of going off this diet because of slow weight loss. Instead, I am happy with how I feel – being able to enjoy food, not being so focused on food on N Days, and stopping the 10 pound per year weight gain I’ve been having for the last several years.
Saturday, January 31, 2009: 203.6. In sharp contrast to last Saturday, when I was in the kitchen with an unwrapped Haagen Dazs bar in my hand waiting for the digit clock to show midnight, this morning I just want some coffee before I have a bath. Last night, my stomach was growling because the pizza, chips, and pink lemonade from Family Fun Night didn’t fill me up. I find it very interesting that I am not all that hungry this morning.
This morning what I am is thoughtful. I have spent so much time on dieting and weight management that it has almost been a hobby. Why? Because I know it is important. What this diet does is normalize eating, and weight loss follows. How is eating normalized? You stick with three meals per day with no sweets or seconds on N Days. I’ve read lots of novels, and looking back what strikes me is the absence of discussion about hunger. People didn’t used to focus on hunger. One result of this diet, I bet, is the dwindling interest in hunger.
I asked myself this morning, “What is the minimum I need to do to stay on this diet?†With the way I have it set up, the absolute minimum is to follow N Day rules and track number of Exception Days. That’s it. I don’t have to worry about weighing myself. I don’t have to journal. I don’t have to do anything else.
Tomorrow is a new month, and I want to move towards doing the minimum with this diet. I’ve had my years of evaluating my eating habits, trying to understand emotional eating, trying to eat different foods to minimize hunger, trying to develop ways of eating that encourage less eating (I still have the little diet fork), and on and on and on. All I need to do here is follow some clear rules and track Exception Days. I can violate the spirit of the diet all I want if I just follow the letter of the diet. That means that why I do something doesn’t much matter. What matters is that I follow these rules. Over time and even occasionally now, I’m going to lose weight.
3 PM: I ate so much that I had to lie down at about 12:45 because my stomach hurt so much. I was sick of Haagen Dazs bars, but I had almost an entire package of Hershey kisses and three PayDays. I got off to a slow start with overeating this morning. I didn’t each much other than cereal until 10 AM. That’s encouraging. Even so, here it is mid-afternoon, and I’m not feeling so great because I ate so much. I keep on thinking that the less time I spend thinking about this diet, the better it will go. I told my husband that I’d like to plan something special for when I fall below 200 pounds. We are going to spend a weekend at a hotel in Rochester in early April. I was 203.6 this morning and 200 earlier this month, so I think it is realistic to expect that I’ll be below 200 by then. I keep on thinking it is time for me to stop focusing on this diet and just switch to a maintenance mentality as if I had already lost all the weight I wanted. It seems strange to still be above 200 pounds and yet want to switch away from thinking about dieting.
I have had to honestly ask myself this question: If I never lose another pound, would I still stay on this diet? The answer is yes. I am not comparing my current weight to the fantasy of finding a different diet which will allow me to return to high school weight of 132. Instead, I am comparing my current weight of 200 – 205 to the weight of my aunt who died last year at age 74 and probably weighed between 350 and 400 pounds. For me, this diet has achieved a lot by simply stopping the weight gain that resulted from other diets. I found a way to normalize eating, at least on N Days. This morning’s normal eating prior to 10 AM was also encouraging. I guess I’m not debating anymore with myself about whether to reign in S Day eating or whether to add to N Day rules or make additional allowances on N Days. My approach to this diet has stabilized, and now it is time to wait and wait and wait and wait and wait for the pounds to come off slowly, if they come off at all. The less time I spend journaling and the fewer times I stand on the scale, the better for me because I will be less focused on my weight.
Last edited by Kathleen on Sat Jan 31, 2009 9:23 pm, edited 66 times in total.
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BrightAngel
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Kathleen,Kathleen wrote: My journaling about my dieting is for one main purpose, and it is to educate my beloved oldest child, who is about 5'5" and 150 pounds. Oh, I want her to avoid all the professional advise that got me into so much trouble!
My own life experience with my two adult children is that
despite one doing one's best to point in a positive direction,
they will still choose their own paths and make their own mistakes.
Verbal acceptance of this fact is easy,
but internal acceptance of the actual fact has been extremely difficult.
It is hard to watch someone you love "jump over a cliff"
after you've done everything possible to point out the danger.
I find your journal interesting and see that we have many thoughts in common.
I've found the important and really useful thing about keeping a journal
is how it helps one put oneself into the place of the "Observer",
and out of the "wild child" or "dictator".
(I take these terms from a book by Martha Beck.)
BrightAngel - (Dr. Collins)
See: DietHobby. com
See: DietHobby. com
BrightAngel,
I so want my daughter to avoid the path I have taken, and it is what motivated me to research the topic of weight loss to try to figure out why I kept gaining weight whenever I dieted. Now that I feel confident I have figured out what one author called "The Dieter's Dilemma" (which was that those who diet tend to regain the weight plus more), I can only model good behavior for her. She's a teenager, after all, and she'll make her own decisions or rebel against her mother telling her what to do. I was pleased to see that she decided to follow this diet, and she has discussed it some with me, but I am careful not to tell her she has to follow it.
I do restrict the eating of sweets on N Days, for her and the other three children. It's not that I say they can't have treats; instead, I just make sure treats aren't in the house. My nine year old calls this diet the "S Day Diet". She really likes the special treats she gets on S Days. We didn't used to buy Haagen Dazs bars!
Kathleen
I so want my daughter to avoid the path I have taken, and it is what motivated me to research the topic of weight loss to try to figure out why I kept gaining weight whenever I dieted. Now that I feel confident I have figured out what one author called "The Dieter's Dilemma" (which was that those who diet tend to regain the weight plus more), I can only model good behavior for her. She's a teenager, after all, and she'll make her own decisions or rebel against her mother telling her what to do. I was pleased to see that she decided to follow this diet, and she has discussed it some with me, but I am careful not to tell her she has to follow it.
I do restrict the eating of sweets on N Days, for her and the other three children. It's not that I say they can't have treats; instead, I just make sure treats aren't in the house. My nine year old calls this diet the "S Day Diet". She really likes the special treats she gets on S Days. We didn't used to buy Haagen Dazs bars!
Kathleen
My goal is a permanent weight loss of two pounds per month, which means that I will never again see 208 pounds.
Day 147 – Sunday, February 1, 2009: (5E) 204.4
Day 148 – Monday, February 2, 2009: 205.0
Day 149 – Tuesday, February 3, 2009: 204.4
Day 150 – Wednesday, February 4, 2009: 203.2
Day 151 – Thursday, February 5, 2009: 202.8
Day 152 – Friday, February 6, 2009: 202.8
Day 153 – Saturday, February 7, 2009:
Day 154 – Sunday, February 8, 2009:
Day 155 – Monday, February 9, 2009:
Day 156 – Tuesday, February 10, 2009: 204.0
Day 157 – Wednesday, February 11, 2009: 202.6
Day 158 – Thursday, February 12, 2009: 204.6
Day 159 – Friday, February 13, 2009: 201.6 A new low!
Day 160 – Saturday, February 14, 2009: 201.4 A new low!
Monday, February 2, 2009: 205.0. I decided to continue weighing myself but try to cut down on journaling and throw out the old diet books. I’m set on what I’m doing. There’s no need to keep repeating the same thing to myself over and over again. The keys are to follow the letter of the law when it comes to N Days and to be able to distinguish N Days from non-N Days. That is it. This diet is easy and doesn’t require much effort or attention.
Over the weekend, I ate a lot, but my weight only went from 203.6 on Saturday to 205 today. On some weekends, the scale has registered a four pound weight gain. Why has there only been a 1.4 pound weight gain this past weekend? I am quite confident I know the reason why. I prefer not to wake up on Monday morning feeling sick. This morning, I did wake up with a slight stomach ache, but it wasn’t as bad as I’ve had on many Monday mornings. Binges used to bring relief from starvation. Now they have no benefit whatsoever. Slowly, they are diminishing in intensity. I did have Caribou Coffee bars this weekend, but I had not one Haagen Dazs bar. When I picked out food that I wanted, the food included oranges as well as ice cream.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009: 204.4. I picked up a book at Kinko’s that has been very thought-provoking for me. It is called Eat that Frog by Brian Tracy, and it has had some great insights into how to get things done. Over and over again in the book, he emphasizes the need to focus on one thing at a time. It’s interesting, but that’s exactly what I did with weight reduction. I had surgery in August, 2007 and had a bandage on my head until the end of February, 2008. My kids were in school, and I couldn't look for work because of the bandage on my head. I did some volunteering in the school and took some classes to improve my computer skills, but my main focus was on researching weight loss. I read books and kept a journal and experimented with different approaches. It wasn’t until September, 2008 that I tried The No S Diet, but by then I had figured out several key ingredients in a successful weight loss program. I knew that my obesity problem came from a survival mechanism which was triggered by my brain not being able to distinguish between an environment of starvation and a diet to lose weight. I knew there had to be times of “unconditional permission to eatâ€. I knew that mealtimes were important. I knew that you had to be on whatever diet you selected for the rest of your life. I knew that you had to follow a program with “perfect compliance.†With my modification of allowing two exceptions per month and not worrying about whether a day was special or not, I had a diet which met all the criteria that I had come to figure out needed to be in a diet.
I’m not surprised that I’ve lost weight. I am surprised that the weight loss is so slow. Now what? Do I keep on reading about dieting, or do I turn my focus to other concerns? I think it is time to move to other problems. I am so happy that my daughter is following this diet. Today, she came home and said she had an exception day because there were snacks in one class and so she was using one of her two exception days for the month. Good for her. I can model behavior for her that I hope she follows.
What else? Well, we are spending a weekend in a hotel in April in anticipation of my falling below 200 pounds. Other than periodic celebrations, I think it is best to let this diet fade into the woodwork of my life. After all, there are lots of things I do without putting much thought into them. I want this diet to fade into the background. In the last few days, I have gone through my bookshelf and thrown out books that have helped me to develop this diet, including Intuitive Eating. I got a lot out of that book, but I don’t want to be stuck reviewing what I’ve already learned. It’s time to move on.
What is my next area of focus? I am really disorganized, painfully disorganized. I use a planner so I know where I need to be, but it is hard for me to find sharpened pencils for the kids or have meals that are good for you and ready when they need to be ready. I tend to buy multiples of items. We must have 10 hairbrushes and 10 pair of scissors. Our family room has the newspaper on the couch and my exercise bag on the couch and the crayon bucket on the table and my planner open on the table. I forgot to bring a form to soccer tonight. My children are following my example in this area as well. My precious nine year old failed band, not because she didn’t practice but because she kept forgetting to bring in her practice charts. My son had to practice for 500 minutes in the last two weeks of last quarter.
I ordered some audio CDs on organization, and I’ll listen to them in the car. I’ve started making sure that the kids have their backpacks packed the night before and their boots and mittens and snowpants out and ready to go for morning. It’s a start. That’s where I need to focus now.
To me, the greatest testament to success in this diet will be that I continue to record my exception days but not much else. The diet is already moving in that direction, but I resist giving up the focus on something which is successful (losing weight) so that I can work on something which isn’t (home organization). I’m procrastinating because I am so happy that at last I am losing weight, but life goes on and there’s more to do than lose weight.
What makes me hesitate is something Brian Tracy wrote in Eat that Frog: “If you have two important tasks before you, start with the biggest, hardest, and most important task first. Discipline yourself to begin immediately and then to persist until the task is complete before you go on to something else.†I still weigh more than 200 pounds. Is it time for me to move on to other goals? I think so. I simply have to stay at the N Day guidelines and track number of exception days. Everything else is immaterial. This diet is still my #1 priority because I think that the greatest gift I can give to my husband and children is to model healthy eating habits. I have to chuckle that my husband is naturally competitive, and there is no way that I will lose weight without having some company. He’s still on the Peanut Cluster Diet, but he’ll eventually figure out that you have to follow N Day rules perfectly or you’ll gain weight. He did decide to exercise and even bought a home exercise bike. My daughter has seen how miserable it is to be overweight and is excited to be following this diet. It’s a great gift I am giving them.
It’s not the only gift, however. My life has also been marred by disorganization. My husband really dislikes the disorganization. I’ve tried different things over the years but have never before made it a focus. Now is a good time. My oldest manages just fine with her homework as does the youngest, but the two children in the middle are bright and capable but disorganization is hurting their grades and their studies. Just as I think my modeling following this diet is a gift in particular for my oldest child, so I think my middle girl will most benefit from my focus on organization. It seems so mundane, but it’s not. The self-discipline I need now is the self-discipline to turn my attention to organization and allow the diet to slowly reduce my weight. Diet is still priority #1, exercise is priority #2, and organization is priority #3. With diet and exercise stable, the need is for attention and thought to go into organization.
Thursday, February 5, 2009: 202.8. I realized this morning, as I was walking my 2.2 miles at the gym, that the reason why I am not losing weight so quickly is that first this diet must help me to stop disordered eating. The N Day rules are very orderly. My goal for this year is orderliness, and this afternoon the guy who cleans our carpet is one step behind me as I pick up all over the house. Why am I so disorganized? With eating, I understand that the reason is that I have attempted to lose weight by starving myself, and the harder I tried the worse I did. With disorganization in the house, I don’t know why. All I know is that this is the focus of my year this year. Is it true that obesity and disorderliness go together? I don’t know. I’ve heard the term “fat slobâ€, but I don’t know if people who are overweight tend to be disorganized. All I know is that I now enjoy the orderliness of N Day eating, and I’m looking forward to the orderliness of a neat and clean house!
Friday, February 6, 2009: 202.8. I was frustrated by slow weight loss and decided that I would try to cut down on my meals since it is a Friday and I can eat all I want tomorrow. It is now 7:14 PM, and I am very grumpy. I told my husband I was grumpy, and he suggested I go to bed. I hate feeling like this. It’s not as if I starved today. I had a big bowl of cereal with an orange and orange juice for breakfast, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with milk for lunch, and two pieces of French bread, a serving of chicken with cheese and tomato sauce, broccoli, some blackberries, and milk for dinner. If I were to estimate calories in today’s meals, I would estimate somewhere around 2,500 calories. Even so, I’m grumpy. I’m glad I tested this approach on a Friday and not a Monday. It is discouraging to look back and see that my last new low was 202 pounds exactly two weeks ago. Sometimes, I feel as though I am standing still on this diet. I think what helps me to stick with it is the recognition that this diet is first of all about disordered eating and only secondarily about losing weight. The disordered eating has to end before the weight can go. Am I going to eat everything in sight tomorrow? Probably. There are only minor indications of a movement towards normalized eating. For example, I bought blackberries. I wanted fruit tonight. I didn’t even think about picking up ice cream bars for midnight snacking. Tomorrow may be a different story, but if it was an S Day right now, I’d be eating blackberries instead of ice cream. I’m getting sick of eating lots of sweets.
Saturday, February 7, 2009: I went to bed at 8 PM, so now I’m up at 2 AM. I’ve had ½ peanut butter sandwich, two bowls of cereal, and some French bread. Trying to further cut back on my eating yesterday really backfired. I need to be patient and allow my body to lose weight in its own time. It is frustrating to still be above 200 pounds, but that is the way it is. If I try to lose weight faster, dieting will become an obsession, and I’ll return to bingeing at unpredictable intervals. What this diet has done is allow bingeing only on certain days so now I see that I am not completely out of control in my eating. I need to stick with this diet and not try to add further restrictions as a way to lose weight faster.
6:15 AM: I did not go right back to sleep but lay in bed thinking about this weight problem of mine. It’s not going to fade into the background if I try restricting eating more than following N Day guidelines. I hate hate hate being so fat. That leads me back to deliberately turning my attention elsewhere. I got a CD on organization, and my 14 year old and I listened to it in the car as we went on an errand last night. We were laughing at yo-yo organizing being like yo-yo dieting. Do I want to revert to yo-yo dieting? Absolutely not. I think that what I’ll try is weighing myself once per week and updating this journal once per week. The best day for that is probably Friday, since it is the last N Day of the week. If I chose Saturday, I could find myself in the position I am in right now, which is that it is early morning and I’ve already eating quite a lot so my weight on the scale could be not worth recording. If I’m not in town on a Friday, which is a rare occurrence, then I could just skip journaling and recording my weight. That’s how I manage exercise three times per week. I exercise on Tuesday morning before work, on Thursday when I don’t work, and on Saturday. If I’m not in town, I don’t exercise. There are instances when I switch days, but this is the norm for my exercise schedule. Actually, this diet is somewhat like that as well. Diet Monday through Friday with days off on Saturday and Sunday plus two exceptions per month. It’s easy to remember. It’s easy to follow. Easy and simple. That’s why it’s been possible for me to follow this diet and follow an exercise program. Now I just need to pull back on the time I spend journaling and weighing myself, which is like watching a pot boil.
1 PM: It is 1 PM, and I am totally satisfied. This feeling of being totally satisfied is not one that is experienced on a typical diet. I had my big snack at 2 PM, pancakes, a Caribou Coffee, two Haagen Dazs bars, some chicken noodle soup, milk, and ½ peanut butter sandwich. I think that what this diet does is lower the amount of food that it takes for me to feel totally satisfied. With this diet, there are predictable times when I can feel totally satisfied, and those times give me the incentive to follow N Day rules. I made a mistake yesterday in trying to cut back on the quantity of food eaten instead of just setting the limit at a plateful. That’s OK. I learned. What I think is going to happen over time is that the amount of food it takes for me to feel totally satisfied will get less and less. At some point, my weight will stabilize. That’s OK, too. I don’t want to be focused on food. I want to enjoy my family. This diet is the means to an end, and the end is not to be thin. Instead, it is to have a normalized eating pattern and be a weight that allows me to enjoy my life. At age 50, my goal is not beauty but functionality. For reading groups the other week, we found a spot behind a table set up for the annual Book Fair, and the kids were surprised that I was willing to crawl under the table. That was no problem. Heck, I crawl around on the floor when I vacuum under tables. What is difficult and uncomfortable, however, is to go anywhere in a bathing suit, to sleep in a sleeping bag, to go on long walks or bike rides. I’m supersized, and I do not like it. My weight today is more than 10 pounds less than it was when I started this diet almost five months ago. I can feel a slight difference. How will I be at the end of the summer or at Christmastime? It will feel so good to be a lower weight. It will feel so good. Weight has been a huge negative in my life, and I can celebrate the pounds coming off, however slowly. I started tracking my weight on a spreadsheet in November, 2005, and the lowest recorded weight was 188.2 on December 17 and 18, 2005. I never was below 190 after January 1, 2006. If I continue at a two pound per month weight loss, I should be below that weight of 188 in a year. How wonderful! How incredibly wonderful! It gives me chills to think that I could lose weight in a predictable way that is not painful, that does not result in my being grumpy. Slow but sure… No pain, no weight gain… How wonderful. I need to keep this in my thoughts rather than focus on being fat today and having to live another three years of being overweight. Each month will be better. That’s what I can tell myself in order to stick with this plan.
7:30 PM: We have an unusual Saturday evening with four children doing four different things, so our Saturday night is quite calm. I’m home alone for a short time, and I have been thinking about how I want to handle this diet going forward. I think the answer is to do the minimum to keep it going. For me, that means tracking the exception days and following N Day rules. I think that means monthly updating of where I am, and that’s it. I’ve spent a lot of time on this diet, and I’ve needed it, but at this point, it’s no longer necessary. It’s time to move on to other things.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009: 202.6. I decided I could just let nature take its course and allow myself to journal as much as I have time for it. It is now almost 10 PM, and I had what I knew weeks ago would be a hectic day. It was. I stayed late for a company meeting and then had to pick up the girls at elementary school and take the kids to dinner at Wendy’s so that I could get to a parent class for new drivers. I got home, and my husband was all upset because of our son’s grades. Our son doesn’t have our attention yet. He’s got a C-, D, and F in three of his seven classes. Yes, it’s early in a quarter, and yes he was sick one day, but still…
So, do I have time to think about dieting? No. Tomorrow morning, I drive this same son to jazz band practice at 7, get back home about 7:15, make sure the two youngest get on the bus by 7:35, then go to work, get to the school about 1, take the youngest for her annual physical at 1:45, get back to the school to pick up the 9 year old from a flute lesson at 3:15, go home, make dinner, make sure the kids have their homework done, and leave about 6:30 to pick up a friend of our son’s to get him and our son to Boy Scouts by 7. I’ll get home about 7:15. That’s my day. Now, where in that day would I be able to tolerate incessant hunger or to count calories or to prepare special foods? Heck, work is a luxury because I can actually concentrate and produce something. With the kids, there is lots of running around, but there also has to be time to just be with them. I’m finding that time in the car is a good time for talking, and that’s what I try to do.
My focus in on my family, and I told my two youngest today that one of the gifts I hope they get from me is knowledge of how to maintain a normal weight – that there’s not much difference between The Peanut Cluster Diet (“unconditional permission to eat†all the time) and The S Day Diet.
I do feel impatient with the results of this diet. I felt really fat today, and I don’t know why. I am just plain sick of being so large. Tonight, I ordered a new swimsuit because the one I got last year was so ghastly. It was nice to treat myself to nice clothes when I have the tendency to not bother because I don’t look nice no matter what I wear.
In thinking about this diet, I have come to realize that the first task of this diet is to correct disordered eating. That’s why weight loss is so slow. I went back through my records and pulled out Monday dates and weights from every month, starting with day one of my diet. It was very revealing just how slowly I have lost weight:
Day 1 – Monday, September 8, 2008: 215.0
Day 36 – Monday, October 13, 2008: 210.2
Day 57 – Monday, November 3, 2008: 209.4
Day 99 – Monday, December 15, 2008: 208.8
Day 120 – Monday, January 5, 2008: 209.2
Day 148 – Monday, February 8, 2008: 205.0
I was able to find a record of a Monday weight at least once in each month, and the weights tell a story of very slow weight loss. I am very confident that this weight loss is permanent, so I’m willing to continue on this diet, especially since I can follow it so easily. It doesn’t have to be a focus in my life. It can just be part of my life, what I have chosen to do so that I can focus on my family and work and making sure the dog doesn’t wake up the neighborhood at 10 at night!
Friday, February 13, 2009: 201.6 A new low! I’m happy about the new low, especially since my weight was up so much yesterday. I am starting to realize that I had disordered thinking – a view that weight management was a lifelong struggle, that I had some sort of food addiction because I wolfed down food whenever I lifted restrictions after a diet failed, and that any sort of hunger – even the mildest little rumble in my stomach – was a crises that required immediate action. The change in habit that comes from following this diet is making the disordered thinking obvious. Weight management is a matter of establishing easy to follow habits and following those habits consistently. “Feeding frenzies†are very natural reactions to starvation diets, the memory of which lasts for longer than the diets. And a little hunger is not a crises. It is possible to survive several hours without food.
So – here I am at another new low. The weight loss is only secondary to the reduction in alarms surrounding food. I was an English major in college, and I read lots of novels from earlier centuries. Looking back, I realize just how little attention was paid to the feeling of hunger. It was a clue for me that I could find very little reference anywhere to hunger. At one point, I searched an online concordance of Shakespeare and found very little reference to hunger. I remember one line being “the hungry edge of appetite.†Who talks about appetite these days? It’s all about hunger – the need to satisfy the body’s driving need for food.
I think this culture has created its own obesity epidemic by focusing so much on food and weight. The saner approach is to establish eating habits and follow them. I am gaining a perspective I cannot remember having since I was a child, before I got on the diet roller coaster.
Saturday, February 14, 2009: 201.4. A new low! It’s 7 AM on a Saturday morning. I was not up at midnight eating Haagen Dazs bars. We do not have any Haagen Dazs bars in the refrigerator. At the moment, I have absolutely no interest in wolfing down any sort of sweets, including Haagen Dazs bars. I’m going to take a bath before I have breakfast. The N Day habits have carried over at least until 7 AM on a Saturday.
9 AM: I’ve had a coffee, a bagel, and a Clementine. I was discussing the plans for the day with my 14 year old daughter. I told her that what is not in my plan is to buy Haagen Dazs bars. Her response: “Yeah, I know. I’m sick of them.†There is no willpower whatsoever involved in my deciding not to eat Haagen Dazs bars today. My daughter put it very well: “I’m sick of them!â€
2:30 PM: This morning, I took Katie and Anne to the grocery store to buy a balloon for our 8 year old whose birthday is today. Anne wanted a doughnut, and I bought her one because she is on The S Day Diet. Katie didn’t get one because she is on The Peanut Cluster Diet. She got upset and decided she would follow The S Day Diet so she could get any treats she wants on S Days. This afternoon, I’m going back to the grocery store to pick up a birthday cake and to let Katie pick out her doughnut. Katie first wanted to make sure she could still have school treats, and she can. She just cannot have snacks at home during the week. I think this is a good path for our children. Meanwhile, Tom admitted to weighing 220. Tom is still on The Peanut Cluster Diet, too, but I think he’ll soon decide to switch over. I am starting to see a difference in my shape, and I’m happy about that. This morning, I measured my waist at 35â€. When I started this diet, it was 38 or 39â€. How amazing to me. When I was single until I got pregnant, my waist was 24â€, and my bust and hips were 36â€. I was perfectly proportioned. I still cannot believe that I dieted my way up to over 200 pounds.
Day 147 – Sunday, February 1, 2009: (5E) 204.4
Day 148 – Monday, February 2, 2009: 205.0
Day 149 – Tuesday, February 3, 2009: 204.4
Day 150 – Wednesday, February 4, 2009: 203.2
Day 151 – Thursday, February 5, 2009: 202.8
Day 152 – Friday, February 6, 2009: 202.8
Day 153 – Saturday, February 7, 2009:
Day 154 – Sunday, February 8, 2009:
Day 155 – Monday, February 9, 2009:
Day 156 – Tuesday, February 10, 2009: 204.0
Day 157 – Wednesday, February 11, 2009: 202.6
Day 158 – Thursday, February 12, 2009: 204.6
Day 159 – Friday, February 13, 2009: 201.6 A new low!
Day 160 – Saturday, February 14, 2009: 201.4 A new low!
Monday, February 2, 2009: 205.0. I decided to continue weighing myself but try to cut down on journaling and throw out the old diet books. I’m set on what I’m doing. There’s no need to keep repeating the same thing to myself over and over again. The keys are to follow the letter of the law when it comes to N Days and to be able to distinguish N Days from non-N Days. That is it. This diet is easy and doesn’t require much effort or attention.
Over the weekend, I ate a lot, but my weight only went from 203.6 on Saturday to 205 today. On some weekends, the scale has registered a four pound weight gain. Why has there only been a 1.4 pound weight gain this past weekend? I am quite confident I know the reason why. I prefer not to wake up on Monday morning feeling sick. This morning, I did wake up with a slight stomach ache, but it wasn’t as bad as I’ve had on many Monday mornings. Binges used to bring relief from starvation. Now they have no benefit whatsoever. Slowly, they are diminishing in intensity. I did have Caribou Coffee bars this weekend, but I had not one Haagen Dazs bar. When I picked out food that I wanted, the food included oranges as well as ice cream.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009: 204.4. I picked up a book at Kinko’s that has been very thought-provoking for me. It is called Eat that Frog by Brian Tracy, and it has had some great insights into how to get things done. Over and over again in the book, he emphasizes the need to focus on one thing at a time. It’s interesting, but that’s exactly what I did with weight reduction. I had surgery in August, 2007 and had a bandage on my head until the end of February, 2008. My kids were in school, and I couldn't look for work because of the bandage on my head. I did some volunteering in the school and took some classes to improve my computer skills, but my main focus was on researching weight loss. I read books and kept a journal and experimented with different approaches. It wasn’t until September, 2008 that I tried The No S Diet, but by then I had figured out several key ingredients in a successful weight loss program. I knew that my obesity problem came from a survival mechanism which was triggered by my brain not being able to distinguish between an environment of starvation and a diet to lose weight. I knew there had to be times of “unconditional permission to eatâ€. I knew that mealtimes were important. I knew that you had to be on whatever diet you selected for the rest of your life. I knew that you had to follow a program with “perfect compliance.†With my modification of allowing two exceptions per month and not worrying about whether a day was special or not, I had a diet which met all the criteria that I had come to figure out needed to be in a diet.
I’m not surprised that I’ve lost weight. I am surprised that the weight loss is so slow. Now what? Do I keep on reading about dieting, or do I turn my focus to other concerns? I think it is time to move to other problems. I am so happy that my daughter is following this diet. Today, she came home and said she had an exception day because there were snacks in one class and so she was using one of her two exception days for the month. Good for her. I can model behavior for her that I hope she follows.
What else? Well, we are spending a weekend in a hotel in April in anticipation of my falling below 200 pounds. Other than periodic celebrations, I think it is best to let this diet fade into the woodwork of my life. After all, there are lots of things I do without putting much thought into them. I want this diet to fade into the background. In the last few days, I have gone through my bookshelf and thrown out books that have helped me to develop this diet, including Intuitive Eating. I got a lot out of that book, but I don’t want to be stuck reviewing what I’ve already learned. It’s time to move on.
What is my next area of focus? I am really disorganized, painfully disorganized. I use a planner so I know where I need to be, but it is hard for me to find sharpened pencils for the kids or have meals that are good for you and ready when they need to be ready. I tend to buy multiples of items. We must have 10 hairbrushes and 10 pair of scissors. Our family room has the newspaper on the couch and my exercise bag on the couch and the crayon bucket on the table and my planner open on the table. I forgot to bring a form to soccer tonight. My children are following my example in this area as well. My precious nine year old failed band, not because she didn’t practice but because she kept forgetting to bring in her practice charts. My son had to practice for 500 minutes in the last two weeks of last quarter.
I ordered some audio CDs on organization, and I’ll listen to them in the car. I’ve started making sure that the kids have their backpacks packed the night before and their boots and mittens and snowpants out and ready to go for morning. It’s a start. That’s where I need to focus now.
To me, the greatest testament to success in this diet will be that I continue to record my exception days but not much else. The diet is already moving in that direction, but I resist giving up the focus on something which is successful (losing weight) so that I can work on something which isn’t (home organization). I’m procrastinating because I am so happy that at last I am losing weight, but life goes on and there’s more to do than lose weight.
What makes me hesitate is something Brian Tracy wrote in Eat that Frog: “If you have two important tasks before you, start with the biggest, hardest, and most important task first. Discipline yourself to begin immediately and then to persist until the task is complete before you go on to something else.†I still weigh more than 200 pounds. Is it time for me to move on to other goals? I think so. I simply have to stay at the N Day guidelines and track number of exception days. Everything else is immaterial. This diet is still my #1 priority because I think that the greatest gift I can give to my husband and children is to model healthy eating habits. I have to chuckle that my husband is naturally competitive, and there is no way that I will lose weight without having some company. He’s still on the Peanut Cluster Diet, but he’ll eventually figure out that you have to follow N Day rules perfectly or you’ll gain weight. He did decide to exercise and even bought a home exercise bike. My daughter has seen how miserable it is to be overweight and is excited to be following this diet. It’s a great gift I am giving them.
It’s not the only gift, however. My life has also been marred by disorganization. My husband really dislikes the disorganization. I’ve tried different things over the years but have never before made it a focus. Now is a good time. My oldest manages just fine with her homework as does the youngest, but the two children in the middle are bright and capable but disorganization is hurting their grades and their studies. Just as I think my modeling following this diet is a gift in particular for my oldest child, so I think my middle girl will most benefit from my focus on organization. It seems so mundane, but it’s not. The self-discipline I need now is the self-discipline to turn my attention to organization and allow the diet to slowly reduce my weight. Diet is still priority #1, exercise is priority #2, and organization is priority #3. With diet and exercise stable, the need is for attention and thought to go into organization.
Thursday, February 5, 2009: 202.8. I realized this morning, as I was walking my 2.2 miles at the gym, that the reason why I am not losing weight so quickly is that first this diet must help me to stop disordered eating. The N Day rules are very orderly. My goal for this year is orderliness, and this afternoon the guy who cleans our carpet is one step behind me as I pick up all over the house. Why am I so disorganized? With eating, I understand that the reason is that I have attempted to lose weight by starving myself, and the harder I tried the worse I did. With disorganization in the house, I don’t know why. All I know is that this is the focus of my year this year. Is it true that obesity and disorderliness go together? I don’t know. I’ve heard the term “fat slobâ€, but I don’t know if people who are overweight tend to be disorganized. All I know is that I now enjoy the orderliness of N Day eating, and I’m looking forward to the orderliness of a neat and clean house!
Friday, February 6, 2009: 202.8. I was frustrated by slow weight loss and decided that I would try to cut down on my meals since it is a Friday and I can eat all I want tomorrow. It is now 7:14 PM, and I am very grumpy. I told my husband I was grumpy, and he suggested I go to bed. I hate feeling like this. It’s not as if I starved today. I had a big bowl of cereal with an orange and orange juice for breakfast, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with milk for lunch, and two pieces of French bread, a serving of chicken with cheese and tomato sauce, broccoli, some blackberries, and milk for dinner. If I were to estimate calories in today’s meals, I would estimate somewhere around 2,500 calories. Even so, I’m grumpy. I’m glad I tested this approach on a Friday and not a Monday. It is discouraging to look back and see that my last new low was 202 pounds exactly two weeks ago. Sometimes, I feel as though I am standing still on this diet. I think what helps me to stick with it is the recognition that this diet is first of all about disordered eating and only secondarily about losing weight. The disordered eating has to end before the weight can go. Am I going to eat everything in sight tomorrow? Probably. There are only minor indications of a movement towards normalized eating. For example, I bought blackberries. I wanted fruit tonight. I didn’t even think about picking up ice cream bars for midnight snacking. Tomorrow may be a different story, but if it was an S Day right now, I’d be eating blackberries instead of ice cream. I’m getting sick of eating lots of sweets.
Saturday, February 7, 2009: I went to bed at 8 PM, so now I’m up at 2 AM. I’ve had ½ peanut butter sandwich, two bowls of cereal, and some French bread. Trying to further cut back on my eating yesterday really backfired. I need to be patient and allow my body to lose weight in its own time. It is frustrating to still be above 200 pounds, but that is the way it is. If I try to lose weight faster, dieting will become an obsession, and I’ll return to bingeing at unpredictable intervals. What this diet has done is allow bingeing only on certain days so now I see that I am not completely out of control in my eating. I need to stick with this diet and not try to add further restrictions as a way to lose weight faster.
6:15 AM: I did not go right back to sleep but lay in bed thinking about this weight problem of mine. It’s not going to fade into the background if I try restricting eating more than following N Day guidelines. I hate hate hate being so fat. That leads me back to deliberately turning my attention elsewhere. I got a CD on organization, and my 14 year old and I listened to it in the car as we went on an errand last night. We were laughing at yo-yo organizing being like yo-yo dieting. Do I want to revert to yo-yo dieting? Absolutely not. I think that what I’ll try is weighing myself once per week and updating this journal once per week. The best day for that is probably Friday, since it is the last N Day of the week. If I chose Saturday, I could find myself in the position I am in right now, which is that it is early morning and I’ve already eating quite a lot so my weight on the scale could be not worth recording. If I’m not in town on a Friday, which is a rare occurrence, then I could just skip journaling and recording my weight. That’s how I manage exercise three times per week. I exercise on Tuesday morning before work, on Thursday when I don’t work, and on Saturday. If I’m not in town, I don’t exercise. There are instances when I switch days, but this is the norm for my exercise schedule. Actually, this diet is somewhat like that as well. Diet Monday through Friday with days off on Saturday and Sunday plus two exceptions per month. It’s easy to remember. It’s easy to follow. Easy and simple. That’s why it’s been possible for me to follow this diet and follow an exercise program. Now I just need to pull back on the time I spend journaling and weighing myself, which is like watching a pot boil.
1 PM: It is 1 PM, and I am totally satisfied. This feeling of being totally satisfied is not one that is experienced on a typical diet. I had my big snack at 2 PM, pancakes, a Caribou Coffee, two Haagen Dazs bars, some chicken noodle soup, milk, and ½ peanut butter sandwich. I think that what this diet does is lower the amount of food that it takes for me to feel totally satisfied. With this diet, there are predictable times when I can feel totally satisfied, and those times give me the incentive to follow N Day rules. I made a mistake yesterday in trying to cut back on the quantity of food eaten instead of just setting the limit at a plateful. That’s OK. I learned. What I think is going to happen over time is that the amount of food it takes for me to feel totally satisfied will get less and less. At some point, my weight will stabilize. That’s OK, too. I don’t want to be focused on food. I want to enjoy my family. This diet is the means to an end, and the end is not to be thin. Instead, it is to have a normalized eating pattern and be a weight that allows me to enjoy my life. At age 50, my goal is not beauty but functionality. For reading groups the other week, we found a spot behind a table set up for the annual Book Fair, and the kids were surprised that I was willing to crawl under the table. That was no problem. Heck, I crawl around on the floor when I vacuum under tables. What is difficult and uncomfortable, however, is to go anywhere in a bathing suit, to sleep in a sleeping bag, to go on long walks or bike rides. I’m supersized, and I do not like it. My weight today is more than 10 pounds less than it was when I started this diet almost five months ago. I can feel a slight difference. How will I be at the end of the summer or at Christmastime? It will feel so good to be a lower weight. It will feel so good. Weight has been a huge negative in my life, and I can celebrate the pounds coming off, however slowly. I started tracking my weight on a spreadsheet in November, 2005, and the lowest recorded weight was 188.2 on December 17 and 18, 2005. I never was below 190 after January 1, 2006. If I continue at a two pound per month weight loss, I should be below that weight of 188 in a year. How wonderful! How incredibly wonderful! It gives me chills to think that I could lose weight in a predictable way that is not painful, that does not result in my being grumpy. Slow but sure… No pain, no weight gain… How wonderful. I need to keep this in my thoughts rather than focus on being fat today and having to live another three years of being overweight. Each month will be better. That’s what I can tell myself in order to stick with this plan.
7:30 PM: We have an unusual Saturday evening with four children doing four different things, so our Saturday night is quite calm. I’m home alone for a short time, and I have been thinking about how I want to handle this diet going forward. I think the answer is to do the minimum to keep it going. For me, that means tracking the exception days and following N Day rules. I think that means monthly updating of where I am, and that’s it. I’ve spent a lot of time on this diet, and I’ve needed it, but at this point, it’s no longer necessary. It’s time to move on to other things.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009: 202.6. I decided I could just let nature take its course and allow myself to journal as much as I have time for it. It is now almost 10 PM, and I had what I knew weeks ago would be a hectic day. It was. I stayed late for a company meeting and then had to pick up the girls at elementary school and take the kids to dinner at Wendy’s so that I could get to a parent class for new drivers. I got home, and my husband was all upset because of our son’s grades. Our son doesn’t have our attention yet. He’s got a C-, D, and F in three of his seven classes. Yes, it’s early in a quarter, and yes he was sick one day, but still…
So, do I have time to think about dieting? No. Tomorrow morning, I drive this same son to jazz band practice at 7, get back home about 7:15, make sure the two youngest get on the bus by 7:35, then go to work, get to the school about 1, take the youngest for her annual physical at 1:45, get back to the school to pick up the 9 year old from a flute lesson at 3:15, go home, make dinner, make sure the kids have their homework done, and leave about 6:30 to pick up a friend of our son’s to get him and our son to Boy Scouts by 7. I’ll get home about 7:15. That’s my day. Now, where in that day would I be able to tolerate incessant hunger or to count calories or to prepare special foods? Heck, work is a luxury because I can actually concentrate and produce something. With the kids, there is lots of running around, but there also has to be time to just be with them. I’m finding that time in the car is a good time for talking, and that’s what I try to do.
My focus in on my family, and I told my two youngest today that one of the gifts I hope they get from me is knowledge of how to maintain a normal weight – that there’s not much difference between The Peanut Cluster Diet (“unconditional permission to eat†all the time) and The S Day Diet.
I do feel impatient with the results of this diet. I felt really fat today, and I don’t know why. I am just plain sick of being so large. Tonight, I ordered a new swimsuit because the one I got last year was so ghastly. It was nice to treat myself to nice clothes when I have the tendency to not bother because I don’t look nice no matter what I wear.
In thinking about this diet, I have come to realize that the first task of this diet is to correct disordered eating. That’s why weight loss is so slow. I went back through my records and pulled out Monday dates and weights from every month, starting with day one of my diet. It was very revealing just how slowly I have lost weight:
Day 1 – Monday, September 8, 2008: 215.0
Day 36 – Monday, October 13, 2008: 210.2
Day 57 – Monday, November 3, 2008: 209.4
Day 99 – Monday, December 15, 2008: 208.8
Day 120 – Monday, January 5, 2008: 209.2
Day 148 – Monday, February 8, 2008: 205.0
I was able to find a record of a Monday weight at least once in each month, and the weights tell a story of very slow weight loss. I am very confident that this weight loss is permanent, so I’m willing to continue on this diet, especially since I can follow it so easily. It doesn’t have to be a focus in my life. It can just be part of my life, what I have chosen to do so that I can focus on my family and work and making sure the dog doesn’t wake up the neighborhood at 10 at night!
Friday, February 13, 2009: 201.6 A new low! I’m happy about the new low, especially since my weight was up so much yesterday. I am starting to realize that I had disordered thinking – a view that weight management was a lifelong struggle, that I had some sort of food addiction because I wolfed down food whenever I lifted restrictions after a diet failed, and that any sort of hunger – even the mildest little rumble in my stomach – was a crises that required immediate action. The change in habit that comes from following this diet is making the disordered thinking obvious. Weight management is a matter of establishing easy to follow habits and following those habits consistently. “Feeding frenzies†are very natural reactions to starvation diets, the memory of which lasts for longer than the diets. And a little hunger is not a crises. It is possible to survive several hours without food.
So – here I am at another new low. The weight loss is only secondary to the reduction in alarms surrounding food. I was an English major in college, and I read lots of novels from earlier centuries. Looking back, I realize just how little attention was paid to the feeling of hunger. It was a clue for me that I could find very little reference anywhere to hunger. At one point, I searched an online concordance of Shakespeare and found very little reference to hunger. I remember one line being “the hungry edge of appetite.†Who talks about appetite these days? It’s all about hunger – the need to satisfy the body’s driving need for food.
I think this culture has created its own obesity epidemic by focusing so much on food and weight. The saner approach is to establish eating habits and follow them. I am gaining a perspective I cannot remember having since I was a child, before I got on the diet roller coaster.
Saturday, February 14, 2009: 201.4. A new low! It’s 7 AM on a Saturday morning. I was not up at midnight eating Haagen Dazs bars. We do not have any Haagen Dazs bars in the refrigerator. At the moment, I have absolutely no interest in wolfing down any sort of sweets, including Haagen Dazs bars. I’m going to take a bath before I have breakfast. The N Day habits have carried over at least until 7 AM on a Saturday.
9 AM: I’ve had a coffee, a bagel, and a Clementine. I was discussing the plans for the day with my 14 year old daughter. I told her that what is not in my plan is to buy Haagen Dazs bars. Her response: “Yeah, I know. I’m sick of them.†There is no willpower whatsoever involved in my deciding not to eat Haagen Dazs bars today. My daughter put it very well: “I’m sick of them!â€
2:30 PM: This morning, I took Katie and Anne to the grocery store to buy a balloon for our 8 year old whose birthday is today. Anne wanted a doughnut, and I bought her one because she is on The S Day Diet. Katie didn’t get one because she is on The Peanut Cluster Diet. She got upset and decided she would follow The S Day Diet so she could get any treats she wants on S Days. This afternoon, I’m going back to the grocery store to pick up a birthday cake and to let Katie pick out her doughnut. Katie first wanted to make sure she could still have school treats, and she can. She just cannot have snacks at home during the week. I think this is a good path for our children. Meanwhile, Tom admitted to weighing 220. Tom is still on The Peanut Cluster Diet, too, but I think he’ll soon decide to switch over. I am starting to see a difference in my shape, and I’m happy about that. This morning, I measured my waist at 35â€. When I started this diet, it was 38 or 39â€. How amazing to me. When I was single until I got pregnant, my waist was 24â€, and my bust and hips were 36â€. I was perfectly proportioned. I still cannot believe that I dieted my way up to over 200 pounds.
Last edited by Kathleen on Sat Feb 14, 2009 8:41 pm, edited 59 times in total.
The following is a list of one weight from one Monday of each month of this diet:
1. Day 1 – Monday, September 8, 2008: 215.0
2. Day 36 – Monday, October 13, 2008: 210.2
3. Day 57 – Monday, November 3, 2008: 209.4
4. Day 99 – Monday, December 15, 2008: 208.8
5. Day 120 – Monday, January 5, 2008: 209.2
6. Day 148 – Monday, February 8, 2008: 205.0
The following is a summary of weights from February 15 - 28, 2009:
Day 161 – Sunday, February 15, 2009:
Day 162 – Monday, February 16, 2009:
Day 163 – Tuesday, February 17, 2009:
Day 164 – Wednesday, February 18, 2009: 201.8
Day 165 – Thursday, February 19, 2009: 201.8
Day 166 – Friday, February 20, 2009: 203.6 (4E)
Day 167 – Saturday, February 21, 2009:
Day 168 – Sunday, February 22, 2009: 204.4
Day 169 – Monday, February 23, 2009:
Day 170 – Tuesday, February 24, 2009: 203.6
Day 171 – Wednesday, February 25, 2009: 203.6
Day 172 – Thursday, February 26, 2009: 201.4
Day 173 – Friday, February 27, 2009: 201.8
Day 174 – Saturday, February 28, 2009: 199.6 BELOW 200 POUNDS!
Tuesday, February 17, 2009: Today is our 8 year old’s annual physical, and this is what I got on one page of paper to give to our pediatrician along with the book, The No S Diet:
The Set Point Lowering Diet
1. This diet must be followed with perfect compliance. Following a diet with perfect compliance makes the diet into a habit which is as difficult as brushing your teeth. In his Great Courses’ lectures on The Ethics of Aristotle, Professor Joseph Koterski of Fordham University called a diet like this an “automatism habit†– when “regularly you do a thing so that you don’t even think about it.â€
2. If you don’t follow the diet with perfect compliance, then you aren’t following the diet. Instead, you are following recommendations from a book called Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. The authors of this book recommend that you give yourself “unconditional permission to eat.†I followed that diet for six months and gained 10 pounds. My kids called that diet The Peanut Cluster Diet. Because I wanted to lose weight, not gain it, I kept researching diets and developed my own diet. My kids started out calling my diet The Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions but now call it The S Day Diet, they have voluntarily joined me in the diet to get S Day privileges, and I am losing weight with ease at a rate of about 2 pounds per month.
3. On The Set Point Lowering Diet, there are three types of days:
3.1 S Days are all Saturdays and Sundays. You have “unconditional permission to eat†on S Days.
3.2 E Days accumulate at a rate of two per month. E Days are weekdays that you take as exception days. On E Days, you have “unconditional permission to eat.†You can take an E Day for any reason whatsoever. I once took an E Day because I wanted a breath mint. I also took an E Day because my son broke glass on the table, and I had just started eating cereal on that same table.
3.3 N Days are weekdays other than E Days. On these days, I follow three simple rules: no sweets, no snacks, and no seconds. When I sit down to eat, I can eat what is before me and not one bite more. Liquids can be drunk at any time. These rules are taken from The No S Diet by Reinhard Engels and Ben Kallen.
4. The authors of Intuitive Eating argue that dieting triggers the body’s survival mechanism. In another book, called The Instinct to Heal by Dr. David Servan-Schreiber, I read how the brain is divided into a cognitive brain and an emotional brain. It is the emotional brain which takes over, for example, when a person is held underwater and suddenly has the strength to get above water. This happened to me when my brother held me underwater when I was 10. It also seems to me to be the reason why so many people fail to stay on a diet. The cognitive brain decides that the body should be starved, and the emotional brain rebels.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009: 201.8. I ended up just telling our pediatrician that we are eliminating sweets during the week. Our pediatrician is a wonderful, compassionate man, but I could not bring myself to tell him how I am putting all our children on this diet to prevent disordered eating, and here I am still above 200 pounds. The time will come when it will be obvious that I have lost weight, but that time is not here.
9 PM: I had a strange day today. On the way to work, I felt very hungry even though I had just eaten breakfast. Then I had a busy day at work and had a kid pickup at 2:45 PM, a car wash, a kid pickup at 3:15, a trip to the video store, and another kid pickup at 3:45 PM. It occurred to me at about 4 that I had not yet had lunch. I had a peanut butter and cheese sandwich and felt hungry again. I ate dinner before delivering a kid to an activity, and after I ate I felt hungry again. Then I went shopping with our youngest for prizes for a birthday party, and I returned home about 8 PM. I’m not hungry. I never really thought about this before, but the feeling of hunger is very fickle. It was immediately after breakfast and dinner that I felt hungry, and I didn’t feel hungry when I had breakfast at 7 and hadn’t had lunch until 4. I am so glad, so very glad, that I no longer have to monitor hunger levels. What a pain that was!
Thursday, February 19, 2009: 201.8. Today, I had lunch with Kathy, a former co-worker whom I had not seen in many years. She told me about some other people who worked with us. One of my former colleagues had one child, a daughter, who is now 10, and Kathy said that it is so sad that this little girl is in an in-patient hospital program right now for anorexia. I cannot describe how this news affected me. I felt like I was going to be sick. I have a happy go lucky child who turns 10 in May and her big problem in life is that the teacher is “way too harsh.†She’s having to learn this year to be responsible for her own behavior, and it’s a hard lesson to learn. She still loves life, despite her perception of her teacher as “harshâ€, and she just now pranced into the family room wearing a gymnastics outfit. I just cannot imagine her in a hospital for anorexia.
I felt so sad for this child and her mother, whom I knew perhaps 15 years ago. How does a society get to the point where 10 year olds get hospitalized for anorexia and more than two thirds of the adult population is overweight? Hunger and weight take center stage in a life that should be filled with laughter. I feel the loss of that little girl’s innocence and maybe the destruction of her health. Will she have problems with bone density? Will she have permanent damage to her development of vital organs? What is the impact on her psychologically from this? I just feel so bad. Focus on food. Focus on bodily appearance. Focus on the internal sensation of hunger. It’s all focus on self. The joy in life comes from caring and loving, and this child has somehow gotten tangled up in having to be the perfect shape. Ten years old. How sad.
Friday, February 20, 2009: 203.6. E Day. One of the challenges of this diet is weight fluctuation. My weight is up two pounds from yesterday, and yesterday was a success. It can be hard to be hoping for a new low in weight and to step on the scale and see an increase. I know that weight fluctuations are normal, but it is still hard to accept them. Today is an E Day for me. My 8 year old is having five friends go snow tubing with her. I always feel unnerved by birthday parties. I had something deliverable at work today, and it was easy compared to preparing myself for a birthday party. I’ll try to relax and just enjoy the kids. Several of them have never gone snow tubing before, so it would be hard for them not to have fun! The success of this diet, I think, can be measured by how little you think about it, and right now my focus is on that party and not on the fact that it is an E Day.
Saturday, February 21, 2009: I am not weighing myself. Yesterday, I was nervous about the birthday party, and I ate a lot. It went well. We were dependent on the weather for snow tubing, and it was perfect – just below freezing with a light snow. The snow continued through the night, and we have several inches on the ground this morning. Had the snow come Thursday night, we would have had a lot of difficulty driving to the snow tubing hill. We were also dependent on how crowded the place would be, and it was almost empty. At one point, we were the only ones on the snow tubing hill. I had picked the time because I thought it would be quiet early on a Friday afternoon. The girls had fun. Before the party, I had three Haagen Dazs bars. I also had lots of cheese. At the party, I had cheese pizza and part of a soft pretzel. After the girls were gone, I had an entire bowl of popcorn and coffee ice cream and was just stuffed. This morning, I feel stuffed and somewhat sick. It seems to me that I am starting to have only one over-the-top non N Day per week, so it will be interesting to see if I have my typical over-the-top Saturday or not.
Sunday, February 22, 2009: 204.4. What would cause me to give up this diet? The answer is that I exceeded my starting weight of 215 pounds. That is unlikely to happen. Now what? I’ve settled on a path, and all my journaling adds no value. Last weekend, we bought a jar of caramel macadamian clusters. When the jar was empty the next day, I calculated out that the jar had contained about 5,000 calories, and I estimated that I had eaten about 3,000 calories of the 5,000 calories. Do I really want to allow myself “unconditional permission to eat†on non N Days when I am willing to eat more than an entire day’s worth of calories in caramel macadamian clusters? Yes. The answer is yes. I don’t want to try to do anything with non N Days because I think that trying to lessen caloric consumption on those days could lead to bending and then breaking the N Day rules on N Days. What does this mean? It means that I am stuck with whatever weight I am right now and with whatever weight is the stable end weight for this diet. I’m not going to try to lose weight any faster, and I’m going to be satisfied with my end weight even if it stubbornly remains above 200 pounds. I have my life back. I am not totally engrossed with food.
For years, and I mean at least 8, I justified not following the Ash Wednesday and Good Friday fasts because I was either pregnant or nursing. Then I found that I simply could not get through a day without snacking. I just checked my journal from Good Friday of last year, and I recorded that I had managed to go 5 hours without eating. Now, on work days, I routinely last from 7:30 AM to about 2 PM without eating. I have learned to focus on something other than hunger and hunger levels. It feels so good to have a life that is not centered on food and fear of being hungry.
Monday, February 23, 2009: I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about all the time I spend journaling about this diet. I think I need to make a firm commitment to stop it. Part of the reason for my continuing is that I think it has helped me to think through the reasons why this diet works and to keep to this path out of obesity, but part of the reason why I am continuing is to procrastinate and to revel in the success of losing weight after so many years of trying so hard and just gaining. I think I do need some way to record my progress. With my minimal exercise program, I created a spreadsheet and have been consistent in marking down my laps walking at the gym. About two weeks ago, I decided I didn’t need to record it anymore, and right away I stopped going. I think I need to make a commitment to record my progress in this diet but I think that too much thinking about it makes me impatient to lose weight faster and is a waste of time. Once per month seems like a good strategy. I then am able to calculate my additional Exception Days and record a Monday weight in the month so that I can look at the list of Monday weights and see that, yes indeed, over time I am losing weight. Watching the fluctuations up and down over the course of a month is frustrating and adds no value. This is my plan: record weight first or second Monday of the month, depending on whether I am home and able to use a scale. Keep to the diet as I have modified it. Be patient. Turn my attention to other things, like getting rid of the clutter in our home!
Tuesday, February 24, 2009: 203.6. On March 8, it will have been six months since I started this diet. Maybe it’s OK if I continue to journal. I think what I’ll do is write once per week. I have noticed a similarity between “the house is a mess†(my husband’s words) and my weight problem. As described in one of the books I’ve been reading. Organizing from the Inside Out, there is a “need for abundanceâ€. My mother grew up in the Depression, and she passed on to me the sense that you cannot count on prosperity in the future. The economic downturn doesn’t affect us much. We’re sitting on a pile of cash, we have no debt except for a car payment and mortgage, and we have about as limited ongoing expenses as you can have with four kids. We have a storage closet filled with hand me down clothes. My thriftiness, however, is somewhat extreme. My 14 year old, for example, didn’t like her white socks, so I kept them for myself since I wear white socks while exercising, only I didn’t like them either. I bought about five pair of white socks about five years ago for walking, and they’ve lasted wonderfully. They were starting to wear out, and it took me some time to find where I had bought them. I finally replaced my white gym socks, only here I had kept my daughter’s old white socks. Why? If the new socks last as well as the old socks, I’ll use those new socks for about five years. After reading the book, It’s All Too Much, I decided to throw out those white socks since they weren’t even in good enough shape to donate to a thrift store.
What does this have to do with weight loss? Well, perhaps my obesity is the result of the “need for abundance.†I am likely to experience a real famine, but my diets have been self-imposed famines. I exacerbated my desire for excess by periodically putting my body through a famine. No more. I’m not going on any more starvation diets, so I can relax. The economic tailspin we are in won’t mean that we’ll be sleeping in shelters. I need to relax and enjoy my life, clutter-free and at a comfortable weight.
As for this journal, yes, it has helped me to stick with this diet, and yes, it is enjoyable to write, but I have spent too much time writing. I can pull back to writing once per week. That’s a good goal for the next six months.
1. Day 1 – Monday, September 8, 2008: 215.0
2. Day 36 – Monday, October 13, 2008: 210.2
3. Day 57 – Monday, November 3, 2008: 209.4
4. Day 99 – Monday, December 15, 2008: 208.8
5. Day 120 – Monday, January 5, 2008: 209.2
6. Day 148 – Monday, February 8, 2008: 205.0
The following is a summary of weights from February 15 - 28, 2009:
Day 161 – Sunday, February 15, 2009:
Day 162 – Monday, February 16, 2009:
Day 163 – Tuesday, February 17, 2009:
Day 164 – Wednesday, February 18, 2009: 201.8
Day 165 – Thursday, February 19, 2009: 201.8
Day 166 – Friday, February 20, 2009: 203.6 (4E)
Day 167 – Saturday, February 21, 2009:
Day 168 – Sunday, February 22, 2009: 204.4
Day 169 – Monday, February 23, 2009:
Day 170 – Tuesday, February 24, 2009: 203.6
Day 171 – Wednesday, February 25, 2009: 203.6
Day 172 – Thursday, February 26, 2009: 201.4
Day 173 – Friday, February 27, 2009: 201.8
Day 174 – Saturday, February 28, 2009: 199.6 BELOW 200 POUNDS!
Tuesday, February 17, 2009: Today is our 8 year old’s annual physical, and this is what I got on one page of paper to give to our pediatrician along with the book, The No S Diet:
The Set Point Lowering Diet
1. This diet must be followed with perfect compliance. Following a diet with perfect compliance makes the diet into a habit which is as difficult as brushing your teeth. In his Great Courses’ lectures on The Ethics of Aristotle, Professor Joseph Koterski of Fordham University called a diet like this an “automatism habit†– when “regularly you do a thing so that you don’t even think about it.â€
2. If you don’t follow the diet with perfect compliance, then you aren’t following the diet. Instead, you are following recommendations from a book called Intuitive Eating by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch. The authors of this book recommend that you give yourself “unconditional permission to eat.†I followed that diet for six months and gained 10 pounds. My kids called that diet The Peanut Cluster Diet. Because I wanted to lose weight, not gain it, I kept researching diets and developed my own diet. My kids started out calling my diet The Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions but now call it The S Day Diet, they have voluntarily joined me in the diet to get S Day privileges, and I am losing weight with ease at a rate of about 2 pounds per month.
3. On The Set Point Lowering Diet, there are three types of days:
3.1 S Days are all Saturdays and Sundays. You have “unconditional permission to eat†on S Days.
3.2 E Days accumulate at a rate of two per month. E Days are weekdays that you take as exception days. On E Days, you have “unconditional permission to eat.†You can take an E Day for any reason whatsoever. I once took an E Day because I wanted a breath mint. I also took an E Day because my son broke glass on the table, and I had just started eating cereal on that same table.
3.3 N Days are weekdays other than E Days. On these days, I follow three simple rules: no sweets, no snacks, and no seconds. When I sit down to eat, I can eat what is before me and not one bite more. Liquids can be drunk at any time. These rules are taken from The No S Diet by Reinhard Engels and Ben Kallen.
4. The authors of Intuitive Eating argue that dieting triggers the body’s survival mechanism. In another book, called The Instinct to Heal by Dr. David Servan-Schreiber, I read how the brain is divided into a cognitive brain and an emotional brain. It is the emotional brain which takes over, for example, when a person is held underwater and suddenly has the strength to get above water. This happened to me when my brother held me underwater when I was 10. It also seems to me to be the reason why so many people fail to stay on a diet. The cognitive brain decides that the body should be starved, and the emotional brain rebels.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009: 201.8. I ended up just telling our pediatrician that we are eliminating sweets during the week. Our pediatrician is a wonderful, compassionate man, but I could not bring myself to tell him how I am putting all our children on this diet to prevent disordered eating, and here I am still above 200 pounds. The time will come when it will be obvious that I have lost weight, but that time is not here.
9 PM: I had a strange day today. On the way to work, I felt very hungry even though I had just eaten breakfast. Then I had a busy day at work and had a kid pickup at 2:45 PM, a car wash, a kid pickup at 3:15, a trip to the video store, and another kid pickup at 3:45 PM. It occurred to me at about 4 that I had not yet had lunch. I had a peanut butter and cheese sandwich and felt hungry again. I ate dinner before delivering a kid to an activity, and after I ate I felt hungry again. Then I went shopping with our youngest for prizes for a birthday party, and I returned home about 8 PM. I’m not hungry. I never really thought about this before, but the feeling of hunger is very fickle. It was immediately after breakfast and dinner that I felt hungry, and I didn’t feel hungry when I had breakfast at 7 and hadn’t had lunch until 4. I am so glad, so very glad, that I no longer have to monitor hunger levels. What a pain that was!
Thursday, February 19, 2009: 201.8. Today, I had lunch with Kathy, a former co-worker whom I had not seen in many years. She told me about some other people who worked with us. One of my former colleagues had one child, a daughter, who is now 10, and Kathy said that it is so sad that this little girl is in an in-patient hospital program right now for anorexia. I cannot describe how this news affected me. I felt like I was going to be sick. I have a happy go lucky child who turns 10 in May and her big problem in life is that the teacher is “way too harsh.†She’s having to learn this year to be responsible for her own behavior, and it’s a hard lesson to learn. She still loves life, despite her perception of her teacher as “harshâ€, and she just now pranced into the family room wearing a gymnastics outfit. I just cannot imagine her in a hospital for anorexia.
I felt so sad for this child and her mother, whom I knew perhaps 15 years ago. How does a society get to the point where 10 year olds get hospitalized for anorexia and more than two thirds of the adult population is overweight? Hunger and weight take center stage in a life that should be filled with laughter. I feel the loss of that little girl’s innocence and maybe the destruction of her health. Will she have problems with bone density? Will she have permanent damage to her development of vital organs? What is the impact on her psychologically from this? I just feel so bad. Focus on food. Focus on bodily appearance. Focus on the internal sensation of hunger. It’s all focus on self. The joy in life comes from caring and loving, and this child has somehow gotten tangled up in having to be the perfect shape. Ten years old. How sad.
Friday, February 20, 2009: 203.6. E Day. One of the challenges of this diet is weight fluctuation. My weight is up two pounds from yesterday, and yesterday was a success. It can be hard to be hoping for a new low in weight and to step on the scale and see an increase. I know that weight fluctuations are normal, but it is still hard to accept them. Today is an E Day for me. My 8 year old is having five friends go snow tubing with her. I always feel unnerved by birthday parties. I had something deliverable at work today, and it was easy compared to preparing myself for a birthday party. I’ll try to relax and just enjoy the kids. Several of them have never gone snow tubing before, so it would be hard for them not to have fun! The success of this diet, I think, can be measured by how little you think about it, and right now my focus is on that party and not on the fact that it is an E Day.
Saturday, February 21, 2009: I am not weighing myself. Yesterday, I was nervous about the birthday party, and I ate a lot. It went well. We were dependent on the weather for snow tubing, and it was perfect – just below freezing with a light snow. The snow continued through the night, and we have several inches on the ground this morning. Had the snow come Thursday night, we would have had a lot of difficulty driving to the snow tubing hill. We were also dependent on how crowded the place would be, and it was almost empty. At one point, we were the only ones on the snow tubing hill. I had picked the time because I thought it would be quiet early on a Friday afternoon. The girls had fun. Before the party, I had three Haagen Dazs bars. I also had lots of cheese. At the party, I had cheese pizza and part of a soft pretzel. After the girls were gone, I had an entire bowl of popcorn and coffee ice cream and was just stuffed. This morning, I feel stuffed and somewhat sick. It seems to me that I am starting to have only one over-the-top non N Day per week, so it will be interesting to see if I have my typical over-the-top Saturday or not.
Sunday, February 22, 2009: 204.4. What would cause me to give up this diet? The answer is that I exceeded my starting weight of 215 pounds. That is unlikely to happen. Now what? I’ve settled on a path, and all my journaling adds no value. Last weekend, we bought a jar of caramel macadamian clusters. When the jar was empty the next day, I calculated out that the jar had contained about 5,000 calories, and I estimated that I had eaten about 3,000 calories of the 5,000 calories. Do I really want to allow myself “unconditional permission to eat†on non N Days when I am willing to eat more than an entire day’s worth of calories in caramel macadamian clusters? Yes. The answer is yes. I don’t want to try to do anything with non N Days because I think that trying to lessen caloric consumption on those days could lead to bending and then breaking the N Day rules on N Days. What does this mean? It means that I am stuck with whatever weight I am right now and with whatever weight is the stable end weight for this diet. I’m not going to try to lose weight any faster, and I’m going to be satisfied with my end weight even if it stubbornly remains above 200 pounds. I have my life back. I am not totally engrossed with food.
For years, and I mean at least 8, I justified not following the Ash Wednesday and Good Friday fasts because I was either pregnant or nursing. Then I found that I simply could not get through a day without snacking. I just checked my journal from Good Friday of last year, and I recorded that I had managed to go 5 hours without eating. Now, on work days, I routinely last from 7:30 AM to about 2 PM without eating. I have learned to focus on something other than hunger and hunger levels. It feels so good to have a life that is not centered on food and fear of being hungry.
Monday, February 23, 2009: I’ve been trying to figure out what to do about all the time I spend journaling about this diet. I think I need to make a firm commitment to stop it. Part of the reason for my continuing is that I think it has helped me to think through the reasons why this diet works and to keep to this path out of obesity, but part of the reason why I am continuing is to procrastinate and to revel in the success of losing weight after so many years of trying so hard and just gaining. I think I do need some way to record my progress. With my minimal exercise program, I created a spreadsheet and have been consistent in marking down my laps walking at the gym. About two weeks ago, I decided I didn’t need to record it anymore, and right away I stopped going. I think I need to make a commitment to record my progress in this diet but I think that too much thinking about it makes me impatient to lose weight faster and is a waste of time. Once per month seems like a good strategy. I then am able to calculate my additional Exception Days and record a Monday weight in the month so that I can look at the list of Monday weights and see that, yes indeed, over time I am losing weight. Watching the fluctuations up and down over the course of a month is frustrating and adds no value. This is my plan: record weight first or second Monday of the month, depending on whether I am home and able to use a scale. Keep to the diet as I have modified it. Be patient. Turn my attention to other things, like getting rid of the clutter in our home!
Tuesday, February 24, 2009: 203.6. On March 8, it will have been six months since I started this diet. Maybe it’s OK if I continue to journal. I think what I’ll do is write once per week. I have noticed a similarity between “the house is a mess†(my husband’s words) and my weight problem. As described in one of the books I’ve been reading. Organizing from the Inside Out, there is a “need for abundanceâ€. My mother grew up in the Depression, and she passed on to me the sense that you cannot count on prosperity in the future. The economic downturn doesn’t affect us much. We’re sitting on a pile of cash, we have no debt except for a car payment and mortgage, and we have about as limited ongoing expenses as you can have with four kids. We have a storage closet filled with hand me down clothes. My thriftiness, however, is somewhat extreme. My 14 year old, for example, didn’t like her white socks, so I kept them for myself since I wear white socks while exercising, only I didn’t like them either. I bought about five pair of white socks about five years ago for walking, and they’ve lasted wonderfully. They were starting to wear out, and it took me some time to find where I had bought them. I finally replaced my white gym socks, only here I had kept my daughter’s old white socks. Why? If the new socks last as well as the old socks, I’ll use those new socks for about five years. After reading the book, It’s All Too Much, I decided to throw out those white socks since they weren’t even in good enough shape to donate to a thrift store.
What does this have to do with weight loss? Well, perhaps my obesity is the result of the “need for abundance.†I am likely to experience a real famine, but my diets have been self-imposed famines. I exacerbated my desire for excess by periodically putting my body through a famine. No more. I’m not going on any more starvation diets, so I can relax. The economic tailspin we are in won’t mean that we’ll be sleeping in shelters. I need to relax and enjoy my life, clutter-free and at a comfortable weight.
As for this journal, yes, it has helped me to stick with this diet, and yes, it is enjoyable to write, but I have spent too much time writing. I can pull back to writing once per week. That’s a good goal for the next six months.
The following is a list of one weight from one Monday of each month of this diet:
Day 1 – Monday, September 8, 2008: 215.0
Day 36 – Monday, October 13, 2008: 210.2
Day 57 – Monday, November 3, 2008: 209.4
Day 99 – Monday, December 15, 2008: 208.8
Day 120 – Monday, January 5, 2008: 209.2
Day 148 – Monday, February 8, 2008: 205.0
Day 176 – Monday, March 2, 2009: 203.4
The following is a list of weights for the month of March, 2009:
Day 175 – Sunday, March 1, 2009: 201.8 (6 Exception Days available)
Day 176 – Monday, March 2, 2009: 203.4
Day 177 – Tuesday, March 3, 2009: 201.8
Day 178 – Wednesday, March 4, 2009: 200.8
Day 179 – Thursday, March 5, 2009: 200.4
Day 180 – Friday, March 6, 2009: 199.6
Day 181 – Saturday, March 7, 2009: 198.8 A new low!
Day 182 – Sunday, March 8, 2009: 201.8
Day 183 – Monday, March 9, 2009: 201.0
Day 184 – Tuesday, March 10, 2009: 202.8
Day 185 – Wednesday, March 11, 2009: 201.8
Day 186 – Thursday, March 12, 2009: 201.0
Day 187 – Friday, March 13, 2009: 200.6
Day 188 – Saturday, March 14, 2009: 199.2
Day 189 – Sunday, March 15, 2009: 201.8
Day 190 – Monday, March 16, 2009: 202.2 (5E)
Day 191 – Tuesday, March 17, 2009:
Day 192 – Wednesday, March 18, 2009: 201.8
Day 193 – Thursday, March 19, 2009: 201.0
Day 194 – Friday, March 20, 2009: 200.6
Day 195 – Saturday, March 21, 2009: 199.2
Day 196 – Sunday, March 22, 2009: 200.2
Day 197 – Monday, March 23, 2009: 202.0
Day 198 – Tuesday, March 24, 2009: 201.4
Day 199 – Wednesday, March 25, 2009: 200.4
Day 200 – Thursday, March 26, 2009: 199.8
Day 201 – Friday, March 27, 2009: 200.4
Day 202 – Saturday, March 28, 2009: 198.2 A new low!
Day 203 – Sunday, March 29, 2009:
Day 204 – Monday, March 30, 2009:
Day 205 – Tuesday, March 31, 2009:
Day 176 – Monday, March 2, 2009: 203.4. It was a thrill to step on the scale on Saturday and see a weight below 200 pounds (199.6). Last week was the beginning of Lent, so we had to fast on Wednesday (I had a bowl of cereal for breakfast and a bowl of split pea soup for dinner), and we attended a Lenten soup supper on Friday (cream of broccoli soup and bread). I knew my weight would bounce back from the low on Saturday, but it was still a thrill to see a weight below 200 for the first time since September, 2007, and I was that low in weight then because I went through four surgeries and spent from Monday to Friday in the hospital (thanks to the good doctors at the Mayo Clinic, the long term result of my medical problem is that I wear bangs to cover my forehead).
I also was pleased that I managed to get through the Ash Wednesday fast without much trouble at all. In prior years, it was a real struggle, and I often didn’t last the whole day. After years of trying to train myself to respond only to hunger, it was really hard for me to recognize that I was hungry and still not eat. I think the Catholic Church has some wisdom in requiring a fast – in having people experience hunger and realize they can survive. The whole approach of responding to hunger made me very sensitive to my internal hunger cues, real or imagined. It was a very time consuming approach to weight management, and I’m glad I’m done with it.
9:30 PM: This morning, my son brought up that the deadline had passed for the swim team banquet, and he really wanted to go. The banquet is for team members and their parents. I didn’t hand in the form because one of the graduating seniors is the son of someone who was my manager more than 10 years ago, I noticed her at a meet, and I didn’t say hello to her because – because I’m so fat. I didn’t want to have her see what how fat I had become, and for that reason I was willing to have my son miss the end of year banquet for swim team. Today, I decided I am not going to stop living or prevent my son from enjoying his life just because of my current weight. I sent an email to the coach and am able to pay for the banquet even though we’ll be late. I’ve spent years putting my life on hold and the lives of my children on hold because of my weight. No more.
Thursday, March 5, 2009: 200.4. Maybe I’ll update this journal on Thursday nights. I’ve told the kids it is my “grumpy nightâ€. I just feel hungry and grumpy. I’m happy I signed up for the swim team banquet. I had to ask myself who is more important – my son or an old boss whom I may never see again? The answer was my son. So what that I’m obese. I’m losing weight – that’s what’s important. Today I wore to work a jacket which I got at a company quarterly meeting. I had been asked what size I wore, and I said a large. I was given the large and the extra large to try on. This was the first day that I actually wore the jacket. It definitely fits better than when I tried it on three months ago. I’m also happy that I am starting to feel a difference in my size. Everything is starting to fit better. I still have not been asked yet whether I’ve lost weight, and the only person who seems to tell that I’ve actually lost weight is our nine year old who told me I’m smaller around the waist and she can tell when she hugs me!
Saturday, March 7, 2009: 198.8. A new low! Tomorrow marks six months on this diet, and I am officially on maintenance. The only change from diet to maintenance is this journal. I’m spent lots of time recording my thoughts, and meanwhile I am falling behind on my life – I haven’t been grocery shopping, the bathrooms need to be cleaned, the dog needed her yearly shots, the younger two last took shows on Wednesday night, etc. I’m following the philosophy of Pete Walsh’s book It’s All Too Much to get rid of clutter in our house. There’s something about the clutter problem and the overeating problem being similar, but I’m not quite sure what it is. Walsh argues that, if you keep everything, you cannot enjoy what you really treasure. I think that is similar to eating everything instead of really considering what you enjoy. At this point, though, what matters is that I follow the letter of the law of this diet and not worry too much about the philosophy behind it. Last night, I revised my summary of my diet, and here it is:
The Set Point Lowering Diet
1. Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, the authors of the book Intuitive Eating, argue that dieting triggers the body’s survival mechanism. In another book, called The Instinct to Heal, author Dr. David Servan-Schreiber describes how the brain is divided into a cognitive brain and an emotional brain. It is the emotional brain which takes over, for example, when a person is held underwater and suddenly has the strength to get above water. This happened to me when my brother held me underwater when I was 10. It also seems to me to be the reason why so many people fail to stay on a diet. The cognitive brain decides that the body should be starved, and the emotional brain rebels against never-ending hunger.
2. On The Set Point Lowering Diet, I experience hunger but know that it will end by Saturday. On this diet, there are three types of days:
2.1 S Days are all Saturdays and Sundays. On S Days, I have“unconditional permission to eat†(a term taken from the book
Intuitive Eating). I once ate approximately 3,000 calories
of caramel macademian clusters on one S Day.
2.2 N Days are weekdays other than E Days. On these days, I follow three simple rules: no sweets, no snacks, and no seconds. When I sit down to eat, I can eat what is before me and not one bite more. Liquids can be drunk at any time. These rules are taken from The No S Diet by Reinhard Engels and Ben Kallen.
2.3 E Days accumulate at a rate of two per month. E Days are weekdays that I take as Exception Days. On E Days, I have “unconditional permission to eat.†I can take an E Day for any reason whatsoever. I once took an E Day because I wanted a breath mint. I also took an E Day because my son broke glass on the table, and I had just started eating cereal on that same table.
3. This diet must be followed with perfect compliance. Following a diet with perfect compliance makes the diet into a habit which is as difficult as brushing my teeth. In his Great Courses’ lectures on The Ethics of Aristotle, Professor Joseph Koterski of Fordham University called a diet like this an “automatism habit†– when “regularly you do a thing so that you don’t even think about it.â€
4. I follow the letter of the law and violate the spirit all I want. I have stayed up until midnight on an S Day to eat. What has happened, over time, is that the N Day habits have started to carry over into S Days and E Days. I find this diet to be first a cure for disordered eating and then a way to lose weight. In six months, I have lost 15 pounds, and I expect to continue losing weight at a rate of about 2 pounds per month. This diet takes very little willpower. The weight loss may be slow, but it is also permanent.
______
I don’t really consider this diet to be a modification of The No S Diet so much as it is a different diet altogether. That is because the two modifications I made are critical to my success. They are: the idea of “unconditional permission to eat†on non-N Days (taken from the book Intuitive Eating) and the idea of “perfect compliance†(taken from a book I cannot locate), which lead to the idea of two Exception Days per month rather than an unspecified number of Special Days which have to be justified. This idea of Exception Days also comes from Aristotle’s Ethics, and I never would have gotten such a clear idea of Aristotle’s Ethics without listening to Koterski’s tapes on the subject.
I think I would have eventually come to a diet like this even if I hadn’t read The No S Diet because I had already recognized the importance of meals, had already understood that a diet needs to have periods of “on†and “offâ€, and had already started to think of an “on†and “off†period that is by the week. I don’t know how long it would have taken me to develop this idea, but I bet it would have been years and by then my now 9th grade daughter would have been out of the house. I’m so grateful I was able to figure out this approach when she was still home, and I’m so happy that she is following it.
This journal was really written for her – audience of one. The purpose was to figure out a sane approach to weight management that she could choose to follow. The purpose has already been fulfilled, so this journal really doesn’t have to be written anymore. Writing it has become a habit, and it’s a habit that I want to break because it no longer needs to serve the purpose for which it was intended.
What I’d like to do is update this journal monthly as a way to track weight and track Exception Days. Maybe I could add a comment here and there, but really I don’t think there’s much more to say. I see the trend. My S Days will get less and less over the top. I’ll continue to lose weight until I stabilize at some unknown lower weight which I will accept whether it is 132 or 122 or 172. I have my life back. This diet is such freedom!
Day 187 – Friday, March 13, 2009: 200.6. I am thinking that there may need to be an additional restriction added to this diet in order for me to get to a normal weight. Over the past few weeks, my husband and I have attended Lenten soup suppers at our church. In past years, I have eaten before and after the soup supper, so I haven’t quite appreciated the idea of restrictive eating on Fridays in Lent. I’ve followed the regulation of meatless Fridays, but that is it. For the soup suppers, what I have eaten is soup and a piece of bread. I haven’t had the brownies that are also offered because that violates the “no sweets†portion of this diet.
Over the past week or so, I’ve dug back in my memory to a college medieval history course and realized that the Catholic Church had lots of feast days and fast days. They came with predictability every year. Every Sunday was a feast day, and every Friday was a fast day. Lent (except on Sundays) was a period of fasting as was Advent (the time before Christmas). This wisdom has been watered down to the point of being meaningless. Now we have two fast days per year (Ash Wednesday and Good Friday) and a mild restriction of no meat on Fridays in Lent.
What is very different about The No S Diet is the period of “on†(fast days – although the restrictions for N Days are very mild) and “off†(feast days – or “Special Days†according to Reinhard and “Exception Days†for me).
The typical diet is a period of unrelenting fast until you reach your goal weight and then the presumption that you can switch to “normal eatingâ€. With the new trend towards a “lifestyle changeâ€, you’ve got people thinking there is no fast and there is no feast, only the unrelenting sense of not having had enough to eat.
The Catholic Church is not the only faith to have fasts and feasts. I know that the Jewish faith has Yom Kippur, and the Muslim faith has a month of fasting with Ramadan. It’s occurred to me over the last week that maybe, just maybe, there is some wisdom about human nature built into these ideas of predictable fasts and feasts and The No S Diet book has the same wisdom in the N Day/S Day distinction.
For me, personally, I’m thinking that I may consider extending the Lenten restrictions of no meat on Fridays to be something I do every Friday unless I take an Exception Day. The fasting before a feast would be a way for my weekend overeating to be dampened somewhat.
I am now tracking my weight daily and trying to compare my average weight in each month to see how much weight I am losing. I was expecting a 2 pound per month weight loss, and I’m not even seeing that.
Here are my average weights since the start of the program:
September, 2008: 214.4 (based on weighing myself 6 days)
October, 2008: 208.0 (based on weighing myself 16 days)
November, 2008: 207.7 (based on weighing myself 21 days)
December, 2008: 206.1 (based on weighing myself 22 days)
January, 2008: 204.6 (based on weighing myself 24 days)
February, 2008: 202.9 (based on weighing myself 20 days)
March, 2009: 201.2 (based on weighing myself 13 days thus far this month)
If it weren’t for the years of struggling to maintain a normal weight of 130 – 135 based on the dreaded diet of counting 1,000 calories for nine days and then maintaining that weight for a month or so and repeating the process, and if it wasn’t for all the testing of other diets after that which led to weight gain rather than weight loss, I’d be looking at these diet results and telling myself that there has to be a faster way to lose weight that this! I’m losing about 1.5 pounds per month.
What I am doing instead is multiplying 1.5/month by 12 months to calculate a weight loss for one year of 18 pounds. That’s not bad, given how easy it is for me to follow this diet. At this point, I tend to have one evening when I am dragging, and that is Thursday evening. By Friday morning, I am feeling good and looking forward to Saturday and being able to eat whatever I want.
That’s why, in looking at my diet history and comparing the basic program to the fast and feast traditions of many religions, I think it might be a good idea for me to look at having additional restrictions on Fridays. I’m not doing anything right now other than following Lenten regulations which I would be doing no matter what. Instead, I’ll think about what I could do that is very clear cut – like not having meat on Fridays.
I guess I was mistaken in thinking that I didn’t need to think anymore about dieting and could put this approach on autopilot. The basic approach is sound, but I think it needs some tweaking with regard to Fridays.
Day 188 – Saturday, March 14, 2009: 199.2. It’s 9:30 AM. I got up early and had some peanut clusters and a Haagen Dazs bar. Then we went out for breakfast, and I was unable to finish the short stack of pancakes that I ordered. When we got home, I had another Haagen Dazs bar and some walnuts. My stomach is rebelling against any more food being put into it. I think that a significant restriction of food on Fridays could really help with over the top eating on S Days. I’m not sure how to structure this Friday restriction, but maybe I’ll just have it as a goal that is not well defined. It’s not measured. It’s not tracked. It’s just a desire to eat much less on Fridays. Yesterday, my 8 year old laughed when she was with me and heard a very deep and very loud stomach growl. She said that, if I was still on the Hunger Satisfaction Diet, I’d be running to the kitchen now! Yes, I would have been. Instead, I managed to have soup, salad, and a piece of bread only at the Lenten soup supper, and I went to bed early. When I first started this diet, I had a terrible time sleeping unless my stomach was stuffed with food. Last night, I had no trouble at all sleeping. I went to bed early (before 10) and got up at 6. This diet is working. It’s just taking a long time. In May, when I see the sister in law who made the less than positive comment about this diet as being just a matter of “common senseâ€, I suspect she won’t realize I’ve lost any weight at all. That’s OK. It may take until Christmas this year or next summer before anyone other than the 9 year old notices that I’ve lost weight, but I’m already starting to feel smaller. I feel such a sense of relief that I’m finally losing weight in a way that I am confident is permanent. Slow. Easy. And permanent.
Day 189 – Sunday, March 15, 2009: 201.8. Today, I got out buckets from the storage closet of summer clothes that I had packed away last year. I was pleased to find that I could fit into a lot of my capris. By September of last year, I could only wear one pair of size 18 capris, and the dog chewed a hole in them! I had made a commitment to myself to never go into women’s sizes, so I had resorted to trying to find size 18 pants that I could actually wear. Although trying on these pants gave me confidence that my body is actually changing, I am thinking that this diet may need something more if I am to lose enough weight to get into a normal weight range. I think I want to significantly reduce my caloric intake on Fridays as a way to make it all that much harder for me to significantly overeat on the weekend. I’m not doing anything right now except researching the topic of fasting, and to that end I ordered two books on fasting from amazon. I would only reduce food intake on Fridays, and I’m not sure if I would have any extra rules like no sweets, no seconds, and no snacks. I’m not sure. It just seems to me worth the effort to look at religious traditions concerning fasting to see if there are any commonalities that might be applicable to a diet.
Day 190 – Monday, March 16, 2009: 202.2. At 6:30 PM, I was picking at the fried potatoes and realized that this was a lot more than just testing to see if they were done, so I called it an Exception Day. Not a failure. An Exception Day. I don’t have a failure unless I use up all my Exception Days.
Day 191 – Tuesday, March 17, 2009: It’s 1 AM, and I cannot sleep. Last night was the first time on this diet when I violated the N Day rules on a weekday without first making the choice to take an Exception Day. This diet, I believe, is a cure for disordered eating before it is a means to lose weight. I don’t think that N Day rules are necessary for those who can manage eating well on their own. In a meeting last week, I observed a thin business analyst open a granola bar and enjoy it during the meeting. That’s not something I can do. I don’t seem to have natural limits to eating based on hunger, and my attempt to develop habits of naturally thin people (eating according to hunger) was nothing short of disastrous. This diet approach allows me to approximate the eating behavior of naturally thin people without making maintenance of a normal weight my life’s work. I think I need to set aside the daily weigh-in and just allow time to pass with a minimal attention to this diet. I need to accept that there will be times I take an Exception Day because I just wasn’t paying attention, but it is better that that occurs than that I spend hours per day focused on weight and eating. I need to accept that I am human and will make mistakes along the way. The Exception Days are my way to allow for a violation of N Day rules without my having an “I blew my diet†meltdown into the end of diet binge.
7 PM: I think that what this diet promotes is orderliness. I look at the diet approach and realize that it is better for me to just weigh myself once per month as a check in than to weigh myself daily and invest lots of time analyzing the numbers. After all, am I going to stop this diet? No. This diet halted the weight gain I have experienced over the past several years. Even if I didn’t lose another pound, I wouldn’t change the basic structure of “unconditional permission to eat†on weekends and an accumulation of two weekdays per month along with other days having restrictions. If I cannot lose weight below a certain level, I may want to work on having further restrictions on N Days, but I am losing weight, so now what I need is patience. I need to simply let the days pass as I follow this extremely easy and orderly approach to eating. My attention needs to turn to the disorder in the home, starting with de-cluttering. If I weigh myself once per month, that should be enough. At this point, the less thought I put into this diet, the better. Orderliness and patience. These virtues seem so banal, but I think they are the virtues I need to make a lifelong success of weight management.
Day 192 – Wednesday, March 18, 2009: 201.8. This is a long haul, a marathon not a sprint, and I think I need to accept that I am going to be impatient to be thinner. It suddenly became spring here in Minnesota. We went from really cold weather to temperatures in the 60s this week, and here I am, fat, fat, fat. I hate it. I need to accept that slow weight loss is part of the deal with this approach. Even though I don’t need to pay much attention to this diet, I think that I need to do whatever with help with my impatience to lose weight. Weighing myself and seeing the average for the month and comparing that average to earlier months could help. Right now, my average weight for March is 201.2, and that compares to the average for January of 204.6 and for February of 202.9. In two months, my average weight has dropped 3.4 pounds. That is pathetic. What I need to do is recognize that this weight loss is permanent. I am confident that I will never again see 216 or 215 or 210 or even 205. Someday, probably by the end of June, I will never again see 200 pounds. I was hoping that I would have dropped 10% of my total body weight (down to 193) by one year on this diet on September 8, but it doesn’t look like that will happen at this rate. I need to lose another 8.2 pounds, which means another six months, putting me into October. It’s possible I’ll make it, but I thought it would be easy to make it. I simply have to adjust my expectations. This diet has its drawbacks, but – as my daughter put it when wolfing down a bismark – “This diet has its advantages.†There is someone at work who is openly trying to lose weight, and she is making veggie burgers. Lots of Lean Cuisines as lunchtime choices as well. I don’t think I am ever again going to have a Lean Cuisine. Now that’s something to celebrate!
Day 193 – Thursday, March 19, 2009: 201.0. One of the two books I ordered on fasting is called fasting: exploring a great spiritual practice by Carole Garibaldi Rogers. I got it yesterday and have only read the first few chapters, but I’ve already figured out how I would like to change my Friday habit. I dog-eared pages with these passages:
“Whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and was your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others buy by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (p. 39 – 40, taken from Matthew 6: 2 – 18 ).
“The disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving encourage Christians to turn their attention away from themselves and toward God and others.†(p. 41)
“By the end of the first century or the beginning of the second, Wednesdays and Fridays had become days of fasting for Christians…For Christians these were not twenty-four-hour fasts or even sunup to sundown fasts; fasting ended with the evening meal, which could be eaten as early as the ninth hour, or 3 PM.†(p. 49).
From these three passages, I have decided that I would like to have a goal of fasting but not make it a requirement in order to have a success on a Friday N Day. My goal will be to fast like the early Christians. The third passage isn’t completely clear in meaning to me, but I think that the meaning is that Christians did not eat breakfast or lunch on Fridays. If I can avoid doing that without others noticing, that is what I think I will try. I will also try to have a light dinner on Friday.
From what I have seen, the effect of following N Day rules is that S Day overeating gets dampened somewhat. Six months after starting this diet, however, I still overeat to the point that I have stomach aches. If I restrict eating on Fridays, I think that will help me with S Day eating without my trying to restrict S Day eating in any way. I don’t seem to have quite the same problem with overeating on weekday Exception Days, and I’m not exactly sure why. It just may be that I have more time on the weekend to overeat.
What I have seen as a wonderful benefit of this diet is that you can turn your toward “God and others.†There is nothing that has made me so single-minded in focus as one of my diets. I am hungry. I am grumpy. I am totally focused on myself. It’s sad. I have a husband and together we have four children. There is more to life than what goes into my belly. While getting going on this diet has required a lot of focus, I see that it has taken less and less time and over time will become so routine that I don’t even think about it. The missing piece to my approach has been how to dampen down my over the top overeating on the weekends, and I think that limiting food intake on Fridays is an approach that is simple and will work. Now it is time to test if it works…
Day 194 – Friday, March 20, 2009: 200.6. Here is another beautiful quote from page 56 of the book on fasting. This quote is from an early Christian book called The Wisdom of the Desert: “Once two brethren came to a certain elder whose custom it was not to eat every day. But when he saw the brethren, he invited them with joy to dine with him, saying: ‘Fasting has its reward, but he who eats out of charity fulfills two commandments, for he sets aside his own will and he refreshes his hungry brethren.’†My first time not following my Hunger Satisfaction Diet (eat only after a hunger growl) came when I attended my nephew’s college graduation, and a buffet lunch was served. I had to choose between following the diet and eating lunch with my extended family. I ate lunch. On this diet, I can take Exception Days whenever I want, including if an unexpected social event presents itself. I can see the wisdom of deciding to have a guideline only in trying to have only water on Fridays until dinner. This morning, I had planned not to eat, but I had also already scheduled a coffee break with a friend. I had a latte.
This diet does something which most diets do not. It allows me to focus on other people rather than on what food is going into my belly. There was a weight loss contest at work, and the winner lost 19% of body weight. I can just imagine the degree to which that person focused on enduring starvation until the end of the weight loss contest. In contrast, I am losing weight slowly, but I am able to live my life today in a way that is the same as if I was already thin. I may still weigh over 200 pounds, but I am already gaining the outlook of a thin person. This is so wonderful.
10 PM: Today was easy. I don’t even feel hungry. I had a latte at breakfast, some green tea in the afternoon, and a roll, salad and broccoli cheese soup for dinner. After the dinner, we went to the store so I could pick up Haagen Dazs bars. I fully intend to enjoy tomorrow’s S Day. This is not self-denial for self-denial’s sake. This is an attempt to dampen down the overeating on S Days without actually placing restrictions.
Day 195 – Saturday, March 21, 2009: 199.2. It’s only 6:30 AM, and I’ve already had three dark chocolate hazelnut wafers, but there is something missing which is hard to describe. I don’t feel the need or the desire to put as much food in my mouth as quickly as I can. I have felt on S Days the way I have felt many times when a diet has failed, and that feeling is not present right now. I don’t have the frantic need to binge eat. I think that the Friday fast may be a critical success factor for me in reaching and maintaining a normal weight.
Day 196 – Sunday, March 22, 2009: 200.2. Yesterday, my 14 year old daughter said to me, “I’m kinda sick of sweets.†She had wanted a large box of Mike and Ike’s for her S Day, and she had gotten it. How many mothers of overweight children would be thrilled to hear, “I’m kinda sick of sweets.†The conversation was triggered because she can no longer stand Haagen Dazs bars. I had all three in the box and by afternoon didn’t feel well at all. I don’t think my body can handle my typical S Day after a fast day. I spent the afternoon in bed, went to church, came back, had dinner, and went to bed. I don’t feel too great this morning. Kelly Brownell of Yale wrote a book on how the obesity epidemic is cultural, and we need to change the culture in order to help people have a normal weight. He’s pursuing making sure poor people have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. I think the answer may be a lot simpler. Who fasts these days? There is zero tolerance for hunger. In fact, some groups have it as a goal to eliminate hunger. Maybe the periodic experience of hunger through religiously mandated fasts is what kept most people from obesity. I suspect my weight will now drop more quickly with the addition of a Friday fast (no breakfast, no lunch, and a light dinner) when I can follow it without it being noticed by others.
Day 199 – Wednesday, March 25, 2009: 200.4. I finished reading the book on fasting, and there was one more page that I dog eared. A Catholic woman religious was quoted as saying: “Personally, I find fasting awkward. I have spent my life on diets. At the present time, a day of fast is little different from an ordinary day for me, because I try mightily to limit the food I eat.†(p. 125 – 126). I felt sad for that woman. Yes, she is very familiar with fasts. She is not familiar with feasts (S Days). This experience of constant fasting is the so-called “lifestyle change†approach to weight maintenance that means you will be hungry for the rest of your life if you want to be thin. I tried that. I also tried constant feasting with the Intuitive Eating approach of “unconditional permission to eat.†It seems to me that the predictable cycle of fast and feast is what makes this diet work. Tonight, surprising even for me, I did not want much to eat. I had soup, crackers, and a soft pretzel. My two older kids have been home sick from school, and they have eaten very little. Eating less seems to me suddenly to mean resting. I found fasting from solid food last Friday to be surprisingly restful. It was a positive experience. In fact, it was so positive that I am still puzzled by how I reacted. Right now, at about 8:30 PM, my stomach growled, and it felt pleasant. I like having a stomach that isn’t stuffed. I feel light. I feel rested. I feel at a loss for words to describe how I feel right now, but the experience is pleasant in a physical way, like taking a long bath or receiving a tender kiss from Tom.
Day 201 – Friday, March 27, 2009: 200.4. The fluctuating weight is very discouraging, but I can look at my average weight for this month (now at 201.0) and compare it to last month’s average weight (202.9) to see that I am making progress. Today is a fast day, except that my two older children are home. I don’t think I’m ready for fasting quite yet. Last week went well with my having liquids until dinner, and I think I’ll try that again today. If it would be awkward not to have lunch because the kids are home, then I’ll have lunch. I’m still trying to figure out fasting. I do think the basic idea of making an effort to eat significantly less food on Fridays is a good approach for me to dampen weekend overeating.
Day 202 – Saturday, March 28, 2009: 198.2 A new low! I got through yesterday with no food except liquids until dinner. Dinner was soup and salad at the Lenten soup supper. I didn’t even notice hunger until about 3 PM. It was a pleasant day. My two older children were off school but still lounging around because they had been sick earlier in the week. Based on the description of symptoms, the pediatrician thought they had influenza. I think fasting will help with S Day overeating, although I did get up at 1 AM and am right now having Milano cookies and Snickers mini bars at 6:30 AM. Because of yesterday’s very light eating, it won’t take much more food before I reach the level of stuffed.
Day 205 – Tuesday, March 31, 2009: Today is Anne’s 15th birthday. She was born on Holy Thursday, and she’s been a blessing to us every since then. Several years ago, Tom commented on how she was getting overweight. I wasn’t so concerned about pre-pubescent weight gain, but I was alarmed by her eating habits. She would come home from school and head straight for the kitchen. She had learned disordered eating from me. On this birthday, I see that she is struggling with the diet and having some failures, but she is learning. She ran out of Exception Days last week when her cousin took her shopping for clothes, and yesterday she had an unexpected night out with a friend at the Mall of America – rides, dinner, and probably treats. She’ll have to learn to budget the Exception Days. The best way for me to help her is to serve as an example and to talk when she wants to talk. Last night, Tom told me he can tell that I’ve lost weight. I was happy to hear that!
Day 1 – Monday, September 8, 2008: 215.0
Day 36 – Monday, October 13, 2008: 210.2
Day 57 – Monday, November 3, 2008: 209.4
Day 99 – Monday, December 15, 2008: 208.8
Day 120 – Monday, January 5, 2008: 209.2
Day 148 – Monday, February 8, 2008: 205.0
Day 176 – Monday, March 2, 2009: 203.4
The following is a list of weights for the month of March, 2009:
Day 175 – Sunday, March 1, 2009: 201.8 (6 Exception Days available)
Day 176 – Monday, March 2, 2009: 203.4
Day 177 – Tuesday, March 3, 2009: 201.8
Day 178 – Wednesday, March 4, 2009: 200.8
Day 179 – Thursday, March 5, 2009: 200.4
Day 180 – Friday, March 6, 2009: 199.6
Day 181 – Saturday, March 7, 2009: 198.8 A new low!
Day 182 – Sunday, March 8, 2009: 201.8
Day 183 – Monday, March 9, 2009: 201.0
Day 184 – Tuesday, March 10, 2009: 202.8
Day 185 – Wednesday, March 11, 2009: 201.8
Day 186 – Thursday, March 12, 2009: 201.0
Day 187 – Friday, March 13, 2009: 200.6
Day 188 – Saturday, March 14, 2009: 199.2
Day 189 – Sunday, March 15, 2009: 201.8
Day 190 – Monday, March 16, 2009: 202.2 (5E)
Day 191 – Tuesday, March 17, 2009:
Day 192 – Wednesday, March 18, 2009: 201.8
Day 193 – Thursday, March 19, 2009: 201.0
Day 194 – Friday, March 20, 2009: 200.6
Day 195 – Saturday, March 21, 2009: 199.2
Day 196 – Sunday, March 22, 2009: 200.2
Day 197 – Monday, March 23, 2009: 202.0
Day 198 – Tuesday, March 24, 2009: 201.4
Day 199 – Wednesday, March 25, 2009: 200.4
Day 200 – Thursday, March 26, 2009: 199.8
Day 201 – Friday, March 27, 2009: 200.4
Day 202 – Saturday, March 28, 2009: 198.2 A new low!
Day 203 – Sunday, March 29, 2009:
Day 204 – Monday, March 30, 2009:
Day 205 – Tuesday, March 31, 2009:
Day 176 – Monday, March 2, 2009: 203.4. It was a thrill to step on the scale on Saturday and see a weight below 200 pounds (199.6). Last week was the beginning of Lent, so we had to fast on Wednesday (I had a bowl of cereal for breakfast and a bowl of split pea soup for dinner), and we attended a Lenten soup supper on Friday (cream of broccoli soup and bread). I knew my weight would bounce back from the low on Saturday, but it was still a thrill to see a weight below 200 for the first time since September, 2007, and I was that low in weight then because I went through four surgeries and spent from Monday to Friday in the hospital (thanks to the good doctors at the Mayo Clinic, the long term result of my medical problem is that I wear bangs to cover my forehead).
I also was pleased that I managed to get through the Ash Wednesday fast without much trouble at all. In prior years, it was a real struggle, and I often didn’t last the whole day. After years of trying to train myself to respond only to hunger, it was really hard for me to recognize that I was hungry and still not eat. I think the Catholic Church has some wisdom in requiring a fast – in having people experience hunger and realize they can survive. The whole approach of responding to hunger made me very sensitive to my internal hunger cues, real or imagined. It was a very time consuming approach to weight management, and I’m glad I’m done with it.
9:30 PM: This morning, my son brought up that the deadline had passed for the swim team banquet, and he really wanted to go. The banquet is for team members and their parents. I didn’t hand in the form because one of the graduating seniors is the son of someone who was my manager more than 10 years ago, I noticed her at a meet, and I didn’t say hello to her because – because I’m so fat. I didn’t want to have her see what how fat I had become, and for that reason I was willing to have my son miss the end of year banquet for swim team. Today, I decided I am not going to stop living or prevent my son from enjoying his life just because of my current weight. I sent an email to the coach and am able to pay for the banquet even though we’ll be late. I’ve spent years putting my life on hold and the lives of my children on hold because of my weight. No more.
Thursday, March 5, 2009: 200.4. Maybe I’ll update this journal on Thursday nights. I’ve told the kids it is my “grumpy nightâ€. I just feel hungry and grumpy. I’m happy I signed up for the swim team banquet. I had to ask myself who is more important – my son or an old boss whom I may never see again? The answer was my son. So what that I’m obese. I’m losing weight – that’s what’s important. Today I wore to work a jacket which I got at a company quarterly meeting. I had been asked what size I wore, and I said a large. I was given the large and the extra large to try on. This was the first day that I actually wore the jacket. It definitely fits better than when I tried it on three months ago. I’m also happy that I am starting to feel a difference in my size. Everything is starting to fit better. I still have not been asked yet whether I’ve lost weight, and the only person who seems to tell that I’ve actually lost weight is our nine year old who told me I’m smaller around the waist and she can tell when she hugs me!
Saturday, March 7, 2009: 198.8. A new low! Tomorrow marks six months on this diet, and I am officially on maintenance. The only change from diet to maintenance is this journal. I’m spent lots of time recording my thoughts, and meanwhile I am falling behind on my life – I haven’t been grocery shopping, the bathrooms need to be cleaned, the dog needed her yearly shots, the younger two last took shows on Wednesday night, etc. I’m following the philosophy of Pete Walsh’s book It’s All Too Much to get rid of clutter in our house. There’s something about the clutter problem and the overeating problem being similar, but I’m not quite sure what it is. Walsh argues that, if you keep everything, you cannot enjoy what you really treasure. I think that is similar to eating everything instead of really considering what you enjoy. At this point, though, what matters is that I follow the letter of the law of this diet and not worry too much about the philosophy behind it. Last night, I revised my summary of my diet, and here it is:
The Set Point Lowering Diet
1. Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, the authors of the book Intuitive Eating, argue that dieting triggers the body’s survival mechanism. In another book, called The Instinct to Heal, author Dr. David Servan-Schreiber describes how the brain is divided into a cognitive brain and an emotional brain. It is the emotional brain which takes over, for example, when a person is held underwater and suddenly has the strength to get above water. This happened to me when my brother held me underwater when I was 10. It also seems to me to be the reason why so many people fail to stay on a diet. The cognitive brain decides that the body should be starved, and the emotional brain rebels against never-ending hunger.
2. On The Set Point Lowering Diet, I experience hunger but know that it will end by Saturday. On this diet, there are three types of days:
2.1 S Days are all Saturdays and Sundays. On S Days, I have“unconditional permission to eat†(a term taken from the book
Intuitive Eating). I once ate approximately 3,000 calories
of caramel macademian clusters on one S Day.
2.2 N Days are weekdays other than E Days. On these days, I follow three simple rules: no sweets, no snacks, and no seconds. When I sit down to eat, I can eat what is before me and not one bite more. Liquids can be drunk at any time. These rules are taken from The No S Diet by Reinhard Engels and Ben Kallen.
2.3 E Days accumulate at a rate of two per month. E Days are weekdays that I take as Exception Days. On E Days, I have “unconditional permission to eat.†I can take an E Day for any reason whatsoever. I once took an E Day because I wanted a breath mint. I also took an E Day because my son broke glass on the table, and I had just started eating cereal on that same table.
3. This diet must be followed with perfect compliance. Following a diet with perfect compliance makes the diet into a habit which is as difficult as brushing my teeth. In his Great Courses’ lectures on The Ethics of Aristotle, Professor Joseph Koterski of Fordham University called a diet like this an “automatism habit†– when “regularly you do a thing so that you don’t even think about it.â€
4. I follow the letter of the law and violate the spirit all I want. I have stayed up until midnight on an S Day to eat. What has happened, over time, is that the N Day habits have started to carry over into S Days and E Days. I find this diet to be first a cure for disordered eating and then a way to lose weight. In six months, I have lost 15 pounds, and I expect to continue losing weight at a rate of about 2 pounds per month. This diet takes very little willpower. The weight loss may be slow, but it is also permanent.
______
I don’t really consider this diet to be a modification of The No S Diet so much as it is a different diet altogether. That is because the two modifications I made are critical to my success. They are: the idea of “unconditional permission to eat†on non-N Days (taken from the book Intuitive Eating) and the idea of “perfect compliance†(taken from a book I cannot locate), which lead to the idea of two Exception Days per month rather than an unspecified number of Special Days which have to be justified. This idea of Exception Days also comes from Aristotle’s Ethics, and I never would have gotten such a clear idea of Aristotle’s Ethics without listening to Koterski’s tapes on the subject.
I think I would have eventually come to a diet like this even if I hadn’t read The No S Diet because I had already recognized the importance of meals, had already understood that a diet needs to have periods of “on†and “offâ€, and had already started to think of an “on†and “off†period that is by the week. I don’t know how long it would have taken me to develop this idea, but I bet it would have been years and by then my now 9th grade daughter would have been out of the house. I’m so grateful I was able to figure out this approach when she was still home, and I’m so happy that she is following it.
This journal was really written for her – audience of one. The purpose was to figure out a sane approach to weight management that she could choose to follow. The purpose has already been fulfilled, so this journal really doesn’t have to be written anymore. Writing it has become a habit, and it’s a habit that I want to break because it no longer needs to serve the purpose for which it was intended.
What I’d like to do is update this journal monthly as a way to track weight and track Exception Days. Maybe I could add a comment here and there, but really I don’t think there’s much more to say. I see the trend. My S Days will get less and less over the top. I’ll continue to lose weight until I stabilize at some unknown lower weight which I will accept whether it is 132 or 122 or 172. I have my life back. This diet is such freedom!
Day 187 – Friday, March 13, 2009: 200.6. I am thinking that there may need to be an additional restriction added to this diet in order for me to get to a normal weight. Over the past few weeks, my husband and I have attended Lenten soup suppers at our church. In past years, I have eaten before and after the soup supper, so I haven’t quite appreciated the idea of restrictive eating on Fridays in Lent. I’ve followed the regulation of meatless Fridays, but that is it. For the soup suppers, what I have eaten is soup and a piece of bread. I haven’t had the brownies that are also offered because that violates the “no sweets†portion of this diet.
Over the past week or so, I’ve dug back in my memory to a college medieval history course and realized that the Catholic Church had lots of feast days and fast days. They came with predictability every year. Every Sunday was a feast day, and every Friday was a fast day. Lent (except on Sundays) was a period of fasting as was Advent (the time before Christmas). This wisdom has been watered down to the point of being meaningless. Now we have two fast days per year (Ash Wednesday and Good Friday) and a mild restriction of no meat on Fridays in Lent.
What is very different about The No S Diet is the period of “on†(fast days – although the restrictions for N Days are very mild) and “off†(feast days – or “Special Days†according to Reinhard and “Exception Days†for me).
The typical diet is a period of unrelenting fast until you reach your goal weight and then the presumption that you can switch to “normal eatingâ€. With the new trend towards a “lifestyle changeâ€, you’ve got people thinking there is no fast and there is no feast, only the unrelenting sense of not having had enough to eat.
The Catholic Church is not the only faith to have fasts and feasts. I know that the Jewish faith has Yom Kippur, and the Muslim faith has a month of fasting with Ramadan. It’s occurred to me over the last week that maybe, just maybe, there is some wisdom about human nature built into these ideas of predictable fasts and feasts and The No S Diet book has the same wisdom in the N Day/S Day distinction.
For me, personally, I’m thinking that I may consider extending the Lenten restrictions of no meat on Fridays to be something I do every Friday unless I take an Exception Day. The fasting before a feast would be a way for my weekend overeating to be dampened somewhat.
I am now tracking my weight daily and trying to compare my average weight in each month to see how much weight I am losing. I was expecting a 2 pound per month weight loss, and I’m not even seeing that.
Here are my average weights since the start of the program:
September, 2008: 214.4 (based on weighing myself 6 days)
October, 2008: 208.0 (based on weighing myself 16 days)
November, 2008: 207.7 (based on weighing myself 21 days)
December, 2008: 206.1 (based on weighing myself 22 days)
January, 2008: 204.6 (based on weighing myself 24 days)
February, 2008: 202.9 (based on weighing myself 20 days)
March, 2009: 201.2 (based on weighing myself 13 days thus far this month)
If it weren’t for the years of struggling to maintain a normal weight of 130 – 135 based on the dreaded diet of counting 1,000 calories for nine days and then maintaining that weight for a month or so and repeating the process, and if it wasn’t for all the testing of other diets after that which led to weight gain rather than weight loss, I’d be looking at these diet results and telling myself that there has to be a faster way to lose weight that this! I’m losing about 1.5 pounds per month.
What I am doing instead is multiplying 1.5/month by 12 months to calculate a weight loss for one year of 18 pounds. That’s not bad, given how easy it is for me to follow this diet. At this point, I tend to have one evening when I am dragging, and that is Thursday evening. By Friday morning, I am feeling good and looking forward to Saturday and being able to eat whatever I want.
That’s why, in looking at my diet history and comparing the basic program to the fast and feast traditions of many religions, I think it might be a good idea for me to look at having additional restrictions on Fridays. I’m not doing anything right now other than following Lenten regulations which I would be doing no matter what. Instead, I’ll think about what I could do that is very clear cut – like not having meat on Fridays.
I guess I was mistaken in thinking that I didn’t need to think anymore about dieting and could put this approach on autopilot. The basic approach is sound, but I think it needs some tweaking with regard to Fridays.
Day 188 – Saturday, March 14, 2009: 199.2. It’s 9:30 AM. I got up early and had some peanut clusters and a Haagen Dazs bar. Then we went out for breakfast, and I was unable to finish the short stack of pancakes that I ordered. When we got home, I had another Haagen Dazs bar and some walnuts. My stomach is rebelling against any more food being put into it. I think that a significant restriction of food on Fridays could really help with over the top eating on S Days. I’m not sure how to structure this Friday restriction, but maybe I’ll just have it as a goal that is not well defined. It’s not measured. It’s not tracked. It’s just a desire to eat much less on Fridays. Yesterday, my 8 year old laughed when she was with me and heard a very deep and very loud stomach growl. She said that, if I was still on the Hunger Satisfaction Diet, I’d be running to the kitchen now! Yes, I would have been. Instead, I managed to have soup, salad, and a piece of bread only at the Lenten soup supper, and I went to bed early. When I first started this diet, I had a terrible time sleeping unless my stomach was stuffed with food. Last night, I had no trouble at all sleeping. I went to bed early (before 10) and got up at 6. This diet is working. It’s just taking a long time. In May, when I see the sister in law who made the less than positive comment about this diet as being just a matter of “common senseâ€, I suspect she won’t realize I’ve lost any weight at all. That’s OK. It may take until Christmas this year or next summer before anyone other than the 9 year old notices that I’ve lost weight, but I’m already starting to feel smaller. I feel such a sense of relief that I’m finally losing weight in a way that I am confident is permanent. Slow. Easy. And permanent.
Day 189 – Sunday, March 15, 2009: 201.8. Today, I got out buckets from the storage closet of summer clothes that I had packed away last year. I was pleased to find that I could fit into a lot of my capris. By September of last year, I could only wear one pair of size 18 capris, and the dog chewed a hole in them! I had made a commitment to myself to never go into women’s sizes, so I had resorted to trying to find size 18 pants that I could actually wear. Although trying on these pants gave me confidence that my body is actually changing, I am thinking that this diet may need something more if I am to lose enough weight to get into a normal weight range. I think I want to significantly reduce my caloric intake on Fridays as a way to make it all that much harder for me to significantly overeat on the weekend. I’m not doing anything right now except researching the topic of fasting, and to that end I ordered two books on fasting from amazon. I would only reduce food intake on Fridays, and I’m not sure if I would have any extra rules like no sweets, no seconds, and no snacks. I’m not sure. It just seems to me worth the effort to look at religious traditions concerning fasting to see if there are any commonalities that might be applicable to a diet.
Day 190 – Monday, March 16, 2009: 202.2. At 6:30 PM, I was picking at the fried potatoes and realized that this was a lot more than just testing to see if they were done, so I called it an Exception Day. Not a failure. An Exception Day. I don’t have a failure unless I use up all my Exception Days.
Day 191 – Tuesday, March 17, 2009: It’s 1 AM, and I cannot sleep. Last night was the first time on this diet when I violated the N Day rules on a weekday without first making the choice to take an Exception Day. This diet, I believe, is a cure for disordered eating before it is a means to lose weight. I don’t think that N Day rules are necessary for those who can manage eating well on their own. In a meeting last week, I observed a thin business analyst open a granola bar and enjoy it during the meeting. That’s not something I can do. I don’t seem to have natural limits to eating based on hunger, and my attempt to develop habits of naturally thin people (eating according to hunger) was nothing short of disastrous. This diet approach allows me to approximate the eating behavior of naturally thin people without making maintenance of a normal weight my life’s work. I think I need to set aside the daily weigh-in and just allow time to pass with a minimal attention to this diet. I need to accept that there will be times I take an Exception Day because I just wasn’t paying attention, but it is better that that occurs than that I spend hours per day focused on weight and eating. I need to accept that I am human and will make mistakes along the way. The Exception Days are my way to allow for a violation of N Day rules without my having an “I blew my diet†meltdown into the end of diet binge.
7 PM: I think that what this diet promotes is orderliness. I look at the diet approach and realize that it is better for me to just weigh myself once per month as a check in than to weigh myself daily and invest lots of time analyzing the numbers. After all, am I going to stop this diet? No. This diet halted the weight gain I have experienced over the past several years. Even if I didn’t lose another pound, I wouldn’t change the basic structure of “unconditional permission to eat†on weekends and an accumulation of two weekdays per month along with other days having restrictions. If I cannot lose weight below a certain level, I may want to work on having further restrictions on N Days, but I am losing weight, so now what I need is patience. I need to simply let the days pass as I follow this extremely easy and orderly approach to eating. My attention needs to turn to the disorder in the home, starting with de-cluttering. If I weigh myself once per month, that should be enough. At this point, the less thought I put into this diet, the better. Orderliness and patience. These virtues seem so banal, but I think they are the virtues I need to make a lifelong success of weight management.
Day 192 – Wednesday, March 18, 2009: 201.8. This is a long haul, a marathon not a sprint, and I think I need to accept that I am going to be impatient to be thinner. It suddenly became spring here in Minnesota. We went from really cold weather to temperatures in the 60s this week, and here I am, fat, fat, fat. I hate it. I need to accept that slow weight loss is part of the deal with this approach. Even though I don’t need to pay much attention to this diet, I think that I need to do whatever with help with my impatience to lose weight. Weighing myself and seeing the average for the month and comparing that average to earlier months could help. Right now, my average weight for March is 201.2, and that compares to the average for January of 204.6 and for February of 202.9. In two months, my average weight has dropped 3.4 pounds. That is pathetic. What I need to do is recognize that this weight loss is permanent. I am confident that I will never again see 216 or 215 or 210 or even 205. Someday, probably by the end of June, I will never again see 200 pounds. I was hoping that I would have dropped 10% of my total body weight (down to 193) by one year on this diet on September 8, but it doesn’t look like that will happen at this rate. I need to lose another 8.2 pounds, which means another six months, putting me into October. It’s possible I’ll make it, but I thought it would be easy to make it. I simply have to adjust my expectations. This diet has its drawbacks, but – as my daughter put it when wolfing down a bismark – “This diet has its advantages.†There is someone at work who is openly trying to lose weight, and she is making veggie burgers. Lots of Lean Cuisines as lunchtime choices as well. I don’t think I am ever again going to have a Lean Cuisine. Now that’s something to celebrate!
Day 193 – Thursday, March 19, 2009: 201.0. One of the two books I ordered on fasting is called fasting: exploring a great spiritual practice by Carole Garibaldi Rogers. I got it yesterday and have only read the first few chapters, but I’ve already figured out how I would like to change my Friday habit. I dog-eared pages with these passages:
“Whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly, I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and was your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others buy by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (p. 39 – 40, taken from Matthew 6: 2 – 18 ).
“The disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving encourage Christians to turn their attention away from themselves and toward God and others.†(p. 41)
“By the end of the first century or the beginning of the second, Wednesdays and Fridays had become days of fasting for Christians…For Christians these were not twenty-four-hour fasts or even sunup to sundown fasts; fasting ended with the evening meal, which could be eaten as early as the ninth hour, or 3 PM.†(p. 49).
From these three passages, I have decided that I would like to have a goal of fasting but not make it a requirement in order to have a success on a Friday N Day. My goal will be to fast like the early Christians. The third passage isn’t completely clear in meaning to me, but I think that the meaning is that Christians did not eat breakfast or lunch on Fridays. If I can avoid doing that without others noticing, that is what I think I will try. I will also try to have a light dinner on Friday.
From what I have seen, the effect of following N Day rules is that S Day overeating gets dampened somewhat. Six months after starting this diet, however, I still overeat to the point that I have stomach aches. If I restrict eating on Fridays, I think that will help me with S Day eating without my trying to restrict S Day eating in any way. I don’t seem to have quite the same problem with overeating on weekday Exception Days, and I’m not exactly sure why. It just may be that I have more time on the weekend to overeat.
What I have seen as a wonderful benefit of this diet is that you can turn your toward “God and others.†There is nothing that has made me so single-minded in focus as one of my diets. I am hungry. I am grumpy. I am totally focused on myself. It’s sad. I have a husband and together we have four children. There is more to life than what goes into my belly. While getting going on this diet has required a lot of focus, I see that it has taken less and less time and over time will become so routine that I don’t even think about it. The missing piece to my approach has been how to dampen down my over the top overeating on the weekends, and I think that limiting food intake on Fridays is an approach that is simple and will work. Now it is time to test if it works…
Day 194 – Friday, March 20, 2009: 200.6. Here is another beautiful quote from page 56 of the book on fasting. This quote is from an early Christian book called The Wisdom of the Desert: “Once two brethren came to a certain elder whose custom it was not to eat every day. But when he saw the brethren, he invited them with joy to dine with him, saying: ‘Fasting has its reward, but he who eats out of charity fulfills two commandments, for he sets aside his own will and he refreshes his hungry brethren.’†My first time not following my Hunger Satisfaction Diet (eat only after a hunger growl) came when I attended my nephew’s college graduation, and a buffet lunch was served. I had to choose between following the diet and eating lunch with my extended family. I ate lunch. On this diet, I can take Exception Days whenever I want, including if an unexpected social event presents itself. I can see the wisdom of deciding to have a guideline only in trying to have only water on Fridays until dinner. This morning, I had planned not to eat, but I had also already scheduled a coffee break with a friend. I had a latte.
This diet does something which most diets do not. It allows me to focus on other people rather than on what food is going into my belly. There was a weight loss contest at work, and the winner lost 19% of body weight. I can just imagine the degree to which that person focused on enduring starvation until the end of the weight loss contest. In contrast, I am losing weight slowly, but I am able to live my life today in a way that is the same as if I was already thin. I may still weigh over 200 pounds, but I am already gaining the outlook of a thin person. This is so wonderful.
10 PM: Today was easy. I don’t even feel hungry. I had a latte at breakfast, some green tea in the afternoon, and a roll, salad and broccoli cheese soup for dinner. After the dinner, we went to the store so I could pick up Haagen Dazs bars. I fully intend to enjoy tomorrow’s S Day. This is not self-denial for self-denial’s sake. This is an attempt to dampen down the overeating on S Days without actually placing restrictions.
Day 195 – Saturday, March 21, 2009: 199.2. It’s only 6:30 AM, and I’ve already had three dark chocolate hazelnut wafers, but there is something missing which is hard to describe. I don’t feel the need or the desire to put as much food in my mouth as quickly as I can. I have felt on S Days the way I have felt many times when a diet has failed, and that feeling is not present right now. I don’t have the frantic need to binge eat. I think that the Friday fast may be a critical success factor for me in reaching and maintaining a normal weight.
Day 196 – Sunday, March 22, 2009: 200.2. Yesterday, my 14 year old daughter said to me, “I’m kinda sick of sweets.†She had wanted a large box of Mike and Ike’s for her S Day, and she had gotten it. How many mothers of overweight children would be thrilled to hear, “I’m kinda sick of sweets.†The conversation was triggered because she can no longer stand Haagen Dazs bars. I had all three in the box and by afternoon didn’t feel well at all. I don’t think my body can handle my typical S Day after a fast day. I spent the afternoon in bed, went to church, came back, had dinner, and went to bed. I don’t feel too great this morning. Kelly Brownell of Yale wrote a book on how the obesity epidemic is cultural, and we need to change the culture in order to help people have a normal weight. He’s pursuing making sure poor people have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. I think the answer may be a lot simpler. Who fasts these days? There is zero tolerance for hunger. In fact, some groups have it as a goal to eliminate hunger. Maybe the periodic experience of hunger through religiously mandated fasts is what kept most people from obesity. I suspect my weight will now drop more quickly with the addition of a Friday fast (no breakfast, no lunch, and a light dinner) when I can follow it without it being noticed by others.
Day 199 – Wednesday, March 25, 2009: 200.4. I finished reading the book on fasting, and there was one more page that I dog eared. A Catholic woman religious was quoted as saying: “Personally, I find fasting awkward. I have spent my life on diets. At the present time, a day of fast is little different from an ordinary day for me, because I try mightily to limit the food I eat.†(p. 125 – 126). I felt sad for that woman. Yes, she is very familiar with fasts. She is not familiar with feasts (S Days). This experience of constant fasting is the so-called “lifestyle change†approach to weight maintenance that means you will be hungry for the rest of your life if you want to be thin. I tried that. I also tried constant feasting with the Intuitive Eating approach of “unconditional permission to eat.†It seems to me that the predictable cycle of fast and feast is what makes this diet work. Tonight, surprising even for me, I did not want much to eat. I had soup, crackers, and a soft pretzel. My two older kids have been home sick from school, and they have eaten very little. Eating less seems to me suddenly to mean resting. I found fasting from solid food last Friday to be surprisingly restful. It was a positive experience. In fact, it was so positive that I am still puzzled by how I reacted. Right now, at about 8:30 PM, my stomach growled, and it felt pleasant. I like having a stomach that isn’t stuffed. I feel light. I feel rested. I feel at a loss for words to describe how I feel right now, but the experience is pleasant in a physical way, like taking a long bath or receiving a tender kiss from Tom.
Day 201 – Friday, March 27, 2009: 200.4. The fluctuating weight is very discouraging, but I can look at my average weight for this month (now at 201.0) and compare it to last month’s average weight (202.9) to see that I am making progress. Today is a fast day, except that my two older children are home. I don’t think I’m ready for fasting quite yet. Last week went well with my having liquids until dinner, and I think I’ll try that again today. If it would be awkward not to have lunch because the kids are home, then I’ll have lunch. I’m still trying to figure out fasting. I do think the basic idea of making an effort to eat significantly less food on Fridays is a good approach for me to dampen weekend overeating.
Day 202 – Saturday, March 28, 2009: 198.2 A new low! I got through yesterday with no food except liquids until dinner. Dinner was soup and salad at the Lenten soup supper. I didn’t even notice hunger until about 3 PM. It was a pleasant day. My two older children were off school but still lounging around because they had been sick earlier in the week. Based on the description of symptoms, the pediatrician thought they had influenza. I think fasting will help with S Day overeating, although I did get up at 1 AM and am right now having Milano cookies and Snickers mini bars at 6:30 AM. Because of yesterday’s very light eating, it won’t take much more food before I reach the level of stuffed.
Day 205 – Tuesday, March 31, 2009: Today is Anne’s 15th birthday. She was born on Holy Thursday, and she’s been a blessing to us every since then. Several years ago, Tom commented on how she was getting overweight. I wasn’t so concerned about pre-pubescent weight gain, but I was alarmed by her eating habits. She would come home from school and head straight for the kitchen. She had learned disordered eating from me. On this birthday, I see that she is struggling with the diet and having some failures, but she is learning. She ran out of Exception Days last week when her cousin took her shopping for clothes, and yesterday she had an unexpected night out with a friend at the Mall of America – rides, dinner, and probably treats. She’ll have to learn to budget the Exception Days. The best way for me to help her is to serve as an example and to talk when she wants to talk. Last night, Tom told me he can tell that I’ve lost weight. I was happy to hear that!
Last edited by Kathleen on Tue Mar 31, 2009 12:27 pm, edited 74 times in total.
Wow Kathleen! I love your weight record and the fact that it is monthly and not daily. I think I'll add this to my check in.
I had tears in my eyes after I read your story about the banquet. I know how you feel. The same reason I haven't gone to a class reunion. I don't want people to say, "Boy she got fat!"
We want our kids to be proud of us and we push them to be the best they can be so we can be proud of them. Well, I have 3 teenagers and I have let myself go to take care of them. Well, I decided that I can only help them, if I do something about myself. I am hoping that by no-sing, I can encourage my daughter to loose weight. She's a beautiful girl but she's about 20 lbs over weight. She's 16 and has lots of friends but hasn't been on a date..no boy friend. Well, the plain and hurtful truth is that teenage boys don't choose fat girls. there I said it
I am glad you decide to go to the banquet. Try to have fun and enjoy your son. These times go by extremely fast.
I had tears in my eyes after I read your story about the banquet. I know how you feel. The same reason I haven't gone to a class reunion. I don't want people to say, "Boy she got fat!"
We want our kids to be proud of us and we push them to be the best they can be so we can be proud of them. Well, I have 3 teenagers and I have let myself go to take care of them. Well, I decided that I can only help them, if I do something about myself. I am hoping that by no-sing, I can encourage my daughter to loose weight. She's a beautiful girl but she's about 20 lbs over weight. She's 16 and has lots of friends but hasn't been on a date..no boy friend. Well, the plain and hurtful truth is that teenage boys don't choose fat girls. there I said it
I am glad you decide to go to the banquet. Try to have fun and enjoy your son. These times go by extremely fast.
Nothing tastes as good as thin feels!!!
The only way to achieve something important that has been out of your reach is to become more assertive. It'll take stong motivation on your part to bodly go where you need to go
The only way to achieve something important that has been out of your reach is to become more assertive. It'll take stong motivation on your part to bodly go where you need to go
caroleann,
My almost 15 year old is almost 30 pounds overweight, and she grew up observing me go from one diet to another, failing and failing and failing. More than anything else, it was the desire to help her avoid the path I have taken that got me researching diets. It was a wonderful day when she told me she was going on the diet, too.
I never really let myself go. In fact, I tried very hard to lose weight, but I just kept on having "diet backlash" -- or, as my husband accurately but not very politely put it, "feeding frenzies."
I plan to go the swim team banquet and enjoy it!
I hope my way of tracking my weight is inspiring to people. Blueskighs said that she didn't lose any weight between month 2 and month 6. From a recording of my weights on a Monday in each month, it looks like I didn't lose much then either! My weight on January 5 was exactly one pound less than my weight on October 13! Patience is a virtue...
Kathleen
My almost 15 year old is almost 30 pounds overweight, and she grew up observing me go from one diet to another, failing and failing and failing. More than anything else, it was the desire to help her avoid the path I have taken that got me researching diets. It was a wonderful day when she told me she was going on the diet, too.
I never really let myself go. In fact, I tried very hard to lose weight, but I just kept on having "diet backlash" -- or, as my husband accurately but not very politely put it, "feeding frenzies."
I plan to go the swim team banquet and enjoy it!
I hope my way of tracking my weight is inspiring to people. Blueskighs said that she didn't lose any weight between month 2 and month 6. From a recording of my weights on a Monday in each month, it looks like I didn't lose much then either! My weight on January 5 was exactly one pound less than my weight on October 13! Patience is a virtue...
Kathleen
April, 2009
The following is a list of one weight from one Monday of each month of this diet:
Day 1 – Monday, September 8, 2008: 215.0
Day 36 – Monday, October 13, 2008: 210.2
Day 57 – Monday, November 3, 2008: 209.4
Day 99 – Monday, December 15, 2008: 208.8
Day 120 – Monday, January 5, 2008: 209.2
Day 148 – Monday, February 8, 2008: 205.0
Day 176 – Monday, March 2, 2009: 203.4
April, 2009: Starting number of Exception Days = 7
Day 206 – Wednesday, April 1, 2009: (Exception Day)
Day 207 – Thursday, April 2, 2009:
Day 208 – Friday, April 3, 2009:
Day 209 – Saturday, April 4, 2009:
Day 210 – Sunday, April 5, 2009:
Day 211 – Monday, April 6, 2009: 203.6
Day 212 – Tuesday, April 7, 2009: 204.0
Day 213 – Wednesday, April 8, 2009: 203.8
Day 214 – Thursday, April 9, 2009: 202.4
Day 215 – Friday, April 10, 2009:202.8
Day 216 – Saturday, April 11, 2009: 201.4
Day 217 – Sunday, April 12, 2009: 202.6
Day 218 – Monday, April 13, 2009: 204.8
Day 219 – Tuesday, April 14, 2009: 203.0
Day 220 – Wednesday, April 15, 2009: 203.4
Day 221 – Thursday, April 16, 2009: 205.0
Day 222 – Friday, April 17, 2009: 203.6
Day 223 – Saturday, April 18, 2009: 202.2
Day 224 – Sunday, April 19, 2009: 204.0
Day 225 – Monday, April 20, 2009: 204.2
Day 226 – Tuesday, April 21, 2009: 203.6
Day 227 – Wednesday, April 22, 2009: 202.2
Day 228 – Thursday, April 23, 2009: 201.8
Day 229 – Friday, April 24, 2009: 200.0
Day 230 – Saturday, April 25, 2009: 199.0
Day 231 – Sunday, April 26, 2009:
Day 232 – Monday, April 27, 2009: (Exception Day)
Day 233 – Tuesday, April 28, 2009: 203.2
Day 234 – Wednesday, April 29, 2009: 202.8
Day 235 – Thursday, April 30, 2009: 201.4
Day 206 – Wednesday, April 1, 2009: I got the April 6, 2009 issue of Newsweek yesterday, and there was an article called “Tales of a Modern Diva.†The summary of the article is: Call it the high-maintenance generation. How our obsession with beauty is changing are kids.†Here is an excerpt from the article:
In Susie Orbach’s new book, “Bodiesâ€, the former therapist to Princess Diana argues that good looks and peak fitness are no longer a biological gift but a ceaseless pursuit. And obsession at an early age, she says, fosters a belief that these are essential components of who we are. “It primes little girls to think they should diet and dream about cosmetic-surgery options available to them, and it makes the body the primary place for self-identity.â€
Sick. I felt sick reading that. The body is “the primary place for self-identity.†What’s wrong with that? I think that, if you are focused on your own body, then you are not focused on loving others and the care and understanding that comes from loving others.
The reason why I felt so upset reading this article is that I had to ask myself: Have I not been part of the weight-obsessed culture? In tracking my weight, I have calculated averages for each month going back to when I started tracking my weight on a spreadsheet in November, 2005. Here are my average weights since the start of the diet in September, 2008:
September, 2008: 214.4 (based on weighing myself 6 days)
October, 2008: 208.0 (based on weighing myself 16 days)
November, 2008: 207.7 (based on weighing myself 21 days)
December, 2008: 206.1 (based on weighing myself 22 days)
January, 2008: 204.6 (based on weighing myself 24 days)
February, 2008: 202.9 (based on weighing myself 20 days)
March, 2009: 200.9 (based on weighing myself 27 days)
Is the most important thing about me my average weight for the month? Does everything I do in one month boil down to one number?
No.
If this diet is primarily a cure for disordered eating and only secondarily a way to lose weight, then how do I manage my life so that my focus is not on my weight?
I think this diet allows weight management to fade into the background.
It’s irritating, but I still need to remind my 8 year old and almost 10 year old to brush their teeth in the morning. It’s not a habit for them – yet.
The beauty of this diet is that following it can become a habit as effortless as brushing my teeth. While I still have much more weight to lose, I feel as though I am ready for maintenance. What is needed for maintenance? Only one thing: a way to track the number of available Exception Days. Of course, as I lose weight, it would be nice to see how much I am losing each month. I don’t want to be so engrossed by this diet that I am weighing myself daily and calculating average weights for the month. Maybe it is sufficient to just record one weight per month. I’ve seen my weight go up and down as much as three pounds for no apparent reason, and I need to accept that one weight doesn’t really reflect how I am doing. What reflects how I am doing is a trend over two or three months. I think I can manage to wait for two or three months for a trend. I think I’ll try to record my weight one Monday per month and track Exception Days and that’s about it.
Next Monday, we’ll be in Rochester for my semi-annual appointment. I may haul my scale down to Rochester, since I bought not only a very accurate scale but also a carrying case for that very accurate scale. I need to change my focus away from my weight, however. The weight loss is slow, and in the meantime life goes on – we celebrate our 16th wedding anniversary this year, and our oldest will be in college in just a little over three years. Since I was myself in college, I’ve wasted way too much time on my weight and dieting. Tom sure has been patient with me as I’ve tried diet after diet after diet. It’s time to have a different focus!
7 PM: I took an Exception Day tonight because I felt like having popcorn.
Day 209 – Saturday, April 4, 2009: Yesterday, I had only liquids until dinner, which was soup, salad and bread at a Lenten soup supper. At midnight, I ate for an hour – Snickers bar, Crunch bars, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, etc. I got up this morning and had oatmeal at a restaurant with Tom and three other people and then came home and ate some more. This afternoon, I bought another Costco jar of caramel macademian clusters and ate about ¼ of the jar (which was significantly less than I ate the last time I bought caramel macademian clusters!). At dinnertime, I abandoned the family to go lie down and then have a bath. I’d already eaten so much by dinnertime that I didn’t want to eat anymore.
It is now 8 PM. My theory that fasting on Friday would dampen S Day overeating did not work out. I still think there is something more for me to do, and it might involve limiting Friday overeating. What I’m going to try next is giving up coffee. I am constantly drinking coffee, especially since my company provides free Caribou Coffee literally feet from my cube. The basics of this diet are set for me, but I still think there is some tweaking to do. On Monday, I’ll weigh myself for the first time since last Saturday. I still think about this diet a lot, but I am less engrossed now that I’ve decided to weigh myself just once a month. The actual weight on the scale is not my main concern. My main concern is my continued out of control eating on the weekend. I’m not sure if I need to do something different or just wait. I have noticed that weekday Exception Days are not out of control. For example, on Monday, I took an S Day so I could have some popcorn. I didn’t even bother to go out to get some chocolate.
Day 210 – Sunday, April 5, 2009: This morning, I don’t feel so discouraged about having eaten so much yesterday. After all, the last time I got those caramel macademian clusters, I ate almost the whole jar. Yesterday, I ate about ¼ of the jar – probably about 800 calories worth of food. I had two cups of coffee ice cream. I had no Haagen Dazs bars. The theory I am following is that N Day habits of moderation will eventually dampen over the top eating on S Days since I don’t like how I feel when I eat too much on S Days. That was definitely true last night. Tom rented the classic movie “Duck Soupâ€, and I didn’t stay around to watch it. I went to bed about 8:30. In other words, I missed time with my family because I ate so much yesterday. I don’t want to do that again. I will, I’m sure, but over time I will start to eat less to avoid feeling bad. Somehow, I think, there is no shortcut here. I can’t just reason to being reasonable. Instead, I have to experience the unpleasant consequences of over the top overeating. S Day overeating is self-correcting. I just have to wait.
Day 211 – Monday, April 6, 2009: 203.6. I am disappointed by my weight this morning, up .2 pound from last month's Monday weight. What happened? I hate to admit it, but I tried to move this diet along faster, and my attempt backfired into "diet backlash." I tried a modified fast on Fridays -- only liquids until dinner and then a light dinner. The result last weekend was that I got up at midnight and was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I wasn't just eating sweets. I think I'm setting aside the idea of fasting on Fridays for a time, although I am required to fast this Friday for Good Friday.
On a good note, we are at the Mayo Clinic for my semi-annual appointment, and we stayed at a hotel as a mini family vacation. It was a stretch to call the pool area a water park, but the kids had fun. I will have breakfast and take a shuttle to the Mayo Clinic while the rest of the family sleeps in. This was my celebration of getting below 200 pounds. I did get below 200 pounds, and I need to celebrate that I am headed in the right direction. There are just a few ups and downs.
3:45 PM: On the boring ride between Rochester and the Twin Cities, I came up with another idea for dampening overeating on S Days. I’ll write down what I eat outside N Day rules. That’s it. The problem with S Day overeating is that it really is like a shark’s “feeding frenzy.†I just eat without any sort of consciousness of what I am eating. I have put myself on so many 1,000 calorie per day – read starvation – diets that I am conditioned to eat in a way that is appropriate for a starving person who suddenly is able to eat. Although I am no longer starving myself with low calorie diets, the memory of the starvation diets lingers in my emotional brain. I could make a comparison to how I feel when I remember my 8 month old daughter falling down 12 steps. There is no rational way to think about that memory. It was a horrible moment in my life, and I am grateful to the pediatrician who examined her about 40 minutes later and told me “You’re lucky†and “She’s giggling. That’s a good sign.†Although I can assure myself over and over again that I am not going back on those starvation diets which allowed me to keep my weight low for about 10 years, I am not going to get over the memory. Instead, I need to do something which is incompatible with “feeding frenzy†eating. Writing down what I eat is incompatible with eating in a way that I am not even aware of what I’m eating. It seems like a possible approach that will work, so I’ll try it. This diet needs tweaking, but I just don’t know how. I believe in having restrictions, in having “unconditional permission to eat†on the weekends, and in accumulating two Exception Days per month. There needs to be something more, however, or I’ll be stuck at 200 pounds for the rest of my life. This idea of writing down what I eat outside N Day rules has some appeal in that I still can eat whatever I want. I just have to write down what falls outside N Day rules!
8:45 PM: Since I don’t have the “feeding frenzy†problem on Exception Days, I’ll just write down what doesn’t follow N Day rules on S Days. I won’t do it on Exception Days. This seems very legalistic. It is also very legalistic to wait until midnight on Saturdays to eat. Maybe legalistic works for me.
9:30 PM: I’ve had the luxury of having a lot of time to think today. The rest of the week won’t be quite so calm, since my two older children have spring break and I’m trying to plan the summer. Today, though, I could think about this diet. I think it is a misnomer to call this way of eating a diet. It’s more of a cure, a cure for disordered eating. People who diet focus on what they eat and the number on a scale. The No S Diet is more about how to eat – how much and when. It’s a cure for disordered eating, which has obesity as its most obvious symptom. If I focus on my weight, I focus on a symptom. If I focus on my eating, I focus on the cause of my obesity. By focusing on normalizing my eating habits, I am addressing the cause of my overeating, and my weight will normalize after an extended period of time of my eating being normal. Starvation diets are unnecessary and often backfire. This approach is about normal eating, not dieting.
Day 212 – Tuesday, April 7, 2009: 204.0. I was awake for about an hour last night thinking about the whole problem of S Days gone wild or, as Tom puts it, “feeding frenzies.†It seems like a problem, but is it? I know there is a psychological disorder called Binge Eating Disorder (BED). The term seems so sanitized for what is a frantic and indiscriminate overeating. Why? Why do I do this? I have compared my eating behavior to what happened when my brother held me underwater when I was 10 years old. I had incredible strength to push myself to the surface of the water. It seems to me that these feeding frenzies are both positive and natural. They aren’t disordered at all. They are part of the body’s survival mechanism, just like pushing myself to the surface of the water was when I held underwater. All those years of dieting resulted in a fear of any sort of restriction.
Now what? I think I need to stop viewing feeding frenzies as a problem and instead view them as part of my body’s will to survive. I can continue to allow “unconditional permission to eat†on the weekend. The only change I am making is to become conscious of what I am eating by writing down what I eat outside my three meals. That shouldn’t be too hard. I thought a modified fast on Fridays would dampen weekend overeating, but that didn’t work. There was solid logic behind that approach, too. I’m just going to keep trying different ideas until I find one that works. At least I’m no longer gaining weight!
Day 214 – Thursday, April 9, 2009: 202.4. I think I’m going to weigh myself daily so that I know how I’m doing. The scale doesn’t lie. I thought I was doing fine during the period of time that I wasn’t weighing myself, but I went from 198.2 on a Saturday to 203.6 on the Monday nine days later.
Day 215 – Friday, April 10, 2009: 202.8. It’s Good Friday, our kids are home from school, and all I can think about is this: Why do I weigh 202.8 on a Friday? Today’s a Fast Day for Catholics, so I should have a lower weight tomorrow, but I’m still distressed by the increase from 198.2 about two weeks ago. What happened? I did stop weighing myself so I would be so focused on my weight. I think I’ll weigh myself daily. Also, I have been toying with the idea of writing down what I eat on S Days if my eating is not within N Day guidelines. This morning, I decided maybe that that additional rule should be triggered if I’m not below a target weight. I dropped the idea of a target weight, but now I’m resurrecting it. Here is what I had before as target weights:
October, 2008: Below 216.
November, 2008: Below, 214.
December, 2008: Below 212.
January, 2009: Below 210.
February, 2009: Below 208.
March, 2009: Below 206.
April, 2009: Below 204.
My goal weight for this month is below 204. My weight today of 202.8 is below 204. If I’m below my goal weight on a Saturday, then I don’t need to be writing down what I eat outside of N Day rules. It’s reassuring to be looking at the weights. Today, I am 13.2 pounds below my start weight 215 days ago. Maybe I need to remind myself that I’ve made progress. It seems slow, but “inch by inch, life’s a cinch.†I’m getting there. I just have to be patient.
11:30 PM: The required fast on Good Friday was difficult for me. I went to bed at 8 PM just so I wouldn’t have to think about eating, and now I am up waiting for midnight. I do think that periodic fasting may be a way to help me to not be so focused on food, but I’m not at the point where I can handle it well. I’m happy with the idea of writing down non N Day eating behavior on S Days if my weight is above my target weight. It is a real surprise to me how difficult it is to lose weight even at my current obese weight.
Day 216 – Saturday, April 11, 2009: 201.4. What I’ve come to recognize is that the end of diet binge – or, as my husband calls it, a “feeding frenzy†– is the enemy of traditional diets. For this diet, the “feeding frenzy†is allowed but only on non N Days. The “feeding frenzy†is a symptom of the person’s will to survive. It is not a problem. It is not an emotional problem or a physical problem or a psychological problem. It is how we are made. We are made to eat everything in sight when there is food available and we have been starving.
I don’t have to worry about my decision to write down what I eat on S Days if my weight is below my target weight, because I weigh 201.4 today and my target weight for the month is 204. Still, like fasting on Fridays and restricting S Days to just Sundays, this decision may be off track. I may just need to wait and wait and wait for the weight to come off slowly. I’ve been on diets since I was 17 and I’m now 50, so I am very familiar – as is Tom – with my body’s will to survive being evident in the “feeding frenzy†that is a reaction to starvation. N Days are not starvation diets, so S Days should end up becoming more and more normal. I was up at midnight to eat because of the Good Friday fast, but I don’t have to worry about another religious fast until Ash Wednesday in spring of next year. My body will learn, over time, that it will be fed. The days of periodic starvations are over.
5:45 PM: I’ve often wondered what is the difference between the person who has a weight problem and the person who does not. I knew it wasn’t a tendency to be self-indulgent or lazy because there are just too many overweight people, like my son’s Scoutmaster and his wife, who are very giving and caring. I think I finally figured it out: it’s gullibility. Those of us with weight problems have a tendency to believe cultural myths like that hunger – even mild hunger – is a crises, that snacks are necessary for a person to keep up energy, and that overweight people lack willpower. It’s all nonsense. It’s taken me 35 years to figure out that I believed what just wasn’t true.
Day 217 – Sunday, April 12, 2009: 202.6. It’s 9:30 on Easter Sunday morning, and I am stuffed with chocolate candies and jelly beans and a croissant. Why have I eaten so much? I think the reason why is that I could. It’s an S Day, after all. As I sat eating the croissant, I thought back to the book Intuitive Eating and realized that the basic premise is correct: that you need to tune in to your body and become sensitive to what is pleasurable. The last half of the croissant was anything but pleasurable. I’ve eaten so much in the last 36 hours that I feel nauseous. This is a turning point for me. I will continue to follow N Day rules but what I’ll do on the weekend is try to become sensitive to what is pleasurable. I no longer need to eat with the frantic reaction of someone subjected to periodic fasts. I’m free of the fear of starvation.
6 PM: I think that this diet is an easy counterbalance to the cultural environment that makes me susceptible to obesity. After all, do I want the focus of my life to be a number on the scale, or do I want it to be getting to know my husband and children? I think of Karen Carpenter singing, “Let’s take a lifetime to say I knew you well.†How ironic that the song that comes to mind is one performed by a woman who died at age 32 from complications due to anorexia.
My life did not end at 32, but it has been very much damaged by my weight problem. I’ve also wasted an incredible amount of time researching weight loss programs. All that is ending. This diet is a simple and effective way for me not to be pulled into the cultural myths that snacking is necessary, that weight loss is a pursuit of incredible willpower, that hunger is a crises…. Dieting is all about me. I want my life to be all about finding my own path in life and being with my family, enjoying them and getting to know them and supporting them as they find their paths in life.
Day 218 – Monday, April 13, 2009: 204.8. My attempts at tweaking the diet to get faster results are backfiring. I think I’ll stick with the one tweak that seems to work well for me, which is having an accumulation of two Exception Days per month and no Special Days other than the weekends. I am spending a lot of time trying to tweak this diet and I just need to be patient and let it work. Maybe I can sit on it and decide not to do anything about trying to tweak it until we have a week at Family Camp at our son’s Boy Scout camp. It’s really beautiful there, and there’s a lot of time when the girls are in activities and I’m left to chat with other mothers. That’s in mid-July, and by then I’ll have another two months of following this diet. I need a break from my own efforts to speed up the process. This pattern of bouncing around trying new things is reminding me of all the diets I would try, one after another. I wouldn’t spend long on one but would flit from one to another, and I’d do that for years on end. It’s time to settle down and stick with one approach. Maybe I should even wait until July of next year, when we’re back at Family Camp, before I try tweaking this diet. By then, I’ll know if my weight loss has ended. At this point, I can’t tell how much I’d weigh if I just stuck with the Exception Day modification. By July of next year, I will know if I am still trending downward in weight.
When I think about my attempts at tweaking this diet, I think of our dog wolfing down a type of dog treat called Greenies. We taught her the command “Leave it†so well that she is not quite sure she’ll get to eat her treat even after she’s been given it. She takes the Greenie, runs off to be alone, and wolfs it down. I think the same thing is happening with me when I keep on changing this diet. Rationally, I know I won’t be on starvation diets again, but the “emotional brain†takes over and wolfs down food in preparation for a change in my thinking about dieting. It’s like the dog being conditioned with the command “Leave it†to think that her Greenie will be taken away. We’ve stopped saying “Leave it†when she gets a Greenie, but the effect of our having her leave a Greenie lingers on. She’s been conditioned to fear the loss of her treat, and I’ve conditioned myself to expect a change in my diet plans so I eat while I can. I wolf down food while I can. I need to keep assuring myself that “Patience is a virtueâ€, and I can settle down now with the decision that – no matter what – I’m following this approach until July of next year.
Day 220 – Wednesday, April 15, 2009: 203.4. I’m reading a different diet book which emphasizes eating lots of fruits and vegetables, so at about 8:50 PM, I decided that I could snack if it is only fruit or vegetables. Before I had taken a bite, I opened the refrigerator, noticed some yogurt, and realized that this approach was the “slippery slope†back to disordered eating. I ate a clemetine, then a cupful of blackberries, and finally a bowl of cereal. My son saw me having a bowl of cereal and said, “Hey! It’s not a Special Day.†I told him I took an Exception Day, he asked why, and I told him “Because I felt like it.†Well, that’s not exactly true. I talked myself into something that I instantly realized wouldn’t work. I’d say that’s a very good use of an Exception Day!
Day 221 – Thursday, April 16, 2009: 205.0. Now I’m up to 205 on a Thursday. What do I do differently? I’m not sure I do anything differently. Last night, after recording what I ate, I continued eating, finishing off with a bowl of cereal and one of those uncrustable peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I was in bed by 9:30. What I’m finding is that I’m starting to want food that is better for you. My daughter a few weeks ago said, “I’m kinda sick of sweets.†Well, it starting to happen to me, too. After all, how many Haagen Dazs bars can a person eat in a lifetime? Last night’s eating was not of sweets except for ice cream because that’s all that was in the house, but what I really wanted was to expand my eating options beyond what is available with this diet. There’s a little rebel in me. The little rebel is telling me that weight loss from this diet has ended, and I need to go on to something else. Luckily, I can back to my weight loss journal from before I found this diet and read about how obsessed I was with food and how I spent so much time evaluating my hunger level and how much I felt like a failure. I can compare how I felt then with what happened two days ago, which is that I worked straight from 9 until 3 without thinking about food or eating. I’d had my typical breakfast of a Clementine and a bowl of cereal, and I experienced no discomfort by waiting so long to eat. It’s so wonderful to be able to focus on something other than my weight, and I don’t want to give that up to go pursue some other approach to dieting. I am waiting!
Day 222 – Friday, April 17, 2009: 203.6. Last night, I spoke with my mother on the phone, and she said that she thought this diet sounded terrible since you eat lots of sweets on the weekend and none during the week. She thought that could cause glucose levels to skyrocket on the weekend and cause health problems like diabetes. I got a chuckle out of that. It was exactly my concern. I hadn’t told her last summer that I had a glucose level of 108, which means I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes. I told them when my weight went below 200 but haven’t said my weight went back up.
It was a thought-provoking conversation for me. What exactly happened that my weight went up? What happened was that I ate lots of sweets, especially this past Sunday which was Easter. My daughter said this a few weeks ago and now I’m thinking it: “I’m kinda sick of sweets.†Had I followed the Intuitive Eating approach of allowing myself “unconditional permission to eat†all the time, I may have reached this point as well. The beauty of this diet is that the weekday N Days let me know how it feels to eat healthfully, and the S Days are in contrast to that. I feel better when I don’t eat so much and eat foods that are better for me. I had my two younger daughters at Costco earlier this week, and I pointed out a jar of caramel macademian clusters to them. The younger daughter made a face! This diet does seem to be working in its own way. The measurement of success cannot be according to the scale. It is according to how I feel about how much I eat and what I eat. I’m starting to gravitate towards eating more fruits and vegetables. If I could eat anything right now, it certainly wouldn’t be a Haagen Dazs bar or a caramel macademian cluster. I think it would be a piece of toast with blueberry jam.
Day 223 – Saturday, April 18, 2009: 202.2. It is Day 223, and I hit a wall. It’s an S Day. This morning, Tom and I had breakfast with other adults. I ordered dry toast and an egg white omlette. I wanted to try the egg white omlette and decided it was tasteless (but ate it anyway), but I enjoyed jam on unbuttered toast. After breakfast, we went to get my S Day food. I bought a box of biscotti. The package had a big label: 110 calories per biscotti. I had two biscotti. It is now 9:30 AM, and my S Day eating of treats can be precisely calculated at 220 calories.
What happened? I think this experience reflects the trait of human nature that you want what you cannot have. I can have anything I want today, so I choose only what I really want and not just whatever I can have. My “emotional brain†is finally satisfied that I can eat whatever I want. I don’t have to actually eat whatever I want in order to be convinced that I can have whatever I want. It took 223 days for me to reach this point after 35 years of my “rational brain†scolding my “emotional brain†for wanting to eat what I want to eat. I’m having difficulty trying to explain this in part because I’m surprised by how completely I have left behind the driving, almost frantic, desire to eat whatever is in sight. Will this last? I don’t know. I’m not confident it will. Perhaps it will be like a dance in which I’ll have longer and longer periods of not wanting to stuff myself. Perhaps it will be like falling off a cliff with no turning back. We’ll see. However it goes, I’m sticking with this diet. I’m very happy that I am so content with two biscotti!
Day 224 – Sunday, April 19, 2009: 204.0. I reverted to my typical S Day behavior yesterday, but yesterday morning’s experience gave me a glimpse of where I am headed. My S Days will calm down. I just have to give it time! In the afternoon yesterday, all four kids went with me to the grocery store to get their “S Day treats.†I’m thinking that this diet could be called The Glutton’s Diet!
Day 229 – Friday, April 24, 2009: 200.0. It was nice to see 200.0 on the scale today. For some reason, my weight went up this month. I’ve been following N Day rules, so I am puzzled. What is interesting about this is that I can now wear pants that I bought two years ago and couldn’t wear previously. Also, my taste in food seems to be shifting. I’m sick of sweets. I want fruits and vegetables even when I can have sweets. The most encouraging part of this diet is the fact that I am feeling less and less hungry.
Yesterday was a busy day for me. I hate getting busy because I get frazzled. I had to find something to wear for our youngest child’s First Communion and then pick up the kids from school and then take our middle daughter to interview my brother for a school project. I sat at Starbucks during the interview while cutting letters out of felt for a banner that had to be handed in today. The interview started at 4 and lasted until about 5:30. At about 5, it dawned on me that I had not had lunch. I didn’t feel hungry. I just realized that I had forgotten to eat lunch because I was so focused on trying to find something to wear for tomorrow’s First Communion.
Earlier this week, I ran into someone who was returning from lunch, and he was carrying an entire box of Tootsie Pops. He offered one to me, and I said I didn’t want one because I was on a diet where I didn’t eat sweets during the week. He pulled out a pomegranate Tootsie Pop and said, “Here. Have one. It’s loaded with antioxidants.â€
This guy is really friendly, really helpful, and overweight. I thanked him for the Tootsie Pop and took it back to my desk where I put it in the mug with all my pencils and pens. Gullible. The defining characteristic of overweight people, I think, is gullible. They aren’t lazy or self-centered or self-indulgent. They just believe what they’re told. I am not gullible enough to be believe that a pomegranate-flavored Tootsie Pop is good for me and “loaded with antioxidantsâ€, but I have bought into the whole notion that my food intake must be carefully monitored. I thought that my energy would be sapped if I couldn’t eat frequently. I thought that the mildest of hunger pains was a alarm to eat immediately. It’s all nonsense.
My weight will come off. It will come off slowly, but it will come off. I never again have to have Styrofoam tasting rice cakes or bowls of popcorn. I have learned to tune out hunger unless it is mealtime.
My thoughts yesterday were of coming to a good stopping place at work because I’m not working today and finding clothes for me for First Communion and greeting my brother and enjoying time with my middle girl and finishing the First Communion banner and getting my son to Scouts. There is so much time available in my life that I didn’t have previously. It’s wonderful!
Day 232 – Monday, April 27, 2009: I decided to stop weighing myself so much. My intent was to assure myself that I was losing weight by looking at average weights for the month and seeing a definite downward trend.
My assumption was that my daily weight might fluctuate but my monthly average weight would show a consistent downward trend. That didn’t happen.
Here are my average weights since the start of the program:
September, 2008: 214.4 (based on weighing myself 6 days)
October, 2008: 208.0 (based on weighing myself 16 days)
November, 2008: 207.7 (based on weighing myself 21 days)
December, 2008: 206.1 (based on weighing myself 22 days)
January, 2008: 204.6 (based on weighing myself 24 days)
February, 2008: 202.9 (based on weighing myself 20 days)
March, 2009: 200.9 (based on weighing myself 27 days)
April, 2009: 202.9 (based on weighing myself 20 days)
At this point, my average weight is exactly the same as my average weight in February and is exactly two pounds higher than my average weight in March.
What do I do now? I stop focusing so much on my weight. After all, the big benefit of this diet is a cure for disordered eating. Do I want to revert back to being obsessed about hunger and food? No. No. No. I am going to accept whatever weight results from this diet and however long it takes to reach that weight. There’s no point in my weighing myself daily. In fact, that habit keeps me where I don’t want to be – focused on my weight.
I will weigh myself, I’m sure, but just less often. This Friday, I had a contest with the kids to see who got closest to my weight on May 1, and whoever does gets $30. The contest began on Christmas Day when I weighed 207 pounds. This is my way of keeping the kids tuned in to my weight loss, since I want them to follow this approach when they are older and tempted to try restrictive diets or tune in to hunger diets. I want them to have learned from me. I’ll also weigh myself on one Monday per month so I can chart a general downward trend. Other than that, I want to be less focused on my weight which would indicate giving up the habit of weighing myself daily.
Day 234 – Wednesday, April 29, 2009: 202.8. I can give myself all sorts of reasons why I shouldn’t weigh myself, but I am still impatient to see how much I weigh. I’m not going to expend energy on resisting weighing myself.
Day 235 – Thursday, April 30, 2009: 201.4. What a lousy month as far as weight loss is concerned! Based on 24 weighings, my average weight went from 200.9 in March to 202.8 in April. Why? I have no idea. If I knew that t would take me five years to get down to 140 and then maintain it, I would be happy. What is most frustrating to me about this diet is that I don’t know what will result from following the diet. I have resolved to follow it no matter what, but I’m open to tweaking it if my weight does not drop to an acceptable level. I think maybe I should just set aside thinking about this diet until next summer and see what results I have then.
5 PM: Kirstie Alley was on Oprah today to talk about her 75 weight loss with Jenny Craig, her gaining of those 75 pounds plus 10 more, and her plans to be really fit – and even in a bikini – by November. I felt really sad. Actually, I felt that she had been trying to do what I’ve tried to do – “crack the code†with weight loss. I doubt she has. She wasn’t talking about what she was going to do to lose and maintain a lower weight. Instead, she was talking about her goal being achieved before the end of the year. I had the kids watch the show with me, and I told them that I thought I’d be where she is if it weren’t for No S. I no longer am in the binge-starve cycle. The weight loss is slow, and it’s not even steady, but I’m confident that I’ll stay with it because this lifestyle is sane and getting saner as the S Days calm down. I wish Kirstie the best, but the show just makes me even more thankful that I’m following this approach.
The following is a list of one weight from one Monday of each month of this diet:
Day 1 – Monday, September 8, 2008: 215.0
Day 36 – Monday, October 13, 2008: 210.2
Day 57 – Monday, November 3, 2008: 209.4
Day 99 – Monday, December 15, 2008: 208.8
Day 120 – Monday, January 5, 2008: 209.2
Day 148 – Monday, February 8, 2008: 205.0
Day 176 – Monday, March 2, 2009: 203.4
April, 2009: Starting number of Exception Days = 7
Day 206 – Wednesday, April 1, 2009: (Exception Day)
Day 207 – Thursday, April 2, 2009:
Day 208 – Friday, April 3, 2009:
Day 209 – Saturday, April 4, 2009:
Day 210 – Sunday, April 5, 2009:
Day 211 – Monday, April 6, 2009: 203.6
Day 212 – Tuesday, April 7, 2009: 204.0
Day 213 – Wednesday, April 8, 2009: 203.8
Day 214 – Thursday, April 9, 2009: 202.4
Day 215 – Friday, April 10, 2009:202.8
Day 216 – Saturday, April 11, 2009: 201.4
Day 217 – Sunday, April 12, 2009: 202.6
Day 218 – Monday, April 13, 2009: 204.8
Day 219 – Tuesday, April 14, 2009: 203.0
Day 220 – Wednesday, April 15, 2009: 203.4
Day 221 – Thursday, April 16, 2009: 205.0
Day 222 – Friday, April 17, 2009: 203.6
Day 223 – Saturday, April 18, 2009: 202.2
Day 224 – Sunday, April 19, 2009: 204.0
Day 225 – Monday, April 20, 2009: 204.2
Day 226 – Tuesday, April 21, 2009: 203.6
Day 227 – Wednesday, April 22, 2009: 202.2
Day 228 – Thursday, April 23, 2009: 201.8
Day 229 – Friday, April 24, 2009: 200.0
Day 230 – Saturday, April 25, 2009: 199.0
Day 231 – Sunday, April 26, 2009:
Day 232 – Monday, April 27, 2009: (Exception Day)
Day 233 – Tuesday, April 28, 2009: 203.2
Day 234 – Wednesday, April 29, 2009: 202.8
Day 235 – Thursday, April 30, 2009: 201.4
Day 206 – Wednesday, April 1, 2009: I got the April 6, 2009 issue of Newsweek yesterday, and there was an article called “Tales of a Modern Diva.†The summary of the article is: Call it the high-maintenance generation. How our obsession with beauty is changing are kids.†Here is an excerpt from the article:
In Susie Orbach’s new book, “Bodiesâ€, the former therapist to Princess Diana argues that good looks and peak fitness are no longer a biological gift but a ceaseless pursuit. And obsession at an early age, she says, fosters a belief that these are essential components of who we are. “It primes little girls to think they should diet and dream about cosmetic-surgery options available to them, and it makes the body the primary place for self-identity.â€
Sick. I felt sick reading that. The body is “the primary place for self-identity.†What’s wrong with that? I think that, if you are focused on your own body, then you are not focused on loving others and the care and understanding that comes from loving others.
The reason why I felt so upset reading this article is that I had to ask myself: Have I not been part of the weight-obsessed culture? In tracking my weight, I have calculated averages for each month going back to when I started tracking my weight on a spreadsheet in November, 2005. Here are my average weights since the start of the diet in September, 2008:
September, 2008: 214.4 (based on weighing myself 6 days)
October, 2008: 208.0 (based on weighing myself 16 days)
November, 2008: 207.7 (based on weighing myself 21 days)
December, 2008: 206.1 (based on weighing myself 22 days)
January, 2008: 204.6 (based on weighing myself 24 days)
February, 2008: 202.9 (based on weighing myself 20 days)
March, 2009: 200.9 (based on weighing myself 27 days)
Is the most important thing about me my average weight for the month? Does everything I do in one month boil down to one number?
No.
If this diet is primarily a cure for disordered eating and only secondarily a way to lose weight, then how do I manage my life so that my focus is not on my weight?
I think this diet allows weight management to fade into the background.
It’s irritating, but I still need to remind my 8 year old and almost 10 year old to brush their teeth in the morning. It’s not a habit for them – yet.
The beauty of this diet is that following it can become a habit as effortless as brushing my teeth. While I still have much more weight to lose, I feel as though I am ready for maintenance. What is needed for maintenance? Only one thing: a way to track the number of available Exception Days. Of course, as I lose weight, it would be nice to see how much I am losing each month. I don’t want to be so engrossed by this diet that I am weighing myself daily and calculating average weights for the month. Maybe it is sufficient to just record one weight per month. I’ve seen my weight go up and down as much as three pounds for no apparent reason, and I need to accept that one weight doesn’t really reflect how I am doing. What reflects how I am doing is a trend over two or three months. I think I can manage to wait for two or three months for a trend. I think I’ll try to record my weight one Monday per month and track Exception Days and that’s about it.
Next Monday, we’ll be in Rochester for my semi-annual appointment. I may haul my scale down to Rochester, since I bought not only a very accurate scale but also a carrying case for that very accurate scale. I need to change my focus away from my weight, however. The weight loss is slow, and in the meantime life goes on – we celebrate our 16th wedding anniversary this year, and our oldest will be in college in just a little over three years. Since I was myself in college, I’ve wasted way too much time on my weight and dieting. Tom sure has been patient with me as I’ve tried diet after diet after diet. It’s time to have a different focus!
7 PM: I took an Exception Day tonight because I felt like having popcorn.
Day 209 – Saturday, April 4, 2009: Yesterday, I had only liquids until dinner, which was soup, salad and bread at a Lenten soup supper. At midnight, I ate for an hour – Snickers bar, Crunch bars, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, etc. I got up this morning and had oatmeal at a restaurant with Tom and three other people and then came home and ate some more. This afternoon, I bought another Costco jar of caramel macademian clusters and ate about ¼ of the jar (which was significantly less than I ate the last time I bought caramel macademian clusters!). At dinnertime, I abandoned the family to go lie down and then have a bath. I’d already eaten so much by dinnertime that I didn’t want to eat anymore.
It is now 8 PM. My theory that fasting on Friday would dampen S Day overeating did not work out. I still think there is something more for me to do, and it might involve limiting Friday overeating. What I’m going to try next is giving up coffee. I am constantly drinking coffee, especially since my company provides free Caribou Coffee literally feet from my cube. The basics of this diet are set for me, but I still think there is some tweaking to do. On Monday, I’ll weigh myself for the first time since last Saturday. I still think about this diet a lot, but I am less engrossed now that I’ve decided to weigh myself just once a month. The actual weight on the scale is not my main concern. My main concern is my continued out of control eating on the weekend. I’m not sure if I need to do something different or just wait. I have noticed that weekday Exception Days are not out of control. For example, on Monday, I took an S Day so I could have some popcorn. I didn’t even bother to go out to get some chocolate.
Day 210 – Sunday, April 5, 2009: This morning, I don’t feel so discouraged about having eaten so much yesterday. After all, the last time I got those caramel macademian clusters, I ate almost the whole jar. Yesterday, I ate about ¼ of the jar – probably about 800 calories worth of food. I had two cups of coffee ice cream. I had no Haagen Dazs bars. The theory I am following is that N Day habits of moderation will eventually dampen over the top eating on S Days since I don’t like how I feel when I eat too much on S Days. That was definitely true last night. Tom rented the classic movie “Duck Soupâ€, and I didn’t stay around to watch it. I went to bed about 8:30. In other words, I missed time with my family because I ate so much yesterday. I don’t want to do that again. I will, I’m sure, but over time I will start to eat less to avoid feeling bad. Somehow, I think, there is no shortcut here. I can’t just reason to being reasonable. Instead, I have to experience the unpleasant consequences of over the top overeating. S Day overeating is self-correcting. I just have to wait.
Day 211 – Monday, April 6, 2009: 203.6. I am disappointed by my weight this morning, up .2 pound from last month's Monday weight. What happened? I hate to admit it, but I tried to move this diet along faster, and my attempt backfired into "diet backlash." I tried a modified fast on Fridays -- only liquids until dinner and then a light dinner. The result last weekend was that I got up at midnight and was eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I wasn't just eating sweets. I think I'm setting aside the idea of fasting on Fridays for a time, although I am required to fast this Friday for Good Friday.
On a good note, we are at the Mayo Clinic for my semi-annual appointment, and we stayed at a hotel as a mini family vacation. It was a stretch to call the pool area a water park, but the kids had fun. I will have breakfast and take a shuttle to the Mayo Clinic while the rest of the family sleeps in. This was my celebration of getting below 200 pounds. I did get below 200 pounds, and I need to celebrate that I am headed in the right direction. There are just a few ups and downs.
3:45 PM: On the boring ride between Rochester and the Twin Cities, I came up with another idea for dampening overeating on S Days. I’ll write down what I eat outside N Day rules. That’s it. The problem with S Day overeating is that it really is like a shark’s “feeding frenzy.†I just eat without any sort of consciousness of what I am eating. I have put myself on so many 1,000 calorie per day – read starvation – diets that I am conditioned to eat in a way that is appropriate for a starving person who suddenly is able to eat. Although I am no longer starving myself with low calorie diets, the memory of the starvation diets lingers in my emotional brain. I could make a comparison to how I feel when I remember my 8 month old daughter falling down 12 steps. There is no rational way to think about that memory. It was a horrible moment in my life, and I am grateful to the pediatrician who examined her about 40 minutes later and told me “You’re lucky†and “She’s giggling. That’s a good sign.†Although I can assure myself over and over again that I am not going back on those starvation diets which allowed me to keep my weight low for about 10 years, I am not going to get over the memory. Instead, I need to do something which is incompatible with “feeding frenzy†eating. Writing down what I eat is incompatible with eating in a way that I am not even aware of what I’m eating. It seems like a possible approach that will work, so I’ll try it. This diet needs tweaking, but I just don’t know how. I believe in having restrictions, in having “unconditional permission to eat†on the weekends, and in accumulating two Exception Days per month. There needs to be something more, however, or I’ll be stuck at 200 pounds for the rest of my life. This idea of writing down what I eat outside N Day rules has some appeal in that I still can eat whatever I want. I just have to write down what falls outside N Day rules!
8:45 PM: Since I don’t have the “feeding frenzy†problem on Exception Days, I’ll just write down what doesn’t follow N Day rules on S Days. I won’t do it on Exception Days. This seems very legalistic. It is also very legalistic to wait until midnight on Saturdays to eat. Maybe legalistic works for me.
9:30 PM: I’ve had the luxury of having a lot of time to think today. The rest of the week won’t be quite so calm, since my two older children have spring break and I’m trying to plan the summer. Today, though, I could think about this diet. I think it is a misnomer to call this way of eating a diet. It’s more of a cure, a cure for disordered eating. People who diet focus on what they eat and the number on a scale. The No S Diet is more about how to eat – how much and when. It’s a cure for disordered eating, which has obesity as its most obvious symptom. If I focus on my weight, I focus on a symptom. If I focus on my eating, I focus on the cause of my obesity. By focusing on normalizing my eating habits, I am addressing the cause of my overeating, and my weight will normalize after an extended period of time of my eating being normal. Starvation diets are unnecessary and often backfire. This approach is about normal eating, not dieting.
Day 212 – Tuesday, April 7, 2009: 204.0. I was awake for about an hour last night thinking about the whole problem of S Days gone wild or, as Tom puts it, “feeding frenzies.†It seems like a problem, but is it? I know there is a psychological disorder called Binge Eating Disorder (BED). The term seems so sanitized for what is a frantic and indiscriminate overeating. Why? Why do I do this? I have compared my eating behavior to what happened when my brother held me underwater when I was 10 years old. I had incredible strength to push myself to the surface of the water. It seems to me that these feeding frenzies are both positive and natural. They aren’t disordered at all. They are part of the body’s survival mechanism, just like pushing myself to the surface of the water was when I held underwater. All those years of dieting resulted in a fear of any sort of restriction.
Now what? I think I need to stop viewing feeding frenzies as a problem and instead view them as part of my body’s will to survive. I can continue to allow “unconditional permission to eat†on the weekend. The only change I am making is to become conscious of what I am eating by writing down what I eat outside my three meals. That shouldn’t be too hard. I thought a modified fast on Fridays would dampen weekend overeating, but that didn’t work. There was solid logic behind that approach, too. I’m just going to keep trying different ideas until I find one that works. At least I’m no longer gaining weight!
Day 214 – Thursday, April 9, 2009: 202.4. I think I’m going to weigh myself daily so that I know how I’m doing. The scale doesn’t lie. I thought I was doing fine during the period of time that I wasn’t weighing myself, but I went from 198.2 on a Saturday to 203.6 on the Monday nine days later.
Day 215 – Friday, April 10, 2009: 202.8. It’s Good Friday, our kids are home from school, and all I can think about is this: Why do I weigh 202.8 on a Friday? Today’s a Fast Day for Catholics, so I should have a lower weight tomorrow, but I’m still distressed by the increase from 198.2 about two weeks ago. What happened? I did stop weighing myself so I would be so focused on my weight. I think I’ll weigh myself daily. Also, I have been toying with the idea of writing down what I eat on S Days if my eating is not within N Day guidelines. This morning, I decided maybe that that additional rule should be triggered if I’m not below a target weight. I dropped the idea of a target weight, but now I’m resurrecting it. Here is what I had before as target weights:
October, 2008: Below 216.
November, 2008: Below, 214.
December, 2008: Below 212.
January, 2009: Below 210.
February, 2009: Below 208.
March, 2009: Below 206.
April, 2009: Below 204.
My goal weight for this month is below 204. My weight today of 202.8 is below 204. If I’m below my goal weight on a Saturday, then I don’t need to be writing down what I eat outside of N Day rules. It’s reassuring to be looking at the weights. Today, I am 13.2 pounds below my start weight 215 days ago. Maybe I need to remind myself that I’ve made progress. It seems slow, but “inch by inch, life’s a cinch.†I’m getting there. I just have to be patient.
11:30 PM: The required fast on Good Friday was difficult for me. I went to bed at 8 PM just so I wouldn’t have to think about eating, and now I am up waiting for midnight. I do think that periodic fasting may be a way to help me to not be so focused on food, but I’m not at the point where I can handle it well. I’m happy with the idea of writing down non N Day eating behavior on S Days if my weight is above my target weight. It is a real surprise to me how difficult it is to lose weight even at my current obese weight.
Day 216 – Saturday, April 11, 2009: 201.4. What I’ve come to recognize is that the end of diet binge – or, as my husband calls it, a “feeding frenzy†– is the enemy of traditional diets. For this diet, the “feeding frenzy†is allowed but only on non N Days. The “feeding frenzy†is a symptom of the person’s will to survive. It is not a problem. It is not an emotional problem or a physical problem or a psychological problem. It is how we are made. We are made to eat everything in sight when there is food available and we have been starving.
I don’t have to worry about my decision to write down what I eat on S Days if my weight is below my target weight, because I weigh 201.4 today and my target weight for the month is 204. Still, like fasting on Fridays and restricting S Days to just Sundays, this decision may be off track. I may just need to wait and wait and wait for the weight to come off slowly. I’ve been on diets since I was 17 and I’m now 50, so I am very familiar – as is Tom – with my body’s will to survive being evident in the “feeding frenzy†that is a reaction to starvation. N Days are not starvation diets, so S Days should end up becoming more and more normal. I was up at midnight to eat because of the Good Friday fast, but I don’t have to worry about another religious fast until Ash Wednesday in spring of next year. My body will learn, over time, that it will be fed. The days of periodic starvations are over.
5:45 PM: I’ve often wondered what is the difference between the person who has a weight problem and the person who does not. I knew it wasn’t a tendency to be self-indulgent or lazy because there are just too many overweight people, like my son’s Scoutmaster and his wife, who are very giving and caring. I think I finally figured it out: it’s gullibility. Those of us with weight problems have a tendency to believe cultural myths like that hunger – even mild hunger – is a crises, that snacks are necessary for a person to keep up energy, and that overweight people lack willpower. It’s all nonsense. It’s taken me 35 years to figure out that I believed what just wasn’t true.
Day 217 – Sunday, April 12, 2009: 202.6. It’s 9:30 on Easter Sunday morning, and I am stuffed with chocolate candies and jelly beans and a croissant. Why have I eaten so much? I think the reason why is that I could. It’s an S Day, after all. As I sat eating the croissant, I thought back to the book Intuitive Eating and realized that the basic premise is correct: that you need to tune in to your body and become sensitive to what is pleasurable. The last half of the croissant was anything but pleasurable. I’ve eaten so much in the last 36 hours that I feel nauseous. This is a turning point for me. I will continue to follow N Day rules but what I’ll do on the weekend is try to become sensitive to what is pleasurable. I no longer need to eat with the frantic reaction of someone subjected to periodic fasts. I’m free of the fear of starvation.
6 PM: I think that this diet is an easy counterbalance to the cultural environment that makes me susceptible to obesity. After all, do I want the focus of my life to be a number on the scale, or do I want it to be getting to know my husband and children? I think of Karen Carpenter singing, “Let’s take a lifetime to say I knew you well.†How ironic that the song that comes to mind is one performed by a woman who died at age 32 from complications due to anorexia.
My life did not end at 32, but it has been very much damaged by my weight problem. I’ve also wasted an incredible amount of time researching weight loss programs. All that is ending. This diet is a simple and effective way for me not to be pulled into the cultural myths that snacking is necessary, that weight loss is a pursuit of incredible willpower, that hunger is a crises…. Dieting is all about me. I want my life to be all about finding my own path in life and being with my family, enjoying them and getting to know them and supporting them as they find their paths in life.
Day 218 – Monday, April 13, 2009: 204.8. My attempts at tweaking the diet to get faster results are backfiring. I think I’ll stick with the one tweak that seems to work well for me, which is having an accumulation of two Exception Days per month and no Special Days other than the weekends. I am spending a lot of time trying to tweak this diet and I just need to be patient and let it work. Maybe I can sit on it and decide not to do anything about trying to tweak it until we have a week at Family Camp at our son’s Boy Scout camp. It’s really beautiful there, and there’s a lot of time when the girls are in activities and I’m left to chat with other mothers. That’s in mid-July, and by then I’ll have another two months of following this diet. I need a break from my own efforts to speed up the process. This pattern of bouncing around trying new things is reminding me of all the diets I would try, one after another. I wouldn’t spend long on one but would flit from one to another, and I’d do that for years on end. It’s time to settle down and stick with one approach. Maybe I should even wait until July of next year, when we’re back at Family Camp, before I try tweaking this diet. By then, I’ll know if my weight loss has ended. At this point, I can’t tell how much I’d weigh if I just stuck with the Exception Day modification. By July of next year, I will know if I am still trending downward in weight.
When I think about my attempts at tweaking this diet, I think of our dog wolfing down a type of dog treat called Greenies. We taught her the command “Leave it†so well that she is not quite sure she’ll get to eat her treat even after she’s been given it. She takes the Greenie, runs off to be alone, and wolfs it down. I think the same thing is happening with me when I keep on changing this diet. Rationally, I know I won’t be on starvation diets again, but the “emotional brain†takes over and wolfs down food in preparation for a change in my thinking about dieting. It’s like the dog being conditioned with the command “Leave it†to think that her Greenie will be taken away. We’ve stopped saying “Leave it†when she gets a Greenie, but the effect of our having her leave a Greenie lingers on. She’s been conditioned to fear the loss of her treat, and I’ve conditioned myself to expect a change in my diet plans so I eat while I can. I wolf down food while I can. I need to keep assuring myself that “Patience is a virtueâ€, and I can settle down now with the decision that – no matter what – I’m following this approach until July of next year.
Day 220 – Wednesday, April 15, 2009: 203.4. I’m reading a different diet book which emphasizes eating lots of fruits and vegetables, so at about 8:50 PM, I decided that I could snack if it is only fruit or vegetables. Before I had taken a bite, I opened the refrigerator, noticed some yogurt, and realized that this approach was the “slippery slope†back to disordered eating. I ate a clemetine, then a cupful of blackberries, and finally a bowl of cereal. My son saw me having a bowl of cereal and said, “Hey! It’s not a Special Day.†I told him I took an Exception Day, he asked why, and I told him “Because I felt like it.†Well, that’s not exactly true. I talked myself into something that I instantly realized wouldn’t work. I’d say that’s a very good use of an Exception Day!
Day 221 – Thursday, April 16, 2009: 205.0. Now I’m up to 205 on a Thursday. What do I do differently? I’m not sure I do anything differently. Last night, after recording what I ate, I continued eating, finishing off with a bowl of cereal and one of those uncrustable peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I was in bed by 9:30. What I’m finding is that I’m starting to want food that is better for you. My daughter a few weeks ago said, “I’m kinda sick of sweets.†Well, it starting to happen to me, too. After all, how many Haagen Dazs bars can a person eat in a lifetime? Last night’s eating was not of sweets except for ice cream because that’s all that was in the house, but what I really wanted was to expand my eating options beyond what is available with this diet. There’s a little rebel in me. The little rebel is telling me that weight loss from this diet has ended, and I need to go on to something else. Luckily, I can back to my weight loss journal from before I found this diet and read about how obsessed I was with food and how I spent so much time evaluating my hunger level and how much I felt like a failure. I can compare how I felt then with what happened two days ago, which is that I worked straight from 9 until 3 without thinking about food or eating. I’d had my typical breakfast of a Clementine and a bowl of cereal, and I experienced no discomfort by waiting so long to eat. It’s so wonderful to be able to focus on something other than my weight, and I don’t want to give that up to go pursue some other approach to dieting. I am waiting!
Day 222 – Friday, April 17, 2009: 203.6. Last night, I spoke with my mother on the phone, and she said that she thought this diet sounded terrible since you eat lots of sweets on the weekend and none during the week. She thought that could cause glucose levels to skyrocket on the weekend and cause health problems like diabetes. I got a chuckle out of that. It was exactly my concern. I hadn’t told her last summer that I had a glucose level of 108, which means I was diagnosed with pre-diabetes. I told them when my weight went below 200 but haven’t said my weight went back up.
It was a thought-provoking conversation for me. What exactly happened that my weight went up? What happened was that I ate lots of sweets, especially this past Sunday which was Easter. My daughter said this a few weeks ago and now I’m thinking it: “I’m kinda sick of sweets.†Had I followed the Intuitive Eating approach of allowing myself “unconditional permission to eat†all the time, I may have reached this point as well. The beauty of this diet is that the weekday N Days let me know how it feels to eat healthfully, and the S Days are in contrast to that. I feel better when I don’t eat so much and eat foods that are better for me. I had my two younger daughters at Costco earlier this week, and I pointed out a jar of caramel macademian clusters to them. The younger daughter made a face! This diet does seem to be working in its own way. The measurement of success cannot be according to the scale. It is according to how I feel about how much I eat and what I eat. I’m starting to gravitate towards eating more fruits and vegetables. If I could eat anything right now, it certainly wouldn’t be a Haagen Dazs bar or a caramel macademian cluster. I think it would be a piece of toast with blueberry jam.
Day 223 – Saturday, April 18, 2009: 202.2. It is Day 223, and I hit a wall. It’s an S Day. This morning, Tom and I had breakfast with other adults. I ordered dry toast and an egg white omlette. I wanted to try the egg white omlette and decided it was tasteless (but ate it anyway), but I enjoyed jam on unbuttered toast. After breakfast, we went to get my S Day food. I bought a box of biscotti. The package had a big label: 110 calories per biscotti. I had two biscotti. It is now 9:30 AM, and my S Day eating of treats can be precisely calculated at 220 calories.
What happened? I think this experience reflects the trait of human nature that you want what you cannot have. I can have anything I want today, so I choose only what I really want and not just whatever I can have. My “emotional brain†is finally satisfied that I can eat whatever I want. I don’t have to actually eat whatever I want in order to be convinced that I can have whatever I want. It took 223 days for me to reach this point after 35 years of my “rational brain†scolding my “emotional brain†for wanting to eat what I want to eat. I’m having difficulty trying to explain this in part because I’m surprised by how completely I have left behind the driving, almost frantic, desire to eat whatever is in sight. Will this last? I don’t know. I’m not confident it will. Perhaps it will be like a dance in which I’ll have longer and longer periods of not wanting to stuff myself. Perhaps it will be like falling off a cliff with no turning back. We’ll see. However it goes, I’m sticking with this diet. I’m very happy that I am so content with two biscotti!
Day 224 – Sunday, April 19, 2009: 204.0. I reverted to my typical S Day behavior yesterday, but yesterday morning’s experience gave me a glimpse of where I am headed. My S Days will calm down. I just have to give it time! In the afternoon yesterday, all four kids went with me to the grocery store to get their “S Day treats.†I’m thinking that this diet could be called The Glutton’s Diet!
Day 229 – Friday, April 24, 2009: 200.0. It was nice to see 200.0 on the scale today. For some reason, my weight went up this month. I’ve been following N Day rules, so I am puzzled. What is interesting about this is that I can now wear pants that I bought two years ago and couldn’t wear previously. Also, my taste in food seems to be shifting. I’m sick of sweets. I want fruits and vegetables even when I can have sweets. The most encouraging part of this diet is the fact that I am feeling less and less hungry.
Yesterday was a busy day for me. I hate getting busy because I get frazzled. I had to find something to wear for our youngest child’s First Communion and then pick up the kids from school and then take our middle daughter to interview my brother for a school project. I sat at Starbucks during the interview while cutting letters out of felt for a banner that had to be handed in today. The interview started at 4 and lasted until about 5:30. At about 5, it dawned on me that I had not had lunch. I didn’t feel hungry. I just realized that I had forgotten to eat lunch because I was so focused on trying to find something to wear for tomorrow’s First Communion.
Earlier this week, I ran into someone who was returning from lunch, and he was carrying an entire box of Tootsie Pops. He offered one to me, and I said I didn’t want one because I was on a diet where I didn’t eat sweets during the week. He pulled out a pomegranate Tootsie Pop and said, “Here. Have one. It’s loaded with antioxidants.â€
This guy is really friendly, really helpful, and overweight. I thanked him for the Tootsie Pop and took it back to my desk where I put it in the mug with all my pencils and pens. Gullible. The defining characteristic of overweight people, I think, is gullible. They aren’t lazy or self-centered or self-indulgent. They just believe what they’re told. I am not gullible enough to be believe that a pomegranate-flavored Tootsie Pop is good for me and “loaded with antioxidantsâ€, but I have bought into the whole notion that my food intake must be carefully monitored. I thought that my energy would be sapped if I couldn’t eat frequently. I thought that the mildest of hunger pains was a alarm to eat immediately. It’s all nonsense.
My weight will come off. It will come off slowly, but it will come off. I never again have to have Styrofoam tasting rice cakes or bowls of popcorn. I have learned to tune out hunger unless it is mealtime.
My thoughts yesterday were of coming to a good stopping place at work because I’m not working today and finding clothes for me for First Communion and greeting my brother and enjoying time with my middle girl and finishing the First Communion banner and getting my son to Scouts. There is so much time available in my life that I didn’t have previously. It’s wonderful!
Day 232 – Monday, April 27, 2009: I decided to stop weighing myself so much. My intent was to assure myself that I was losing weight by looking at average weights for the month and seeing a definite downward trend.
My assumption was that my daily weight might fluctuate but my monthly average weight would show a consistent downward trend. That didn’t happen.
Here are my average weights since the start of the program:
September, 2008: 214.4 (based on weighing myself 6 days)
October, 2008: 208.0 (based on weighing myself 16 days)
November, 2008: 207.7 (based on weighing myself 21 days)
December, 2008: 206.1 (based on weighing myself 22 days)
January, 2008: 204.6 (based on weighing myself 24 days)
February, 2008: 202.9 (based on weighing myself 20 days)
March, 2009: 200.9 (based on weighing myself 27 days)
April, 2009: 202.9 (based on weighing myself 20 days)
At this point, my average weight is exactly the same as my average weight in February and is exactly two pounds higher than my average weight in March.
What do I do now? I stop focusing so much on my weight. After all, the big benefit of this diet is a cure for disordered eating. Do I want to revert back to being obsessed about hunger and food? No. No. No. I am going to accept whatever weight results from this diet and however long it takes to reach that weight. There’s no point in my weighing myself daily. In fact, that habit keeps me where I don’t want to be – focused on my weight.
I will weigh myself, I’m sure, but just less often. This Friday, I had a contest with the kids to see who got closest to my weight on May 1, and whoever does gets $30. The contest began on Christmas Day when I weighed 207 pounds. This is my way of keeping the kids tuned in to my weight loss, since I want them to follow this approach when they are older and tempted to try restrictive diets or tune in to hunger diets. I want them to have learned from me. I’ll also weigh myself on one Monday per month so I can chart a general downward trend. Other than that, I want to be less focused on my weight which would indicate giving up the habit of weighing myself daily.
Day 234 – Wednesday, April 29, 2009: 202.8. I can give myself all sorts of reasons why I shouldn’t weigh myself, but I am still impatient to see how much I weigh. I’m not going to expend energy on resisting weighing myself.
Day 235 – Thursday, April 30, 2009: 201.4. What a lousy month as far as weight loss is concerned! Based on 24 weighings, my average weight went from 200.9 in March to 202.8 in April. Why? I have no idea. If I knew that t would take me five years to get down to 140 and then maintain it, I would be happy. What is most frustrating to me about this diet is that I don’t know what will result from following the diet. I have resolved to follow it no matter what, but I’m open to tweaking it if my weight does not drop to an acceptable level. I think maybe I should just set aside thinking about this diet until next summer and see what results I have then.
5 PM: Kirstie Alley was on Oprah today to talk about her 75 weight loss with Jenny Craig, her gaining of those 75 pounds plus 10 more, and her plans to be really fit – and even in a bikini – by November. I felt really sad. Actually, I felt that she had been trying to do what I’ve tried to do – “crack the code†with weight loss. I doubt she has. She wasn’t talking about what she was going to do to lose and maintain a lower weight. Instead, she was talking about her goal being achieved before the end of the year. I had the kids watch the show with me, and I told them that I thought I’d be where she is if it weren’t for No S. I no longer am in the binge-starve cycle. The weight loss is slow, and it’s not even steady, but I’m confident that I’ll stay with it because this lifestyle is sane and getting saner as the S Days calm down. I wish Kirstie the best, but the show just makes me even more thankful that I’m following this approach.
May, 2009
The following is a list of one weight from one Monday of each month of this diet:
Day 1 – Monday, September 8, 2008: 215.0
Day 36 – Monday, October 13, 2008: 210.2
Day 57 – Monday, November 3, 2008: 209.4
Day 99 – Monday, December 15, 2008: 208.8
Day 120 – Monday, January 5, 2008: 209.2
Day 148 – Monday, February 8, 2008: 205.0
Day 176 – Monday, March 2, 2009: 203.4
Day 211 – Monday, April 6, 2009: 203.6
The following is a list of weights from the month of May, 2009:
Day 236 – Friday, May 1, 2009: 200.4
Day 237 – Saturday, May 2, 2009: 201.4
Day 238 – Sunday, May 3, 2009: 203.0
Day 239 – Monday, May 4, 2009: 204.8
Day 240 – Tuesday, May 5, 2009: 202.6
Day 241 – Wednesday, May 6, 2009: 201.8
Day 242 – Thursday, May 7, 2009: 201.4
Day 243 – Friday, May 8, 2009: 200.0
Day 244 – Saturday, May 9, 2009:
Day 245 – Sunday, May 10, 2009:
Day 246 – Monday, May 11, 2009: 203.6
Day 247 – Tuesday, May 12, 2009: 202.8
(EXCEPTION EVENT: Oreo Dairy Queen birthday cake for Tom’s 13th birthday)
Day 248 – Wednesday, May 13, 2009: 202.8
Day 249 – Thursday, May 14, 2009: 201.0
Day 250 – Friday, May 15, 2009: 200.2
(EXCEPTION EVENT: Katie’s 10th birthday party. I had more than Oreo Dairy Queen birthday cake. I had chips and a soft pretzel and tootsie rolls.)
Day 251 – Saturday, May 16, 2009: 202.0
Day 252 – Sunday, May 17, 2009: 203.8
Day 253 – Monday, May 18, 2009: 205.0
Day 254 – Tuesday, May 19, 2009: 203.6
(EXCEPTION EVENT: Invited to take the kids to Dairy Queen; had a small Arctic Freeze drink.)
Day 255 – Wednesday, May 20, 2009: 201.0
Day 256 – Thursday, May 21, 2009: 201.4
Day 257 – Friday, May 22, 2009: 199.6
Day 258 – Saturday, May 23, 2009: 199.6
Day 259 – Sunday, May 24, 2009: 200.2
Day 260 – Monday, May 25, 2009: 200.4
Day 261 – Tuesday, May 26, 2009: 200.6
Day 262 – Wednesday, May 27, 2009: 199.6
Day 263 – Thursday, May 28, 2009: 200.0
Day 264 – Friday, May 29, 2009: 199.0
Day 265 – Saturday, May 30, 2009:
Day 266 – Sunday, May 31, 2009:
Day 236 – Friday, May 1, 2009: 200.4. I’ve keep such a detailed journal on my weight loss because of my desire to have my kids learn from what I have done. To encourage them to pay attention to what I am doing, I started having them guess my weight loss and make a bet on the amount I would lose by a certain date. The three dates of the year when they guess is for our wedding anniversary (May 1), Tom’s birthday (September 1), and Christmas Day.
Today is our wedding anniversary. On Christmas Day, I weighed 207, and the kids made the following guesses for my weight loss by today:
Tom (age 12): loss of 1 pound, putting me at 206 pounds
Katie (age 9): loss of 5 pounds, putting me at 202 pounds
Anne (age 15): loss of 6 pounds, putting me at 201 pounds
Elizabeth (age 8 ): loss of 7 pounds, putting me at 200 pounds
Elizabeth won. I’m happy. She was the one who guessed the most weight loss, and I’m really glad Tom did not win because he’s been the most skeptical that I would continue on this diet. He told me that he actually thought I would gain weight rather than lose weight. Of course, that has been my track record for diets I have been on in the past.
For the guesses for the September 1 weigh-in, I have changed the process. Each of the children writes down an expected ending weight and then the guesses are sealed in an envelope to be opened on September 1. In this way, I’m not influenced by their guesses so that I try to reach the weight which was the lowest guess. Anne is out of town on a band trip so we will wait until she returns before the kids place their guesses. They enjoy this, of course, because a very little effort could yield $30 in payment. I’m happy because I don’t really look like I’ve lost weight but they know I have. The weight loss is so gradual that the only way I can tell is that I can wear a pair of pants that I bought two years ago and have been unable to wear until last week.
I also think that I’ve spent so much time thinking about this diet because I’m constantly considering different tweaks I could make to the diet. Changing from an unspecified number of Special Days to an accumulation of two Exception Days has been critical to my successfully staying on this diet, I believe, but I don’t need to be constantly considering other changes. I think I need to stay the course for a period of time. When I first started the diet in September, I was going to wait until this coming summer before I considered dropping it. Now I think I’ll give the diet an entire year – until next July when we are at the Family Camp at Many Point Boy Scout Camp – before I consider making any additional changes to this diet.
Despite the lat month when I did not lose any weight, I am still down 14.6 pounds from my starting weight of 215.0. This diet is working.
7:15 AM: My husband gave me a nice gift and card for our wedding anniversary, and I was more focused on my weight today and who would win this competition to guess my weight. I think that I’ll have the competitions end the day before his birthday, the day before Christmas, and the day before our wedding anniversary.
6 PM: My parents are in town for two weeks, and today they took me out to lunch. My father was very concerned about my weight and told me I was at risk of adult-onset diabetes. My mother is concerned that weekend overeating would cause a spike in blood sugar. They were unimpressed by my 15 pound weight loss since I should lose about 70 more. What to do? I listened. I told them that I no longer feel hungry. I eat at mealtimes and don’t worry about food outside of mealtimes. My mother has gained some weight in recent years, and my father is always after her to lose weight. I told my father he was a restrictive eater, and I understand what that is like because I was a restrictive eater for a number of years as well. This diet makes absolutely no sense to them. It will be interesting to observe when they recognize the value of this approach. I will guess that I’ll need to get down to about 150, so it may be two or three years before they realize that this is a good way to maintain a healthy weight.
Day 237 – Saturday, May 2, 2009: 201.4. I have no idea why my weight went up a pound from yesterday or why my weight has not gone down in the last month. Still, I am very encouraged by a change which is occurring. I seem to be losing my frantic desire to put everything in my mouth that is allowed on this diet. When I was counting calories, I always got right up to the allowed number of calories. When I was eating Lean Cuisine, there was never any food left. Dieting got me in the habit of eating everything I was allowing myself to eat. Now, every weekend, I’m allowed to eat anything I want. I’m being more discriminating these days.
Yesterday, I was trying to explain to my parents that I had four Haagen Dazs bars in under two hours but I doubt I will again. My mother doesn’t understand that the period of time of allowing myself to eat whatever I want is what is so special about this diet. It’s what makes weight loss permanent. I am not building up this great desire for food because of having to restrict my eating day after day after day. Instead, each weekend is a time when I can eat to complete satisfaction or even to being completely stuffed. Because complete satisfaction feels better than being completely stuffed, I thought I would eventually eat less on the weekends. Now it is actually happening.
It’s still early – just 9 AM – but I do not have the desire to eat more than I already have, which is two French toast, a biscotti, and an Italian ice. I wasn’t up at midnight with a Haagen Dazs bar in my hand waiting for the digital clock to read 12:00. I doubt that sense of urgency will occur again. It’s very intriguing what is happening to me, and I’m going to let it play out over the next year. It would be just great if I could reach a normal weight just following the rules that are already in place. They are so easy that I could follow them for the rest of my life without much effort or time.
Day 238 – Sunday, May 3, 2009: 203.0. I’ve given some thought over the last day to my slow weight loss and believe that I need to do something different. My weight may have stabilized already at an unacceptably high rate. I think I need to limit food intake at meals on N Days. Maybe I can just resolve to eat as if I am already thin. This would mean I no longer track Exception Days. What I’ve found is I tend to take an Exception Day for reasons that are not a desire for over the top eating. I think I’ll be OK with this approach, although it is a risk.
9 PM: When I told the kids about my change in plans, Anne told me she thought it sounded like The Peanut Cluster Diet, and Tom said I’d follow the diet two days per week – on Saturday and Sunday! That may be so. What I think it will do is eliminate the “I just felt like it†decision to take an Exception Day. Instead, I’ll allow myself Exception events for specific reasons, like that my son broke glass on the table when I was eating breakfast or I had bad breath and wanted a breath mint. I am entering dangerous territory. If I succeed, however, my eating will be very close to how naturally thin people eat. I think this approach is worth the risk that I’ll revert to The Peanut Cluster Diet. My kids predicted my weight on August 31 before I told them of my change in plans. Tom then said he thought I’d gain 5 pounds, and Anne thought I’d gain 10 pounds. We’ll see.
Day 239 – Monday, May 4, 2009: 204.8. I deliberately ate a lot yesterday, so I’m not surprised that my weight went up so much. I’m changing my approach now. Saturday will no longer be an S Day. This could be a disaster. It could backfire. I recognize that, and my kids sure recognize it. What I am now going to attempt to do is to eat as if I am thin already – except on Sundays which is a day to rest my set point, to allow myself “unconditional permission to eat.†I will record Exception Events here. What I’m going to add is that I will try to eat like a thin person which means that my meals will be smaller. When there are exceptions, it will mean exceptions for a specific reason rather than permission to binge.
It feels like the training wheels on the bike are off. The first few rides may be a bit wobbly, but I’m excited. Back in the fall, when I started this diet, I had to give up the notion that I could ever become a naturally thin eater. Now I see that this diet has helped me to tune out hunger between meals and so not be so obsessed about food. It’s great! I also think that continuing the diet as I have has led to excesses on the weekend and on Exception Days. Now I am limiting my “unconditional permission to eat†from 10 days per month (2 Exception Days plus 8 weekend days) down to 4. There will be an impact.
Fasting on Fridays caused weight gain because on the weekend I more than made up for the food not eaten on Friday. This could be the same result for this diet, but I’m going to try it. I have not lost enough weight that anyone even notices, but what I have done is manage to eat somewhat normal amounts on N Days. I have had a long path to cure disordered eating, and I think I am at least partway down that path. This diet has been good for me so far, despite the painfully slow progress and lack of weight loss these past three or four months. I feel so much better than I did a year ago, and I can go back to my journal from them to refresh my memory about the feeling of despair from dieting failure after failure after failure. This diet has been a success for me from Day 5. I just need to tweak it to succeed in losing enough weight, but the basic premise of days on a diet alternated with days off a diet is what allows me to stay successful in following diet rules. Now I’m making those diet rules into guidelines. To help me in not turning this approach into the return of The Peanut Cluster Diet, I will record the exceptions.
2 PM: Surprise! I feel very different. This diet is no longer a way to jump through hoops to try to maximize food intake. Instead, I can take pleasure in eating moderately. I think I’ve finally gotten over the fear of starvation that developed from years of dieting. I tend to think in analogies, and this experience reminds me of hiking near the Continental Divide, coming through some brush, and seeing for miles around. One minute I can see about 20 feet ahead. The next minute I can see a breathtaking view of mountains and lakes. Wow – am I ever glad I tried this approach!
Day 240 – Tuesday, May 5, 2009: 202.6. I woke up at about 3 AM thinking about Aristotle’s Ethics.
I returned to reading Aristotle’s Ethics last year after reading Kelly Brownell’s book Food Fight. In this book, he argues that the obesity epidemic is caused by cultural factors. His department at Yale University is conducting studies like the impact of trans fat on obesity and the lack of access to fresh fruit and vegetables for low income people. I read his book, and it occurred to me that a cultural factor may be a belief – an assumption – that this culture has about eating. I concluded that obese people have a defining characteristic of gullibility, but I could not figure out what would be the false belief that has led to the obesity epidemic. Now I believe I know what it is: the prevailing belief is that weight management is a lifelong battle or a struggle.
The idea from Aristotle’s Ethics that I believe has much to do with the obesity epidemic is that that those who are truly virtuous find pleasure in virtue. It was a eureka moment for me at 3 AM to tie Aristotle’s philosophy of pleasure to the obesity epidemic. Aristotle’s view is that those who are virtuous have learned to take pleasure in moderation. This is simply not within the scope of possibilities that I have heard in my life. Those who are naturally thin are considered to be lucky rather than virtuous. The rest of us, the overweight, just got stuck with the wrong genes or a poor environment.
All my studies of diets and theories have come to a surprising conclusion: becoming naturally thin is not only a possibility but is actually a pleasurable experience! In the fall, when I started this diet, I resigned myself to always having to track exception days and having to restrict my eating on N Days. Now I realize that this diet was a process to allow me to recover from years from dieting, and now I can become naturally thin with little effort and with pleasure. I had many weekends of getting stuffed to the point of feeling sick, and the result is that I learned to associate overeating with pain. I avoided eating sweets during the week, and the result is that I learned to enjoy foods that are not sweets. I also managed to not move the kids along fast enough to make the bus this morning, so I have to return to the real world and take them to school! Then there’s work and an annual physical for my son and a soccer game for my daughter. No wonder I wake up in the night – I have no time to think during the day! I need to listen again to Joseph Koterski’s tapes on Aritotle’s Ethics and especially on the last book of the Ethics about the relationship between pleasure and virtue. I can listen to those tapes while doing laundry, but I think listening to those tapes is just going to reinforce my assessment that the obesity epidemic is caused by a false belief that weight management is a battle whereas in actual fact it is possible to practice temperance until it is a pleasure to do so. I have found the path to becoming naturally thin, and now I need to get my two younger children to school.
Day 241 – Wednesday, May 6, 2009: 201.8. After last night’s soccer game, I had to monitor my son working on an assignment and not taking breaks by playing computer games, so I was able to get my copy of Aristotle’s Ethics and review the last book, which discusses virtue and pleasure. Aristotle discusses how the well-trained person takes pleasure in virtue. If I were to substitute temperance for the word virtue, then what Aristotle is implying is that the temperate person has been trained to be temperate. In other words, there is no such thing as naturally thin. This is yet another cultural myth. Instead, parents teach children temperance by having them be temperate in their eating. For temperate people, it is pleasurable to not eat to being stuffed. Of course, I had to learn this lesson by finding out by experience that it is painful to eat to being stuffed. Diets are about intemperance – since severe restriction of calories is the other extreme to bingeing. Moderation is pleasurable. The two extremes of dieting and bingeing are not pleasurable. What this diet has done for me is help me to recognize that I want to eat moderately, and it is in moderate eating that I will enjoy food the most.
This diet started out hard (for about 3 weeks), became easy (for about 6 months), and now is pleasurable.
6 PM: My parents were in town for about two weeks, and this afternoon they had lunch with my niece and me. They expressed amusement at my diet. They took my two younger children out to Dairy Queen yesterday and asked them about the diet and why they could have a treat at Dairy Queen on a weekday. My girls told my parents that there was an “amendment†to the diet – that they could have sweets if not at home. I tried explaining to my parents that the girls get treats at school, so what I’ve done it tell them they are now on the no-sweets-at-home-during-the-week-because-there-aren’t-any diet. I am no longer allowing them “unconditional permission to eat†on the weekends because the 10 year old has visibly gained a lot of weight. My parents told me that my diet lacks all “common senseâ€. When I said I’d lost 15 pounds, they said that means nothing at all when I’m so heavy. I am disappointed that they feel that way, but they’ll change their minds at some point as I continue to lose weight. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to summer when I have more control over my kids’ eating. It is alarming to see just how much they get in the way of sweets from birthday celebrations and activities. No wonder there’s an obesity epidemic for children! They never go longer than a few hours without eating, and that sort of schedule is considered necessary.
Day 243 – Friday, May 8, 2009: 200.0. Aristotle is known as the philosopher of “common sense.†Thinking back, I believe that he said, “The temperate man is the man who practices temperance.†What this diet does is have a person practice temperance during the week, and the habit eventually carries over into the weekend. I have thought that this diet was first a cure for disordered eating and then a way to lose weight, but now I understand why: it’s not until the habit carries over into the weekend that you really start to lose weight. I had to be patient without really understanding why I was following this diet perfectly but not losing weight. Now I’m down exactly 15 pounds. If, in fact, the weekend binges are a thing of the past, then my weight should go down much more quickly in the future.
Day 244 – Saturday, May 9, 2009: 9 PM: I didn’t feel like overeating, but lunch was delayed so I had a snack and then lunch and then treats at a graduation party instead of dinner. I decided to allow both Saturdays and Sundays as S Days and to record weekday exceptions to N Day guidelines. That’s it. That’s my diet.
I skimmed through Aristotle’s Ethics and found a brilliant contrast between the scientific and the calculative parts of reasoning. In the scientific, we “contemplate things whose first principles are invariable.†For the calculative, “we contemplate things that are variable†(Book 6).
I have been of the opinion that this diet needs to be followed with “perfect compliance†like the commitment to be faithful. Now I realize that this analogy is hopelessly flawed, since fidelity is based on invariable principles and diet is not.
What makes this diet so special, I think, is found in Aristotle's Ethics: “A man who abstains from bodily pleasures and enjoys the very fact of so doing is temperate; if he finds it irksome he is licentious†(Book 3).
The contrast of moderate eating on N Days with overeating on S Days is changing me into a person who “abstains from bodily pleasure and enjoys the very fact of so doing.â€
Day 245 – Sunday, May 10, 2009: I was hoping that the switch from enjoyment of overeating to enjoyment of moderate eating happened last week and now I am in a “new reality†(this term is from Elizabeth Edward’s new book Resilience which I read in the past few days). Well, that was wishful thinking. It will take time, but I’m confident it will happen. On Saturday morning, I had one plateful at breakfast and then no desire to eat until about 1 PM, but the rest of the weekend became my norm for S Days which was constant eating. And that’s OK.
What I like about having both Saturday and Sunday as non N Days is that there is a different rhythm to the weekend because I’m not working and Tom’s not working and the kids are not in school. I decided to just let this diet continue with two weekend S Days and just allow myself to drift into enjoying moderate eating. It never occurred to me that I would actually enjoy dieting. The culture makes dieting and weight control into such a huge and unpleasant task when, in reality, Aristotle is right that the habit of temperance makes moderate eating an enjoyable experience. Right now, my stomach is somewhat bloated, and I’m looking forward to the structure of N Days and the activity of another N Day. I spent an entire academic year home with not much to do, and I didn’t like it. Work contrasted with weekend play makes both more enjoyable, just like I enjoy the succession of seasons. I am starting to really enjoy this diet, which is good because I want to be on it for the rest of my life!
Day 248 – Wednesday, May 13, 2009: 202.8. Yesterday, I had coffee with a friend, and I told her about my diet. While she is thin, her mother was more than 300 pounds when she died, and her sister is gaining weight and is convinced she is addicted to sugar. How much our beliefs drive our behavior! I told her that my weight has stayed almost exactly the same for the past three months, and she suggested one S Day rather than two. Yes, I told her I had tried that. I told her that I am starting to prefer moderate eating to overeating. After talking with her, I am thinking that what I want to start doing is consciously eating moderately on N Days. Right now, I can load up one plate with food, although I am starting not to do that. For example, last night, we went to a pizza restaurant for our son’s birthday. I had two slices of pizza, not three or four which I could have fit on a plate. I think what I’ll do is consciously choose to eat moderately but just start with Fridays until I feel comfortable. I tried fasting on Fridays during Lent, and that practice backfired for me. This practice is more conscious moderation (a positive choice) rather than restriction to one plate. Conscious moderation includes the practice of no snacks, no sweets, and no seconds. I’m not trying to weasel my way out of the No S guidelines, only consciously move towards their positive correlative which is moderate eating.
6 PM: Conscious moderation. I think that’s my current location on the path to naturally thin. I still need to think about it. I need to consciously choose moderation, but I no longer see it as a negative – as restriction or deprivation. Instead, I am recognizing what is positive about moderation.
Day 251 – Saturday, May 16, 2009: 202.0. It’s frustrating to see literally no change on the scale. My average weight for the week was 202.6 during the week of February 22nd. The last time I had a new low was at the end of March. What am I going to do? Absolutely nothing. The last month has been particularly stressful because of two family graduations (one out of town), two birthdays for children, the last First Communion, and my parents in town for two weeks. I even stopped exercising for a month, but I did not stop this diet. It’s finally nice weather, so we can be outside more. With the kids home from school, I’ll be home more. I just need to stick with this diet and see how it goes. I told myself I wouldn’t change anything until the one year anniversary of the diet on September 8, and my goal for then is 193.5, which is a 10% weight loss in one year. That amount of weight more to lose is very possible. Yesterday, I weighed 200.2, which was less than seven pounds more than my goal weight in about 3 ½ months. That works out to about 2 pounds per month. If I don’t make that goal, that’s OK, too.
The change I do see is that I no longer have the ravenous desire to eat everything in sight on an S Day. It’s an S Day right now, and there are no sweets in the house. I can get some today. I didn’t even think about getting treats because of our daughter’s party last night.
9 PM: I ate a lot today. At breakfast, I ordered a short stack of pancakes. When I had about 1/8th of one pancake left and everyone else was done, the waitress started to clear the plates. She asked if I was done as she lifted up the plate, and I said no. I then commented that I was stuffed but thought I might still eat it. On the way home from breakfast, Tom asked me why I didn’t just let the waitress clear the plate instead of forcing myself to eat the last few bites. Good question. I have no idea why I did that. Was it habit from the intense desire to eat the last grain of rice from those Lean Cuisine meals?
During the day, which was filled to absurdity with activities, I managed to inhale lots of food. Why? Again – I have no idea. I sure didn’t have time to think. Today was the last busy day of a busy several weeks. Now we’ll return to normalcy. I had time tonight to take my glasses in to get fixed, and I concluded that I need to go down to one S Day. When I tried that approach a few months ago, the results were bad – I ate more on the other days to make up for the lost S Day. Now, however, I think I’m ready. It’s time to limit the thinking and writing and focus more on doing. I like the entire approach of N Days with an S Day that is insurance against the end of diet binge behavior, but I don’t like the number on the scale being stuck at about 200 pounds. One S Day, to me, is the absolute minimum.
Day 252 – Sunday, May 17, 2009: 203.8. Today’s weight seals the deal: one S Day per week, and I’ll make it Sunday because Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest. I am disappointed that I did not drop to an acceptable weight while following this diet with two S Days. Those years of dieting must have made so much of an impression on my “emotional brain†that it’s hard to overcome. I read somewhere that survivors of the Holocaust tended to become obese, and I can appreciate why. I look around and see lots of morbidly obese people, especially those who are older. Why? Are they people who dieting for years, and their bodies reacted like the survivors of the Holocaust? I think so. I think I need to accept that the effect of 35 years of dieting is never going to dissipate completely, and I need to be accepting of the impact of all that dieting.
4 PM: I feel absolutely stuffed. The prospect of only one S Day has led to constant eating all day. I just resorted to popcorn which has a tendency to fill me up. I think I’m going to skip weighing myself and writing about dieting through the end of the month and just follow the program. I am sad that I have not lost weight in three months, but I am glad that I am changing my behavior with the hope that I will lose weight now. As of Friday, I only had 7 pounds to go in 3 ½ months to make my weight loss goal of 10% of body weight lost (from 215 to under 193.5 pounds) in one year. I would be really sad if I didn’t make that goal, so I wanted to tweak the diet. I am so back and forth on what to do.
I want my children to learn from me. The years of restrictive eating, when I weighed under 135, were so affected by my on again off again dieting. I would go on 1,000 calorie per day diets for nine days, during which time I limited social contacts, and then I would feel comfortable with eating what I wanted until my weight edged above 135 again and I would repeat, repeat, repeat… I hated this way of life, but I was thin. Now I’m obese and determined to find a saner approach to weight loss. This approach seems sane. Now I just have to lose enough weight to be satisfied with my weight.
4:30 PM: Brian Tracy, in his book Eat That Frog!, warns against technological time sinks. I think my approach to dieting has resulted in lots of time sinks – the daily weigh ins, the tracking of weight in a multitude of ways (average weight per week, the new lows, the new highs, etc.), and the daily journal. I think I’m done. I need to set an approach for a period of time, stick with it, and see what happens. I can put off any changes until September 8, the one year anniversary of my starting this diet. I want to see the impact on weight of going down to only one S Day.
Day 253 – Monday, May 18, 2009: 205.0. I decided to see the damage of yesterday’s binge. I am still down 10 pounds from September 8, and the basic structure of the diet is sound. I have to adjust to one S Day because I am not losing weight because… why? Because I am eating so much on S Days. I need “unconditional permission to eat.†What I do not need is two days of “unconditional permission to eat.â€
Day 254 – Tuesday, May 19, 2009: 203.6. I’m already glad that I went down to one S Day. I realize now that I was more worried than I allowed myself to feel. I was worried that I would be stuck above 200 pounds but dead set against returning to the binge-starve cycle of conventional diets. Since I have an unlimited number of exception events, I don’t have to worry about running out of exceptions if there is an exception event. There do tend to be more exception events on Saturdays, but that’s OK. I can try only having beverages. Even if I do take an exception on a Saturday, at least I won’t be eating from first thing in the morning to evening. At least the eating will be more normalized. This approach seems like a good one for me at this point. When I tried going to one S Day a few months ago, it became apparent to me immediately that it was not a good idea. I guess learning to eat normally occurs in stages for me. This month, with the move to one S Day, is a new stage. It took more than 200 days to get to this stage, and that’s OK. My guess is that the last time I am above 200 pounds will be next Monday. I will be so pleased to be back below 200 pounds. It’s been about 5 years since I went above 200 pounds for the first time. As I recall, it was about in June, 2004. I wish to save my children from the frustration of conventional diets.
My 15 year old daughter, who is following this diet, has clearly gained weight. At her last doctor’s appointment, she weighed in at about 160 pounds. It alarmed me. I was so happy about her following this diet that I hadn’t realized she had actually gained weight. I was happy to see that she was no longer returning from school, charging into the kitchen, and wolfing down what she could find. I was happy to notice that she was no longer complaining about being hungry. I could see the benefits of this diet, but my rose colored glasses did not allow me to see that she had actually gained weight. I hope to encourage her to also go down to one S Day. She is my inspiration – my beautiful, smart, and highly motivated first born child. I could not have a greater motivation than to model behavior that I would like her to follow.
Day 256 – Thursday, May 21, 2009: 201.4. At about 4 PM today, I may have experienced genuine hunger. I had forgotten to eat lunch and had only had a bowl of cereal for breakfast. How could I have forgotten to eat? I was so caught up in picking up children from school and chatting with other mothers and going to visit other mothers at a garage sale that they were holding that I just plain forgot to eat. It is so nice not to be obsessed with food!
Day 257 – Friday, May 22, 2009: 199.6. In the car, our son asked me, “Don’t you think it is dumb how the elementary school has snacks every day?†Our 10 year old piped up and said, “It’s not dumb. It’s scientifically proven that kids who have snacks do better in school.†Oh great. I wonder who told her that!
Day 260 – Monday, May 25, 2009: 200.4. I got through the weekend fairly easily even though it was my first weekend without Saturday as an S Day. On Saturday morning, I bought something I have wanted for several months – a 16†14K gold chain. I have an 18†14K gold chain, but pendants of that length don’t work well with some of my clothing. The cost for that one chain was $177. It was an extravagant purchase, to say the least. It was a commitment of sorts to myself that I wasn’t going back to two S Days. This was my reward.
Today I weigh just over 200 pounds. I think it is possible that this is the last time in my life that I will weigh over 200 pounds. Certainly, by the end of the month, I will never again weigh 200 pounds. What a wonderful feeling! I think that the first time I went above 200 pounds (except in pregnancy) was about 5 years ago, and now I say good-bye and good riddance to that much weight. Yesterday, our family went for a bike ride, and it was really hard for me to carry that much weight on a bike. I used to love bike riding and haven’t done much of it in the last several years because of my weight. I look forward to a different life as I lose weight – a life in which I can ride a bike, a life in which I can wear a bathing suit which isn’t ghastly, and a life in which I am not obsessed by food every waking hour. There is no longer any sense of deprivation. Instead, there is an almost overwhelming sense of relief.
Day 262 – Wednesday, May 27, 2009: 199.6. Since about Monday afternoon, this diet has gone back to being difficult. It’s not as difficult as it was in September, but I would rate the difficulty at about a 7 on a scale from 1 to 10. I had not anticipated problems after having only one S Day. Apparently, I didn’t load up as much on food as I have on other weekends.
I told Tom not to expect as much out of me. He suggested that maybe I should do more. I pointed out that I worked six hours yesterday plus attended our son’s jazz band concert plus worked on packing for a weekend camping trip plus made dinner. It’s not that I’m lounging around the house, but I do feel fatigued. I cannot believe how difficult it is to drop below 200 pounds.
My perspective is still of the person I was when I was single and struggling to maintain my weight in the low 130s. I thought that people who were as obese as I am now had simply “let themselves go.†Oh no. I think that obese people, like me now, are usually ones who kept on trying and trying and trying despite failing every time. You have to have a lot of willpower to go on a diet when you are so overweight that it will take months, if not years, to reach a normal weight. I’m glad I’ve got the goal of losing 10% off my starting weight in one year. As of today, I have only 6.2 pounds to go in more than 3 months to make my goal weight of 193.5 or less by September 8. My next goal weight will be in the low 170s by September 8, 2010, but I’ll worry about that goal after I reach this one! In the meantime, I’m taking it easy until I adjust to only one S Day on the weekend.
Day 263 – Thursday, May 28, 2009: 200.0. I’m irritated about having a “2†in the hundreds column of my weight, but I’m not surprised. Yesterday, I had an entire bowl of popcorn with dinner. That’s what I did several times back in September when I was adjusting to no snacks. How I feel today is very similar to how I felt in September. I feel grumpy and tired and just plain irritated. These last two week of school tend to be easy for the kids because there is limited homework, although Anne still has some projects and I was a helicopter parent picking up an assignment for Tom that he had missed. Tom appears to have no sense of planning. My husband Tom thinks it is due to laziness. I think it may be due to not knowing how to plan. I told him that I’ve been very motivated to lose weight, but all I did before this diet was gain weight. I didn’t know how. I am confident that going to one S Day is appropriate for me even though the transition is turning out to be difficult. I want to make my goal weight, and that desire is helping me to endure the transition to one S Day.
Day 264 – Friday, May 29, 2009: 199.0. I had an apple for lunch. When I bit into it, it didn’t taste very good. I threw it out and got a different apple. I then asked myself if I was going to record this as an Exception Event. No. I wasn’t. That’s the end of recording exceptions. The habit of no snacks is ingrained enough that I don’t think this is going to be a problem. I have concluded that the big myth behind the obesity epidemic is this: “Snacks curb hunger.†The reality is that snacks stimulate hunger. If you are eating all the time, you’ll feel hungry all the time.
Day 265 – Saturday, May 30, 2009: Since my old diet – “The Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions†-- ended May 3, I’ve been uncertain how to change my diet approach and today I slid right into an unplanned “feeding frenzyâ€. It started Thursday with having popcorn before dinner. On Friday, I threw away a bad apple and replaced it. Friday evening before dinner was an indulgence in cherries. Today I ate so much that I can’t record my inhalation of food completely. I did have the Snickers bar I was saving for tomorrow. I had chips and popcorn and so much food that it brings back memories of how I’d act before I was on this diet. I’d just check out at unpredictable times. I was unreliable, like an alcoholic parent. It’s obvious to me why some believe food can be an addiction because I would act like an addict.
Enough! It’s time to press the restart button. I learned two big lessons from this:
Lesson 1: It may seem silly, but it’s important for me to record exceptions even if an exception is that I replaced a bad apple.
Lesson 2: It matters whether I eat food before or after a meal. The “everything on one plate†rule isn’t necessary for me. I never could stomach placing an apple on a plate next to meat. What is important to me is to have everything before me before I take one bite.
I’ve learned enough lessons. It’s time to revise this diet. I’m naming it what my 10 year old named it: The S Day Diet. Here are the rules:
- On Sundays. I have “unconditional permission to eat.†Sunday is my “S Dayâ€.
- On other days (“N Daysâ€), I have no snacks or sweets. Before I take one bite, everything is before me.
- If I take exceptions on N Days I record the exceptions.
Day 266 – Sunday, May 31, 2009: What a day! Last night, my daughter asked me if it was OK for her to have s’mores as an exception event rather than to take an S Day, since s’mores can’t be kept overnight and eaten in the morning. I told her that I could tell her what I am doing to lose weight but she needs to find her own path. She understood. What works for me may not work for her. I need to encourage her and respect her individuality. I realized that, for me, food diaries were a big negative, so my recording exception events will help to deter me from taking exception events. Would that be true for everyone? Probably not.
I didn’t really like the name “The S Day Dietâ€,so I got the kids to help come up with a new name with a reward of $10 for the name I selected. Tom put in his two cents’ worth and said it should be called “The It’s Not Going to Work Diet.†I thought I’d tease him a little after that comment, so I asked him if he’d commit to going to the Gokhale Method Posture Classes with me if I got below 140 pounds. Sure – no problem! Well, I had him sign a page from my planner saying he’d go. Anne won the diet naming contest after she came up with a name with exception in it, and I added exceptional. We ended up with The Exceptional Diet as a name. I try to make all of this a game and in fun, but the intent behind it is serious – I want the kids to learn from me so they don’t repeat what I have done in struggling with my weight for most of my life. The kids enjoy competing to come up with names for diets and guessing my weight loss. I enjoy involving them so they learn. We bought jelly beans two weeks ago, and the jar was not opened until Sunday morning, and then nothing was eaten from the jar after Sunday until this Sunday. They like Exceptional Days, and they appreciate getting treats I wouldn’t buy previously. Tom bought ice cream for them tonight. I think they enjoy sweets more when the time for having them is limited.
The following is a list of one weight from one Monday of each month of this diet:
Day 1 – Monday, September 8, 2008: 215.0
Day 36 – Monday, October 13, 2008: 210.2
Day 57 – Monday, November 3, 2008: 209.4
Day 99 – Monday, December 15, 2008: 208.8
Day 120 – Monday, January 5, 2008: 209.2
Day 148 – Monday, February 8, 2008: 205.0
Day 176 – Monday, March 2, 2009: 203.4
Day 211 – Monday, April 6, 2009: 203.6
The following is a list of weights from the month of May, 2009:
Day 236 – Friday, May 1, 2009: 200.4
Day 237 – Saturday, May 2, 2009: 201.4
Day 238 – Sunday, May 3, 2009: 203.0
Day 239 – Monday, May 4, 2009: 204.8
Day 240 – Tuesday, May 5, 2009: 202.6
Day 241 – Wednesday, May 6, 2009: 201.8
Day 242 – Thursday, May 7, 2009: 201.4
Day 243 – Friday, May 8, 2009: 200.0
Day 244 – Saturday, May 9, 2009:
Day 245 – Sunday, May 10, 2009:
Day 246 – Monday, May 11, 2009: 203.6
Day 247 – Tuesday, May 12, 2009: 202.8
(EXCEPTION EVENT: Oreo Dairy Queen birthday cake for Tom’s 13th birthday)
Day 248 – Wednesday, May 13, 2009: 202.8
Day 249 – Thursday, May 14, 2009: 201.0
Day 250 – Friday, May 15, 2009: 200.2
(EXCEPTION EVENT: Katie’s 10th birthday party. I had more than Oreo Dairy Queen birthday cake. I had chips and a soft pretzel and tootsie rolls.)
Day 251 – Saturday, May 16, 2009: 202.0
Day 252 – Sunday, May 17, 2009: 203.8
Day 253 – Monday, May 18, 2009: 205.0
Day 254 – Tuesday, May 19, 2009: 203.6
(EXCEPTION EVENT: Invited to take the kids to Dairy Queen; had a small Arctic Freeze drink.)
Day 255 – Wednesday, May 20, 2009: 201.0
Day 256 – Thursday, May 21, 2009: 201.4
Day 257 – Friday, May 22, 2009: 199.6
Day 258 – Saturday, May 23, 2009: 199.6
Day 259 – Sunday, May 24, 2009: 200.2
Day 260 – Monday, May 25, 2009: 200.4
Day 261 – Tuesday, May 26, 2009: 200.6
Day 262 – Wednesday, May 27, 2009: 199.6
Day 263 – Thursday, May 28, 2009: 200.0
Day 264 – Friday, May 29, 2009: 199.0
Day 265 – Saturday, May 30, 2009:
Day 266 – Sunday, May 31, 2009:
Day 236 – Friday, May 1, 2009: 200.4. I’ve keep such a detailed journal on my weight loss because of my desire to have my kids learn from what I have done. To encourage them to pay attention to what I am doing, I started having them guess my weight loss and make a bet on the amount I would lose by a certain date. The three dates of the year when they guess is for our wedding anniversary (May 1), Tom’s birthday (September 1), and Christmas Day.
Today is our wedding anniversary. On Christmas Day, I weighed 207, and the kids made the following guesses for my weight loss by today:
Tom (age 12): loss of 1 pound, putting me at 206 pounds
Katie (age 9): loss of 5 pounds, putting me at 202 pounds
Anne (age 15): loss of 6 pounds, putting me at 201 pounds
Elizabeth (age 8 ): loss of 7 pounds, putting me at 200 pounds
Elizabeth won. I’m happy. She was the one who guessed the most weight loss, and I’m really glad Tom did not win because he’s been the most skeptical that I would continue on this diet. He told me that he actually thought I would gain weight rather than lose weight. Of course, that has been my track record for diets I have been on in the past.
For the guesses for the September 1 weigh-in, I have changed the process. Each of the children writes down an expected ending weight and then the guesses are sealed in an envelope to be opened on September 1. In this way, I’m not influenced by their guesses so that I try to reach the weight which was the lowest guess. Anne is out of town on a band trip so we will wait until she returns before the kids place their guesses. They enjoy this, of course, because a very little effort could yield $30 in payment. I’m happy because I don’t really look like I’ve lost weight but they know I have. The weight loss is so gradual that the only way I can tell is that I can wear a pair of pants that I bought two years ago and have been unable to wear until last week.
I also think that I’ve spent so much time thinking about this diet because I’m constantly considering different tweaks I could make to the diet. Changing from an unspecified number of Special Days to an accumulation of two Exception Days has been critical to my successfully staying on this diet, I believe, but I don’t need to be constantly considering other changes. I think I need to stay the course for a period of time. When I first started the diet in September, I was going to wait until this coming summer before I considered dropping it. Now I think I’ll give the diet an entire year – until next July when we are at the Family Camp at Many Point Boy Scout Camp – before I consider making any additional changes to this diet.
Despite the lat month when I did not lose any weight, I am still down 14.6 pounds from my starting weight of 215.0. This diet is working.
7:15 AM: My husband gave me a nice gift and card for our wedding anniversary, and I was more focused on my weight today and who would win this competition to guess my weight. I think that I’ll have the competitions end the day before his birthday, the day before Christmas, and the day before our wedding anniversary.
6 PM: My parents are in town for two weeks, and today they took me out to lunch. My father was very concerned about my weight and told me I was at risk of adult-onset diabetes. My mother is concerned that weekend overeating would cause a spike in blood sugar. They were unimpressed by my 15 pound weight loss since I should lose about 70 more. What to do? I listened. I told them that I no longer feel hungry. I eat at mealtimes and don’t worry about food outside of mealtimes. My mother has gained some weight in recent years, and my father is always after her to lose weight. I told my father he was a restrictive eater, and I understand what that is like because I was a restrictive eater for a number of years as well. This diet makes absolutely no sense to them. It will be interesting to observe when they recognize the value of this approach. I will guess that I’ll need to get down to about 150, so it may be two or three years before they realize that this is a good way to maintain a healthy weight.
Day 237 – Saturday, May 2, 2009: 201.4. I have no idea why my weight went up a pound from yesterday or why my weight has not gone down in the last month. Still, I am very encouraged by a change which is occurring. I seem to be losing my frantic desire to put everything in my mouth that is allowed on this diet. When I was counting calories, I always got right up to the allowed number of calories. When I was eating Lean Cuisine, there was never any food left. Dieting got me in the habit of eating everything I was allowing myself to eat. Now, every weekend, I’m allowed to eat anything I want. I’m being more discriminating these days.
Yesterday, I was trying to explain to my parents that I had four Haagen Dazs bars in under two hours but I doubt I will again. My mother doesn’t understand that the period of time of allowing myself to eat whatever I want is what is so special about this diet. It’s what makes weight loss permanent. I am not building up this great desire for food because of having to restrict my eating day after day after day. Instead, each weekend is a time when I can eat to complete satisfaction or even to being completely stuffed. Because complete satisfaction feels better than being completely stuffed, I thought I would eventually eat less on the weekends. Now it is actually happening.
It’s still early – just 9 AM – but I do not have the desire to eat more than I already have, which is two French toast, a biscotti, and an Italian ice. I wasn’t up at midnight with a Haagen Dazs bar in my hand waiting for the digital clock to read 12:00. I doubt that sense of urgency will occur again. It’s very intriguing what is happening to me, and I’m going to let it play out over the next year. It would be just great if I could reach a normal weight just following the rules that are already in place. They are so easy that I could follow them for the rest of my life without much effort or time.
Day 238 – Sunday, May 3, 2009: 203.0. I’ve given some thought over the last day to my slow weight loss and believe that I need to do something different. My weight may have stabilized already at an unacceptably high rate. I think I need to limit food intake at meals on N Days. Maybe I can just resolve to eat as if I am already thin. This would mean I no longer track Exception Days. What I’ve found is I tend to take an Exception Day for reasons that are not a desire for over the top eating. I think I’ll be OK with this approach, although it is a risk.
9 PM: When I told the kids about my change in plans, Anne told me she thought it sounded like The Peanut Cluster Diet, and Tom said I’d follow the diet two days per week – on Saturday and Sunday! That may be so. What I think it will do is eliminate the “I just felt like it†decision to take an Exception Day. Instead, I’ll allow myself Exception events for specific reasons, like that my son broke glass on the table when I was eating breakfast or I had bad breath and wanted a breath mint. I am entering dangerous territory. If I succeed, however, my eating will be very close to how naturally thin people eat. I think this approach is worth the risk that I’ll revert to The Peanut Cluster Diet. My kids predicted my weight on August 31 before I told them of my change in plans. Tom then said he thought I’d gain 5 pounds, and Anne thought I’d gain 10 pounds. We’ll see.
Day 239 – Monday, May 4, 2009: 204.8. I deliberately ate a lot yesterday, so I’m not surprised that my weight went up so much. I’m changing my approach now. Saturday will no longer be an S Day. This could be a disaster. It could backfire. I recognize that, and my kids sure recognize it. What I am now going to attempt to do is to eat as if I am thin already – except on Sundays which is a day to rest my set point, to allow myself “unconditional permission to eat.†I will record Exception Events here. What I’m going to add is that I will try to eat like a thin person which means that my meals will be smaller. When there are exceptions, it will mean exceptions for a specific reason rather than permission to binge.
It feels like the training wheels on the bike are off. The first few rides may be a bit wobbly, but I’m excited. Back in the fall, when I started this diet, I had to give up the notion that I could ever become a naturally thin eater. Now I see that this diet has helped me to tune out hunger between meals and so not be so obsessed about food. It’s great! I also think that continuing the diet as I have has led to excesses on the weekend and on Exception Days. Now I am limiting my “unconditional permission to eat†from 10 days per month (2 Exception Days plus 8 weekend days) down to 4. There will be an impact.
Fasting on Fridays caused weight gain because on the weekend I more than made up for the food not eaten on Friday. This could be the same result for this diet, but I’m going to try it. I have not lost enough weight that anyone even notices, but what I have done is manage to eat somewhat normal amounts on N Days. I have had a long path to cure disordered eating, and I think I am at least partway down that path. This diet has been good for me so far, despite the painfully slow progress and lack of weight loss these past three or four months. I feel so much better than I did a year ago, and I can go back to my journal from them to refresh my memory about the feeling of despair from dieting failure after failure after failure. This diet has been a success for me from Day 5. I just need to tweak it to succeed in losing enough weight, but the basic premise of days on a diet alternated with days off a diet is what allows me to stay successful in following diet rules. Now I’m making those diet rules into guidelines. To help me in not turning this approach into the return of The Peanut Cluster Diet, I will record the exceptions.
2 PM: Surprise! I feel very different. This diet is no longer a way to jump through hoops to try to maximize food intake. Instead, I can take pleasure in eating moderately. I think I’ve finally gotten over the fear of starvation that developed from years of dieting. I tend to think in analogies, and this experience reminds me of hiking near the Continental Divide, coming through some brush, and seeing for miles around. One minute I can see about 20 feet ahead. The next minute I can see a breathtaking view of mountains and lakes. Wow – am I ever glad I tried this approach!
Day 240 – Tuesday, May 5, 2009: 202.6. I woke up at about 3 AM thinking about Aristotle’s Ethics.
I returned to reading Aristotle’s Ethics last year after reading Kelly Brownell’s book Food Fight. In this book, he argues that the obesity epidemic is caused by cultural factors. His department at Yale University is conducting studies like the impact of trans fat on obesity and the lack of access to fresh fruit and vegetables for low income people. I read his book, and it occurred to me that a cultural factor may be a belief – an assumption – that this culture has about eating. I concluded that obese people have a defining characteristic of gullibility, but I could not figure out what would be the false belief that has led to the obesity epidemic. Now I believe I know what it is: the prevailing belief is that weight management is a lifelong battle or a struggle.
The idea from Aristotle’s Ethics that I believe has much to do with the obesity epidemic is that that those who are truly virtuous find pleasure in virtue. It was a eureka moment for me at 3 AM to tie Aristotle’s philosophy of pleasure to the obesity epidemic. Aristotle’s view is that those who are virtuous have learned to take pleasure in moderation. This is simply not within the scope of possibilities that I have heard in my life. Those who are naturally thin are considered to be lucky rather than virtuous. The rest of us, the overweight, just got stuck with the wrong genes or a poor environment.
All my studies of diets and theories have come to a surprising conclusion: becoming naturally thin is not only a possibility but is actually a pleasurable experience! In the fall, when I started this diet, I resigned myself to always having to track exception days and having to restrict my eating on N Days. Now I realize that this diet was a process to allow me to recover from years from dieting, and now I can become naturally thin with little effort and with pleasure. I had many weekends of getting stuffed to the point of feeling sick, and the result is that I learned to associate overeating with pain. I avoided eating sweets during the week, and the result is that I learned to enjoy foods that are not sweets. I also managed to not move the kids along fast enough to make the bus this morning, so I have to return to the real world and take them to school! Then there’s work and an annual physical for my son and a soccer game for my daughter. No wonder I wake up in the night – I have no time to think during the day! I need to listen again to Joseph Koterski’s tapes on Aritotle’s Ethics and especially on the last book of the Ethics about the relationship between pleasure and virtue. I can listen to those tapes while doing laundry, but I think listening to those tapes is just going to reinforce my assessment that the obesity epidemic is caused by a false belief that weight management is a battle whereas in actual fact it is possible to practice temperance until it is a pleasure to do so. I have found the path to becoming naturally thin, and now I need to get my two younger children to school.
Day 241 – Wednesday, May 6, 2009: 201.8. After last night’s soccer game, I had to monitor my son working on an assignment and not taking breaks by playing computer games, so I was able to get my copy of Aristotle’s Ethics and review the last book, which discusses virtue and pleasure. Aristotle discusses how the well-trained person takes pleasure in virtue. If I were to substitute temperance for the word virtue, then what Aristotle is implying is that the temperate person has been trained to be temperate. In other words, there is no such thing as naturally thin. This is yet another cultural myth. Instead, parents teach children temperance by having them be temperate in their eating. For temperate people, it is pleasurable to not eat to being stuffed. Of course, I had to learn this lesson by finding out by experience that it is painful to eat to being stuffed. Diets are about intemperance – since severe restriction of calories is the other extreme to bingeing. Moderation is pleasurable. The two extremes of dieting and bingeing are not pleasurable. What this diet has done for me is help me to recognize that I want to eat moderately, and it is in moderate eating that I will enjoy food the most.
This diet started out hard (for about 3 weeks), became easy (for about 6 months), and now is pleasurable.
6 PM: My parents were in town for about two weeks, and this afternoon they had lunch with my niece and me. They expressed amusement at my diet. They took my two younger children out to Dairy Queen yesterday and asked them about the diet and why they could have a treat at Dairy Queen on a weekday. My girls told my parents that there was an “amendment†to the diet – that they could have sweets if not at home. I tried explaining to my parents that the girls get treats at school, so what I’ve done it tell them they are now on the no-sweets-at-home-during-the-week-because-there-aren’t-any diet. I am no longer allowing them “unconditional permission to eat†on the weekends because the 10 year old has visibly gained a lot of weight. My parents told me that my diet lacks all “common senseâ€. When I said I’d lost 15 pounds, they said that means nothing at all when I’m so heavy. I am disappointed that they feel that way, but they’ll change their minds at some point as I continue to lose weight. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to summer when I have more control over my kids’ eating. It is alarming to see just how much they get in the way of sweets from birthday celebrations and activities. No wonder there’s an obesity epidemic for children! They never go longer than a few hours without eating, and that sort of schedule is considered necessary.
Day 243 – Friday, May 8, 2009: 200.0. Aristotle is known as the philosopher of “common sense.†Thinking back, I believe that he said, “The temperate man is the man who practices temperance.†What this diet does is have a person practice temperance during the week, and the habit eventually carries over into the weekend. I have thought that this diet was first a cure for disordered eating and then a way to lose weight, but now I understand why: it’s not until the habit carries over into the weekend that you really start to lose weight. I had to be patient without really understanding why I was following this diet perfectly but not losing weight. Now I’m down exactly 15 pounds. If, in fact, the weekend binges are a thing of the past, then my weight should go down much more quickly in the future.
Day 244 – Saturday, May 9, 2009: 9 PM: I didn’t feel like overeating, but lunch was delayed so I had a snack and then lunch and then treats at a graduation party instead of dinner. I decided to allow both Saturdays and Sundays as S Days and to record weekday exceptions to N Day guidelines. That’s it. That’s my diet.
I skimmed through Aristotle’s Ethics and found a brilliant contrast between the scientific and the calculative parts of reasoning. In the scientific, we “contemplate things whose first principles are invariable.†For the calculative, “we contemplate things that are variable†(Book 6).
I have been of the opinion that this diet needs to be followed with “perfect compliance†like the commitment to be faithful. Now I realize that this analogy is hopelessly flawed, since fidelity is based on invariable principles and diet is not.
What makes this diet so special, I think, is found in Aristotle's Ethics: “A man who abstains from bodily pleasures and enjoys the very fact of so doing is temperate; if he finds it irksome he is licentious†(Book 3).
The contrast of moderate eating on N Days with overeating on S Days is changing me into a person who “abstains from bodily pleasure and enjoys the very fact of so doing.â€
Day 245 – Sunday, May 10, 2009: I was hoping that the switch from enjoyment of overeating to enjoyment of moderate eating happened last week and now I am in a “new reality†(this term is from Elizabeth Edward’s new book Resilience which I read in the past few days). Well, that was wishful thinking. It will take time, but I’m confident it will happen. On Saturday morning, I had one plateful at breakfast and then no desire to eat until about 1 PM, but the rest of the weekend became my norm for S Days which was constant eating. And that’s OK.
What I like about having both Saturday and Sunday as non N Days is that there is a different rhythm to the weekend because I’m not working and Tom’s not working and the kids are not in school. I decided to just let this diet continue with two weekend S Days and just allow myself to drift into enjoying moderate eating. It never occurred to me that I would actually enjoy dieting. The culture makes dieting and weight control into such a huge and unpleasant task when, in reality, Aristotle is right that the habit of temperance makes moderate eating an enjoyable experience. Right now, my stomach is somewhat bloated, and I’m looking forward to the structure of N Days and the activity of another N Day. I spent an entire academic year home with not much to do, and I didn’t like it. Work contrasted with weekend play makes both more enjoyable, just like I enjoy the succession of seasons. I am starting to really enjoy this diet, which is good because I want to be on it for the rest of my life!
Day 248 – Wednesday, May 13, 2009: 202.8. Yesterday, I had coffee with a friend, and I told her about my diet. While she is thin, her mother was more than 300 pounds when she died, and her sister is gaining weight and is convinced she is addicted to sugar. How much our beliefs drive our behavior! I told her that my weight has stayed almost exactly the same for the past three months, and she suggested one S Day rather than two. Yes, I told her I had tried that. I told her that I am starting to prefer moderate eating to overeating. After talking with her, I am thinking that what I want to start doing is consciously eating moderately on N Days. Right now, I can load up one plate with food, although I am starting not to do that. For example, last night, we went to a pizza restaurant for our son’s birthday. I had two slices of pizza, not three or four which I could have fit on a plate. I think what I’ll do is consciously choose to eat moderately but just start with Fridays until I feel comfortable. I tried fasting on Fridays during Lent, and that practice backfired for me. This practice is more conscious moderation (a positive choice) rather than restriction to one plate. Conscious moderation includes the practice of no snacks, no sweets, and no seconds. I’m not trying to weasel my way out of the No S guidelines, only consciously move towards their positive correlative which is moderate eating.
6 PM: Conscious moderation. I think that’s my current location on the path to naturally thin. I still need to think about it. I need to consciously choose moderation, but I no longer see it as a negative – as restriction or deprivation. Instead, I am recognizing what is positive about moderation.
Day 251 – Saturday, May 16, 2009: 202.0. It’s frustrating to see literally no change on the scale. My average weight for the week was 202.6 during the week of February 22nd. The last time I had a new low was at the end of March. What am I going to do? Absolutely nothing. The last month has been particularly stressful because of two family graduations (one out of town), two birthdays for children, the last First Communion, and my parents in town for two weeks. I even stopped exercising for a month, but I did not stop this diet. It’s finally nice weather, so we can be outside more. With the kids home from school, I’ll be home more. I just need to stick with this diet and see how it goes. I told myself I wouldn’t change anything until the one year anniversary of the diet on September 8, and my goal for then is 193.5, which is a 10% weight loss in one year. That amount of weight more to lose is very possible. Yesterday, I weighed 200.2, which was less than seven pounds more than my goal weight in about 3 ½ months. That works out to about 2 pounds per month. If I don’t make that goal, that’s OK, too.
The change I do see is that I no longer have the ravenous desire to eat everything in sight on an S Day. It’s an S Day right now, and there are no sweets in the house. I can get some today. I didn’t even think about getting treats because of our daughter’s party last night.
9 PM: I ate a lot today. At breakfast, I ordered a short stack of pancakes. When I had about 1/8th of one pancake left and everyone else was done, the waitress started to clear the plates. She asked if I was done as she lifted up the plate, and I said no. I then commented that I was stuffed but thought I might still eat it. On the way home from breakfast, Tom asked me why I didn’t just let the waitress clear the plate instead of forcing myself to eat the last few bites. Good question. I have no idea why I did that. Was it habit from the intense desire to eat the last grain of rice from those Lean Cuisine meals?
During the day, which was filled to absurdity with activities, I managed to inhale lots of food. Why? Again – I have no idea. I sure didn’t have time to think. Today was the last busy day of a busy several weeks. Now we’ll return to normalcy. I had time tonight to take my glasses in to get fixed, and I concluded that I need to go down to one S Day. When I tried that approach a few months ago, the results were bad – I ate more on the other days to make up for the lost S Day. Now, however, I think I’m ready. It’s time to limit the thinking and writing and focus more on doing. I like the entire approach of N Days with an S Day that is insurance against the end of diet binge behavior, but I don’t like the number on the scale being stuck at about 200 pounds. One S Day, to me, is the absolute minimum.
Day 252 – Sunday, May 17, 2009: 203.8. Today’s weight seals the deal: one S Day per week, and I’ll make it Sunday because Sunday is supposed to be a day of rest. I am disappointed that I did not drop to an acceptable weight while following this diet with two S Days. Those years of dieting must have made so much of an impression on my “emotional brain†that it’s hard to overcome. I read somewhere that survivors of the Holocaust tended to become obese, and I can appreciate why. I look around and see lots of morbidly obese people, especially those who are older. Why? Are they people who dieting for years, and their bodies reacted like the survivors of the Holocaust? I think so. I think I need to accept that the effect of 35 years of dieting is never going to dissipate completely, and I need to be accepting of the impact of all that dieting.
4 PM: I feel absolutely stuffed. The prospect of only one S Day has led to constant eating all day. I just resorted to popcorn which has a tendency to fill me up. I think I’m going to skip weighing myself and writing about dieting through the end of the month and just follow the program. I am sad that I have not lost weight in three months, but I am glad that I am changing my behavior with the hope that I will lose weight now. As of Friday, I only had 7 pounds to go in 3 ½ months to make my weight loss goal of 10% of body weight lost (from 215 to under 193.5 pounds) in one year. I would be really sad if I didn’t make that goal, so I wanted to tweak the diet. I am so back and forth on what to do.
I want my children to learn from me. The years of restrictive eating, when I weighed under 135, were so affected by my on again off again dieting. I would go on 1,000 calorie per day diets for nine days, during which time I limited social contacts, and then I would feel comfortable with eating what I wanted until my weight edged above 135 again and I would repeat, repeat, repeat… I hated this way of life, but I was thin. Now I’m obese and determined to find a saner approach to weight loss. This approach seems sane. Now I just have to lose enough weight to be satisfied with my weight.
4:30 PM: Brian Tracy, in his book Eat That Frog!, warns against technological time sinks. I think my approach to dieting has resulted in lots of time sinks – the daily weigh ins, the tracking of weight in a multitude of ways (average weight per week, the new lows, the new highs, etc.), and the daily journal. I think I’m done. I need to set an approach for a period of time, stick with it, and see what happens. I can put off any changes until September 8, the one year anniversary of my starting this diet. I want to see the impact on weight of going down to only one S Day.
Day 253 – Monday, May 18, 2009: 205.0. I decided to see the damage of yesterday’s binge. I am still down 10 pounds from September 8, and the basic structure of the diet is sound. I have to adjust to one S Day because I am not losing weight because… why? Because I am eating so much on S Days. I need “unconditional permission to eat.†What I do not need is two days of “unconditional permission to eat.â€
Day 254 – Tuesday, May 19, 2009: 203.6. I’m already glad that I went down to one S Day. I realize now that I was more worried than I allowed myself to feel. I was worried that I would be stuck above 200 pounds but dead set against returning to the binge-starve cycle of conventional diets. Since I have an unlimited number of exception events, I don’t have to worry about running out of exceptions if there is an exception event. There do tend to be more exception events on Saturdays, but that’s OK. I can try only having beverages. Even if I do take an exception on a Saturday, at least I won’t be eating from first thing in the morning to evening. At least the eating will be more normalized. This approach seems like a good one for me at this point. When I tried going to one S Day a few months ago, it became apparent to me immediately that it was not a good idea. I guess learning to eat normally occurs in stages for me. This month, with the move to one S Day, is a new stage. It took more than 200 days to get to this stage, and that’s OK. My guess is that the last time I am above 200 pounds will be next Monday. I will be so pleased to be back below 200 pounds. It’s been about 5 years since I went above 200 pounds for the first time. As I recall, it was about in June, 2004. I wish to save my children from the frustration of conventional diets.
My 15 year old daughter, who is following this diet, has clearly gained weight. At her last doctor’s appointment, she weighed in at about 160 pounds. It alarmed me. I was so happy about her following this diet that I hadn’t realized she had actually gained weight. I was happy to see that she was no longer returning from school, charging into the kitchen, and wolfing down what she could find. I was happy to notice that she was no longer complaining about being hungry. I could see the benefits of this diet, but my rose colored glasses did not allow me to see that she had actually gained weight. I hope to encourage her to also go down to one S Day. She is my inspiration – my beautiful, smart, and highly motivated first born child. I could not have a greater motivation than to model behavior that I would like her to follow.
Day 256 – Thursday, May 21, 2009: 201.4. At about 4 PM today, I may have experienced genuine hunger. I had forgotten to eat lunch and had only had a bowl of cereal for breakfast. How could I have forgotten to eat? I was so caught up in picking up children from school and chatting with other mothers and going to visit other mothers at a garage sale that they were holding that I just plain forgot to eat. It is so nice not to be obsessed with food!
Day 257 – Friday, May 22, 2009: 199.6. In the car, our son asked me, “Don’t you think it is dumb how the elementary school has snacks every day?†Our 10 year old piped up and said, “It’s not dumb. It’s scientifically proven that kids who have snacks do better in school.†Oh great. I wonder who told her that!
Day 260 – Monday, May 25, 2009: 200.4. I got through the weekend fairly easily even though it was my first weekend without Saturday as an S Day. On Saturday morning, I bought something I have wanted for several months – a 16†14K gold chain. I have an 18†14K gold chain, but pendants of that length don’t work well with some of my clothing. The cost for that one chain was $177. It was an extravagant purchase, to say the least. It was a commitment of sorts to myself that I wasn’t going back to two S Days. This was my reward.
Today I weigh just over 200 pounds. I think it is possible that this is the last time in my life that I will weigh over 200 pounds. Certainly, by the end of the month, I will never again weigh 200 pounds. What a wonderful feeling! I think that the first time I went above 200 pounds (except in pregnancy) was about 5 years ago, and now I say good-bye and good riddance to that much weight. Yesterday, our family went for a bike ride, and it was really hard for me to carry that much weight on a bike. I used to love bike riding and haven’t done much of it in the last several years because of my weight. I look forward to a different life as I lose weight – a life in which I can ride a bike, a life in which I can wear a bathing suit which isn’t ghastly, and a life in which I am not obsessed by food every waking hour. There is no longer any sense of deprivation. Instead, there is an almost overwhelming sense of relief.
Day 262 – Wednesday, May 27, 2009: 199.6. Since about Monday afternoon, this diet has gone back to being difficult. It’s not as difficult as it was in September, but I would rate the difficulty at about a 7 on a scale from 1 to 10. I had not anticipated problems after having only one S Day. Apparently, I didn’t load up as much on food as I have on other weekends.
I told Tom not to expect as much out of me. He suggested that maybe I should do more. I pointed out that I worked six hours yesterday plus attended our son’s jazz band concert plus worked on packing for a weekend camping trip plus made dinner. It’s not that I’m lounging around the house, but I do feel fatigued. I cannot believe how difficult it is to drop below 200 pounds.
My perspective is still of the person I was when I was single and struggling to maintain my weight in the low 130s. I thought that people who were as obese as I am now had simply “let themselves go.†Oh no. I think that obese people, like me now, are usually ones who kept on trying and trying and trying despite failing every time. You have to have a lot of willpower to go on a diet when you are so overweight that it will take months, if not years, to reach a normal weight. I’m glad I’ve got the goal of losing 10% off my starting weight in one year. As of today, I have only 6.2 pounds to go in more than 3 months to make my goal weight of 193.5 or less by September 8. My next goal weight will be in the low 170s by September 8, 2010, but I’ll worry about that goal after I reach this one! In the meantime, I’m taking it easy until I adjust to only one S Day on the weekend.
Day 263 – Thursday, May 28, 2009: 200.0. I’m irritated about having a “2†in the hundreds column of my weight, but I’m not surprised. Yesterday, I had an entire bowl of popcorn with dinner. That’s what I did several times back in September when I was adjusting to no snacks. How I feel today is very similar to how I felt in September. I feel grumpy and tired and just plain irritated. These last two week of school tend to be easy for the kids because there is limited homework, although Anne still has some projects and I was a helicopter parent picking up an assignment for Tom that he had missed. Tom appears to have no sense of planning. My husband Tom thinks it is due to laziness. I think it may be due to not knowing how to plan. I told him that I’ve been very motivated to lose weight, but all I did before this diet was gain weight. I didn’t know how. I am confident that going to one S Day is appropriate for me even though the transition is turning out to be difficult. I want to make my goal weight, and that desire is helping me to endure the transition to one S Day.
Day 264 – Friday, May 29, 2009: 199.0. I had an apple for lunch. When I bit into it, it didn’t taste very good. I threw it out and got a different apple. I then asked myself if I was going to record this as an Exception Event. No. I wasn’t. That’s the end of recording exceptions. The habit of no snacks is ingrained enough that I don’t think this is going to be a problem. I have concluded that the big myth behind the obesity epidemic is this: “Snacks curb hunger.†The reality is that snacks stimulate hunger. If you are eating all the time, you’ll feel hungry all the time.
Day 265 – Saturday, May 30, 2009: Since my old diet – “The Peanut Cluster Diet with Restrictions†-- ended May 3, I’ve been uncertain how to change my diet approach and today I slid right into an unplanned “feeding frenzyâ€. It started Thursday with having popcorn before dinner. On Friday, I threw away a bad apple and replaced it. Friday evening before dinner was an indulgence in cherries. Today I ate so much that I can’t record my inhalation of food completely. I did have the Snickers bar I was saving for tomorrow. I had chips and popcorn and so much food that it brings back memories of how I’d act before I was on this diet. I’d just check out at unpredictable times. I was unreliable, like an alcoholic parent. It’s obvious to me why some believe food can be an addiction because I would act like an addict.
Enough! It’s time to press the restart button. I learned two big lessons from this:
Lesson 1: It may seem silly, but it’s important for me to record exceptions even if an exception is that I replaced a bad apple.
Lesson 2: It matters whether I eat food before or after a meal. The “everything on one plate†rule isn’t necessary for me. I never could stomach placing an apple on a plate next to meat. What is important to me is to have everything before me before I take one bite.
I’ve learned enough lessons. It’s time to revise this diet. I’m naming it what my 10 year old named it: The S Day Diet. Here are the rules:
- On Sundays. I have “unconditional permission to eat.†Sunday is my “S Dayâ€.
- On other days (“N Daysâ€), I have no snacks or sweets. Before I take one bite, everything is before me.
- If I take exceptions on N Days I record the exceptions.
Day 266 – Sunday, May 31, 2009: What a day! Last night, my daughter asked me if it was OK for her to have s’mores as an exception event rather than to take an S Day, since s’mores can’t be kept overnight and eaten in the morning. I told her that I could tell her what I am doing to lose weight but she needs to find her own path. She understood. What works for me may not work for her. I need to encourage her and respect her individuality. I realized that, for me, food diaries were a big negative, so my recording exception events will help to deter me from taking exception events. Would that be true for everyone? Probably not.
I didn’t really like the name “The S Day Dietâ€,so I got the kids to help come up with a new name with a reward of $10 for the name I selected. Tom put in his two cents’ worth and said it should be called “The It’s Not Going to Work Diet.†I thought I’d tease him a little after that comment, so I asked him if he’d commit to going to the Gokhale Method Posture Classes with me if I got below 140 pounds. Sure – no problem! Well, I had him sign a page from my planner saying he’d go. Anne won the diet naming contest after she came up with a name with exception in it, and I added exceptional. We ended up with The Exceptional Diet as a name. I try to make all of this a game and in fun, but the intent behind it is serious – I want the kids to learn from me so they don’t repeat what I have done in struggling with my weight for most of my life. The kids enjoy competing to come up with names for diets and guessing my weight loss. I enjoy involving them so they learn. We bought jelly beans two weeks ago, and the jar was not opened until Sunday morning, and then nothing was eaten from the jar after Sunday until this Sunday. They like Exceptional Days, and they appreciate getting treats I wouldn’t buy previously. Tom bought ice cream for them tonight. I think they enjoy sweets more when the time for having them is limited.
Last edited by Kathleen on Mon Jun 01, 2009 2:00 am, edited 96 times in total.