hja's Daily Check-in

hja · Post by **hja** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 2:46 am

Hello everyone! Let me try to introduce myself in a few short sentences: I'm an almost-30 year old female software engineer. I have actually already lost almost all the weight I'd like to lose (191 lbs -> 148 lbs, yay!), and have been in maintenance / "maybe I should lose another 10lbs for vanity's sake" mode for a year and a half. I lost it in a very healthy way: eat less, eat more whole foods, exercise more.

"Great," you say, "what are you doing here?" Well, I've been maintaining the same way I lost: strict food logging / calorie counting and lots of exercise. The exercise is great and I love it (I'm actually training for my first triathlon right now). But the obsessive food logging feels less and less sustainable to me, as do my old habits of eating micro-meals through the day. That worked great when I brought all my food into work, but my new (6 months old) job feeds me free breakfast and lunch and snacks every day. There are lots and lots of healthy options, which I do eat, but I also find myself eating the dessert every day at lunch and just eating less real food to make the total calories add up right. I haven't gained weight, but I have started to build up a "sugar belly." With all this triathlon training I had to increase my caloric intake but I was just eating more sugars and not more good food (big salad, grilled chicken, fresh vegetables, two big chocolate chip cookies. Hmmm...). I began to realize that we're socialized to eat 3 big meals a day, not 5 or 6 small ones, and that I had to make my maintenance plan work with that. And, let's face it. I'm tired of mentally cataloging the contents and portion sizes of everything I eat every meal so that I can go back to fitday.com and enter it all in every single day. It's draining.

Then I came across this website, read the No-S-Diet page, mulled it over for a few days, and realized that here was a very simple, intuitive set of rules I could make work for me as a long-haul solution. No snacking, of course! If I'm eating these three big meals a day I can't also save another few slices of toast for midmorning and another half sandwich for the afternoon.

So, here I am! I'm absolutely commited to cutting out the snacking. I'm absolutely commited to cutting out the seconds. I'm very much trying to be fully committed to cutting out the sweets.

Oh boy, that wasn't short at all.

Starting Day -1: going to start tomorrow.

gratefuldeb67 · Post by **gratefuldeb67** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 2:50 am

Good luck!
You will love this plan..
Oh, also fantastic work on losing all that weight!!!
NoS will definitely be a nice way to keep it off painlessly!

Have a nice evening..
Peace and Love,

Deb

hja · Post by **hja** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 9:33 pm

Day 1: SUCCESS Funny stuff: Dessert at lunch today was "pudding with maple syrup and molasses over corn bread", but I saw a smallish bit of corn bread all by itself in the corner of the pan so I added that to my lunch plate.

EDIT: I had a small cocktail at night, well after dinner, but since alcohol (in moderation) isn't a Sweet I guess that's no different than having a small glass of juice between meals.

hja · Post by **hja** » Wed Feb 22, 2006 9:38 pm

Oh, and thanks so much for the welcome, Deb!

carolejo · Post by **carolejo** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 8:02 am

Deb is right, for what you want it to do, NoS should be a walk in the park for you

Welcome. Hope it's everything you need it to be.
C.

hja · Post by **hja** » Thu Feb 23, 2006 10:25 pm

Day 2: SUCCESS Funny stuff: Scone at breakfast was definitely on the line of "sweets", but was more buttery than sugary. My salad at lunch was on a small side plate instead of on the meal plate. However, I fully passed up the really soft moist delicious cookies they had in the cafeteria. Yay!

Again, haven't had dinner yet but I'll come back and edit if there is a problem.

hja · Post by **hja** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 8:56 pm

Day 3: SUCCESS Funny stuff: Scone at breakfast again. Lunch salad on a small side plate again. But I left a good half cup of orzo which was part of the lunch entree, so I was definitely listening to my body's signals.

Other notes: I have a few cups of coffee through the day, and each has soy milk and a sugar packet in them. Also, when I go out to see live music I have up to three alcoholic drinks. I don't count these as S's.

hja · Post by **hja** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 9:09 pm

More notes: I'm noticing a few things, nothing new to others here I'm sure.

One is that my breakfast plates have been very full because I'm afraid of getting hungry before lunch. I have been a bit too full after breakfast as a result, and should make those plates a bit less crowded.

Two is that it's nice to be hungry at lunch! When I snacked through the day, even watching my calories, I was never really hungry, just a bit peckish. Now I get a real hunger signal before lunch and before dinner, and it feels nice. I feel more in touch with my hunger, and can contrast that with feeling full.

Three is that since I snacked through the day (health or unhealthy) I was often not hungry for dinner at all. This week I've been satisified after lunch but hungry for a full meal four or five hours later. This also feels good and natural and a bit novel.

gratefuldeb67 · Post by **gratefuldeb67** » Fri Feb 24, 2006 9:22 pm

Who could have thought that being a little hungry could actually enhance your enjoyment of food!
Boy that seems like it would be so obvious, but it really does feel totally novel to experience it when one is used to being more of a snacker..

I liked, and continue to like the feeling of having a good appetite build up before a meal.

Have a great day Holli

Peace and Love,

Deb

hja · Post by **hja** » Sat Feb 25, 2006 3:49 pm

Day 4: S-DAY
Day 5: S-DAY

Bad planning at work and lots of work at work led me to skipping my workouts on Thursday and Friday. So today I feel very sluggish and icky. I know I'll be biking around a bit just to do some errands and see people, but I'm going to try to fit a real workout in as well.

I've been working on my own "14 minutes of resistance training" idea that isn't shovelglove. I'm compiling a list of exercises that require no equipment (pushups, squat thrusts, jumping jacks, etc) and I'm going to make a card for each one. Then I'll just shuffle them up every day, choose 14 off the top randomly, and do each for 1 minute without stopping. That way I'll get a different, small resistance workout every day that is short enough that I'll never skip it.

I'll let you know how it goes.

carolejo · Post by **carolejo** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 2:48 pm

I like your resistance exercise plan, it sounds very do-able.

Unfortunately, those kinds of exercises are frought with bad mental associations for me

due to some particularly sadistic and unpleasant PE teachers from my youth! Probably it's about time I reclaimed them for myself, so perhaps I will try something similar when I'm travelling during the week and don't have my sledgehammer to hand.

C.

hja · Post by **hja** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 5:49 pm

Day 6: SUCCESS Funny stuff: small package of animal crackers with dinner. They are more cracker than cookie, for sure.
Day 7: SUCCESS - so far.

I'll edit if it changes. Resisted doughnuts at breakfast.

No-S really helped me last night; I stayed at work until midnight finishing up an important task and the junk food in the mini-kitchens really called out to me. I resisted and this morning, aside from being tired, my body feels very good. I'm sure I would feel bloated and a bit icky if I had eaten those cookies/chips/candies.

hja · Post by **hja** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 5:58 pm

Day 8: SUCCESS so far.

Yesterday remained a success, by the way. The only funny stuff was a bit of bread pudding at lunch, but the way our cafeteria makes it it's not sweet at all, just bread baked in milk and eggs with no extra sugar. Plus they put the caramel sauce on the side instead of baking it in so I didn't have any of the sauce.

hja · Post by **hja** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 5:16 pm

Day 9: SUCCESS so far.

Yesterday remained a success as well. Another funny thing, though: I had some apple coffee cake with dinner. I told myself that I wouldn't consider it an S if it were served at breakfast, but since I had already had a scone at breakfast that was already two "iffy" choices for the day.

This morning at breakfast it was a CLOSE one. I had a small muffin with my wheat toast and fruit, but after I was done with my breakfast I really really wanted to go get another small muffin. I think I would have lost that battle, but when I looked back at the breakfast bar I saw that there were no more! Whew.

hja · Post by **hja** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 5:09 pm

Day 10: SUCCESS so far

Yesterday at lunch I made myself a HUGE plate of food. (Oh, the pitfalls of free good food at work). I didn't get any of the big moist soft cookies lined up for my eating pleasure, so that was a success. I had intented to eat half of the plate of food for lunch and save the other half for dinner (which I often also eat at work). I had used this strategy several times already, successfully. I should know better than to rely on my restraint. I just plowed through that whole plate of food in one sitting. Eep!

The very last thing I want to do is turn the clock back 5 years and re-teach my stomach to expect enormous meals. I put in a lot of work to shrink my stomach, lots of meals where I was still a bit hungry afterwards but I toughed it out. I don't want to go back there.

So today I'm focusing on reasonable portions and normal-looking plates: NO STACKING. If I want to save a plate of food for dinner I'll go get it AFTER I've eaten lunch.

hja · Post by **hja** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 9:31 pm

Day 11: S-DAY
Day 12: S-DAY
Day 13: FAILURE

It was the smallest of transgressions. A single Thin Mint cookie. It wasn't that I wanted one really, it was that the boy offering it to me was so cute.

In any case...

Day B1: SUCCESS so far...

hja · Post by **hja** » Thu Mar 09, 2006 6:54 pm

Day B2: SUCCESS
Day B3: SUCCESS so far

Through a new relationship, even! Very cool.

hja · Post by **hja** » Fri Mar 10, 2006 9:56 pm

Day B4: S-Day Good friend's bachelorette party.
Day B5: S-Day
Day B6: S-Day

hja · Post by **hja** » Mon Mar 20, 2006 5:34 pm

I didn't check in last week at all, but it didn't go that well.

I've been sick and busy at work and getting back into regular exercising (triathlon training) and I started dating someone, and my whole regular routine went up in smoke. Poof!

The weekend went well though. I listened to my hunger signals and didn't eat unless I was hungry, which wasn't often. Nice to not feel over-full.

I'm getting it all back in order now, so let's call today:
Day C1: SUCCESS so far