Everyday Systems

I find that if I'm going to get by on 3 meals a day, I have to make them old-fashioned square meals. Pork chops, sautéed potatoes, and a green salad with vinaigrette, say. No low-fat anything. I like using old-school recipes, like Julia Child's or Marcella Hazan's. I see cheese and butter as my fri...

Are gone! I've been trying to lost the 5 lbs. I gained freshman year since my sophomore year of college! (I'm 29 now.) For most of the last decade, trying to get rid of those 5 lbs. involved gaining another 10 or 15 on top of them, plus getting compulsive about food. About 7 months of 100% plain van...

Thanks, you guys!!! Wise words. I guess it's just really one of those things where you need some common sense--eat until you feel satisfied, try a bit of each thing, but don't overeat. I'm just not always so good with common sense! (Which is why, generally, I find No S so useful--it's about learning...

Sometimes I wonder why that's part of why women are more often overweight than men; they can and should eat more than us, but we are often eating with them, and I, at least, have a hard time telling myself not to "keep up"! My skinny husband's way taller than me and must have some kind of crazy meta...

Well, you could see it as a more general problem--not necessarily just with those cuisines, although they're some of the very trickiest. But the general problem being the unstructured, multi-plate, family-style, semi-festive restaurant meal, where everything's shared. I thought I had a good solution...

Hello, all, I'm baffled by how to deal with certain cuisines. Ethiopian. South Indian. Tapas. Where you end up with lots of little plates around, and no plate of your own to portion onto, and it's kind of a free-for-all. And it's so delicious that "virtual plating" just seems too hard. I've been try...

Another great breakfast thing is the Swiss Muesli recipe in the Joy of Cooking. It's a lot like "optimized oatmeal," but possibly even more convenient, 'cause you make a batch at a time: Put old-fashioned oats in a big bowl, add an equal amount of boiling water, and just let that sit out on the coun...

Hey, babyprr, About treats people make and want you to have--I feel bad saying no, and don't want to feign a stomach ache! It's a tricky thing, but I like my solution pretty well: I have ONE bite ("no seconds"), if there's a GOOD reason. And I loudly appreciate that bite! For me, two bites is failur...

Hey, there, I have a couple of ideas... first, have you lost all your Christmas weight? And is your current weight healthy, BMI-wise? If so, maybe your current weight is simply the weight you're supposed to be, and the plateau is telling you that. And then maintaining and keeping up the good habits ...

Hey, Dawn and Reinhard, Thanks! Yeah, making a spectacle of oneself one way or the other (refusing any of the homemade guacamole your best friend made, OR eating all of the guacamole, OR, even worse, doing first the one and then the other) is no good. So "no seconds" works well! Oh my gosh, my appet...

Just realized I wrote this a little ambiguously: I don't mean just one bite from each plate, which, in some contexts, would be crazy, but one normal-person serving (one cracker, yes, but one serving of salad or one piece of bread with one pat of butter, or one normal serving of the fried rice going ...

Dear all, I've been lurking here for a while, and very happy with "No S"! What a relief... I've always been quite slim, but I do have some VERY BAD binge-y eating habits that I know will catch up with me someday as I get older and my metabolism slows down. I'm trying to use "No S" to get myself into...