Everyday Systems

DaveMc

Also, if anyone thinks that calorie counting is something that should be avoided on No S, I'd like to hear about that, too. I don't think anyone would say that calorie counting is something that always needs to be avoided on NoS. What I usually say, when this comes up (which is fairly frequently), ...

DaveMc

I enjoyed going to classes, but the new gym I joined does not offer any, but they do have a movie theater with all different types of cardio machines... it's great! Wow, I've never encountered such a thing. I guess if there's someone tall in front of you, you just have to jump to see over them, inc...

DaveMc

I do either 50-min fitness classes (step aerobics, weights-plus-cardio classes, etc.), or biking or stair-climbing on machines, for 20-30 minutes at a time. The fitness classes are a fun group activity that I enjoy, and for the cardio machines I bring my iPod and watch TV or listen to audiobooks, wh...

DaveMc

oolala53 wrote:On another site, the moderators were saying ....

Whereas on this site, we are *all* moderators (or at least striving for moderation).

DaveMc

Hmm ... Early on in NoS, maybe a month or two in, I took a five or six hour N-day train trip with my daughter, and the train was delayed, so we got in about an hour later than expected. I'd eaten lunch before we left, and dinner seemed like an *incredibly* long way away by the time we arrived, and t...

DaveMc

The Scalesian vs. NoWeigher debate is one of the longest-lived ones on this board, and many of us have had to learn to agree to disagree. Some people do weigh in regularly, while others (and I'm among them) use the scale very infrequently, and choose instead to focus on things like how we feel and h...

DaveMc

I'm in the "It's not *what*, it's *how much*" camp, but at the same time I'm also firmly in the "Whatever works for you" camp.

DaveMc

Tips for handling office goodies: 1) Learn to politely say no without feeling guilty. There are plenty of nice ways to turn down a treat. And trust me, declining sweets/treats gets easier every time you do it. I find that people really do not care if I eat goodies, at office gatherings -- we had on...

DaveMc

Well, now ... it's nice that you folks feel that interval training works well for you, but let's not discourage more gentle forms of exercise, shall we? Whatever works to get people moving, and some people may have no interest in doing intense bursts of hard-core exercise -- and they'll get benefits...

DaveMc

Yes, indeed! We call it "Remembrance Day" here in Canada, but the sentiment is the same. (Actually, I take it that the two aspects of Remembrance Day, here, namely remembering the fallen and thanking them (and the living) for their service, are sort of split into two days in the U.S. -- Memorial Day...

DaveMc

Very fairly put, Sienna.

DaveMc

It would be HARD to do ... Yeah, I imagine that a lot of people are seeing the story and thinking, "Lose weight eating Twinkies? Awesome!", but they're not taking into account the amount of discipline it would take to eat precisely 1800 calories a day, without fail. Especially since just a couple o...

DaveMc

"Vanilla NoS" is a term people use to describe sticking to the basic plan: no snacks, no sweets, no seconds, except on days starting with S. That is, "vanilla" includes no extra exceptions, and no extra restrictions. (No "mods", to introduce another term you may see, short for "modifications", and c...

DaveMc

The votes do seem to be converging to a consistent result: snacks and sweets show up about equally often in people's replies, with seconds much less popular.

With 53 total votes:

Snacks - 10+15+4+3 = 32
Sweets - 13+15+2+3 = 33
Seconds - 6+4+2+3 = 15

DaveMc

One thing I'd just note, not at all as a criticism: I seem to enjoy vegetables and fruit a lot more now (after 16 months of NoS) than I remember doing before. So it might be worth sort of "checking in" every year or so, to see if your preferences might have changed when you weren't looking. It's lik...

DaveMc

Sixteen months. Here's my "testimonial" thread:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=6595

DaveMc

Welcome, JD!

DaveMc

jumbotights wrote:Still trying, still failing, but won't stop till I get it right.

With that attitude, you can't lose, in the long run. Hang in there!

DaveMc

Welcome aboard! Best of luck to you.

DaveMc

I've concluded that my issues with BMI amount to haggling over the last ten pounds or so. One's weight is a continuous quantity, and it's only the ranges on the BMI chart that are discontinuous: that is, move from 25.1 to 24.9, and suddenly you've moved from "overweight" to "normal". But that's a bi...

DaveMc

DaveMc, I do totally get what you are saying about piling the Big Mac and fries on a plate and do try to behave better than that. I agree that I am probably not one of those lucky people :( I have been looking at the positive side of this as well, its the first time in a long time that I have been ...

DaveMc

My assumption is you could eat what you wanted, just no snacks, seconds, or sweets. Worrying about types of food at meals will frustrate me enough that I completely give up on this. Well, here's a deep secret about NoS that we were hoping not to need to break to you until later: NoS isn't magical. ...

DaveMc

I think we need to be pretty cautious about urging anyone to get really "hard core" about their approach to eating, unless that desire comes from them. A lot of people are here looking for a sensible, moderate, long-term approach that won't lead them to drop NoS for the next fad, and the moderate na...

DaveMc

How different people's bodies react to different combinations of diet and exercise seems to be something of a mystery, and still nowhere near fully understood in scientific terms, from what I can tell. One thing that I've picked up is that the prime suspect whenever anything changes rapidly is: wate...

DaveMc

Great to hear! Best of luck as you continue your journey.

DaveMc

And I agree with the idea of not trying to start off with 3 meals (if you read the site and book there are things that say 3 meals is the default, but you have to make it work for you!) but with maybe 3 and some planned snacks. I think this is a key point: the first and biggest challenge with NoS i...

DaveMc

Right, right, we're getting mixed up with the various ways the word "easy" can be used. I think "simple" captures the way I think about NoS better than "easy", but I can certainly see how one could use the latter, too -- easy to understand, not complex, etc.

DaveMc

Funny, because it pretty much is *that* easy. Well, now, easy yet hard, surely? (I know, I know, don't call you Shirley. :)) I'm just thinking that "Eat less and exercise more" was *exactly* my diet plan, before NoS -- I called it "The Thermodynamics Diet". But it wasn't easy to maintain, because i...

DaveMc

Will the hunger diminish with time or will I just get used to being hungry so that the feeling of hunger doesnâ€™t bother me anymore? I found both: I started to feel less hungry, and the sensation bothered me less. Everyone's different, but I think many people here have experienced the same thing. ...

DaveMc

I'm 5'10" and I weight over 300 lbs, which I believe puts me over 150 lbs overweight. By the way, you may be over-stating how much you're overweight, there. I mean, "How much should a person weigh?" can be as silly a question as "How much should a vehicle weigh?" ("Well, what *kind* of vehicle?"), ...

DaveMc

What I lack is the knowledge and the path to be set upon. I don't have money to buy treadmills and Bowflexes. Nor do I have the money to buy special diet food every week. I can work to buy normal, healthy food from a store (Which is going to be better overall because I can't just eat special diet f...

DaveMc

There's a thread on here somewhere about weighing, which was very good. As I recall, folks tend to fall into two main categories: 1) Weigh often so you learn to ignore blips 2) Weigh infrequently so trends show clearly I found the thread: http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=84226 KCCC's c...

DaveMc

Posting a comment to bump this up, in case any of our newcomers want to vote in this unscientific poll ...

DaveMc

If not now, when? If not you, who? It's always hard to get started. Perhaps ask yourself: will it get easier as time goes by, or harder? I find that starting only gets harder, the more you put it off, personally. Planning ahead makes things smoother, but it's not absolutely required -- if that part ...

DaveMc

Hey, whatever works! It sounds to me like your approach has all the key features of NoS: regular, moderate meals, no snacking, limited sweets, and a safety valve to keep you from missing those sweets so much that you give up. Some people do well with that safety valve being S days, but others find t...

DaveMc

This looks like
a haiku; it has the shape.
But it's not.

DaveMc

I've been thinking lately that I am now finally, after about 14 months of NoS, moving into what I think of as the "advanced nutrition" phase. That is, initially I was so focused on getting the habits down that I didn't have a lot of concentration left over to think much about the details of what I w...

DaveMc

Well, by my count, there are over 70 days between now and Christmas ... Is it possible to allocate one of your meals, each day, to testing a recipe? Even if some of the recipes are for things that would usually be snacks, you could group some together and make a meal of them ... And dessert recipes ...

DaveMc

All those articles with titles like "Eating a Big Breakfast Will Help You Lose Weight" tend to leave out the second part of that statement, which is: "... but only if allows you to eat less, later in the day". That's why it's considered important: some studies have found a correlation between skippi...

DaveMc

Great to hear, Starla, and congratulations!

DaveMc

I think "stunt" is a fair description, but it's interesting: I ran into this story about a professor of nutrition who is doing a self-experiment in which he eats a carefully controlled number of total calories, but those calories come entirely from "junk food". http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Scien...

DaveMc

But, yes, it is completely possible to be trim on No S and get there by doing No S. Yes, but is it possible to be "trim trim"? I'm assuming that's similar to "trim", but with extra trim-ness. :) There are plenty of people around here who seem to be quite slim, from their reported weights, and have ...

DaveMc

What should I do? The glib answer, I suppose, is that if you want to gain weight, you should reverse the advice you followed to lose it: instead of "eat less", you want to invert that to ... wait for it ... "eat more". :) However, less glibly, it sounds like your problem is that your appetite is ju...

DaveMc

Welcome back! Good luck, and I hope you'll come to see the unstructured nature of NoS as a feature rather than a bug, to use Reinhard's software-inflection language.

DaveMc

Recently I read that it's not the occasional feast or over-indulgence that causes us to gain weight, it's the daily consumption of just a little more than we need. That makes a lot of sense. It reminds me of one of my favourite stats: based on the conversion rate of 3500 calories to 1 pound of fat ...

DaveMc

Oh, yes -I like that, so long as you don't end up sounding judgemental. But as you say, that's something most people would vaguely think is a good idea. Yes, I try give it a sort of half-apologetic spin - "I'm trying not to eat between meals [shrug]", as if it's some silly thing I'm trying. But the...

DaveMc

(The original, pre-book version of No-S included the word "sometimes" - "except, sometimes, on S-days." Eating sweets/seconds/snacks is NEVER mandatory.) There's quite a funny thread about the "sometimesian" followers trying to get the word back into the canon: http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtop...

DaveMc

If you say, 'I'm on a diet' they'll come back with 'Oh, go on - one biscuit won't do any harm' or whatever. Not offering any explanation usually works well, but if you do explain, I find that something like "I try not to eat between meals" works better than "I'm on a diet". The former sounds non-ne...

DaveMc

Welcome aboard! I think the simple answer is that you don't need *severe* calorie restriction in order to lose weight. In fact, that's not recommended, medically: it puts too much stress on the body, and rapid weight loss is the most likely to be regained equally rapidly when the extreme behaviour b...

DaveMc

Update, now with 34 votes: Snacks: 6+9+4+1 = 20 Sweets: 8+9+1+1 = 19 Seconds: 5+4+1+1 = 11 So, basically no change in the standings. It did occur to me the other day to wonder if I really know whether I had a problem with "seconds", back before NoS ... I had so little idea how much I was eating, bac...

DaveMc

Just thinking about this some more ... For me, at least, NoS has been almost entirely about learning (or training myself) to want less. On the face of it, this plan apparently shouldn't work: if you're allowed to eat anything you want, two days a week (or more), surely you'll just eat so much on the...

DaveMc

Kathleen wrote:I think I'm leaning towards trying to figure out how to allow myself as much as I want, but I don't want as much. (per DaveMc)

That sounds very wise, but I may be biased.

Good luck!

DaveMc

I can't really unlearn calorie values, and should I quit thinking about them? Well, I'm not sure this is something that anyone else can answer for you. Seems to me that the answer depends on what kinds of problems you've had with other diets/approaches to eating. If the process of counting calories...

DaveMc

"Is portion control necessary to lose weight?" Yes, unfortunately. But perhaps a rephrasing of the question that might give you some comfort would be: "Is *conscious* portion control necessary to lose weight?" And I think the answer there is "Probably not." That is, I think it's possible to graduall...

DaveMc

You can have sugar-sweetened drinks during the week, too. There's no rule against sweet drinks, just sweets. Since fruit juice has as much sugar as pop sometimes, but I still drink it a lot, even during the week. Well, I'd be a bit careful, there ... Most people would treat non-diet soda (called "p...

DaveMc

OK, as of now (23 votes submitted), let's see how each of the S's fare, by summing up all the categories in which they appear: Snacks: 4+7+2+1 = 14 Sweets: 6+7+1+1 = 15 Seconds: 2+2+1+1 = 6 So, pretty much a statistical tie for first place between snacks and sweets, with seconds a distant, um, second.

DaveMc

Foxtrotter wrote:Dirty Harry, is that you?

Mr. Harry would probably have not included the smiley face. But seriously, good luck.

DaveMc

Foxtrotter wrote:I don't expect others to read this thread, but they could, which I hope will keep me going.

Oh, we'll be watching you, punk.

DaveMc

A year ago, I was about a month and a half in to doing NoS when my birthday came along -- on a Saturday. The injustice! It landed on a day that was *already* an S day, how unfair! I wrote a rather plaintive post to the forum asking if people thought I could grant myself an extra S day to compensate ...

DaveMc

Welcome aboard! A lot of us had that "Wow" reaction when starting NoS, and it's great to hear that you did, too.

DaveMc

vmsurbat wrote:Here's the scenario: I think a major source of my overeating was mindless tasting of food while cooking and then putting away.

I think I'd call that "snacking", but you're right, it could go either way ... You could use a binary random number generating device (a coin).

DaveMc

reinhard wrote:But I've got no horse in this race, I love all my S's equally.

And as they round the turn, it's Snacks and Sweets pulling away from the rest of the field ...

Apparently I'm not alone with "snacking *on* sweets" having been my biggest problem. Though as we keep saying, we need more data ...

DaveMc

Welcome, and it's wonderful to hear that things are going so well!

DaveMc

Following up on the poll started by "Nicest of the Damned" (perhaps the most simultaneously cute and chilling user name I've ever seen!), I wanted to create a poll with all the possible permutations presented. It's quite possible that we'll end up with one vote for each of the 7 possibilities, but l...

DaveMc

I guess it's a little early to make sweeping conclusions, but I'm a little surprised that snacks is in last place. I'd bet that all, or nearly all, of those "more than one" votes include snacks as one of the more-than-ones. Let's see, if we wanted to cover every permutation, how many poll options w...

DaveMc

Snacking *on* sweets, for me. Seconds was never my problem, my extra calories all came between meals.

DaveMc

Well, OK, Reinhard, but I was arguing specifically with the Yahoo home page (come to think of it -- I'm arguing with the Yahoo home page? Probably foolish, in the long run), where it apparently said: "In fact, some studies suggest that over the long term, if you had a choice of eating consistently l...

DaveMc

I think it's certainly true that one definitely should both do some moving and eat moderately, in order to be healthy. For weight loss, though, one of them does have a clear numerical advantage: it's far easier to remove calories from your diet by not eating them, than it is to burn them through exe...

DaveMc

It does seem that people fall into two schools of thought about weighing... 1) Weigh infrequently, so trends are obvious and you aren't distracted by normal variations 2) Weigh frequently, so you learn to ignore the normal variations that often seem to have nothing to do with recent events In eithe...

DaveMc

Kathleen wrote:The author of "Mindless Eating" came up with the idea. He promoted to food companies that people would pay more for less, and he was right!

So, wait, a book called "Mindless Eating" is actually *in favour* of mindless eating? That's wouldn't have been my first guess ...

DaveMc

~reneew wrote:oh my gosh!!! Would you believe my nice glass-top digital scale was shattered into a zillion tiny glass shards by one of my kids?

It really does sound like someone doesn't want you to weight yourself too frequently. (The prime suspects being God, or your kids.)

DaveMc

Does anyone know if there's something specific underlying the proliferation of 100 calorie "snack packs"? They're *everywhere*, now (at least here in Canada), and the figure of exactly 100 calories is so universal that I assumed it was the result of some sort of government-imposed rule, but I can't ...

DaveMc

This is what we would call a 'crumble' in the UK. Is that another distinction for the list or just a British term? I was just thinking (in Canada), "That sounds like an apple crumble, to me." I guess we've retained some of the nomenclature of the Old Country. But "apple stuff" would work perfectly ...

DaveMc

Put your ear up close to the screen: Stop trying other diets! (Well, you did ask for it. :) ) But really, maybe all these trials have put you where you need to be, to appreciate NoS? The others you list sound like they're presenting definite problems in terms of keeping them going forever, so maybe ...

DaveMc

As it happens, the body fat % inaccuracy isn't too important, as there is a far more useful measure to pay attention to: the waist-to-height ratio. I like the WHR, too. It's surprising to me that a number of papers I've seen recently talk about just waist circumference: that is, the absolute number...

DaveMc

This is one of my favourite S-day treats. If it's not an S day, you should probably not look directly at this recipe. FRUIT COBBLER Mix together: 1 cup flour 1 cup white sugar 2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp salt Add 1 cup milk and stir until you get a smooth batter. Melt 1 stick butter into a baking di...

DaveMc

The poll results at the moment are an interesting lesson in statistical skepticism: it's a landslide for "Yes" (83%), with a tiny minority going for "Other" (16%). Except that if you look at the actual numbers instead of the percentages, it turns out to be 5 people for Yes, and 1 for Other ... so ma...

DaveMc

Also, has anyone lost just a little bit doing this system? I think you could say that a lot of people have, in the sense that a lot of people are losing zero pounds, as they maintain their current weight. (I lost about twenty pounds in my first year, just completed, but since I'm not small, that ma...

DaveMc

I really don't think detailed calorie counting is the only option -- in fact, that's one of the central premises of NoS. By eating regular meals, you get used to eating more moderately in general, and you can gradually reduce your portions or improve your food selections, without having to keep trac...

DaveMc

The thing is...I really don't want to count calories. I have had an extreme obsession with calorie counting and the scale (literally staying home from work and calling in "sick" on days that the scale was up 1 lb and I was so depressed), and with the No-S lifestyle, I'm trying to stay away from the...

DaveMc

Huh. Live and learn ... I would never have guessed that the set of foods described could add up to anywhere near that amount! Bright Angel makes a good point, of course: it can't really not matter what you put on your plate, and "shorter, older women" may have to be more careful than, say, younger m...

DaveMc

I'll agree with all the advice above (and your own response): give it time! It's very common, from all the accounts we see here, for people to initially gain some weight, before they start to settle in to a new pattern of eating. I don't count calories, myself, so I wonder if I could ask for some in...

DaveMc

I agree that you might want to consider, at least at first, the addition of a fourth planned extra "mini-meal". I always say that the really hard first step in NoS is getting rid of *random* eating, so if an extra small meal is planned, at least you're not just eating at whim. It does get easier aft...

DaveMc

One last comment about this, then I'll shut up ... I just thought of what I think may be a good example of why one shouldn't trust these equations too far: Imagine that they wanted to establish a relationship between weight and *height*. You could do it -- you can establish a relationship (an equati...

DaveMc

Over43 wrote:1) He suggests eating three balanced meals a day: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Nah, that's too simple, it'd never work.

DaveMc

This is day 2 for me and I've feeling queasy as well and have a headache. I hope I am eatting enough, but I'm doing well otherwise. I'm sure it'll get easier as I go. Have you been in the same room as "talk at ya" recently? Maybe you caught the same bug? :) At any rate, yes, do make sure you're eat...

DaveMc

That's really interesting, Graham, thanks for posting it! A whole bucket of stats and recommendations from a variety of sources, all in one convenient place. This is really interesting, Graham - thank you. I'm amazed that my body fat %age can be measured like this!! I hate to always be a wet blanket...

DaveMc

It's been tried ... somewhere here there's a thread where somebody posted the link to Oprah's suggest-a-guest site. It didn't work, alas, but we could keep trying ...

DaveMc

Well, point taken about the vanity: I'll admit that it's at least partly a vanity problem, for me. :) I guess it's not so much the BMI I have a problem with, as much as the way it's used by doctors -- namely, as an excuse not to have to think about the individual in front of them. They don't seem to...

DaveMc

I've been thinking about why NoS works so well for me, and I think one reason is the "lifestyle change" you mention. Making a big lifestyle change sounds like a huge and intimidating prospect, but NoS lets one sneak up on it: just follow these simple rules, you can do that, right? Before you know it...

DaveMc

You bring up a point that I'm not sure was addressed. Are these people gaunt? Underweight? I thought data showed that people in the underweight BMI category also had health risks. (Sour grapes?) The article does bring this up: one of the guys is six feet tall, 115 points, which the author points ou...

DaveMc

Of course I can only speak for myself, but for me, this would not be a moderate and stress-free life-style. It would feel to me like just another form of obsession, but this time with *not eating* instead of with eating. Food would become the central feature of my life, and I don't want it to be. I ...

DaveMc

I'm not a doctor (well, not a medical doctor, anyway), but I'm going to second/third/fourth the guess that this is an illness rather than a NoS side effect. Unfortunate timing, since you're just starting, but at least it should pass soon. Take two aspirin and call a real doctor in the morning (or in...

DaveMc

What a wonderful story, thanks for sharing! And many congratulations on your success, both with the weight loss and with your newfound inner peace. Fantastic.

DaveMc

I've heard of this before. I have to wonder: will you live a hundred years, or will it just *feel* like a hundred years?

DaveMc

I'm happy to offer generic encouragement ("Go! Go! Yay, you!"), but we might be able to provide more specifically helpful comments if you could tell us a bit more about what you're finding difficult. Is snacking at the same time as your toddler the main problem, or are there other things that are di...

DaveMc

oolala53 wrote:As noted above, I guess people have to reach the end of their ropes, though, even in the face of looming obesity.

Yes, people have to be ready to hear the idea, and I realize it's not as simple as just handing everyone a copy of the book.

DaveMc

That guy who thinks he can eat whatever he wants without getting fat probably has a nasty shock coming, later in life. At least, that's what happened to me.

DaveMc

Hear, hear on the thanks. I have to admit, every time I hear another story on the news about the looming tide of obesity in Western society, I sort of think, "Yeah, but we've got a solution to that, now. If everyone would just do NoS, we'd be all set."

DaveMc

Thanks! Oh, one more pearl of wisdom I wanted to share from my vast experience of one year (I'm being ironic, given how many multi-year NoSers we have around here): I've been reflecting a lot, lately, that the way we eat on N days really isn't "dieting". For most of history, and still today in much ...

Everyday Systems

Search found 394 matches

Re: Calorie counting + No S

Re: Hungry all the time

Re: Need advice, not specific to "No S"

Re: Need advice, not specific to "No S"

Junk food diet stunt

Re: I keep losing - that can't be healthy

Re: can't stop tallying calories in my head

Birthday S days

Finer-grained poll: Which of the S's was your weakness?

100 calorie snack packs

Re: how much to eat at a meal

Re: Question about daily calorie amounts...and I gained 3 lb

Re: Kenneth Cooper

Re: day 2