Everyday Systems

DaveMc

Hi all, I'm just about to reach my one-year anniversary on NoS (it's actually tomorrow, I think). In honour of the occasion, I've been weighing myself for the past week (normally I don't use the scale, or at least not regularly). The numbers I've been seeing have been bouncing around in the 200 to 2...

DaveMc

This issue of bingeing is a really tricky one. On the one hand, generally we want to avoid advising anyone to panic prematurely and start adding a bunch of restrictions to their S days. For a lot of people, that's unnecessary because their S days will taper off on their own, and it's risky because t...

DaveMc

Oh, and: welcome aboard, punkybean!

DaveMc

Interesting, but normally my response to this sort of article is "Ignore them, they change their minds every couple of years, anyway." In this case, I agree with their general conclusion, so I'd advise people not to ignore them. :) It's funny to see the quote where they reassure people that, yes, yo...

DaveMc

The saying around here is "With NoS, you *start* with maintenance". If you've got some excess weight, it'll gradually come off, but really you're trying to establish a moderate eating habit that will keep you at a stable weight indefinitely.

DaveMc

Fantastic weight loss, but the next time you see your doctor, you should get those black patches on your face looked at.

DaveMc

The last weekend I felt physically bad from overeating "trying to get as much in as I could". My stomach is shrinking from successful N days and I SHOULD be glad, but I'm lamenting not being able to hold as much on my S days! I know it's hard to believe right now (you're in the early stages, and th...

DaveMc

I am losing fat consistently and gaining muscle. My most recent weight loss was 1.8 pounds over the last 40 days, but I've gained a great deal of muscle and my clothes are looser. I just don't want to pack on pounds of fat because I'm working out and think I can eat whatever whenever. Ah, now I see...

DaveMc

Well, you don't have to resist desserts completely, just limit them ... maybe just have them on weekends, or something like that. :) This issue of doing NoS while also being a fairly serious athlete keeps coming up, and I'm not sure there's a universal answer. One obvious thing to try, though, is to...

DaveMc

paulawylma wrote:Is there an everyday system for impatience?

Yes, but it won't be available until next year.

DaveMc

People 'round here have heard my comment about this way too often, before, but I'll say it again: I think we put far too much emphasis on the number reported by the scale. If your concern is that your stomach is too big and your jeans don't fit, why not focus on those things directly: your "ideal we...

DaveMc

I haven't given up diet soda, myself, and I think it's probably not tremendously harmful in moderate quantities -- but then, you seem to be concerned that you're consuming immoderate quantities. (I drink about the equivalent of a can a day, and when I tell my doctor about this, she tends to say, "Me...

DaveMc

My take on the philosophy behind the "no snacks" part of NoS is that it's mostly aimed at removing random, unplanned eating from your day (and thus removing all the calories one tends to consume absent-mindedly while snacking). From that perspective, a planned "mini-meal" at 3pm (or whenever) fits r...

DaveMc

Question: How do you count the 21 day challenge, is it 21 days in a row that you treat as No-S, or do you still incorporate the S days in between? I believe the usual practice is to count 21 calendar days in a row, including both both N and S days. It's based on the vague and unproven notion that i...

DaveMc

I also like the extra time and money no snacking encourages. That was something that really struck me when I started NoS: I realized how much time and effort I'd been expending, keeping up my supply of snacks! I was lugging stuff to the office all the time, whereas on NoS I would carry ... lunch. N...

DaveMc

Having 60 lbs to lose probably makes it *more* likely that "vanilla" NoS will allow you to lose weight: just the calorie intake reduction from eating more moderately overall will probably lead to weight loss. (As mrsj points out, just not snacking can remove huge numbers of calories from your daily ...

DaveMc

Another vote in favour of going easy on yourself, from me. This is hard stuff, and beating yourself up about failures will only make it harder -- try to let go of that, if you can. (Easier said than done, I realize.) To focus on the positive: you said you've already done NoS successfully, in the pas...

DaveMc

Let's talk timing -- in very approximate terms, because I think trying to pin these down to a specific schedule would be a very bad idea! At the same time, newcomers may wonder about how long we're talking about, here. Very roughly, I'd say that each of these phases takes (at least) several months. ...

DaveMc

Beautifully done! I'd second the idea that this should be a "sticky". 82.4% of the questions newcomers ask [warning: imaginary statistic] could be answered by pointing them at what you've written here.

DaveMc

I have always been a grazer during the day, and a pig-outter at night. See Reinhard's "but I'm a grazer" commentary on the main NoS page ... It's theoretically *possible* to eat moderately as a grazer, but most people don't -- and if you're here, chances are you aren't, either, right? So this patte...

DaveMc

Congratulations on your first week! Well done, and best of luck for many weeks to come.

DaveMc

This way of eating is all about taking gradual steps until moderation becomes a habit. Maybe your first step is ordering a regular cheeseburger and small fries the next time you go to McDonalds. I'd definitely agree about the gradual steps. That's what makes NoS work for so many people: you can tak...

DaveMc

I'm 39. Later this year, I have to decide if I'll turn 40, or if I'm going to continue being 39 indefinitely.

DaveMc

Yes, welcome back, and good luck! Having done it once before, at least you know you can do it.

DaveMc

I should note, in the interest of full disclosure, that I only shifted to the Friday-Sunday thing after (*checking HabitCal*) about eight months of Monday through Friday N days.

DaveMc

I do Fridays and Sundays, so I give you permission. :) It's not technically "vanilla" NoS when we do this, but I don't think anyone is going to excommunicate you. Whatever works, right? I think the argument in favour of the default 5-then-2 pattern is based on the workday vs. weekend distinction, an...

DaveMc

A not-very-secret secret of NoS is that over time, your definition of what constitutes a "binge" will probably start to change: as you get used to eating more moderate amounts of food, your standards of excess start to change, as well. (At least, that's what happened for me, and I think for a lot of...

DaveMc

Perhaps I am panicking too soon then - this was my first experience with S days - and I had not had a failure free week of N days. I guess I need to be more patient, get greater control over N days and then worry about S days I think that's wise ... wosnes and others have been at this for quite a w...

DaveMc

But where's the line at the end of the story saying "On the other hand, studies X, Y, and Z reported that slow weight loss was more effective in the long term"? Because I'm sure I've seen such studies ... I will leave it to wosnes to supply the exact citations.

DaveMc

I've always been fond of the Celsius scale. It's simple, has easy to remember reference points, and it puts you in synch with the majority of the world's temperature measurements. :) (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) Frequent weighings seem to me like a recipe to drive yourself insane. I weigh myself ever...

DaveMc

I guess I'm technically non-vanilla in the sense that I take my S days on Fridays and Sundays, and have Saturday as an N day. I've been doing that for the past few months, and I find it works better for me: I like having one S day when I'm at work, and I like having them spaced out rather than two i...

DaveMc

One of the interesting things that a lot of us have found on NoS is exactly the thing referenced in wosnes's quote: after a while, you may find that you start to "embrace" hunger. I've certainly found that after maybe six months or so, I mentally relabelled "being hungry" into "having an appetite", ...

DaveMc

wosnes wrote:The bottom line: nutrition science is complicated.

Well, I can certainly believe that.

DaveMc

I haven't tried any fad diets, and unfortunately I'm not a nutritional or metabolic scientist, so I can't really answer your question. It does remind me of something I've been wondering for a while, though: Why isn't the science of nutrition better than it seems to be? I mean, human metabolism is a ...

DaveMc

Izbiz, I'll agree with Noel, here: With all the various sources trying to tell you what you "should" eat, you could easily end up with a mountain of anti-oxidant, pro-biotic, neutral-ion (or whatever) foods that you're "supposed" to manage to eat every day, and it'll drive you crazy. Your selection ...

DaveMc

reinhard wrote:First thing I'm going to do is wait a bit and see if the problem goes away

Well, that seems to have worked: it's back, now!

DaveMc

Is it just me, or has the HabitCal gadget in iGoogle suddenly stopped working right? I used to get a little HabitCal display in the logged-in view of iGoogle, but now it just contains the text "Click on one or more tags from the list above and hit the show button. Hold down the control (or apple) ke...

DaveMc

Hi, welcome aboard! I was lucky enough not to go through what you're experiencing, but there have been lots of stories posted here from people who have. The general advice is: don't worry at all, at first, about how piled up your plate is. Just get the three-meals-a-day habit down, first. After a wh...

DaveMc

I'm sorry to hear about your troubles, Gia, but it's a really interesting illustration of how little changes can add up. I've always heard that a pound of fat is about 3500 calories worth of stored energy, so to add one pound you need to take in about that many excess calories, or to drop one pound ...

DaveMc

That study is indeed interesting, though I'm very glad that I'm reading about it rather than being a subject: "Gastric capacity was determined before the study and 4 wk later by oral insertion of a latex gastric balloon after an overnight fast. The balloon was infused with water at a rate of 100 mL/...

DaveMc

Number 9 on the first list disturbs me: Tropicana orange juice, 25 g of sugar in 8 oz. OK, that's a surprising amount of sugar, but I'm still not going to consider orange juice to be a dessert! It makes me think that their boundary of 15 g, in addition to being arbitrary, may be somewhat too low.

DaveMc

Oh, and I keep meaning pointing people with this question to a passage that's a bit buried in Reinhard's own description (I mean, it's right there on the main NoS page, but it's so far down at the bottom that it's easy to miss): From http://nosdiet.com/ : Sometimes it takes a false start (or 12) Som...

DaveMc

dudley, one thing I'm doing that might potentially help you: I take my S days as Friday and Sunday, with Saturday as an N day again. This isn't official NoS policy, it's a modification, but I like breaking up the S days rather than having two in a row. I was just thinking that it might be nice for y...

DaveMc

Of course, if you *don't* need a snack to give you the energy to exercise, or to avoid snacking after you exercise, then all you've done is add a snack to your day. Maybe if you just got into the habit of not snacking at all, you wouldn't need to worry about pre-exercise or post-exercise snacking. :...

DaveMc

Mazel tov, Nichole! So, let's see, you're eating for two, so that means six meals a day, right?

DaveMc

Personally, I've been experimenting with having my weekly S days be Fridays and Sundays, with Saturday as an N day. I find that two S days in a row is a bit too much, and I'd rather break them up with an N day in between. Might be worth a try, unless the time on your hands problem would still be the...

DaveMc

I, too, wrote to both Brody and Pollan. In both cases, I pointed them to your site and book, and emphasized that although the general idea may seem like common sense, they have (mis)quoted it using almost exactly your words, Reinhard, and they should be aware that this phrasing didn't just happen, i...

DaveMc

My natural waist, over belly button, and hip measurements are all down half an inch, so hopefully the weight gain is muscle from my moderate exercise regime. Has anyone else experienced weight gain when starting the diet? Just to chime in: I agree with those urging you to keep paying attention to t...

DaveMc

So here I am.. back to square one. This is harder than I thought. I hope to get my habits straighten out before the holidays come in but now I don't think I'd be able to do that. I don't know what to do. :( I doubt you're really all the way back to square one: after trying for several weeks, you'll...

DaveMc

Seems to me that there's a (somewhat) hidden assumption in NoS: you can eat whatever you want on S days, but "whatever you want" is supposed to change over time as you get used to eating more moderately on N days. I'm not sure if it will work if this never happens -- but many people have found that ...

DaveMc

Of course, the short version of my long post, above (the one that responded to something other than the original topic, sorry about that!) is: Whatever works for you! :) It's interesting that for some people it's easier to follow stricter rules than less strict ones - but that's great, so much the b...

DaveMc

This and a number of related recent posts has got me to thinking about this question: Should you do vanilla NoS if it's incredibly hard for you to maintain? That is, if you've given it a good, fair, honest try (months, say), but you still find that every day is a huge struggle, should you try to sti...

DaveMc

Welcome back! I think I remember reading somewhere that the number of attempts required to make a long-lasting change in eating behaviour was quite high - the number I remember (though I can't find it at the moment) was that the *average* number of attempts was somewhere over 10. So you're doing the...

DaveMc

It was Blithe, in this thread: http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=5479 My non-weekend S days are pretty well identified in advance. If a last minute opportunity presents itself I use a metric I devised to see if it merits an S day designation. I have to score something a 7 before I can ca...

DaveMc

On a slightly different note, I find myself saying (or thinking) "No" to what I think of as "half-desserts". I was at a Dairy Queen recently (on an S-day), and as I watched people ordering the fruit smoothies that are trying to sell themselves as healthy despite seemingly being basically ice-cream w...

DaveMc

Interesting stuff, ARI, thanks for sharing that! There seems to be a tendency around here to prefer weight-loss advice that's over a thousand years old -- Reinhard often refers to the Bible/Torah, and now you're citing Aristotle (a relative newcomer, but still pretty old). :) Of course, you only hav...

DaveMc

To start with the obvious: you don't suck. :) Give yourself a break. The main thing that jumps out at me is this: NoS will never work if you're not the one making decisions about what you eat. A big part of the reason that S-days don't end up turning into the binge-fests that some initially worry ab...

DaveMc

I'm finding that snacking isn't really a big priority for me on S days, though I do a bit if I happen to feel like it. Normally, I plan ahead to have one big dessert item on each day of the weekend, something like an ice cream sundae, cookies, some cake, that sort of thing. I also usually start each...

DaveMc

Another place to consider getting NoS listed would be the Wikipedia list of diets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diets I notice NoS isn't on there, but all it would take would be someone willing to create a page for it and edit that list to include the page ... Unfortunately I'm not in a posi...

DaveMc

Let me just add a "hear, hear" to what spork and Noel have said, above. The other thing to bear in mind is that many people have noted that the less weight you have to lose, the slower it's likely to be. People who are trying to lose 50 or 100 pounds often have pretty rapid weight loss in the early ...

DaveMc

Interesting article I ran into at WebMD, called "3-Hour Diet or 3 Meals a Day?": http://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/features/3-hour-diet-or-3-meals-a-day It includes a lot of skepticism about the idea that eating more often creates some sort of metabolic magic that increases your BMR, and basically ...

DaveMc

Thanks Reinhard. I've been weighing every day and plotting a moving average curve. I don't have enough data to know for sure, but it is looking more and more like a fluke. I think a minimum of a week moving average is necessary to get a better view. Possibly a month is better. Let me put in a plug ...

DaveMc

Hi, I just wanted to ask how things are going, and to second Blithe and others with the recommendation that you seek medical advice from a doctor. If you're still struggling with extreme hunger between meals after a couple of months of an honest implementation of NoS, then your reaction to this styl...

DaveMc

I have a feeling that my concerns about BMI really come down to haggling over the last ten or fifteen pounds. It seems pretty clear that if you're fifty or a hundred pounds overweight, you'll have health problems, and it's probably going to be pretty obvious if you're in that state no matter what de...

DaveMc

mimi wrote:
wosnes wrote: No-S is the tortoise to WW's (and other program's hare. It's slow and steady. Slow and steady in terms of diet not only wins the race, it keeps you from having to be in that race ever again.
Wow, wosnes! This needs to go in the NoS sticky glossary of catch phrases!

Seconded! Very nicely put.

DaveMc

The Pro Snacking forces are powerful and pervasive.

DaveMc

I guess what worries me more is the fact that I don't sometimes feel the hunger to eat on S days the crap I'm allowed to eat, but find that I will eat it anyways BECAUSE it's an S day. That hesitation is the beginning of a very helpful impulse. Eventually you'll probably find that you won't feel th...

DaveMc

My main issue with BMI is that it's unwise to reduce your entire health status to a single number. I think you can see whether you're overweight without the charts to tell you so - that's basically what you said, Kodama: you know you've got some weight to lose by observing your body, so you'd know t...

DaveMc

Welcome, aoc, and best of luck! You sound very determined. In terms of being hungry between meals, I've heard a number of people here mention that they initially used drinks (milk or fruit juices) as a way to bridge the gap. They can help fill you up and help you last to the next meal, but since you...

DaveMc

I would say on any diet or weight control way of eating - 15 pounds is not really that effective in a year. It would seem that something is a little off - be it how often you exercise or what you are eating. A one to two pound a week weight loss is perfectly acceptable after an intial jump of weigh...

DaveMc

I agree with the common sense approach: I tend to interpret the one plate a little more broadly, as meaning that I set out a certain amount of food, and don't take any more than that. It follows the spirit of "no seconds", but I don't mind if the food is spread out over two little plates and a bowl,...

DaveMc

S days are your time to unwind, so anything goes! Some people find they need to make some extra rules for themselves about what they do on S days, but the default is that S days are rule free, so knock yourself out.

DaveMc

To that South Beach Dieter, my thought is: "Then you are probably eating too much!" :lol: Well, he's lost weight with it, so I'm not sure if he's actually eating too much. I think it's possible to never feel hungry and yet lose weight, if you eat a sufficiently controlled diet and filling but low-c...

DaveMc

wosnes wrote:Everything in moderation!

One of my favourite quotes: "Everything in moderation, including excess." I can't seem to find who said it, though.

DaveMc

I've gone from 35.7 to 31.2. Still obese. Funny, I don't feel obese... I'm in much the same situation. If you look around for stuff about the BMI, you'll find pretty widespread dissatisfaction with it as a metric. (There's a lot of funny stuff about how many Hollywood stars come in as "obese" under...

DaveMc

Just a little story I thought some of you might get a chuckle from: Someone was telling me about his recently-adopted South Beach diet, and he was very pleased that "I've never felt hungry on this diet!" And my immediate thought was, "Mine's even better, sometimes I *do* feel hungry!" That sensation...

DaveMc

SO IF I EAT 3 PLATES OF MCDONALD'S A DAY I'M GOING TO LOSE WEIGHT? Well, from what I can find online, a Big Mac has about 575 calories, so if you ate three of those a day you'd be at 1725 calories, which is well below what you probably burn in a day (in the mid-2000s for a moderately active male). ...

DaveMc

By the way, Bunny88, I didn't mean to tease or offend you -- I know you weren't expecting results after three days, you were just asking about the future. Welcome aboard, and best of luck!

DaveMc

I think "more than three days" would be a safe prediction. :) Some people have gone faster, but something like half a pound to a pound per week seems to be typical. I've also read quite a few comments from people to the effect that the less you have to lose, the longer it tends to take, so your 15 p...

DaveMc

Let me second wosnes (and Reinhard's past commentary) on this: your weight on a scale is a very noisy number, and can fluctuate all over the place. To draw any real conclusions from it, you need to try to separate out the "signal" (something related to your actual weight) from the "noise" (random wa...

DaveMc

Lol! Yup, No-S throws the responsibility right back on you, doesn't it? Building on Deb's excellent suggestion... one of the things I totally love about No-S is that I can have perfectly N-compliant meals that are incredibly special. Since you're not limiting entire food groups, you can have food y...

DaveMc

Yeah, I usually plan my Habitcal a few days in advance ... not weeks or months though ... I would mark my squares 5-6 days in advance. This system works for me and lately I haven't had to change any colors based on what actually happened on that day, I was spot on. I like this idea! It's a form of ...

DaveMc

Blithe: Cool, an algorithm! I always love a nice algorithm. How do national holidays (Thanksgiving, Easter, Labour Day, etc, depending on where you live) come out, on your scale? I wasn't sure how to evaluate how well I know the people involved, for example, since it's the whole country -- or do you...

DaveMc

I hit 21 days on July 27, 2009. Since then, things have completely fallen apart, and now I just lie around every day eating cookie dough directly out of the tube, switching to pork rinds in the evenings. (Kidding, kidding. Going strong into month two.)

DaveMc

Hi all, something I'm curious about: do people find any merit in looking ahead and declaring in advance when your S-days are going to be? I was just going through my HabitCal and marking S-days through to the end of September (Labour Day, a couple of vacation days, plus weekends), and I wondered if ...

DaveMc

I haven't spoken to many "dieters", but I do keep hearing about diet plans, and my post-No-S reaction is "You're making this too hard and too complicated". Another interesting side-effect of No-S is that it's changing my reaction to thin people I pass on the street. I used to think, at some level, t...

DaveMc

I do also drink a glass of milk (10 oz) with at least 2 of my meals as well. Is this good to do? ... I am just in a little disbelief right now that this way of eating will actually result in weight loss! :) Drinking milk with meals seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do! As mentioned, a lot ...

DaveMc

100% agreed. Some of us here have started threads talking about the nature of food mainly because once we started paying attention, really started paying attention, to how much we ate, we couldn't help but notice that what we ate needed some attention too. Hmm, that makes sense ... Early on, you fo...

DaveMc

The thermodynamics argument is a bit oversimplified. The body isn't a linear system. Your metabolism can and will adjust to its circumstances: slowing down in times of famine, putting on fat stores during pregnancy, etc. It's a complex system that can change its mechanical efficiency on the fly. An...

DaveMc

People tend to overestimate the role of exercise in losing weight, especially given some of the psychological foibles we humans are prone to. Some of these foibles may even be hard wired - like eating more after working out hard. Although I, like others, consider exercise an integral part of my wei...

DaveMc

Hi all, another "hello" from a new No S fan. In the past I've always followed what I call the "Thermodynamics Diet", which is, in its entirety: "Eat less, exercise more". Basically, it's all about energy balance, so if you consume fewer calories and expend more, you should lose weight. I can't prove...

DaveMc

Tough crowd. :) Well, I must admit I was sort of hoping for a "Sure, go ahead and take a bonus S day", but I appreciate the commentary. One of my favourite things about No S is that it's a diet where I have discretion, so I'll take your advice under consideration, and decide. (I guess you always hav...

DaveMc

This seems like one of those "your mileage may vary" areas . . . I have, for years, used diet cola as my sole source of caffeine. I drink one glass in the morning, the equivalent of a bit more than a can's worth of volume, and I didn't stop that when I started No S. It's not such a high volume that ...

DaveMc

Hi folks, I've been following No S for about a month and a half, now, and I'm really feeling like it's the most sensible, sustainable plan I've ever encountered. Great stuff, Reinhard! I even bought the book, so enjoy your nickel (or whatever you get from the publisher for each copy)! :) Snacking wa...

Everyday Systems

Search found 394 matches

First year

Re: Please Help! Desperate for S Days Perspective!

Re: thanks, iti's working today

Re: Breakfast amd lunch issues

HabitCal Google gadget busted?

Re: WEIGHT GAIN ARRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHH

Re: Allowed Snack Day Question

A little anecdote about hunger

Re: I just started- Would love some advice!

"Calling" S-days in advance?

Thermodynamics

Birthday policies?