Everyday Systems

I'm pretty lax about the standard of proof when it comes to compliments (criticisms are another matter!). Enjoy and keep on no-essing.

Reinhard

Glad you got a kick out of it, Over43 -- I've got some more rows pending. While we're on the subject of King James English versus our insipid modern euphemisms, here's a wonderful passage on the subject from a George Orwell essay I read recently (and I think we're far worse off today than in his 50 ...

Here's the good news about the "eating season" and No-s: You can legitimately enjoy the holi days to the hilt Here's the perhaps not so good news / secret to making No-s work: Even more than usually, you really have to limit your essing to those days. There really aren't that many of them. I find th...

Thanks for the link. Always good to keep abreast of other shovelglove-like stuff that's out there.

I dug up the older post Djemps mentioned:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=5092

Reinhard

Welcome, JD!

(Love the Apollo 13 quote, JD)

Great information! Thanks! I would love to read your stories/testimonies. Please share.

Have you seen the testimonials forum?

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewforum.php?f=13

Best of luck and looking forward to hearing more,

Reinhard

Welcome back! Sorry you've been through a rough patch... sounds like you're in a better place psychologically at least.

Best of luck making No-s stickier this time around and looking forward to hearing more,

Reinhard

Welcome, Chubbylawyer.

Thanks for the links -- great (if somewhat disturbing) stuff.

Best of luck with No-S and keep us posted,

Reinhard

I like it! One potential difficulty I can see is that with enough ingenuity you can spin anything as unique. Example: One commuter bike, one racing bike, one mountain bike (they're different!). But with a bit of common sense I guess you should be OK (and at least the cost of having to be ingenious t...

Friday Nov 5: No-s failure (been a while since I've had to report one of those!). At the time, I viewed it as a murky situation and thought I was going to call it an NWS day. We were at a friends house for a fancy dinner and I wanted to be a polite guest. But he's a good friend who knows all about n...

Picky eaters of the board, unite! I knew what I was doing here couldn't be *entirely* unrelated to the work of my great-great-granduncle Friedrich! :-) I think No S is a good diet for picky eaters and people with pre-existing dietary restrictions (from religion, allergies, food aversions, or what h...

Ah, sorry. Could have sworn I read "Lisbon" in your profile, but I think I must have been getting you mixed up with someone who just emailed me. Always good to have another fellow American here, too.

Reinhard

Aren't we close to that? Sadly I guess we're not too far, but I guess the news here is that though researchers had previously thought we'd plateaued (or hit rock bottom), that no longer looks to be the case -- there's further to fall. The current obesity rate is 34%, plus an additional 34% who are ...

Welcome, Petros. Looks like we've got the Iberian peninsula well represented here. :-) I found shovelglove on Wikipedia. I'm happy someone took the time and effort to get it up -- and it's got a link back to the home page. I guess I could try to figure out how to tweak it myself (or would that viola...

Welcome, AimingForVegan! I think the trick for succeeding as an urban ranger is looking for ways to build it into your routine, so you don't even think about it as exercise. Start with the low hanging fruit: are there any places it makes sense to walk to now, that you're not currently walking to jus...

Please join me in welcoming and congratulating He>mE, who has been "consistently loosing a pound a week, and not even trying." (so about -14 since he started about 3 months ago).

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=6898

Welcome, He>mE! most people I mention it to think in going to replace "conds" with "x" This is, of course, a secret subliminal marketing ploy I embedded in the rules. :-) I now weigh less than my drivers license says I do. I hope you realize that this is probably messing up the police's whole formul...

Sounds like not nearly enough people are doing no-s! (Oprah, for the good of the nation, would you pick up no-s already?) Some highlights (or lowlights) from: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/11/obesity-rate-will-reach-at-least-42/ Researchers at Harvard University say Americaâ€™s obesity ...

Sa Oct 23rd: glass ceiling failure (2 drinks over the limit). No harm done, but no real excuse.

Fri Oct 29th: shovelglove failure. 5 hour drive to NYC knocked me a little off schedule.

I think I actually ate less junk than I've done since I was old enough to eat solid foods, though it wasn't by plan. We had a big dinner before taking the kids trick-or-treating (pizza, so much healthier! :-)) and I was so worn out after that I was too tired to eat much. There's still a ton of stuff...

Sounds intense! 14 minutes is still plenty for me

Reinhard

AmyLiz has just update her testimonial after another successful 6 months:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=4847

Reinhard

Great to see you here again amyliz -- and to hear that No-s is still going strong for you. "Relatively normal eating" is a beautiful thing, isn't it?

I'm happy to help with the photos. If you'd like, email them to me and I'd be happy to post them here myself.

reinhard.engels@gmail.com

Reinhard

Interesting article in the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/dining/27candy.html?_r=1 Some highlights: â€œAt least candy is honest about what it is,â€ [Dr. Kawash] said. â€œIt has always been a processed food, eaten for pleasure, with no particular nutritional benefit.â€ Today, she said, e...

Dear Too Solid Flesh, I'm sorry to hear you've having a stressful time -- I can certainly relate! I had something pretty close to a nervous breakdown last year due to work stress (the worst part was crippling insomnia, which I'd never experienced at all before). I managed to keep no-s and shovelglov...

Kim, What I'd recommend is looking at the problem as practically as possible. One one end is you, your rational self, and on the other are your current, extremely powerful bad habits. It's like you and some ravenous lion are sharing the same body. Don't feel guilty that the lion is dominating you --...

I enjoyed this book and it's one of the few diet books (besides this one , of course :-)) that I recommend reading. But I think Dr. Wansink is much stronger in the description department (i.e., showing what the problems are) than in the solutions he presents (like that dreadful tradeoff advice). Tha...

There have been some heated arguments on both sides of this issue over the years here on these boards. My personal take on this stuff is I find the idea of it disgusting, so the science as to whether or not it's actually going to dissolve my insides in thirty years is almost besides the point. Relev...

For the (intellectually) lazy, I posted a quick overview of the article in the urban ranger forum here:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=6867

From: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/the-pedometer-test-americans-take-fewer-steps/ Americans are thousands of steps behind other countries when it comes to daily physical activity, according to new research that used pedometers to measure movement. The breakdown: Americans: 5,117 steps a ...

Apparently I'm not alone with "snacking *on* sweets" having been my biggest problem. Yeah... that is interesting. What used to be eaten as dessert, as a finishing touch after a special meal is now perpetually dripped into us. Anyway, don't let all this commentary influence you and keep voting away ...

Thanks for the link! A few relevant blurbs from the book: Page 14: The No S Diet gives maintenance its proper focus. It does this by treating weight control as a mental problem, not a physical one. It focuses on incentives and enforceability, on leveraging limited reserves of willpower to build sust...

Welcome, Drarin. And thank you for spreading the word among law enforcement/armed forces circles. Although there's something a trifle absurd about the the security of our nation depending however slightly on something concocted by a pyjama-clad star wars geek, I will be deeply honored if to even a t...

Thursday Oct 14: Tasks failure. First in a while! Just got a little too ambitious with work tasks.

Sunday Oct 17: Weekend luddite failure. Work spill-over. Wasn't really necessary.

Reinhard

I think the stewed apples are definitely going to be an N food for me. I sometimes "pan roast" or even grill apples on N-days, so this seems totally legitimate to me (especially after having gone apple picking this weekend). I think you made the right call about the pie, though. Much as I love the ...

Thanks, all for posting there! It may not seem like it, but such efforts can make a big difference. My editor at penguin told me she first heard of no-s through comments on the shangri-la diet bulletin board (which I think we've since eclipsed in terms of activity). So I owe the whole book to posts ...

I'm German. I can't invent a diet that doesn't allow beer. :-) There's a related "everyday system" called "glass ceiling" that I (and many others on this board) use to regulate alcohol consumption. The short version is you're allowed 2 drinks a day. The long version is here: http://www.everydaysyste...

I agree, I don't see the point of Hindu squats.

Well, I've discovered that if you do enough of them, you won't be able to walk for a week. That's something.

Welcome back, Chiangmaiboss! I'm glad to hear you're feeling well enough to shug again. Best of luck and let us know how it's coming along. Give my regards to Marisa and mom,

Reinhard

Friday Oct 1: nosdiet and shovelglove NWS day. My birthday "observed." I'm not normally into taking an s-day for your birthday when your birthday already falls on an s-day, but my wife and daughters were set on "surprising" me and what kind of evil dad is going to tell his 3 year old, "sorry, I can'...

I agree with the others -- this sounds very moderate and sensible. And it's certainly sufficiently no-s-like (2/3 of the rules "No Snacks, no Seconds") to claim kinship with the mother system, if that's important to you. If you can keep the sweets down to a reasonable level (as it sounds like you're...

Welcome to freedom!

Funny that rules could make you free, but in this case (and others, I think) it's so.

Reinhard

Welcome! After all, I don't snack, I don't eat many sweets, I rarely had seconds....um...or so I told myself. Apparently I DO do those things and I didn't realize how much I was doing those things until they were on my radar! :-) The main virtue of no-s is precisely in putting these things on your r...

Please join me in congratulating Ashleigh on some much anticipated weight gain : http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=86241 Beautiful pictures -- and no less beautiful story (some of you will remember Ashleigh's post a few months ago on how No-s helped her lose 60 pounds and overcome BED )....

Ashleigh, Congratulations -- on so many levels: on your marriage, your pregnancy, your weight loss, your maintenance, your achievement at overcoming BED. And THANK YOU for posting your photos. I would have said "bravely," but you look so lovely that I'm not sure how much bravery was required. :-) Se...

I love it! Thanks, mailgirl, for starting this thread -- and please keep the haikus coming, fellow diet poets. :-) In the book I wrote: The No S Diet is a diet plan so short and simple that it fits on the cover of this book. No pseudoscience, no miracle foods, no counting calories or carbs or fat or...

Trial and error? :-) I'm not especially adept at this kind of thing, and I don't usually get it right the first time. But there aren't that many first times, because when I do eventually get it (usually after two or three attempts), it's months (possibly even years) before I have to redo it. I'd say...

I don't think it's possible for anyone except John the Baptist hermit types to give up S-days entirely. No desserts, EVER? That doesn't sound realistic -- or even desirable. Even if you could pull it off, my bet is you'd be kind of miserable doing it. There are lots of tweaks you could make that add...

Welcome back, Scott! Sounds like you've been through a lot. I hope you find a no-s a helpful too in getting yourself back where you want to be. I think the biggest challenge with S-days is not letting yourself get too upset by them. Excesses will happen. They happen to me. Keep the focus on N-day co...

Welcome!

And congratulations on your success with WW so far -- that takes serious willpower!

But I think you'll get much more bang for your willpower buck with no-s. A lot less will go a much longer way.

Best of luck and keep us posted,

Reinhard

I'd be careful. There are few things that are more strongly associated with being overweight than skipping breakfast. If you want to tweak something to get better results, I wouldn't start here. Adding an "intelligent dietary default" or two might be all you need. Maybe you want to make it a breakfa...

Thank you all!

I was actually (almost) surprised with an NWS "birthday observed" on Friday.

I say "almost surprised" because my three year old couldn't quite contain her excitement and shouted "daddy, we got you a cake!" as soon as I walked in the door.

Reinhard

Hi Graham, I've intentionally kept the habitcal very simple -- both for technical reasons (the simpler it is the easier it is for me to maintain and debug) and (more importantly) for psychological ones: if I give the option for more gradations, people will be tempted to use them, even if (as is almo...

Thanks for the link, DaveMc. If it's a stunt, then it's a useful one. Sheer, simple excess is the biggest problem for most of us here, and if this experiment draws some more attention to that fact, all the better. There are a thousand reasons to eat decent, real food (and most no-essers report that ...

I've never actually seen the show.

What I like about it (from a distance): the very clever name.

What I dislike about it: the very clever name.

If I am the sort of person who enjoys watching the humiliation of "losers," I don't care to admit it to myself so frankly.

Reinhard

Welcome back, Cassie. I've always thought vanilla was the finest flavor. It may not be flashy, but it goes with everything and it never gets old.

Best of luck -- and enjoy!

Reinhard

Of course it's OK, welcome back! If we had an aristocracy on this board, you'd be a duchess at least, with all the kind, helpful advice you've given over the years. I'm sorry I've been so busy recently that I didn't see your post till now (kids starting school, my wife starting a very demanding new ...

Welcome and congratulations, frugaltexan, DielleNicole, Happyhomemama, oolala53 , and punkybean!

Sorry it's been so long since I've popped in here, but I'm thrilled to see how this joint has been hopping in my absence.

Reinhard

you now "know" two persons who own medieval weapons and armors. That is slightly terrifying! Actually, it's worse -- I think phayze on the shovelglove board is into medieval combat as well (though paternity may have softened him). I will stick with my sledgehammer. I am sure it does at least d12 da...

Thanks for this thoughtful post, Cornucopian, and sorry I've taken such a long time to respond to it. I agree that thinking in terms of partial success, even though it may seem more "accurate" (and kinder to oneself) can be counterproductive in terms of habit formation if it compromises clarity. Tha...

There have been times (particularly at the end of the week) where I feel beat, but I don't think quite what you describe. In general I feel like I have both much more strength and more endurance since I started practicing shovelglove. Maybe you're overworking yourself? Try easing up a bit, particula...

It's hard to tease the two apart.

I lost 20 pounds on No-s doing no regular exercise.

Then I started shovelglove and lost 20 more.

I can't say how much of that last 20 pounds was due to shovelglove, but I suspect a fair amount. I certainly put on quite a bit of calorie-burning muscle.

Reinhard

Welcome, jwdillon1s! I'm sorry our welcome hasn't been as enthusiastic as your hello (or at least prompt). I've been pretty distracted with the kids starting school, my wife starting a new job (4th grade teacher -- VERY full time!), and taking a class myself for the first time in a decade. Anyway, I...

I am -- though at the moment it's not much more than just a fiddlyer version of my old ipod nano, the way I use it. The video camera is nice, but in general, I'm surprised at how little difference it's made in my life (that'll change, of course, with the advent of the habitcal app! :-)). The toolkit...

Ah, almost forgot: Thursday Sept 16: glass ceiling failure (3 drinks over the limit, one was at lunch). I'm going to officially allow myself to do "time zone shifting again" because it seems I've had more problems with glass ceiling since I've been off it, however dubious and shady it sounds. It giv...

Welcome, philagirl! This is turning into a very NWS-y month. Friday the 17th (erev yom kippur, shovelglove and non-weekend special day) Sat Sept 18th: weekend luddite failure. Part confusion because I was fasting and didn't have that bounding breakfast, and part scrambling to meet a work deadline (u...

Bonnie, I love hearing from no-essers who've dropped scores of pounds or more, but I don't think anything makes me happier than hearing from people who've been maintaining on no-s for years -- when people actually use this "yearly checkin" to check in year after year instead of disappearing after a ...

BonnieUK has been successfully no-essing for 3 years now.

Read her update (and new insights) here:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic ... 5554#85554

Pounds are one thing -- and Bonnie's lost them. But years on habit -- this is a metric that impresses me far more.

Reinhard

Yes, alcoholic drinks (unless they're also loaded with sugar) don't count as esses for no-s purposes. But since alcohol is also a potentially (and personally, for me) tricky issue apart from mere caloric considerations, I maintain a 2 drink a day "glass ceiling." http://nosdiet.com/#drinks http://ww...

Welcome! (much belatedly)

Now...going to get my sledgehammer today. LOL!!This is probably one of the most comical purchases I've ever made..

Comedy is the only way to approach the subject of exercise

Best of luck on both systems,

Reinhard

Last year I mocked my husband for spending $12 on No Sweets, No Snacks, No Secondsâ€”yeah? Who needs to read that book? Just read the cover!

Click here to find out who -- and the impressive results she achieved.

Audiomama, Congratulations and thank you for posting this! This isn't just a great success story with very impressive numbers, but I love your pithy reformulation of something we talk about a lot on these boards: If it looks like gluttony, it probably is. If it seems reasonable, I donâ€™t worry abou...

Yes, me too!

(No-s is actually good training for this. Pity the poor permasnackers....)

Wow. I can't imagine what kind of rationale they gave for that "absurd" length of time -- unless they used mine.

Perhaps "schedualistically insignificant time" too, has become a meme at large?

Do they give any more details about why precisely this number?

Reinhard

Kathleen, It is not only "OK" for you to continue posting, I'd be very sorry if you did not! If we limited ourselves to nothing but the canonical 14 words in the strictest possible sense there wouldn't really be much to discuss here, would there? Everyone one who is interested in discussing anything...

Nothing really to add here.... That sounds like a lot of food (and pretty calorically dense food), and by putting it all on one plate in front of you at the same time it'll look like a lot of food, too -- which is the main point of the no-seconds rule. You could then legitimately go ahead and eat th...

It's hard to tell. It's not designed to get you "trim trim;" it's designed to help you eat moderately (and see what happens). That being said, moderate eating can have a striking effect on your physique. I'm thinner than I ever thought I could be (recent stunned comment at the beach: "you must have ...

There are a wide range of approaches. Here are two seminal bulletin board discussions on the subject: http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=759 http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2784 I'm of the "everything is permitted" on S-days school, myself -- though (generally) far less is d...

Welcome and good luck, EatingWell!

You're obviously free to make any modifcations you want, but under "orthodox" vanilla no-s, all solid food needs to fit in your three plates. Why? Two reasons: 1) Habit. It's very easy to slippery slope from health snacks to unhealthy ones. Today it's a leafy green, tomorrow it's dark chocolate, the...

Yeah, I intentionally made everything public because: 1) It's easier to code. I barely have time to code and maintain it as is. And I'd much rather spend what little extra time I can carve out on adding new features (like an ipod/android app, which I'm looking into now -- just got an ipod touch) tha...

Staria recently reported losing a whopping 65 pounds in her first year on No-s. Her secret? Plain old vanilla no-s . When you don't fool around, stay strict on your N-days, and enjoy your S-days (without too many non-weekend variety) it's amazing how powerful it can be. Lots of details as to how she...

Staria, Congratulations and THANK YOU for letting us know -- and in such detail, too. It's very helpful to read about how you saw things along the way, and not just from the mountaintop of your incredible success. These are seriously impressive numbers, and I'm happy to hear good old vanilla no-s wa...

Hi Machelle, My guess is that as you grow in habit you'll come to love S-days (though you'll be happy you don't have more than you do). If that doesn't happen of its own accord, or you feel yourself getting so discouraged by excessive S-days that you think you'll never get there, there are tweaks yo...

More vacation last week. I adhered to my 50/50 vacation rule with no-s and shovelglove. No-s "special" vacation days: Aug 31, Sept 2 shovelglove "special" vacation days: Aug 30, 31 I also had some minor (but frequent) glass ceiling violations. (I was traveling spouseless with the kids and my willpow...

I just ordered my ipod touch today. Should arrive in a couple of weeks.

Reinhard

If your Yom Kippurs are like my Yom Kippurs, it's an S-day. Yeah, there's that fasting bit -- but I more than make up for it at the end of the day. The way I navigate swarms of holidays like this is by asking myself, do I really need to make this an eating S-day to fulfill my religious or social obl...

I'm glad to hear it, Deb. It's good not to beat oneself up with words. It's better to be impervious to such beat ups. Congratulations for your victory over/reconciliation with "failure!" (And congratulations to Richie too, that's a fun musical). For those of you who have not quite come as far as Deb...

I think most people have trouble getting started (and some get past it!). I love the idea of easing in one S at a time, and someone even recently reported successfully pulling this off. I think the danger is that even vanilla no-s is slow to produce results -- 1/3 no-s is REALLY slow, and so, althou...

Currently, on N-days my schedule is pretty regular (thanks to the kids):

Breakfast 7
Lunch 12:30 (most flexible because the kids aren't around)
Dinner 5:45

Reinhard

Welcome, Gabriel -- and sorry it's taken me forever to post here. Vacation + digging myself out of accumulated work emails. It terms of fitting SG into your current routine, I'd recommend focusing on a fixed time every N-day to do some kind of exercise, and then filling in those slots with whatever ...

zenboar, Those are fanatastic drawings -- and they make a good point. I have to admit that the only degree to which I worry about form is to make sure that I'm "acting" each move right -- that it feels like something a lumberjack, etc. would do (and doesn't hurt). My guess (or at least my hope) is t...

Welcome, Frankster. I'm sorry I can't advise you on the sledgehammer in Norway issue, though I'm stunned that such a simple, common implement would be so expensive there. Your provisional solution looks great, though. And if your dad has an 8 pounder that's a great way to test the waters as well. My...

What wosnes said about this stuff almost always being crap is helpful. As is having a counter-spell "mantra" at the ready like "idon'tknow." Such spells will only be necessary for a few weeks, then they get internalized by habit. You'll be as likely to casually grab a sweet as to shoplift a cheap tr...

Would it seem weird (if you were sitting next to me) if I pulled a Tupperware out of my purse and packed up some of my food? Not at all -- remember the good old doggy bag. It also increases the value of your restaurant meal, maybe even doubles it if you can get an extra meal at home out of it. I us...

"One plate" is pretty flexible and humane as far as portion control goes.

Maybe just bring that back, if you're having trouble without it?

Reinhard

Thanks, Deb -- glad you got a kick out of it. Something I forgot to mention: One of the great things about biking is that you're not just a biker, you're this kind of hybrid entity. When I do feel an irresistible urge to break the law, I dismount and switch to pedestrian mode (sometimes this is usef...

Welcome, kickinthehabit. I'd skip the sweet muffins going forward, but you can grandfather in that last one if the rest of your day was fine. August 18-20 No-s and Shovelglove vacation Special days. I took vacation N-days Monday and Tuesday, so that more or less fit my goal of splitting extended vac...

I don't know if anyone else can make you accountable, but you've taken a good step yourself by posting here. We'll certainly cheer (threaten, and cajole) you on.

Reinhard

Being pissed off from a sense of deprivation on a low carb diet would be enough to account for my mood change. :-) As for Passover, I find I get plenty of carbs (potatoes!), what I've usually been short on is fiber. But I've found a a delicious and gastronomically appropriate solution to that latter...

I posted this in the urban ranger forum, which I think is its natural home, but it might have some appeal beyond:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=6697

Everyday Systems

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