Everyday Systems

Well, I can now beat just about everyone I know in armwrestling.

There are only two people I'm not sure about:

1. a boxing instructor who can bench press over 300 pounds

2. My wife's uncle, who does 500 pushups a day

I'll have to schedule an experiment with them to find out.

Reinhard

http://www.tnr.com/book/review/harsh-lesson

Alas, my wife still won't let me read it to the girls

Hi Pepper, It's certainly possible that you won't be able to become Mr. Universe on vanilla no-s, but I'm pretty happy with how strong I've gotten doing shovelglove and no-s. It sound's like you have no ambitions to become Mr. Universe, so I wouldn't worry about it. One of my favorite computer scien...

Habitcal is up for me, but I'm noticing that the server is seeming a little sporadically sluggish lately, not just for habitcal but the whole site. One request is very fast, the next one churns. Hopefully this is just temporary, but I'll keep my eye on it. Rimuhosting has been great since I moved th...

Flush with their tremendous success in legislating away sugar and fat induced obesity, U.S. regulators now have a new stab in the back substance in their sights: salt. I'm not sure why they think their luck will be any better this time, but hey, you can't fault em for trying, right? What's the worst...

Vanilla is such a great flavor -- it goes with everything.

Good luck!

Reinhard

I'm trying to decide what my ideal weight should be Here's the official No S diet formula for determining this: From: http://www.everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=64865#64865 Eat moderately. Move moderately. See what happens. That's your "ideal" weight. My guess is that most people will actual...

Cool!

Thanks for spreading the word.

Dailymile looks like a fun site. Will have to putter around there a bit more...

Reinhard

I did today! I've been lucky enough to work close enough to home to walk my last three jobs (>10 years), but there are days when I have a distant lunch appointment or errands to run on which a bike comes in handy. Bike-rangering is fun as hell -- but I think I'd miss the thinking and audiodidacting ...

Reinhard's latest podcast inspired me to go back to 14 minutes Glad you found it inspiring! Go ahead, try it. I DARE you to report that it wasn't enough work I believe you! I've done something similar (even a little simpler) on some Freestyle Fridays when I'm hammered out. I start with max full ran...

I am (see my "tasks" tag in my habitcal) -- though I've made some modifications since the original podcast after a rough patch last fall. I'll do a fuller write up (or perhaps an update podcast) soon, but basically here's the status quo: Daily Soldier: On N-days, 2-column yellow index card task list...

Monday May 31: Shovelglove and No-s special day (Memorial day) Tuesday June 2: Tasks failure. First in a while! Just got a little overambitious with work tasks and fell asleep while tucking in my wife. I've been doing a simplified 2 column (work/personal) N-daily punch card for the last two months o...

2 pounds in a month loss clearly sucks Actually it's exactly what I recommend to expect . since I try to stick to one meal a day Uh... that doesn't quite sound like no-s. I know I don't specify the number of meals, but I took it for granted that people wouldn't make it next door to zero. I've heard...

Okay, 1/2 a lb a week doesn't sound like much It actually sounds ideal -- this is precisely the number like to quote (from Brian Wansink) that people should expect from long term weight loss. I have to relearn how much to eat at meals. I've been feeling really stuffed about a half and hour or so af...

7/8 don't tempt me much. But I do like fish. The risk/benefit analysis does still seem very much up in the air for now (and on balance, from what I can gather, with the fish). http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=3013797 Whoever came up with the concept of the "cereal bar" was bri...

At least if you optimize with nuts as I do:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/healt ... ref=health

Just don't take that bit about "airplane snacks" too literally.

Reinhard

This question come up a lot!

Here's a relatively recent response:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic ... ht=vanilla

Think I should move this question to the home page... (don't want to make it another "sticky" since it's getting rather crowded up there)

Reinhard

On one hand, fruit is not the part of our usual meals - Indian meals tend to be a combination of some carb (bread/rice), vegies and lentils. Should I eat my fruit after that as part of the plate? Here's an easy solution that is 100% compatible with both the literal no-s rules and the traditional in...

I find it quite interesting that fasting is an important part of a lot of religions. I do too! Keep us posted. If it goes well for you maybe I'll need to add a little halo icon for F-days on the habitcal. :-) My fasting is currently limited to one day a year at Yom Kippur, and I know I eat enough a...

Thanks for letting us know, sophiasapientia.

Fingers crossed!

(my amazon.com sales rank seems to be creeping up again, possibly related?)

Reinhard

Wednesday May 19: shovelglove failure. We were out late at a play starring a good friend's father . My wife and I fell asleep while lying in bed trying to determine whether this was a sufficiently special occasion to constitute a shovelglove S-day. I'm going to call it a failure because a) I never a...

Welcome, becauseIcan! (wittingly or not)

Always good to see you again, mrsj.

Reinhard

KCCC, thank you again for another deeply thoughtful and helpful post. I've been hesitant to talk about "phases" because I like to emphasize the continuity of what one does on No-s (practicing maintenance from day 1), but what you've written is profoundly true and worth knowing, especially for beginn...

And what a covergirl! Sure she's lovely, sure she's had a great success story. But here she is, years after the stardust has settled, still happily plugging away at the same old modest thing. For those of you who are relatively new to the board, here's the full story: http://everydaysystems.com/bb/v...

I agree about the no sweets rule - what doesn't make sense to me is that alcoholic drinks aren't restricted to S days in the same way. They are just as calorific and arguably just as problematic as any sugary drink and therefore shouldn't they be just as restricted? Again, it's about habit, not one...

Timothy posted part of this to the routines section a couple of months ago.

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=6302

Pretty cool, I think. And commendably deadpan!

Reinhard

This is very interesting, hope we get even more responses.

Maybe at some point I should post a survey that collects a bunch of different pieces of information, sex, age, weight, height, time on no-s, weight loss on no-s etc.

Reinhard

Encouraging. 14x5 minutes seems like plenty compared to 6x1! What I take from this is further confirmation that short periods of exercise can be plenty sufficient. But I think I enjoy shovelgove too much to limit it to just 6 minutes a week. :-) And I know shovelglove works, and haven't injured myse...

I like succeeding and dislike failing, the rules aren't complicated but at times maddeningly rigid. At times they are rigid, though I'd argue far less so than most other diets. Still, most of us need some firmness -- or we wouldn't have a problem with food to begin with. I could have had a second g...

She'll come round eventually.

It's a natural progression:

Diet.
No Diet.
No S Diet.

Or in Hegelian terms:

Thesis.
Antithesis.
Synthesis.

Reinhard

Great to see you here again, Ranger!

Reinhard

Tuesday May 4: No-S and shovelglove special day. My oldest friend was in from Paris to celebrate his birthday.

Hi All, Interesting discussion! I'm sorry it's taken me so long to pop in here -- just started a new job and it's been a little distracting. :-) I'm happy you all have been able to recover from some initial... tension. Here's what I see as the difficulty: Is there (generally speaking) some relations...

Djemps, This is awesome -- I'm so sorry it's taken me forever to take a look at it (just started a new job a few weeks ago and it's been a little distracting :-)) I LOVE the historical footage. My final-cut-pro-understanding brother is planning on visiting in June to shoot a shovelglove dvd -- I'd l...

I bet that's it... I think it's the single biggest usability problem in the habitcal.

Top of this list of stuff to be fixed for the next version.... (that and releasing an iphone version

)

Let us know if that didn't do the trick for you, Mom In High Heels.

Reinhard

Julie,

Contratulations! I'm not a huge fan incessant scale-stepping, but you might as well enjoy.

Reinhard

Hi Noel, sorry but it looks like this conversation was started by tag team spambots -- just blasted their accounts.

Reinhard

Bookman old school has posted a guru beating (-64 pounds in a year!) testimonial here (with chart!):

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=6376

Reinhard

Bookman, Congratulations! Another guru-beating success story! (I lost only ~40 pounds -- how I sometimes wish I'd started heavier :-)) And thanks for posting the chart. As a former scientific visualization programmer, I love this kind of stuff. Your "qualitative" comments are very interesting, too. ...

That's great, Noel.

I think I originally got the "half a pound a week" from Brian Wansink's Mindless Eating.

I just did a quick google book search and found a (the?) relevant quote.

Reinhard

Welcome, Royce! I like to think that No-s is "eye opening" on many levels -- and especially on the literal level of making your eyes useful tools in guarding against excess again. When you limit yourself to three single plate meals a day, a lot will look like a lot. By forcing yourself to confront t...

Welcome, Imogen! I'd advise seeing how the vanilla rules work for you before introducing any mods... you might be surprised that issues you thought would be problems don't turn out to be. And if they do, well, then mod away. As a wise computer programmer once said, "Premature optimization is the roo...

My favorite kind of bug

Reinhard's 2 rules of software debugging:

1) wait and see if the problem goes away by itself (or the geniuses at google fix it for you)

2) reboot and see if that fixes it

Reinhard

No-s old-timer and reigning bulletin board champ gratefuldeb has had a fabulous year on No-s. Please join me in congratulating her here:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=6334

Reinhard

My kinds have been known to try to force feed me sweets on N-days ("daddy, just have one little bite!"), so I hear you about the difficulties. :-) Still, it's more comprehensible to them than any other diet I can think of. And even though we don't inflict strict no-s on them, their eating habits are...

That is brilliant -- home page level brilliant, if you don't mind me quoting you.

Reinhard

Everything turned out fine. It was one of those "you remember it worse than it was" situations. So purely a personal disappointment. But a disappointment nonetheless -- my first significant "glass ceiling" failure since I started back in 2002. But I feel pretty confident that it won't happen again. ...

Dear Deb, Congratulations! I am so delighted to read this. It's so great to see your long perseverance though difficult times paying off big. I'm especially glad to hear that you've finally got the "Zuel" issue under control :-) (and that the habitcal helped with that) Best to you and Richie both an...

Welcome and good luck, rokchic.

If you're only on your 7th try you're doing better than most

Reinhard

It's not just you... I see this problem too (actually I'm just getting a blank). I haven't changed anything on my end, and the gadget still seems to work when embedded in a regular web page, so I'm not sure what's going on here. First thing I'm going to do is wait a bit and see if the problem goes a...

This one comes up a lot.

I think we need a glossary.

Anyway, welcome!

Reinhard

Welcome! I second marygrace's note of caution about trading S-days... Though it may be worth it in your case (just consider it carefully). I miss those pretzels, too. And the wurst... It's possible to get decent beer here in Cambridge but I pine for a decent plate of Wurst and Kartoffelsalat. Best o...

I did not expect this rapid of a start. I am happy. It does happen -- enjoy! I can't really comment on the cholesterol issue. I know many here have posted striking improvements in their numbers after doing no-s, but my cholesterol was always good even back in the day when I was eating like a beast ...

Congratulations and welcome back, cowfishpro!

Hubris is a tough one... wish I had a good system for that

Reinhard

Sat April 11: Weekend Luddite failure. Damage control emails resulting from the glass ceiling failure.

mmarchin hit the -10 pound threshold in just 4 months despite some very difficult events:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=6297

Reinhard

Congratulations, mmarchin! And sorry for the delayed reponse -- just started a new job last week and it's been a little distracting. :-) Sorry to hear about your dad... As of last week, I'm no longer in bioinformatics (moved back to the cutting edge field of library science) but I'm still a fellow p...

Hi Joel, I've never seen this before (and even if I had, stuff this good is always worth reposting if it's not immediately obvious that it has been -- if you missed it, chances are others will as well). Very cool, both as confirmation that shovelglove is "onto something" (some of the moves directly ...

Timothy, I'm sorry I didn't comment on this sooner (just started a new job this week and you know how that is :-)). This is amazing -- a fantastic contribution to the shovelglove "community." Between your site, phayze's videos, and fungus's meticulously documented hammer "mods" I feel like shovelglo...

Fri Apr 10: For some incomprehensible reason I decided that for my bon voyage outing for my previous job I should suspend glass ceiling for a night and just relax and enjoy. Well, let's just say that it's precisely for such occasions that glass ceiling was created. Led to shovelglove and tasks reds ...

That's great to hear. For me it's the other way around -- what I notice most is how shovelglove preps me for snow shoveling season.

KCCC,

I agree. Unfortunately the magazines target me (or not) and not vice versa. My preferences don't seem to enter into it at all.

I'll run it by my publicist, tough... worth a shot.

Reinhard

I'm thrilled to hear it -- not just for your sake (though that's plenty) but also because proceeding "one S at a time" seems so sensible but until now I haven't heard any evidence that it works. I updated the section on the home page about this with a link to this discussion.

Reinhard

Thurs April 9: shovelglove and tasks failure. Came home late and just completely forgot to shug.

Friday April 2: shovelglove S-day (good friday).

Sat April 3: glass ceiling failure. 2 drinks over the limit (had drinks at dinner with family and then later with friends -- these multiple social events in one day are tricky to navigate)

That's tough, RJLupin. Hopefully if it's the steroid your appetite will calm down soon. If you need an extra motivational boost, just consider what a great workout you're giving your habit muscle by holding out now under these difficult circumstances. You may be lying in bed, but your willpower is g...

Welcome back, drwife! I, too, remember you fondly.

I just released an exercise podcast episode ("14 minutes of ANYTHING') which might be helpful if you want to supplement your walking a bit.

http://everydaysystems.com/podcast/episode.php?id=38

Reinhard

I'm surprised it's taken this long for someone to inquire! But I'm afraid it may take a little research... My first thought was it must have been Emile Zola's Germinal, but I can't find it in there. I think it may actually have been from an art book at my mom's house quoting Edgar Degas. I should ha...

Hi Amyliz,

I'm very eager to see the new photo!

But alas, I had the same experience as Noel....

Reinhard

Thalia,

Thank you for responding!

Would you mind emailing me some pictures I could forward on to them?

Good tip about checking the amazon reviews, gia.... it didn't occur to me that I could contact the reviewers but I think there's some private message mechanism via amazon.

Reinhard

It's been a while... http://everydaysystems.com/podcast/episode.php?id=38 I got a new recorder and I think the sound quality is better, but the volume is lower, which can be a little jarring if you're listening to multiple episodes. Also, after publishing this I realized that I'd said many of the sa...

Congratulations and welcome, blueangel!

Congratulations and welcome back, mrsj and oolala53!

Friday March 26: glass ceiling failure. 2 drinks over the limit. Work social engagement followed by a private one.

Monday Mar 29 - Tues Mar 30: Passover S-days for nosdiet and shovelglove and even weekend luddite (religious obligation to drink "4 cups of wine"

).

You had me too

Thanks for honoring this fine holiday here.

Reinhard

I wouldn't get too discouraged. I think when most people hear the word "exercise" they think of grueling dedicated gym time, hard-core all-out running, etc. By that definition I get 14 minutes a day -- and only on N-days. Upping that or something like that to an hour would be insanely hard (and in m...

Thanks for the update, Kes!

That sounds like excellent progress.

I run about .75 times a week (usually about 3 ~10 minute miles), and I don't think I'd be able to do that without the physical (and psychological) preparation of shovelglove and urban ranger.

Reinhard

I think you could probably still get a great workout from swinging around a shorter hammer, but the movements on the shovelglove site do assume something longer, so they may not be as effective (shorter hammer means less leverage) and might just seem a little weird.

Reinhard

What's are they doing eating pork, anyway? And "bread" -- it was passover! From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matzo According to Western Christian belief, matzo was the bread used by Jesus in the Last Supper as there he was celebrating Passover; Communion wafers used by Roman Catholics for the Eucha...

In the same autodidactic vein as blankful , here's a non-boring typing tutor/test that I threw together for my own amusement. http://typealong.com/ Remaining todos: 1) support umlauts and other non-ascii charcters so I can practice my Deutsch 2) make keyboard display into a heatmap showing error hot...

Not sure if anyone else is using this, but I continue to find it helpful.

I just added a little tweak that lets you blank out words in the input text by surrounding them with _underscores_.

See Example

Thanks for the links, pokey. Loved the Penn and Teller video. I grew up in NYC, and was raised to be very proud of our tap water, so bottled never really appealed to me. Plus I'm cheap, and always inclined to give cheap the benefit of the doubt. As far as pop goes, I think we're pretty well agreed h...

I'll let the shovelgirls speak for themselves. Just wanted to pop in to say "welcome" and give a link to a discussion on the same subject from a few months ago:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=5270

Reinhard

Thanks for the post. As a humanities nerd with a dayjob in science, I got a huge kick out of it. I do suspect the methodology might be a little flawed, however... A more obvious explanation for the increasing portion sizes might simply be increasing artistic realism. From what I understand, back in ...

Welcome back, babyprrr, and sorry to hear you've run into some turbulance getting started again. If it's any comfort, I had a brutal few months late summer and fall -- not no-s wise (almost 10 years "on-habit" has made that pretty much indestructible) -- but some of my other systems (most notably, m...

I'm embarrassed to admit I don't know who she is, but she looks great, and it's refreshing to read that it's (partly, I'm sure goddess-like genes helped) because of old fashioned meal based eating. I'm still waiting on a celebrity spokesperson for No-s, I think she'd fit the bill brilliantly. :-) Re...

Congratulations, RJLupin!

Your numbers are great, but this is even greater:

Best of all, I feel free of my food obsessions

Happy belated birthday!

Reinhard

I wouldn't eat a fruit juice popsicle during the week but I promise I won't be offended if you want to allow them in your implementation of No-s. No-s is about eating habits and structures rather than "stuff." Popsicles, equivalent though they may be to permitted fruit juice on a molecular level, se...

It's great to see scientific and popular support for meal based eating finally catching on again. About time, too! For the last decade or so a huge movement has built up around eating traditional food stuffs (which I'm all for). It's surprising that traditional eating structures have been so neglect...

That is interesting. I have to admit, I'd always thought they were more or less equivalent and that the demonization of corn syrup was just an attempt to find a scape goat, but this is pretty convincing. It's never been much an issue for me personally since we cook most of our own food, and even on ...

It's a pretty arbitrary measure, but as we've been doing it in the "21 day club," S-days count.

Looking forward to seeing you there soon,

Reinhard

I like the idea (and interest has been expressed before ) but I'm afraid the shipping would make it significantly less economical than it might initially seem (a lot of the amazon hammers ship free). I guess I could start an exchange sticky thread for people to post "want ads" and see if people actu...

Wow, lotta action around here since I last stopped by.

Congratulations frugaltexan, oolala, and mrsj!

Welcome and congratulations! It really is amazing how hard it is not to snack when I'm not even hungry Yes, for most people snacking is more like a nervous tick than anything to do with real appetite. That's bad news short term, because it can be hard to get over, but great news long term, because y...

Sunday March 21: weekend luddite failure. Playdate coordination required email. Well, maybe not "required," but I preferred a red square to awkward explanations.

You're all very kind. I guess I'm finally reaching the age when it's desirable to look younger. :-) I'll try to get my older daughter in the 2010 (yes, she's every bit as adorable as #2). Got to get her in before she starts rolling her eyes and being mortified by her dad! The horizontal scrolling is...

Making this "sticky" so less obsessive checkers of the bulletin board members have a chance to see...

Looking forward to the deluge of emails I'm sure is coming! (hint, hint)

Reinhard

Sounds like you made the right call. It's obviously a personal decision -- but if you don't have Irish background and aren't planning on actually celebrating it's probably a bit of a stretch. Otherwise you're going to be feasting all year round, if you celebrated every national holiday in the world....

Dandelion, Congratulations! Oh, the scale certainly lies. And even when it's telling the truth it isn't always about the right thing. I hear you about blogs and bulletin boards in general (and even our lovely board here) being a potential problem, something to obsess about. As the "founder," I feel ...

F March 12: Tasks failure. Just got a little overambitious with work tasks.

I was emailed the following last month. It was intended as a private communication, and so is a little raw, but I got such a kick out of it that I'm posting it here (with permission) anonymized but otherwise unaltered. If you're turned off by "colorful language," you might wish to stop reading here,...

Everyday Systems

Search found 5900 matches

Review of Struwwelpeter in the New Republic

Salt: The New S?

Good news for Oatmeal Optimizers

Podcast 38: 14 minutes of ANYTHING

TypeAlong.com: free non-boring typing tutor

Glass Ceiling Success Story