Everyday Systems

A system that can appeal even to "enablers!" I'm very flattered.

Happy to hear he's making it easy for you (even if only by negative example on the weekend).

Reinhard

I think it's clear that there used to be norms around eating, and that (very roughly) they consisted in limiting food to social meals, with sweets and other treats largely limited to holidays. Why was this the case? I think the answer is simple. Food was scarce. It was expensive, both in terms of mo...

I'm very glad you all like the book! Honestly, all you "need" is the formula itself -- a quick look at the cover of the book, or the "title" field of the home page. If you follow that, you'll be fine. So what's the point of the rest of the book and the web site? To convince you that this is true: wi...

No snacks means no eating between meals -- even if it's "healthy" food. Why no healthy food? Because 1) it still has calories 2) it's setting up a pretext for unhealthy snacks later (c'mon, are you really going to stick with carrot sticks forever?) 3) it's an excuse not to eat healthy foods at meals...

haha. I thought the writing www.nosdiet.com in all the donated diet books was HILARIOUS.

And appropriate, given that the author is an ex-librarian.

Reinhard

Yup. Sick starts with s. Do whatever it takes to get yourself through. I have to say, though, that I haven't taken a No-s sick day in a long time. If anything, I find it's easier to stick to the rules on sick days than on regular days because I'm just not as hungry. I do lay off the shovelglove, tho...

Dear Sandy, The biggest danger with excessive S-days is NOT any direct excess, but that you will let them unhinge you psychologically, that you'll either compensate for the excess by adding extra, unsustainable rules, or give up completely because "it doesn't work." If you can get past this psycholo...

I'm not worried. I think it's a very cool service, actually, and that it'll help sell more books (or amazon wouldn't provide it, for one thing). It's a little like being able to go into a bookstore and browse.

April 5,6: 2 weekend luddite failures. Had to finally update the nosdiet.com home page a bit because it's getting so many new eyeballs thanks to Woman's World.

I'm sure the feeling's mutual .

Reinhard

Welcome, jreneew! It's slow -- sorry! If you want to succeed with this you're going to have to mentally budget for the fact that it's probably (depending on how much you have to lose) take many weeks or months or even years to get there. A very crude rule of thumb for the rate of sustainable weight ...

I have a hard time believing whole milk is a problem in terms of weight management -- for the simple reason that we drink so much less of it these days than we used to when we were thin (Americans drank 6 times as much whole milk in the 1940s than they do today). (more fun milk stats on page 55-56 o...

Linda, Welcome back! (and congratulations of finishing culinary school). I think you're right the best thing about no-s is the sense of normalcy and regularity it gives you. Even if it did nothing more than that, it would be a great thing. But it does do more -- it gets you to a healthy weight. And ...

If no-cal or low-cal drinks like lemon water won't cut it, (whole!) milk is your friend. It's got enough fat and calories to sop up any real hunger. It also has a soporific effect, so it'll get you to sleep sooner.

Reinhard

I think they're using "world" in the sense of "world series."

It is funny how much talk there is about sustainability on a global scale, and how little on the scale of individual behaviors -- behaviors you can sustain without trashing your personal ecosystem, i.e, your body. But there is (or can be) a connection between the two. I don't want to get too righteo...

The time you see on these posts will always be the same no matter where YOU are in the world -- GMT, (originally at least) the time in Greenwich, England, where they first came up with this whole time zone thing (more or less).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Mean_Time

Reinhard

vesta0424, It started with S-days ("days that start with S"). Then there were Non-S-days. Which was too long and morphed into N-days. Which then was taken to refer to "Normal" days. If you want to get really advanced, there are also now NWS days -- "non-weekend S-days -- e.i., "Special days". As for...

It looks like you can now "search inside the book" for the No S Diet on amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0399534040/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link Even if you already have the book, this can be a useful way to pinpoint a particular question or issue (say, "milk" or "salad"). If you don't own t...

Well, my coworkers are rooting for the book to bomb because they're afraid I'll get rich and leave. :-) And I've been asked at least once for an introduction to my "disciple" Angie Harmon. :-) Seriously, everyone has been very sweet, some are even doing No-s (and shovelglove!) themselves and they al...

Milk, even whole milk (the only kind I drink) is fine any time.

(I give a whole milk pep talk on pages 55-56 of the book, if you're interested)

Chocolate milk, however, seems to fall rather squarely into the category of sweets...

Reinhard

mjn, Some ideas for ranging in hot weather: 1. time your walks to take place mornings or evenings when it's cooler 2. carry a water bottle 3. Don't range too far from home so you can get back quickly if you start to overheat 4. Adjust your ambitions with the thermostat. If it's sweltering, make it a...

I'm not quite over 80, or even over 40, but I love people too and am happy to see you here.

I hope some other over 80s (or thereabouts) see your post here and respond, but in the meantime, welcome!

Reinhard

I've noticed it! That "spotlight" of three single plate meals isn't just a cute metaphor, it really does make you take them more seriously. You just don't want to waste your meal opportunity on crap. It raises the "opportunity cost" of crap. Funny how these "side effects" of No-s seem almost more im...

bettyp Welcome! It varies a great deal how fast people lose weight on No-s. I and some others lost very quickly. But I think those are unusual cases. It's better to expect that it's going to be very slow, and put your focus on behavior rather than results. It's better to see this as a permanent chan...

Not officially

Dear sc_mom_of_5, Welcome! I'm glad you find No-s resonates with you. But don't worry about whether "it" will work, about results. Sustainable weight loss is slow and individual measurements erratic and you'll make yourself crazy staring at the scale. Instead, worry about whether you will work: abou...

It's funny how many people read "no sweets" and understand "no sugar," despite all my attempts to distinguish the two.

My rule of thumb is "if it's sweet enough to be a dessert, then it's a sweet." If not, don't worry about it.

Reinhard

They all promise the loss of copious amounts of weight WITHOUT BEING HUNGRY. I promise you, though you certainly won't starve, you WILL SOMETIMES BE HUNGRY on No-s. But you'll come to view it as a good thing. Hunger isn't a disease. It's natural. It's even enjoyable: "Appetite is the best sauce." I...

Welcome, carmij! The forums are great, but by their very nature, the posts going to skew towards unusual circumstances, problems, ambiguities, tangential issues, special needs, etc. People tend to post about what they are NOT clear about, rather than what they understand perfectly well. Most of the ...

Ah, excellent. I should have spotted that.

Reinhard

My simple rule is: load up as much as you want before you start eating. It might be a lot, but it's still just "firsts." If you start eating and then load up more, it's "seconds." Firsts CAN be excessive. But they have the advantage of being OBVIOUSLY excessive. And over time, the gentle pressure of...

It's allowed.

Though I personally am not crazy about the stuff:

http://nosdiet.com/#fake_sugar

You may find, after a few weeks of No-essing, that you no longer want it. Real sweets on weekends are so much better than the fake kind.

Reinhard

You know, I did. At my wife's insistence (there'd been an unpleasant incident). I can't remember how long, but I think it was on the order of 2-3 months.

Silver gives good advice.

3 meals is probably better than 4 if you can swing it, just because it makes it harder for excess to creep in, but 4 meals is much better than chaos. With a little bit of extra attention, 4 meals can work just fine.

Reinhard

Thank you for your orders! The book certainly isn't NECESSARY for No-s (you can find pretty much everything in it somewhere or other on this website for free) but I do think it's helpful. If you're going to spend a few hours learning about no-s (all it should take to plow through the book), the book...

Yeah, that would be nice -- but a little tricky to code. I'll probably get to it some day...

Right now you can "qualify" your habitcal in the daily checkin forum. What I do is whenever I have a failure I explain it there -- helps keep a minor slip up from becoming a disaster.

Reinhard

Welcome!

Yes, you can drink tea and coffee. You can even put a little sugar in it if you like.

http://nosdiet.com/#sweets

Reinahrd

Great to see you all here! Brandy_S, the time stamps are all GMT (greenwich mean time). jansw, though I'm happy for you, I'd be wary of reading too much into that 3 pounds. This is a slow, moderate diet and it takes weeks or months to see meaningful results. I just don't want you to be disappointed ...

oatmeal.

http://everydaysystems.com/podcast/episode.php?id=23

Reinhard

A watched scale can do worse than not drop. :-) http://everydaysystems.com/podcast/episode.php?id=24 I'd suggest either: 1. forget the scale altogether (best for serious scale phobias). Focus on behavior and how your clothes fit. 2. measure just once a month, and then take a few measurements over a ...

During the week I reward myself with little green squares on the habitcal . On the weekends, I reward myself with (for example) an ice cream cone from Toscanni's (great local ice cream shop with such good ice cream that its customers banded together to rescue it from bankruptcy due to massive back t...

Welcome, likefrogs! Here's a couple of quotes from the book (pages 88-90) to answer your question (lots more good stuff like this in the book, wink wink nudge nudge :-)): Virtual Plates Sometimes, mostly for social reasons, it isn't possible to fit your entire meal on a single physical plate. Maybe ...

Is there a reason why you can't? I'd love to see the article, but this magazine is not available in Europe. Well, there's this little issue called "copyright".... I'll ask. Didn't want to annoy them too much while there was the slightest possibility of their going back on it :-) Glad you took the p...

mutahi5, Theoretically, it's fine -- as long as it isn't a candy bar in disguise (and thus a sweet). No-s gives you a lot of leeway in terms of how you define your meals. But I think you'll find that sitting down to a formal meal, however brief, is HELPFUL for long term success. The more concrete ex...

Hmmm..

I'm still seeing "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. Please search for Shovelglove. in Wikipedia to check for alternative titles or spellings."

Maybe rival wikkipedia editors are dueling about its status and sending it back and forth.

Reinhard

You are very welcome, Nossuzy. I hope you'll continue to find No S useful in the months/years/decades to come. Congratulations on making it to your 5th day "on habit," tgp157. Get enough of these under your belt and it becomes very, very easy. 15 months, Tiffani! Time flies. Congratulations! Reinhard

It varies tremendously. Some people lose 20 pounds. Some lose nothing. What should you expect? I'd say "don't expect." Focus on behavior, on building new habits, rather than results. Sustainable weight loss is (depending on body size, of course) about half a pound a week. It's very, very slow. You w...

fkwan,

Glad you're off to a good start!

I would like to caution you not to get overambitious in terms of results. The goal should be "eat moderately, see what happens," not some target number in pounds -- especially when that number would put you at "underweight."

Please be careful!

Reinhard

"No sweets" doesn't mean "no sugar." You can eat food that contains some sugar. You just have to avoid foods where the primary source of calories is added sugar. A good rule of thumb is, "if it's sweet enough to be a dessert, it's a sweet." No need to check ingredients, your taste buds will let you ...

Welcome back to the club, Tiffani. Always good to see you here.

March 28, 31, April 1, 2: shovelglove sick (NWS) days. Finally got the nasty cold that had laid low the rest of my family most of March. March 30, April 1: Tasks failures. Cold induced. I was toying with the idea of calling these days exempt because I was sick, but frankly, I could have just been be...

My ads can be hard to "get." :-) From podcast episode 19, "Personal Punch Cards" http://everydaysystems.com/podcast/episode.php?id=19 I carry each daily card around with me in my wallet. The rest I keep in an index card filing box at home, in chronological order. I use golf pencils , those little st...

Marvin -- welcome to the group and thanks for posting your routine. Looks like an excellent start.

I took all the copies my coworker gave me and hid them. And I haven't told my family. Ha. I'm a dork, but I'm embarassed! I understand this must be weird, Mandy, but 1) you really truly, sincerely do look gorgeous and 2) if your mother finds out you were on the cover of a national magazine and DIDN...

Yes, you are allowed alcohol. There's no particular rule about it that's intrinsic to the No S Diet system, but I (and others here) follow a two (alcoholic) drink a day "glass ceiling." (Depending on your body size, you might want to limit it to one.) The idea is that a drink or two a day is actuall...

I love this idea of HABITS! When did it go out of style? Me too! Not sure when it went out of style. It was hugely in style for thousands of years. Aristotle thought that all virtues (not just dietary ones :-)) were essentially habits. The modern dichotomy of addiction vs. total freedom seems neith...

fkwan, You need S-days or you'll crack. I would recommend starting with completely free S-days (and proactive rewards) and seeing what happens. IF, after a few weeks of good literal compliance with the rules, you feel your S-days need tightening up, there are a number of things you can do without co...

I've run into this problem, too. I don't think there's a straightforward way to fix this at the moment. What you can do is take a screenshot and print that, but that's obviously not quite the same thing. Printability is on my short list of things to investigate for habitcal, if that's any comfort. R...

queenmom, First off, welcome! Secondly, don't think about results at all. Think about behavior. Think about building good habits. Eating without either gluttony or guilt is a great good in itself -- and it will bring lasting results. But if you worry too much about results up front it'll throw you o...

Welcome, lostnfound! I think you'll find the No S Diet enjoyable and effective, if you can get yourself in the proper long-term mindset. That means be patient about seeing results, and realizing that it may take a few false starts to get the habit down. It's more like training an animal (appetite, i...

Thank you, Olive!

I hope you do find the system works for you, and in any case, I'm glad you enjoyed reading the book.

Reinhard

We've had more new members over the last 2 days than we used to get in the course of a typical month, and the No S Diet book is now the 10th bestselling diet book at amazon.com. I assume the woman's world article had something to do with this. :-) So, welcome! You should be able to find everything y...

Thanks for posting this modification, Jules. This is one of the toughest moves for most people. It's great to have a version that is more "accessible."

I think I'll try it out myself!

Reinhard

This is a great move. Clear description, clear manual labor "precedent," and clearly physiologically beneficial, with a slightly difference muscular emphasis than the other moves. It's also a great reminder that actually sweeping floors is a great exercise that most of us opt out of most of the time...

Interesting...sounds like a great solution for your mom, but would be nice to have something more ready made for mom's without such handy sons.

I'll do some poking around in "home and garden" at amazon and see if I come up with anything...

Reinhard

Thanks!

My routine is simple enough that any old timer will do, but this looks cool for the more ambitious.

Reinhard

Jessica Biel, Patron Celebrity of "special" days

Alas, I think you'd have to do some kind of "bible code" interpretation of her words to arrive at that.

Oh well, gotta leave SOMETHING for us to educate people about here.

Reinhard

Chew gum. Drink non-caloric beverages -- or even caloric (but not sugary) ones. What kind of work do you do? Is it very social, or can you listen to music or spoken audio? There is nothing natural about the connection between killing time and eating. So while it might seem a very hard habit to break...

I love this quantification of plate number and size tradeoffs, Steve! Very amusing -- and actually useful, I think. A couple inches off the diameter makes a huge different in terms of surface area. The miraculous surprises of basic math! KC 7707, I think it's useful as a playful, eye opener. Not som...

Hungry Girl,

It is absolutely OK to introduce a fourth meal if your schedule demands it. You might want to keep two of your plates "half sized" to compensate for this (thank you for quantifying this, Steve!).

Reinhard

I was emailed a scanned image last night and just got my own physical copy today. The publisher gave me permission to put up a jpeg of the cover. I stuck a link at the bottom of this discussion: http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2660 (I have a few nits with some of the wording, but Mandy...

Thank you all for your kind words! (especially the "yoda" comment :-)) Sorry I misspoke about your mode of transport, Blondie, but I could have sworn I heard something about booking a flight. Oh well, it doesn't detract too much from the Cinderella glamour of the thing (and I think I'd actually pref...

Glad you liked it, Deb!

There was actually another discussion about this, but with all the traffic we're getting nowadays particular discussions are getting hard to find:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2763

Reinhard

Here's the direct link:

http://forum.t-tapp.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=75113

Welcome, ToutDeSuite! The day's barely begun and I think we're close to our record for daily new members already. I think it's only going to increase as we approach the 7th (I hadn't expected anything before the 7th --the issue is dated the 14th).

Reinhard

Behold Mandy (aka Blondie)! http://nosdiet.com/images/womans-world-2008-05-14-cover.jpg (You look STUNNING -- thank you so much again for doing this.) "No willpower? No problem!" is not quite the headline I would have picked, but I'll choose to look at it as an oversimplification (clear rules levera...

Hey, there's dignity in manual labor -- at least as much as in killing people, I think.

Reinhard

I'm flattered! But the thing is, I don't think this is an official entry that you can find from the main wikkipedia page. It looks like it's attached to a particular user, but hasn't for some reason made it to "production." Here's where the official article should be (but isn't): http://en.wikipedia...

I'm very, very sorry to hear this. Please be easy on yourself. You've had it hard enough.

Reinhard

That's fascinating... and sad. The reason behind the gorging is because today falls in the middle of a four-week gap between people giving up New Year diets and starting new ones to get in shape for summer holidays. Let's just hope now that the nosdiet book is out (even in Britain!) the new diet the...

You know, funny you should mention it, because there are actually two versions of the ten commandments as well (one in Exodus, one in Deuteronomy) and although everyone seems to agree that there are ten, and what in sum, they are, there is some disagreement about their division: http://en.wikipedia....

Interesting. Would have been a shorter Odyssey if she'd started with no-s

Moderation with structure.

Maybe I'll drop her and email or leave a comment to enlighten her

Reinhard

Ah, someone noticed :-) First off, before anyone gets burned at the stake, let it be known that, as far as I'm concerned, both the 13 and 14 word versions are "canonical." The "sometimes" is always there -- it's just implicit in the shorter version. We're all Sometimesians, just explicit or implicit...

Hi Jesseco, I would take a close look at the chart Rose linked to (thank you again for posting this, Rose!). The individual measurements seem to be jumping all over the place -- but the trend line is very clear. If Rose had been obsessing over individual measurements, she might have quickly conclude...

We actually share an editor.

Yeah, I find his stuff interesting, though not completely convincing. And I guess we share some methodological approaches. The big difference is he's interested in physiology whereas I'm more interested in psychology.

Reinhard

Jesseco, Although it might help some to prefer smaller plates, I don't think plate size matters that much. Because the most important function of the plate is not as a limiting container, but as a presenting stage, so you can see how much you're eating. When you have your whole meal in front of you ...

Welcome to the group, Jim! And thanks for posting your routine. Beat the drum sounds intriguing. I've occasionally done something similar with 2 5-pound dumbells as part of my "freestyle friday" routine. Rubber mallets sound like they'd work much better... On a somewhat related note, Paulrone recent...

Tommi, You are very welcome! And don't worry about sounding like you're bragging -- bragging in the cause of advancing the shovelglove movement is a virtue! I've noticed many of the benefits you mentioned myself (from the bowling to the veins to arm wrestling the pushups to the other forms of exerci...

Hi Deb,

Sorry that March was less than ideal, but glad you're still with it to some degree and checking in. With the weather picking up, hopefully it'll be easier to make progress.

Glad you like the book so far! Can't wait for your final assessment.

Reinhard

This is what happens when a good Lutheran boy marries a Rabbi's daughter

It's a challenge keeping NWS days down to a reasonable level. I guess on the plus side, if I can lose weight with 2 sets of religious holidays, the majority with a mere single set should have no problem.

Reinhard

There's no question there's been a major pickup lately. Maybe I'll make some kind of histogram to quantify this a bit better... I'm pretty sure we've had more new members in March so far than we've ever had in any other single month by a longshot. The volume of new posts and discussions has been suc...

Nope, false alarm. The issue will be dated April 14th (but available April 7th).

Reinhard

Paul, Very cool! I've been thinking about doing something like this for a while. I've actually been using my 12 pounder for some one armed moves that would work much better with a shorter, lighter hammer ("blacksmith" is one of them). The term "drill hammer" will be helpful in tracking these down......

http://calorielab.com/news/2008/03/27/t ... diet-book/

Reinhard

Oh, I forgot to register some NWS days:

March 20: Purim -- NWS day nosdiet
March 21: Good Friday -- NWS day nosdiet, shovelglove

Very moderate NWS days, nosdiet-wise.

March 25: Rough day! Shovelglove failure. The same glass ceiling happened as last time (lunch bar two drinks, then didn't refuse glass of wine at dinner). And tasks failure. Resolved: I will never let this particular pattern of glass ceiling violation happen again. It's not that in was a disaster in...

Wow, I didn't think it would be out in the UK till late april. And I just got another email from a British No-esser, so it's not just a fluke. Great to see you again here, Steve. Sorry Mungo got the better of you for a bit (though amusing to see him here again, too). Thanks, swimfit, for St. Louis. ...

Thank you, Mimi, Jan, Peetie, shamrockmommy and Too solid flesh! I am so relieved that people really seem to be liking it.

I just noticed that they added a "search inside the book" option which will hopefully translate into some extra sales, since now you can browse a little.

Reinhard

Eat your granola. Yes it has a lot of sugar, but it's not quite a dessert level "sweet." You'll get much more bang for your buck focussing on the obvious offenders. If you find yourself UNABLE to eat your granola without worrying about it, consider cutting it 50/50 or some other ratio with an unswea...

Everyday Systems

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