Everyday Systems

Glad to hear it! Thanks for sharing your routine. 50 reps is a lot. I don't even do that anymore (my max is 42, and most days I don't even do that). I think shorter rep sets are safer, more interesting, more natural and more fun (plus it's easier to keep count if your mind wanders). Still, it is nic...

The rule is "no sweets," not "no refined cane sugar." Put enough honey in something and it's a sweet. Ditto "all natural organic cane juice" and whatever the "wellness" industry will come up with next. But just as you can have foods that contain "some sugar" during the week, you can have foods that ...

Welcome! You sound like one tough preacher

I'm a big Clint Eastwood fan myself (and and even bigger bible fan).

Reinhard

Hi Bee, I'm sorry you aren't seeing better results. Here are a few ideas/encouragements: 1) you know the story about how muscle weighs more than fat. Well maybe that explains what you are seeing. I'm confident that, if you're overweight, extra muscle will lose you weight in the long run. And while i...

Hi chentegt, No-s doesn't actually limit drinks, alcoholic or otherwise (as long as they're not loaded with sugar). There is another system I practice, glass ceiling , which does limit drinks. It's compatible with, but not an inherent part of No-s. So you can technically do No-s with more than 2 dri...

Hi June, Well, here are some tips/tricks/things to keep in mind: 1. tip: as you point out, delaying the first drink and spacing out the second (maybe with a non-alcoholic drink in between) can help. 2. trick: if the party goes on long enough, it will be the next calendar day. 3. If you're out of gas...

Sustainable weight loss (like no-s) is very, very slow. About half a pound a week. Some people are lucky and it goes faster, but don't bank on it. And your scale is not accurate enough to measure such tiny increments on a daily or even weekly basis, so I'd recommend not stepping on it too often and ...

The reference was probably to a particular kind of luddite.

That's correct, they are covered. But they're a "specially" interesting subset of S-days.

There's no need to consider them separately or track them if it's not a problem or doesn't interest you.

Reinhard

First there were S-days (days that start with S) Then there were N-days (Non-S-days) How about NWS-days? (Non-Weekend-S-days) Pro: short, precise, unambiguous technical term for something we need to make sure doesn't happen too often. Con: baffling if you don't know what it stands for. Might be good...

Lots of stuff to report since last check-in! (unfortunately) I took an (nosdiet) S-day last Monday that was so dubious I'm going to call it a failure . Basically I anticipated social pressures that didn't materialize. It wasn't a disaster in terms of excess, but it was unnecessary, and not a good pr...

Thanks for bringing it up again... I'll certainly give it a look in May. We use wikki's internally at work, so I'm familiar with them from a user perspective. I am a little skeptical that it will save time... it might be a great feature, but I'm sure, unless I let it degenerate into complete chaos, ...

Hi mimi, Congratulations on your good start. You can make text green by highlighting it and then choosing " Font colour: green " from the drop down menu above. You'll see funny little brackets around the text as long as it's in the edit box and the color won't change. But when hit preview or submit ...

Welcome, Mimi!

I'm happy to hear that no-s is spreading by word of physical mouth as well as email! And especially when the people spreading the word are as influential (and presumably knowledgeable) as gym owners.

Reinhard

I was reading about parkours (=freerunning) in the New Yorker this weekend, and was interested to read about George Hébert, a turn of the century French "sports theorist" (doesn't that sound so much better than "fitness guru?"). His most famous saying was, "Etre fort pour être utile" - "Be strong to...

Viel Glück! Hope to see you back here soon. My mostly very thin and fit family in Germany doesn't "exercise" either. They walk. They garden. They play soccer. They eat rich food -- 4 meals a day. It's not quite no-s, but it adds up to a lot less than the guilty permasnacking most Americans indulge i...

I love it! I wonder if I can order a reprint... Next month, when I have a brief window of some extra free time and am going to attend to all the other changes I've been promising to make to the sites for a while, maybe I'll add a "historical picture gallery" showing how deeply and broadly "normal" t...

What's interesting about this is that it shows the power of "no seconds." McDonalds had to subvert this natural instinct of ours to be embarrassed by going back for seconds by rolling seconds into firsts. Imagine how much more effective it would be to work with this instinct, as No-essers do, than a...

Moxie, Sorry it's been a while since I popped in here... I'm very happy to hear how well it's going for you. High heeled shovelglove... now that would make some compelling youtube :-) I'm very impressed (and amused) with how you talked yourself out of skipping a workout, but do be careful about swin...

Nice! I've tried a few times at the playground... but the "what the hell are you doing looks?" I get from the other mommies and daddies (or imagine I'm getting) stop me way before I physically max out. 7 is very respectable -- especially if you haven't been specifically training by doing them. I'm v...

Welcome, Mercenaire. Thanks for posting! The other watchers (and posters) really appreciate it. I too, have a very sedentary job. It's especially important for people like us to get moving, and in an interesting, varied way. Kevin is right: don't rush it. You don't want your routine to get hard/dang...

Nice! Congratulations, Storm.

I can easily vary 4 pounds in a single day, according to my scale.

In fact, I've jumped as much as 10.

That's why I stick with days on habit as my primary metric (though scale weight is a good rough sanity check now and then).

Reinhard

Yeah, just got back. Sorry about that. This stuff doesn't get posted by trolls, but by automated spambots. I have some primitive but effective filtering code that blocks the vast majority of this, and I'm pretty quick about finding and deleting the rest, but some slips through, especially on weekend...

Welcome! Regarding breakfast, basically all that's out is stuff doused in maple syrup, pop tarts, and sugar cereal. That leaves a lot left over. 1. Most "grown up" cereal is fine. Remember you can eat things with some sugar, just not things that have a ton of sugar. And don't forget hot cereal -- I'...

Hi Jessica, I'm sorry you had a bad experience, but are you sure the diet you were following was no-s? You say you never saw the home page till now, so maybe it got a bit garbled in transmission. You ate three meals a day? 3 meals a day is not exactly "purging" or "deprivation" or "not eating." And ...

Interesting... but not a big surprise. I think I quote some similarly dismal statistic on the home page. I guess the really bad news is that dieting isn't just non-productive, but that it's actually harmful. One point of confusion is the definition of "diet." Any kind of eating is a diet. Animals ha...

Jonathan, I am very psyched that shovelglove has graduated to the point of water cooler conversation. Just out of curiosity, what line of work are you in? You've probably read all my cautions about upgrading too quickly... but it sounds like you're a pretty seasoned exerciser and know what you're do...

Thank you Matthew! This is excellent. A lot of people have described canoeing type movements, but it really helps to see it. Youtube/myspace video is turning into such a boon for exercise in general and shovelglove in particular. I really, really have to beef up that movements page soon... along wit...

My March 2007 Personal Olympics standings:

No S Diet: Gold (0 failures, 0 exemptions)
Shovelglove: Gold (0 failures, 0 exemptions)
Weekend Luddite: Gold
Glass Ceiling: Gold

A perfect month! Time to start adding more events, maybe

Reinhard

Congratulations to both of you! Since your buddy system is working so well, maybe you'll have imitators soon. I am really amazed that it is becoming so much easier, just like you said it would, Reinhard! I have to admit, I didn't believe you on that part I wouldn't have believed it myself either, st...

That's great, Tiffani. Congratulations! I still love sweets... more than ever. I just don't feel the constant need for them, and it seems like it's a waste of a limited opportunity to eat sweets that aren't really top quality. Ice cream I'm still very fond of in general, but pretty much all sugar so...

Karina, This isn't going to work unless you think long term -- months and years, not a long weekend, and not about some immanent trip. It's only been two days since easter. Anything a scale does in two days is utterly meaningless. I'd remove the fractional pound from your current weight -- scales ar...

I don't actually see anything wrong here... You Essed on S days, you didn't on N-days. That's good behavior.

My daughter actually vomited all over the car from eating so much chocolate on Easter. Now THAT was a disaster.

Reinhard

This guy is great.

I love the "would your great grandmother recognize it as food" test.

Reinhard

I'm really sorry these planned updates to the site have been taking so long... I've just had an overwhelming amount of work to do the last few months and it's just hard to get the solid hour or so that it would take to do them right. But while I'm slow, I am persistent... I will get them done eventu...

Welcome, gourdly! It's great to have another triple system practitioner on board.

I'm glad it's working so well for you. Feel free (and encouraged) to pop in here now and then to let us know how it's going.

Reinhard

Since last check-in:

Took 2 nosdiet non-weekend S-days for 2 passover seders.

Took 1 shovelglove non-weekend S-day for good Friday.

Maybe we need a new acronym to confuse the uninitiated: NWS-days

Reinhard

Yes, one's kid's birthday is an unambiguous S-day. Enjoy! A week isn't a very useful scale on which to measure this. Try a month. A good rough metric for acceptable compliance is 2 non-weekend S-days a month. If you have that or less, don't sweat it. If you have more... start considering whether you...

I didn't know that about runners training with walking. Interesting. I'm sure I will get into it (as long as I have someone to run with). My one reservation is that now I won't be able to say "the ONLY exercise I do is walking and shovelglove." Though I guess I have some evidence to document that th...

Steve, Absolutely. Not only is that metaphor accurate, it's so right on with the Zeitgeist. I should hire you to do marketing :-). In fact... I've gotta bump this quote up a bit.... home page and/or book (if you don't mind). The trick isn't boundaries vs. freedom, but where to set the boundaries so ...

I'm still reading -- I just have to limit it to 15-20 minutes a day until book and baby are safely on their way.

Thanks for the advice! Don't worry, there will be no "new agey bs." This is old school, not new age.

Reinhard

Cool! I think I'm going to add an "other sledgehammer exercises routines" section to the home page. People have been posting enough good stuff recently that I think we have critical mass. One thing I've noticed about a lot of "external" sledgehammer movements: they seem a little dangerous if you hav...

The DS-2 is cheaper than one psychiatrist visit.

Welcome, Moxie! And congratulations on making it through the full 14 minutes. Great to have another female shugger on board. I finally got around to linking back to stumptuous.com on the shovelglove.com home page in belated recognition of all the traffic Mistress Krista has brought my way over the y...

There is room for shovelglove purists and those who are merely loosely inspired by shovelglove in this group. I'm very interested to read what Storm is doing (different from, but very much in the spirit of shovelglove), and I'm also very happy to read that simple, vanilla shovelglove is enough for m...

Hi Karina, Ultimately you have to make these calls. What works for you is what works for you. This isn't about ideological purity, but about solving a practical problem. That being said, I would warn both about fake sugar and semi-seconds. Both are likely to smudge the clarity of your behavior, to m...

Good luck!

Put that grazing thing out of your head. No one grazed back when we were skinny. This is a new, historically unprecedented fat society behavior.

Reinhard

Hi Kevin, Yeah, this certainly isn't something I'll recommend for everyone... at least in its present unrefined form. But conceptually it's actually rather simple: 1 minute per set. It's actually simpler to express than the variable movements per set that are now the status quo. The complexity comes...

Yeah, I think mountain ranger played a big rolled in this, too.

It's a shame we just moved back to the second floor from the seventh, so that's going to be seriously curtailed for me...

I'll have to keep my eyes open for new opportunities.

Reinhard

Congratulations, Storm!

It's great when we stick to the rules, but it's even better when the training wheels come off and we see that even then we can behave moderately and normally. The best part of the rules is how they train us.

Reinhard

A couple weeks ago, I started watching a dvd ( ushpizin , to practice my hebrew) while shugging and noticed that either I kept losing count of what rep I was on or, if I focused on counting, couldn't pay attention to the dvd. I decided to try doing "time based" sets rather than rep based sets, so I ...

Heidster, I love the batting gloves idea... the baseball bat is excellent too, better than the broom I recommend on the home page. I'll mention these on the home page with a link to this post to credit you. Congratulations on completing your first week and thanks for sharing these great suggestions....

Welcome, Scott! I've briefly looked at heavyhands before (I think someone posted it here). It does look intriguing. Here's the home page if anyone else is curious: http://www.heavyhandsfitness.com/ I like the idea of "panaerobics" and its anglo saxon equivalent "longstrength." Great terms, and certa...

I am reasonably confident this guy hasn't stolen my idea (links to his site have been posted here before). Though I didn't know it when I came up with shovelglove, sledgehammer workouts did exist pre-shovelglove (from what I understand, they mostly involve whacking things and are ill suited for indo...

I haven't run since before the turn of the millennium. Two days ago, I went running with a coworker who'd invited me. I braced myself (and him) for a really embarrassing performance, but I actually found it surprisingly not bad. We ran about two miles, and I'm reasonably confident I could have done ...

You can do more than three meals if it's necessary -- but it does introduce new risks. I would consider revising your schedule, if it's within your power, so that you only need three. If it's not within your power, or you really think you can manage the increased risk of an additional "input opportu...

1. If you look at the testimonials page and the boards here, you'll see that many of the most successful no-essers have been female. So that shouldn't be grounds for skepticism. No one (not even women!) counted and measured back when we as a society were thin. 2. This is the problem: Then after seve...

If you consistently do 10 minutes, I wouldn't worry about it. The big divide is between SOMETHING and NOTHING. 10 minutes vs. 14 is a detail.

Reinhard

If you insist...

P.S. those 4s are impossible to read in the spambot detection image (not that you have any control over this). They look like 1s or 7s because the cross bar obscures them.

Sorry for the long wait... I'm going to have to scale back to doing these monthly instead of weekly for a bit, until book and kid are safely delivered.

http://everydaysystems.com/podcast/episode.php?id=27

Welcome, Karina! I think you'll find NO-s is the opposite of WW: it starts out hard and gets easier instead of starting out easier and getting insufferable. But the start can be tricky. And it sometimes takes a few false starts. So brace yourself for that. The good news is once you get the habit dow...

Congratulations! That's great. A pound a week is plenty. And 10 weeks of good behavior is huge.

Reinhard

Steve, Very cool... those flickr maps are perfect for urban ranger. Sorry I haven't gotten around to the home page mods yet. I will. I'm slow, but very persistent. Speaking of slow, a coworker invited me to go running with him today after work. I haven't run since before the turn of the millennium.....

Belated official congratulations to you both, shamrockmommy and Hilary! Hang in there, wanttobehealthy. Just keep bouncing back and eventually you'll get it. Don't waste time blaming yourself, just ask yourself what in particular is giving you a hard time and try to take practical steps to better yo...

Yup. Anything.

Yes, it is possible to technically follow the rules and still overeat, but I don't think you can do this without it being glaringly obvious -- and long term, that obviousness will be enough to keep you sufficiently in line.

Good luck and enjoy!

Reinhard

Sorry for the long delay on the movements page update... and you're right, sledgehammer, someone is going to beat me to my own idea if I don't do something about it soon.

As soon as I've got the no-s book out I'll swing my guns around and focus on shovelglove.

Reinhard

Thanks for the link! Assuming it's not cool for me to log in to vote up my own system

.

I'm very happy to hear that, Deb.

Ancient Chinese blessing: may your diet blog be boring and sparse.

Reinhard

Bienvenue, Rose! I think inner children (like outer children) like firm but reasonable boundaries. I tend to use animal training metaphors when talking about appetite, but child based ones work just as well (maybe even better). I am always happy when I see French http referrers in my web site logs (...

I just got an email back from Arnel saying he'll put in a prominent link ASAP. In fact, I see it's up now. I think some good will come of this. Shovelglove has clearly worked very well for him, and he's got some nice additional moves (though I have to wonder where he got them from...) that would be ...

Deb, The editor claims to like it. Just started on the next and presumably final draft... Glad you and Richard are still with it and doing well! I understand that bulletin boards can be a bit of a distraction, but I'm happy you'll still be checking in from time to time. I always enjoy hearing from y...

Wow. That's pretty shameless. At least he changed ONE of the movement names. I'll send him a friendly note asking if we can join forces. Hopefully that'll work and we won't have to consider anything more brutal. I have no problem whatsoever with people doing and writing about and posting videos abou...

Thanks for the link... I've heard of that "paradox of choice" issue and I think it's true and useful. "Good constraints" is a great concept, too. My downstairs neighbor is hugely into postive psychology and from the little I've read about it it sounds like an improvement over "blame your parents and...

Hi hockeystar, It's hard to say... it didn't take long for me to notice I was getting much stronger. But all I have for "hard evidence" are those photos on the "before and during" page 2 years apart. So at most 2 years. It probably didn't (and won't) take quite that long, but it can't hurt to convin...

I don't do it myself, but there's gotta be a reason boxers are so into it. And boxers don't joke around when it comes to exercise. In fact, they've even been know to do some very shovelglove-like stuff...

http://shovelglove.com/group/29.html

Reinhard

Welcome (fellow) library guy! I'm glad you're into the 14 minutes, because I think they're as important as the fun of swinging a sledgehammer around. You have to balance the sense of doing something fun and free and kind of nuts with the rigor and regularity of a firm time structure. Fun alone won't...

I think morning is preferable if possible. But if it's not possible, then it's not possible. Arguments for morning: 1. It's more likely to happen. Putting shovelglove first also prioritizes it. You take it more seriously. And if something stops you from doing it in the morning you have a whole day t...

Was it a failure? Perhaps -- but if so, it was a failure at an impossible task. I wouldn't be demoralized by it. What I would do, if you expect to encounter this situation often, is to come up with some contingency plan with clear, humane rules. Like a fourth fresh fruit mini-meal when you have a lo...

Welcome, Rosyposy.

1. Prepare with a big lunch

2. Grab a drink, even a caloric one, if you get hungry. Drink preemptively if you're scared hunger will overwhelm you.

3. Keep in mind that habit is going to make this easier every time you refrain from snacking.

Reinhard

Wow... sorry (and surprised) about the gain, Heidi. 85% compliance could use improvement... but I'd think it would at least buy you maintenance. I guess it's hard to quantify these things. But I'm glad you're less hung up on food and that you think you can work with this structure. I would be very s...

Maybe it's how they theoretically train all the time on some website, but I dunno about these actors: from: http://www.menshealth.com/cda/article.do?site=MensHealth&channel=guy.wisdom&category=life.lessons&conitem=de42ad5c08450110VgnVCM10000013281eac____&page=2 Of course, the downside to an extreme ...

Moderate hunger is good. And that's all you'll ever feel once you get this habit down.

Does anyone not want to feel sexual desire because they can't immediately satiate it? Same deal. You don't ever really enjoy food if you never get hungry.

Reinhard

Moxie, If it gets too bad, have a glass of milk. Yes, milk has calories, but it's not solid food, it's not sweet, and if your hunger is real, it will satiate it. You'll technically keep the habit of not eating between meals. Milk is soporific too, so you kill two birds with one stone. Best of luck a...

Not to knock what these guys accomplished, but it is important to note that this routine is utterly unsustainable. The point of the routine wasn't to be sustainable -- it was to get these guys maximally buff for a movie shoot. At that, it succeeded brilliantly. But that's not what most of us here ar...

I weed some out manually. I've coded some primitive spam blocking which gets most of it, but there's A LOT, and enough gets through for it to be a pain. I'm sure there's some patch I could apply that would block spam more efficiently... too many technologies to consider to consider any of them! Do l...

A wikki has been proposed before.... I'll look into it. One big concern I have is I don't want another redundant user account system. But I'm sure someone has hacked something to make phpbb accounts work with wikkis... The other concern I have is having the time to properly administer it. I can bare...

Kayvan, One thing I do to balance the two competing goods of habit and novelty is to stick with a pretty fixed routine (or two) four days a week, and experiment on Fridays. If an experiment is particularly fruitful (after having given it a few Fridays to really try it out) I consider inserting it in...

Nascif, Thanks for these links! Wow, almost 5000 years of proto-shovelglove. That's older than most major world religions! I love this line: Users of this weapon could take attacks and produce attack in the hardcore style. I'm at work right now but I'll see if I can find anything on youtube when I g...

Congratulations Tiffani and Jaxhil!

Maybe more newbies should follow your buddy system example. I am so happy it's working so well for you.

Reinhard

Congratulations! The more you do this, the easier it gets. Every time you do the right thing in a hard situation, the next hard situation gets easier.

I'm getting tired of running a shared server out of my basement... I think it's getting to be time for professional hosting somewhere.

so far so good..

Kayvan,

That is awesome! Testimonials page worthy!

Congratulations!

I wish my current doctor had known me pre-shovelglove....

Reinhard

I've found it's amazing how little people really care what you eat.

"No thanks," is really sufficient in 90% of all cases.

Good luck!

Reinhard

You can eat "snack food" for a meal if you want on No-s. Snacks, for No-S purposes, are "when" not "what."

That being said, once you get into the habit of eating regular meals, you'll probably find meal style food more appealing (which is good, since snack food tends to be awful).

Reinhard

I would advise eating when it is time to eat, whether or not you are hungry. That way you'll train your hunger to come at the right time. Regular habits are what's important, not saving a few calories on one skipped meal. When your mealing habits are all over the place, hunger is a totally unreliabl...

No funny stuff to report since last checkin. Nice and boring.

For me, breakfast and Dinner are very fixed (my 2 year old insists): 7 AM and 6:30 PM. Lunch can float around a bit. If I'm eating my "default" oatmeal, I at at noon. If I'm eating with others it depends on their schedule. I have a standing weekly lunch with friends on Tuesday at 1:45. The more regu...

I'd actually love to see this movie... (I'm willing to forgive quite a bit given the classical theme, which I'm very into -- reading "A War Like No Other," by Victor Davis Hanson right now) but there's no way my wife is going to go for it, and with the arrival of kid #2 looming, I'm not sure sneakin...

I have an ipod nano that I got as a gift. It's nice... but expensive enough that I'm not sure I would have bought it for myself. Before that I was using an mp3 cd player, which, with a little bit of forethought is pretty OK, especially for long lecture series (and a lot cheaper). I guess I'd recomme...

Everyday Systems

Search found 5900 matches

A new acronym to confuse the uninitiated

Georges Hébert: "Be strong to be useful."

Time based vs. rep based sets

Urban ranger (and shovelglove?) translates to running!

Audiodidact (Output)

"Load Test" crashed server this morning 2007-03-21

Testing after crash