Everyday Systems

Happy new year, David! The holiday's are tough. I'm confident, given your record so far, that you'll bounce back quickly.

Reinhard

Welcome back!

Looking forward to a triple digit record this go

Reinhard

Have a glass of milk. Caloric, full of protein, and totally legitimate, No-s wise. Warm milk is supposed to have a soporific effect, too. If you stick with 3 regular meals, I think this nighttime hunger will go away soon. It's no surprise that your old bad habits, still firmly in place, are objectin...

A little longer and sloppier than usual, but I think there's something useful in here:

http://everydaysystems.com/podcast/episode.php?id=18

Welcome, chentegt!

Some people find this clicks right away, others take a few tries to get it down -- it's safest to mentally budget for the latter.

Good luck and looking forward to hearing more from you,

Reinhard

Congratulations! That's fantastic. And it's doubly fantastic because you've attained it though moderate, sustainable means.

Reinhard

Great to see you here again, Herman. The huge hammers are fun to gawk at, but they shouldn't make anyone here feel inferior. For one thing, I don't think they're realistic for anyone except competitive strongmen. For another thing, I don't even think they're necessary for such strongmen. As I mentio...

Wow! Great links. It's going to take a while for me to digest all of them.

I'll post more then, just wanted to give you a quick thanks in advance.

Reinhard

Welcome, Marc. I don't actually recall the sword movement being posted before. Sounds interesting and fun, especially in the context of your scenario. Also easy to understand. I'll definitely try it. And don't ever worry about your independent discovery having been posted here before. If it works fo...

Great to have you activing shugging (our definition

) again.

30 pushups is no joke! Tell Richie I'm impressed.

Best of luck and looking forward to updates,

Reinhard

I love your "new year's aspirations," silverfish. I'll be thinking about that this year.

Off for another extended luddite weekend. Happy 2007, all!

Reinhard

Tslne,

Your smoothie is fine. A glass is just a funny shaped plate

Reinhard

The simplest, cheapest solution is: avoid eating in restaurants on a frequent, routine basis. If it's not routine, then it doesn't really matter.

If for some compelling reason you do have to eat in restaurants routinely, these advanced techniques sound good.

Reinhard

If it works for you, it's ok by me. The difficulty is making it work for you. Less routine means less automation which makes no-s a harder, more conscious effort. But as wosnes says, if it's the best option you have available, then it'll have to do. And if you continue to pull it off, then fantastic...

I don't quite get this spammer. I've deleted several of his posts before. It's unusual for spam in that it's political, but I've never had the patience to read it through to figure out precisely what his angle is. It's a somewhat involved argument. Back to propaganda school, spambot!

Great post. Thanks! Most of these issues have been touched on here, but not in such a concentrated way. I'm a big fan of smaller scale monthly resolutions , but I'll be using new years to reflect on some big "strategic" issues to address more specifically with a monthly resolution in 2007. I'll be l...

Glad to hear you're already doing this. I don't think anything alone will do it. People compensate for virtue in one realm with astonishing efficiency by vice in another. Moderate effort from several directions (diet, strength exercise, cardiovascular exercise) is both easy and pleasant (it's modera...

Sounds fun and effective... but also dangerous (especially with a sledgehammer) and borderline self-torturous.

Interesting, though. Thanks for the post. I'll have to give this a try some time.

Reinhard

I haven't weighed myself, but behavior wise, I was stellar. I ate a ton, but limited myself to just one extra S day. And enjoyed an extra long luddite weekend....

(belated) Merry Christmas!

Reinhard

I'm with silverfish... I think there is a lot more worry about excessive S-days than is warranted. Most people who agonize about S days have trouble getting the N days right -- that is what you should focus on. If you can't get the N days right, there is no way you're going to manage extra strict S ...

Took an all-system S day for Christmas.

Took an additional vacation S day from shovelglove yesterday (lots of driving back from relatives).

Otherwise, no funny stuff. Not bad.

Reinhard

Sorry to hear it, Laura. Hope your spirits brighten this week.

Reinhard

Soup can confound the clarity of no-s a bit, but with a modicum of attention you can pull it off without much danger. It's like virtual plating, except even more legitimate. I think it boils down to this: 1. If the soup is hearty, have a hunk of bread with it and call it a meal (vanilla no s). or 2....

My wife is an "inner city" public school teacher and I'm familiar with the phenomenon you're describing. I think the biggest issue is lack of discreet, regular meals at home and the permasnacking that has replaced it. Poor kids tend to have less intact families and less intact families "meal" less. ...

Officially, sick days are s days, no guilt required. There is potential for abuse, so I guess you have to exercise a bit of caution. A good sanity check is "if I'm well enough to drag myself into work, it's an N day." I'm not sick much, and I usually eat much less when I'm sick, so this isn't a pers...

I've never experienced this. If it does happen again, maybe talk to your doctor. It doesn't seem to me like three meals and moderate exercise should leave you that hungry unless something funny is going on.

Hope it was just a fluke,

Reinhard

Nice! That's excellent. I urban mountain ranger only half as many stairs, but it's been fantastic. You will get in ridiculously good shape with 13.

Pete, it was done over a cell phone, so the less than optimal sound quality is not surprising -- though I was the one at the other end of the recording equipment and should sound worse. Fungus, I'm a big advocate of upgrading very slowly (which I have), but I've been on the 20 pounder for a while no...

Have a drink. Coffee. A caloric drink if necessary.

Keep hitting reload on this page and see what people come up with.

You can do it! Hang in there.

Reinhard

Strength radio is a podcast and web site run by Jason White, a (certified!) personal trainer in New York City. He's interviewed a ton of very high profile people in the fitness world, and I'm honored and amazed that he saw fit to include me in that company. My favorite quote from the interview: "He...

Hi Sue, Sorry I didn't see this post til now. I'm sorry you're having so much trouble getting No-s to stick. It sounds like you've got a good mental grasp of the issues. But that isn't everything, of course. I know it's frustrating... but instead of assuming that something is fundamentally wrong (or...

Nice... we've had a few canoe paddling moves proposed, but the gondolier image is better because unlike canoes or rowboats or kayaks, gondolas are paddled standing up.

I don't suppose there's any chance I could persuade you to youtube it at some point?

Reinhard

Welcome Keenan!

It is a surprisingly tough work out. 8-12 pounds don't sound like much, but at the end of a stick, it's a lot.

Thanks for sharing your routine. Hoping to get that long planned "routines" section of the site up over the week or two...

Reinhard

Sounds promising! Hope it continues to work. This also sounds like a great product idea... Get the most maternal sounding voice actress you can find and then sell "Mom's insomnia cure" cds. As for no-s applications, it reminds me of the "excuses for virtue" thread I started recently. http://everyday...

Great to see you here again, Jan. And glad to hear things are going well (and stabilizing).

Another good "air shovelglove" (I love the term!) alternative is to use a broom.

Reinhard

Welcome, hexagon! A pound a week is just fine. And behavior is the key thing. Get the behavior down, and the results will come -- and stay.

Reinhard

Congratulations and retroactive good luck! Enthusiasm is inherently temporary, but if you use it to lay strong habitual foundations, they're even stronger than enthusiasm. I like your "reinterpretation" of hunger. A little hunger is good. And once you get the habit down, you won't feel more than tha...

Rosemary, Congratulations on your continued progress and thank you for letting us know! It's amazing not just how well you've pulled this off, but how realistically you planned. Best of luck (and fun!) with those last three pounds and looking forward to future resurrections of this thread, Reinhard

Hi Deb, Sorry to hear you're having a rough time... please do use this group to help you get through it. Right now your bad feelings from the job search are dragging your eating habits down. But it can also work the other way around. Get your eating habits in order again and you will go into the job...

Hexagon, I'm just going to reiterate what KCCC and zoolina said: sick days are legitimate S days, there's no need to trade. Relax and enjoy. You're in this for the long haul, a couple of sick days aren't going to make a difference -- unless by overcompensating you knock yourself totally off course. ...

Thanks, Kwag. I say something similar (though less eloquently) in my monthy resolutions podcast.

Reinhard

I understand your enthusiasm... but I would skip it. That way you'll appreciate it more Monday. N-days shouldn't seem like drudgery, they should be a valuable opportunity. S-days make them that way. Otherwise you're going to think you have some credit built up and start to skip N-days. No N day will...

We're all too familiar with excuses for failure ("cravings!" "stress!" "depression!"), but there are plenty of excuses for success in the repertoire too. They're a little dusty, but very compelling. If someone offers you seconds: "No thanks, I've had plenty. I'm full." If someone offers you snacks/s...

Yes, navin. Just to be clear: I don't advocate hiding what you're doing -- I just don't advocate getting on a stage and making a big show about it either. Especially if you've just started. Once you've done it for a while, no-s will start to ooze out of you. People won't necessarily notice what you'...

Shovelglove failure yesterday. Yes, I was feeling sick. But I somehow dragged myself to work, and I take shovelglove at least as seriously as my job

, so I'm going to have to call it that.

Amen to that! It's tempting to just keep on experimenting with new stuff forever, but it's important to have a base from which to proceed. Those hard parameters: 14 minutes, N-days, a shovelglove, and mimicked real word movements are a great base -- simple and routine and fun enough for habit to wor...

Welcome, Kayvan.

"Kill the dragon" sounds like a nice stoke the oven variant.

If you want to run with that motif and turn it into a scenario, figure 8 could be "disembowel the dragon."

Reinhard

http://everydaysystems.com/podcast/episode.php?id=17

If I sound a little off, it's because I had a bit of a cold.

Reinhard

Thanks for the suggestions and encouragement! The book will just be on No-s. If it sells, maybe there will be a separate follow up shovelglove book or an everyday systems compendium. I don't think anyone here will be surprised by the book. It'll basically be the homepage (prints out at over 30 pages...

Yeah, maybe I should do a "days on habit" version of one of these... or a habit traffic light with a number for each light.

Reinhard

Took a shovelglove sick day Friday. Otherwise no funny stuff.

Welcome, Kwag! No-s combines the clear boundaries of 12 step type programs with sustainable and pleasant moderation. It's got the "good hardness" of abstinence without the "bad hardness." It uses "hardness" as a tool to get to moderate normalcy, not as a template for what you should become. You get ...

Belated welcome, Jesslyn. Ease into it. Shovelglove will get you very strong, but there's no rush. If you're aching tomorrow, take it off with a clear conscience. If you keep at it, and go slow, you'll soon get to the point where there is no carryover ache.

Thanks for bringing this to our attention -- and the rousing call to arms.

I was inspired to take the unusually assertive step of emailing the author.

Reinhard

You'd think someone (me, maybe) would have done this by now.... wow. Not one but two legally/morally/socially dubious/embarrassing definitions: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=shugging On the other hand, the term also has an established exercise connotation: http://forums.jpfitness.co...

Interesting.... Especially the impact of social situations on caloric intakes in the first article. In a nutshell: thinner people eat more in social situations, fatter people eat less (presumably because they're embarrassed to show how much they normally eat). But I found it odd that the study seeme...

It's happened... I waited long enough and a book deal fell in my lap. And not just any book deal: it's from a real, top flight madison avenue publishing house , and an editor who digs crazy (she also edited the Shangri-la diet). The downside (besides a ton of work): it's going to be until spring 200...

Thanks for the update, Hunter (and sorry for taking an age to respond to it). Very nice to hear you're still sticking with it and achieving good results. Now that you've graduated from daily tracking, have you considered negative tracking ? Might be a good, cost effective structure to use the boards...

Welcome Gareth and Stuartt! Behavior is the most important thing, but results are nice, too. Double congratulations.

Welcome, elena!

Good luck with the exams (and no-s

)

Reinhard

I don't hide what I'm doing, but I don't talk about it either, unless it's an issue -- which, thanks to no-s's unobtrusiveness, doesn't happen often. Accountability is good, but accountability is different than grand gestures. I find that making grand public resolutions isn't very effective. I think...

There was some talk about combining no-s with Shangri-la a while ago, but I'm not sure if anyone stuck with it.

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=920

For me, habit does the trick. Three meals is plenty. Our ancestors were lucky to get that much.

Reinhard

A juicaholic, huh?

Maybe the solution is to apply a version of glass ceiling -- a "shirley temple" glass ceiling.

Reinhard

Welcome, deryck!

Congratulations on your success so far and thanks for letting us know.

Feel free to divulge your additional rules -- if they work for you, they might be helpful to others.

Looking forward to hearing more from you,

Reinhard

Congratulations! And on your first go! You should post to the 21 day club thread. It's been a while since we've seen any action over there. Don't worry about switching to negative tracking. The traffic light is great as long as you don't get sick of it. You'll know it's time to switch when and if th...

http://everydaysystems.com/podcast/episode.php?id=16

Zoolina, Relax! Remember the "no self revenge" part of that podcast. Rebounding from a significant failure is a very vulnerable time. You get the mad fit of perfectionist energy, but then if you run into trouble again, and don't do so well, it can be deeply disappointing and knock you completely off...

Iregirl, Congratulations on your string of successes! And I think your scrupulousness will pay off... you seem to have handled that one little failure in a very mature and honest and non-self destructive way. Failures like that, when you respond to them as well as you did, can actually be a positive...

People do all kinds of stuff here. But all no s requires is those simple rules. I think that's enough for most people. You can fine tune once you get that down if you want (or not).

Reinhard

Minor weekend luddite violation: had to burn a photo cd. Social (spousal!) pressure again. But I limited the damage to that one task.

Otherwise no news is good news.

Glad to be inspiring, Deb! You're pretty inspiring yourself.

Reinhard

Sorry I missed your last update... you look great!

Oh, wait.... you're the dude... you still look pretty good

.

We need gootube for Moulinets! Given the original inspiration, all the moves should have French names.

Reinhard

Hmm. I haven't had any discomfort. Are you doing just 14 minutes a day or a lot more? Glad to hear shovelglove is working well for you otherwise. Hope that just concentrating on smoother movements will take care of this problem for you. And if it's any consolation, there is something slightly awesom...

Good luck tomorrow, Deb.

Sorry you've crept back up over your milestone, but it's just a touch, and this is a tough time of year even without searching for a job. I know you'll bounce back.

Reinhard

This is friggin awesome! Much clearer than my videos. You actually bother to explain what you're doing! I'm going to attempt this move with some confidence that I'll be doing what you have in mind (a first, I'm never quite sure when people post move descriptions here that I'm getting it). Only thing...

This is true... and if you do want to shug your way to super sizes, upping the minutes might be a good first step before upping the weight. Though it would be fun to become Mr. Universe in schedualistically insignificant time...

Reinhard

I think I just slaughtered a whole bunch of innocent bystanders, but besides that, it seems to be working

.

This is one of those borderline issues that you can decide either way. I tend not to drink caloric drinks between meals, but I have, and don't count them as failures. Milk and juice are very caloric, and juice is also very sweet, but they taste very caloric, it's hard to drink them in the astonishin...

Books are only passive if you don't discuss them with anyone. Start or join a book club. If you're afraid of wasting your time on books you don't really want to read, start or join a very narrowly themed book club (I'm in one whose mandate is to study the works of the philosopher Xenophon, who no on...

No apologies necessary! It has been posted before, but it's well worth reposting. If you want to be a professional strong man, maybe these tremendous weights make sense (and maybe they don't: world class strongmen have gotten that way on far less ), but for the casual 14 minutes a weekday morning sh...

Welcome back!

It sounds like you're in a much better position now, job- and routine- wise, for this to work.

Reinhard

Well, not the best, but keep at it. Keep at it and eventually you'll succeed. Keep succeeding and you'll build habit that makes further success easy. It's hard at first, no question.

This is tough! I think there are two more or less legitimate options: 1) As Gareth suggests, hoard them for weekends and S days. 2) Treat them as "medicine." They're actually tiny. One a day isn't going to do much, calorically. You could almost squeeze it in under the sugar in your coffee exemption....

If you get this message when trying to register, it's because my primitive home brewed spambot detection code thinks you are a spambot. Basically if you remove any references to pharmaceuticals, the stock market, icq numbers, select parts of human anatomy, and countries in the former soviet union, y...

Welcome, Mada! Nice start. This "brushing your teeth" comparison has come up a few times... I'm going to have to use that. It's really how it becomes.

It's all been said before in various posts to the bulletin board, but here's a more concentrated treatment:

http://everydaysystems.com/podcast/episode.php?id=15

Welcome back, Iregirl! Here's another technique to add to your visualization routine: a calendar that you mark with green (success), yellow (exempt S days), and red (failures). Very visual, very motivating, and very seasonally appropriate (sort of like an advent calendar). I'll also help keep those ...

Welcome, Jody! The holidays are a tricky time for diet. The status quo, for most people, is to gain weight. So you might want to do what KCCC suggests, and adjust your expectations so that mere maintenance will count as success. Otherwise you might get disappointed and quit -- and gain (I just did a...

Took a non weekend S day for Thanksgivings.

Otherwise no funny stuff. I even managed to be good the Friday after Thanksgivings.

Reinhard

I was emailed a new move last week and given permission to post it here. I've messed around with it a little, and it seems promising.... Great name, too. Ellie writes: Found your site through Krista's weight lifting site and gotta say - love it. Got a sledgehammer and have been chopping (and lifting...

Thanks for the feedback. I'm gradually spell checking and tidying them up...

Nice! Not only is Richie a talented musician, but he has way more friends than I do.

Thanks for checking in, Deb. The board feels kinda empty without you!

Carolejo and the viscount... wow. Hope they're doing well.

Reinhard

Welcome! Building the habit is hard, but that's how you make it easy. If you find yourself having a crazy day and are tempted to snack, think "if I can resist snacking on a crazy day like this, think how easy normal days are going to be in comparison." A crazy day is an opportunity for major habit b...

Zoolina, I think it will get easier. Long term, it doesn't make sense for it to get harder. You'll build habit, and need less will. A month may feel like a while, but I'd be very surprised if you didn't notice it getting easier soon. My guess is your initial spurt of enthusiasm gave you a big willpo...

Ugh. Yeah, they launched a major offensive over the long weekend. Figured (correctly) that system administrators everywhere in the US would be off celebrating. There were about 50 spam accounts set up since Thursday. It took just about 10 minutes to delete them (hope I didn't hit any innocent bystan...

Hi bobbie,

If you want accurate timestamps, you have to specify your timezone in the profile link above (the time zone drop down is toward the bottom of the profile page).

Reinhard

Woah! Three pages of spartan success since I last popped in here. Nice work!

David,

"Like brushing your teeth" -- congratulations! That's solid.

I'm big on nuts too. I eat them in my oatmeal almost every weekday for lunch.

Reinhard

And links to the bulletin board for discussions.

It now doubles as a regular text blog.

http://everydaysystems.com/podcast/

Reinhard

One thing that every self help guru can agree on is that you have to have an arbitrary number in your system. It is a little weird that the most rational concepts we have available to us -- numbers -- are so irrationally inspiring. But it clearly is the case.

http://everydaysystems.com/podcast

Everyday Systems

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