Everyday Systems

Excellent! A pound gone might be a pound of muscle. No such ambiguity with this measurement. Congratulations!

Diet and exercise really do work, even for non-heroic types, if you make them pleasant and convenient enough to stick with.

Reinhard

Wow! Thanks for posting. We're gonna have some buff bods in that before and during gallery. You're clearly very good at this whole diet/exercise thing, hitting several rather different goals. No rambling at all.... I'd actually never heard the thing about the tendons, though it makes perfect sense. ...

1 non weekend S day since last checkin (Columbus day). Glass ceiling violation Saturday night. Bachelor party. I did much, much, better than I would have otherwise, just one drink over the limit (I would have easily had three or four times as much in the bad old days), but I need to count it as a fa...

Hmmm. I've heard of getting muscle soreness, but not colds. I'm completely unqualified to make medical pronouncements on the subject, but it might also just be coincidence. I would keep trying, if not shovelglove, then something else. As Joel points out, not exercising is pretty bad for your health....

Great idea. Good luck! I wonder if I should move the nosdiet checkin and 21 day club to the everyday systems section, so it makes more sense for people to track other habits there. I think it should be technically straightforward... It would be nice to have one place to check in, especially if you'r...

Excellent, Deb! And glad you'll be around more again. I have no doubt that if you walk every N day you'll lose more weight. I agree, tracking does get pretty boring after a while. So if you feel good about the food, it makes sense to move your limited tracking capacity to the newer urban ranger habi...

Also, question: How much value do you place in "not looking at the timer"? I've been using an iTunes playlist as someone suggested here, simply because I didn't have a countdown timer, and I kind of like the way it gives a vague indication of progress; I know that there's four songs in it. Is this ...

I have no trouble on my mac....are you using a recent version of OS X? I could post the raw data files, but they're huge. And if you can't see youtube... you'll probably have a problem with these too. Is there a local supra genius kid you could get to take a look at your setup? You are missing out o...

Sorry that got through. Spammers love weekend luddite (especially on long weekends).

Not gingi or zippy, server is at my neighbors.

I've used audible too. It's a good service. I got rid of it during a massive cost cutting crusade only because there were cheaper (if less convenient) ways to get audiobooks. I also just like small tracks on cds instead of the massive whoppers you tend to get from downloadable audio.

When you first start out trying to turn a new behavior into a habit, every successful day is "information" and worth noting. The behavior is novel, and by default, you wouldn't have been doing it. This is positive tracking. But tracking takes effort, even if it's only a minimal "days on habit," and ...

Great. Since I've made it "no option" but to take the stairs at work, I pretty much take the stairs everywhere instead of elevator or escalator. It adds up! "Useful" exercise like this also makes life more interesting. You're always looking for a challenge. The world becomes a permanent low intensit...

Excellent, Steve!

I have made them from scratch (much better, but too much work). These were frozen (not bad when you pan roast/braise them with olive oil and coarse salt).

Here's another routine I've been messing around with. It's basically just a formalization of my "freestyle fridays." Do a 10 rep set of each movement. Don't repeat any set of movements. Come up with new moves or do non-shovelglove movements when you've gone through the standards. Slight variations a...

There are two contradictory schools of thought: 1) weigh often and keep track. You will see a lot of inexplicable fluctuation, but because you have a lot of data you won't be too upset by any one measurement. Downsides: this involves a lot of keeping track, you might still be upset by individual mea...

My latest health hacks podcast segment was about weekend luddite.

http://everydaysystems.com/podcast/

Correction: you were a sugar addict. :-) When you're serious about beating this problem, I don't think the term "addict" helps. It's too passive. An addict can't do without something. You can -- it's just hard. It's not just a matter of will, it's also a matter of habit. But will can alter habit, an...

1 non weekend S day I forgot to mention in my last check-in (Rosh hashana). 2 non weekend S days since (yom kipper, birthday). I glass ceiling violation. No ill effects, but a violation of the literal rules. We were offered drinks at lunch visiting friends and I didn't refuse. Twice. Then later we w...

Welcome! One of the shovelglove pioneers, my former neighbor, Justin, is now farming in Maine. Maybe shovelglove will kick off a new "back to the land" movement :-). Let us know what you come up with regarding the lawnmower. Warning: we've got a few push mower fans here who I'm sure will try to conv...

Good to see you here again, Mike, and thanks for mentioning no-s to Mark Forster, and Mark Forster to us here. This has been a crazy week personally (missed a lot of work, scrambling to make up for it) so I haven't had time yet to give Mark's site the attention it clearly deserves, but I will. I did...

hexagon, In a rush, so I'm going to have to resort to bullet points: 1. How long have you been no-essing? The weekend binge might become less of an issue as you mature as a no-esser, even without conscious intervention. I know this may seem hard to believe, but it makes sense if you think about it: ...

Excellent! Congratulations and thanks for letting us know.

Welcome, psuli!

I've though of doing a 14 minute playlist instead of relying on the timer, but somehow I never got around to it. Great idea.

Reinhard

Great run so far! Almost there... keep it up!

Welcome and congratulations, Ruthie!

Looking forward to hearing more,

Reinhard

Welcome! It's more dangerous than keeping them weekends because you'll be tempted to take weekends s days too (especially if you do most of your socializing then), but realistically, if that's your work schedule, it might be your best option. There are pros and cons either way. I guess you've got to...

Interesting... I've seen the abbreviation GTD all over the place, and I even bothered to find out what it stands for, but I didn't know it referred to a specific book and methodology. Thanks for the link, will have to do further research.

Thank you, Nessi! I love them.

Updating movements page now with these alternates...

Reinhard

Funny stuff since last check-in: Weekend luddite violation last weekend: had to purge my inlaws computer of viruses and adware. Mandatory, but reporting it here because if there are too many violations of a system, mandatory or not, it ain't working. Not that I'm worried about this for WL, but I mig...

Welcome, wosnes!

It shouldn't be difficult to layer medically recommended diet choices on top of the no-s diet.

Reinhard

I'm glad you think they would give me airtime! But I think the news comes to you if they think you're newsworthy, and not the other way around. Maybe on a *really* slow news day some intern will bring me to his boss's attention and they'll decide to take a chance. But I'm not sure I'm going to be ab...

Welcome, Reid! Very nice riff on nos. I especially like the fun challenge element. I'm going to think about whether I can apply something similar to myself... I'd given myself a monthly spending limit. But it's been tricky to stay within it. That may have something to do with it being set at an unre...

I like it... Excel is by far my favorite microsoft program. Good luck with "entrepreneur!" Looking forward to the blog. I've been doing something similar with index cards for the last couple months that I'll report on soon. One of the tricky things associated with scoring virtues/goals, is that they...

Thanks, Deb! Yeah, the poem was a little much to begin with, the music in the background was even more much. I wasn't consulted on the matter. Purists may wish to listen to my vanilla everyday systems podcast segment, which doesn't have any music.

My new health hacks podcast segment is about urban ranger:

http://everydaysystems.com/podcast/

Reinhard

Congratulations, hlidskjalf!

I am very impressed that you stuck with it and managed to hit this goal.

Good luck hitting the Weil benchmark!

Reinhard

Congratulations, Deb! Glad to see you here again. Glad it was for good reasons, and hope you can squeeze us in again.

Wow. I have a hard time believing that some of the shovelglove moves would be physiologically possible for anyone with this weight.... Though if I continue more or less doubling the weight I shug every 5 years (fat chance), I should make it to the beast before I retire. :-) These "war hammers" are p...

Agreed. "No name" will remain the official name. This will just be listed as an alternate.

Interactive is where the "club" part of book club comes in. It also gives you a much better understanding of the book. I'd forget what I read right away if I didn't talk about it with someone. If it still doesn't feel productive enough for you, maybe consider reading something for the librivox proje...

Thanks for the link, hlidskjalf. For now I'm probably going to just keep banging out vanilla pushups as part of my shovelglove routine. I'm in no rush, and stretching out the progress over as long as possible is motivationally useful. But if I get stuck on too long a plateau I now know where to look...

Welcome, Toro!

Congratulations on knocking off a few pounds and navigating your first weekend without too much excess. And it only gets easier.

It sounds like you're coming at this with very reasonable expectations, and some good informal preparation.

Best of luck and keep us posted,

Reinhard

I've never watched the show (sounds dreadfully boring), but amen to those sentiments, Phil. Step one for any expert is to convince you that your problem is sufficiently complicated to require expertise. Obnoxious (but relevant) self-quote: From http://nosdiet.com/#me I am neither a doctor, a nurse, ...

If someone were paying you 7 figures to be thin -- believe me, you'd be thin. Unless, toward the twilight of your career, you calculated that you could make even more money by intentionally getting fat and then making a spectacle of losing the weight again.

Same issue as last time. Will probably happen again. Ugh. Hate this stuff.

I've got the opposite problem: too many competing interests. I don't have nearly enough time to indulge them all.... Reading alone could fill up several lifetimes. Just to throw something out there, have you considered joining a book club?

Reinhard

I love it! mp3 link?

The trend is good! I would be careful about reading too much into .2 pounds... or you might be upset by a seemingly undeserved fluctuation in the other direction. I don't think scales are anywhere near that accurate. Still, as you point out even status quo after S days is a good thing! Congratulatio...

Very cool.

Now that I've got the movements section of the website up, the natural next steps are a "routines" page and a "tools" or "hammers" page (not sure what I'll call it). Your creation (assuming the test drive goes ok) will definitely make it there.

Reinhard

Nice! I would give all kinds of warnings about going nice and slow, but you seem to have that part down. Every time I've upgraded (just twice) for the first couple weeks I thought "no way in hell I'm every going to be able to do my old routine with this." But then surprisingly quickly, without any s...

Welcome back, Scott! Congratulations on having dealt with those other huge issues and best of luck this time round on No-s.

It's an old problem with a distinguished literary legacy -- even more distinguished than "Biggest Loser." St. Augustine recalled a prayer from his sinful youth in his Confessions (circa 397 A.D.): "Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet" Or for pretentious wannabe Latin scholars like myself: ...

I don't know, but I have a superman shirt that I sometimes wear while shugging, and that amplifies the feeling even more.

Reinhard

I've gone through periods when I've ditched the buzzer, but I've found that big picture it's better to use it. It's easier to motivate when you know that no matter what, it's going to be over in 14 minutes. And if you're already feeling highly motivated it amplifies it by making you righteously haul...

Jeff from an undisclosed location just emailed the following suggestion:

Call it "hammering" or "hammering nails" or something like that

Kind of obvious in retrospect... it looks just like it. Except the effort is mostly in the reverse direction.

Reinhard

Regarding why you lost counter intuitive amounts of weight these first few weeks: I have no idea. There's natural fluctuation, inaccurate scales, who knows. I wouldn't obsess over it, short term. Over a period of many months, you'll lose weight in a more predictable way. 9 pounds is more than random...

The public library.

My local library is part of a larger network, and you can do interlibrary loan through the website. The network has pretty much everything in terms of books on tape/cd, and they'll deliver to your local branch. It's like a free netflix.

Reinhard

I think it's a great idea. You'll get used to the distance quick (it's far by contemporary, sedentary standards, but not by historical standards), and there's nothing like having to get somewhere to motivate you. It's like a free gym membership with a guarantee that you'll go.

Reinhard

Just hit gold with pushups (50). Platinum next (55). Then I guess it morphs into "personal rock star" and I try for multi platinum.

Reinhard

If I don't breath forcefully, I make squinty funny faces that looks stupid and I'm sure is unhealthy. I read somewhere recently that not breathing while lifting weights can put undue pressure on your optic nerve and hurt your vision, and I believe it (my vision is bad enough as it is). At first, I h...

Hi Kevin,

Great to see you hear again. I'm glad to hear you've been doing lots of exercise, even if it wasn't shovelglove. I've been throwing pushups into my routine the last few months, too.

Reinhard

Sorry server crashed 2006-09-20 and corrupted database fixed now. I hope.

fixed now. I hope.

another crash. Database corrupted but hopefully repaired now.

Welcome, lysiosquillid. Good start -- though I'd caution against having sugar soda with the idea of working them off. It takes a lot more exercise than you think to work one of those off, and most of us have plenty to workoff already. Nice weird username and avatar! Are you studying marine biology? ...

My 5th health hacks podcast segment is up, also about shovelglove:

http://everydaysystems.com/podcast/

Reinhard

Welcome, Tim. Glad the podcasts are getting the word out, they've been fun to do.

Thanks for the wallmart tip.

P.S. -- if there are any walmart execs lurking here, I'm open to a strategic partnership

Operababe, Welcome back! You had a great first go at it, much better than most people's -- and it does take most people a few tries to get this down. It's very understandable that you were thrown off kilter by recent events, but now that you're back in more predictable circumstances, things should b...

I don't know! I never figured when I started that I'd stick with it for so long, so I didn't pay very precise attention. It's also been a pretty smooth procession.... I keep getting a little stronger and more anatomically instructive. I'll see if I can find something in my voice memo notes to indica...

Amazon knows who you are. Every ad on every site you visit reports back to the mother ship. It's creepy, and amazingly ineffective. I haven't had a single person buy anything through these amazon banner ads yet (though I have had a fair number through the home page link and some through the shovelgl...

I wish I knew the answer to this. Ipods look gorgeous but I've never heard of one lasting for more than a year. I bought an original ipod when they came out, it broke within a year and they replaced it free of charge. Very sweet of them, but the replacement also broke within a year (now out of warra...

Good on all systems EXCEPT my new extra strict ludditing. 1 morning luddite violation to report. I was trying to talk my wife through something on the computer and in my impatience seized the keyboard. Totally unconscious. 1 intentional weekend luddite violation to report: I've been invited to be on...

Welcome back! Sorry I somehow missed you post the last few days.

Sorry to hear about your knee....

I know it isn't easy, but I can speak from experience that no-s and shovelglove are compatible with having a toddler.

Best of luck and keep us posted,

Reinhard

Congratulations! Keep up the good work, and enjoy the water aerobics.

Welcome back, operababe! So good to see you here again. Off to your check-in for the gory details...

Reinhard

I'm fond of tevas, but they might not be so ideal for wandering around in the tick infested woods.

Reinhard

OK, I just added the warning with a link to this thread.

Sorry again and thanks for letting us know so hopefully at least a few others won't repeat your experience.

Reinhard

Ouch. Sorry about that.

Hope you recover quickly...

I'll add some warnings to the drive fence posts page pronto.

Reinhard

Wow. Very urban ranger. Especially: Side Bar I. Suggestions to Help Your Clients Be More Active During the Day A very helpful ‘Get Active’ web site is SmallStep.gov (http://www.smallstep.gov/). Here are just a few of the many suggestions provided at this web site to help students and clients get mov...

Thanks, Deb! I've gotten to the point where I can post mere written words to the internet without batting an eye, but speech still makes me a little nervous. If anyone has ideas for stuff I should discuss once I briefly cover the major systems, don't hesitate to let me know. Also don't hesitate to s...

That's tough... I guess I'd advise: 1) be really really clear and strict that you can't touch this stuff during the week. Treat it almost like a religious dietary prohibition. If that sounds excessive and harsh, I actually think it's the only way you're going to make this easy. It's like taming a li...

Welcome to the club, Bob! Glad you decided to give no-s another go and managed to hit some good temporal and corporal numbers.

Looking forward too seeing you here again,

Reinhard

The latest segment I did for health hacks is about shovelglove:

http://everydaysystems.com/podcast

Reinhard

I haven't used anything besides a sledge, but there's really no reason not too. The sledge is just a convenient device to channel the important stuff: the fun of useful movements, etc. If you've got room, the 6 foot staff sounds great. I would be nervous about doing a single move to exhaustion just ...

I have done it. When I visit my brother his is naked. But I do prefer the glove. It's sort of like an army helmet: it's not going to protect you much from a direct hit, but it does help with little dings.

Reinhard

Hmmm. Sorry, can't help you... I have no idea. Good luck finding out, and let us know what you come up with.

Congratulations, Silverfish! A well deserved S day. I think in America "lawyer" is what everyone else calls them -- they call themselves "attorneys." Too many lawyer jokes, I guess. Also they work at "firms," whereas everyone else works at mere "companies." I like "solicitor." It sounds both fancy a...

Welcome, Shannon!

Keep us posted and please don't hesitate to ask for help if you get stuck. We've got some very experienced motivators in this group.

Reinhard

I eat sesame chicken on n-days and don't worry about it. No-s is really just about cutting out the obvious excesses, not going on a witch hunt for hidden ones. Congratulations on your continued progress! Regarding plates and bowls, put the toast and the bowl oatmeal in front of you at the same time....

Josie,

Thanks for posting this. The angel, as well as the proverbial devil, is in the details.

For those of you who haven't seen the first part of Josie's success story, look here:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=1222

Reinhard

Even when it's a little tongue in cheek: http://calorielab.com/news/2006/09/14/diet-plans-from-a-to-almost-z/ Here's a link to my original article on calorielab (didn't mention it here because it's stuff you all know already): http://calorielab.com/news/2006/09/09/reinhard-engels-no-s-diet-no-snacks...

Steve, Congratulations and thanks for the extra edit details! There's something so satisfying about having good habits that goes beyond even the good achieved by the habits themselves. Regularity, order, even apart from the thing you are doing, is a satisfying good in itself. It's like a rhythm of b...

I wouldn't have the pudding during the week, even if it's low in sugar it seems too desserty not to lead to more. It's not so much the pudding in itself as what it might lead too by blurring boundaries. But it's your call. I'd decide one way or the other so you don't agonize over it every time. Rein...

Looks like a good run, Sue. Keep it up! Sorry it's been so long since I've popped in here. I'm impressed at how you keep coming back after setbacks. You are bound to succeed if you keep at it like this. When I attack a problem that has rebuffed my efforts several times, I think of myself as a bulldo...

Belated welcome back, bob, and congratulations on your 4 pounds.

I've decided to start being extra fence around the law strict with weekend luddite, and so I have a failure to report: I used the computer to look up an address and a phone number last weekend. I've also started doing weekday morning luddite, and will report any violations here (no computer before I...

Welcome, hikermom! Welcome Rosemary! Since you've now managed a respectable positive count, laid a foundation for your habit, it might be easier to just count violations from now on. That's what I do in my check-in. Gives me some accountability without much work. But if you're still feeling doubtful...

Welcome Spudd! Sorry I somehow missed this post for 10 days. Hope you're still with us, despite the lack of a prompt welcome. It's not the flashiest, but urban ranger is probably the single most important system. If I had to choose one, that would be it. For one thing, I thought of most of the other...

Sounds borderline borderline :-) A little sugar is fine, but I bet it's probably loaded with sugar.... I wouldn't necessarily count it as a failure, but I'd also probably try to avoid it going forward just so you don't have to agonize every time. But it's your call. The fruit cup in itself probably ...

Everyday Systems

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Server went down yesterday because cat sat on UPS

Negative Tracking

The routine of 10s: no repeats

Weekend luddite podcast segment

Urban ranger podcast segment

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No name gets (another) new name: hammering nails

Sorry server crashed 2006-09-20 and corrupted database

Shovelglove podcast segment

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery