Everyday Systems

You thought it was just the "no sweets" part, but "no snacking" is important, too. From http://www.deltadentalwa.com/oralhealth/o_1_7.htm Frequent snacking speeds up the destruction of teeth. Whenever the cavity-causing bacteria on your teeth come into contact with food or drinks containing sugar or...

Good to see you here again, hlidskjalf, and thanks for the link. My take on nutrition is sort of the opposite: reduce your consumption of the world's least healthy foods. These are usually screamingly obvious. I don't worry about whether blueberries are better than pomegranates or vice versa, or wha...

I'm glad you like it. For some reason canoe has never clicked with me, but it's good to have some movements in general circulation that aren't 100% reinhard-based. When I come up with the movement registry page I'll be sure to stick in an entry for this one.

No, I'm not moving to San Francisco. But we are moving to another office building, and I'll be moving up to the 7th floor instead of the second. And these are tall "double" floors, so it's more like 14. My goal is to not use the elevator unless socially impossible. I've made similar resolutions befo...

Hi Darcy, It's not going to be easy, but clarity is a start, and no-s gives you that. You're just going to have to learn discipline about eating at meals, and not in between. The more you do this, the easier it gets. Habit is what make this hard now, but it's also what's going to make it easy once y...

Welcome, Masked Lioness. Stumptuous is a great site. And an old table leg sounds like a great way to test the waters. Don't worry about 6 pounds vs. 8. The hard part is building the habit, not the weight.

Looking forward to hearing more from you,

Reinhard

Hi Mark,

I don't do this, but why not? I don't imagine it'll be quite as fun as using a real sledge, but it beats pumping out curls, etc.

Let us know what you decide and how it goes.

Reinhard

Hi Pete, I do 42 shovels each arm with the 20 pounder. It's easier than driving fence posts or churning butter (the other moves of which I do that many reps), but I wouldn't call it too easy. I think Deb's advice is a good start. I'm a pretty enthusiastic shoveler, and my motions are pretty realisti...

Welcome, Rudie. It doesn't surprise me that no-s sounds a lot like how you ate when you were younger. No-s is basically just the explicit "80% solution" codification of how most people ate for a variety of social and cultural reasons before the "obesity epidemic." Eating moderately is not a complex ...

No funny stuff since last check-in. So boring, I know... the downside of virtue.

Shovelglove is 100% back (and then some) to where I was before that last bout of illnesses. Amazing at how fast you can bounce back once you've gotten into good physical and "habitual" shape.

Reinhard

Carolejo, This is fantastic. Thanks so much for posting it here. This is very impressive on several levels: the weight loss, the fact that you've stuck with no-s through some turbulent times, and that many rounds into a tough fight you can deliver a knockout punch like this. Congratulations! Reinhard

Sledge-O, Glad to hear that initial spurt of overdoing it didn't do you in. Deb is right. There's no rush. Force yourself to go slower than you think you need to, really build the habit and get the movements natural and fluid. The upgrade should be a reward for months (at least) of good behavior. Re...

Ben, I love to hear stuff like this. Thank you for posting! And you must be the first person to have ever taken those warnings seriously! Thank you! I was about to resort to the dreaded blink tag... I don't recall ever getting blisters from shovelglove, but my hands have been callused for years now....

Hi Mr. Tut, While you shouldn't be miserable, Älskling is right: the idea that hunger is somehow "wrong" is a novel and misguided concept. It's natural and good to be hungry before a meal. Not for hours, and not painfully, but habit and attitude can go a long way towards mitigating that. Have big, t...

Thanks, Kid. For those of you who are wondering what glass ceiling is, here's the link: http://everydaysystems.com/glassceiling (I announced it in the everydaysystems forum, but that doesn't seem to get quite as much traffic). Los vascos is actually from Chile. But I'm fond of spanish wines, too. Re...

Welcome, juniebumble.

Yeah, there are a lot of posts to plow through...

I've tried to link to some of the most informative ones from the home page, but there are just too many.

Let us know if anything stands out in particular and I'll see if I can squeeze in another link.

Reinhard

Hi Jinx, I don't know much about vitamin water. My understanding was that it's just water + artificial coloring + a vitamin tablet + astonishing markup, which should technically make it ok as far as no-s is concerned, but if I were you I'd stick with regular water/juice/food that contains vitamins. ...

Carolejo, I'm happy to hear you and the viscount have found it helpful. I'll link to it from the home page and elsewhere. Just wanted to give sanity check it with you guys first. It's got a nice, obvious "biblical term." Deb, thanks also for your vote of approval. 12 step programs, in fairness, are ...

Finally gets it's own page: http://everydaysystems.com/glassceiling I actually wrote most of this page over a year ago, but then decided against pushing it out because I didn't want to give a crutch to serious alcoholics. But it's been such an effective system for me (and I did have a serious proble...

David,

Glad to hear you're still at it, thanks for keeping us posted.

Mixing shovelglove up with other exercises is fine by me. I sometimes throw in some squats and pushups myself (I just treat it as any other movement, for timing purposes).

Reinhard

Another post-crash test.

On the bright side, it's been a while.

MJ, Congratulations, that's great news. I'm very impressed that you stuck at it for so long without the reward of seeing the scales move, and very happy that they finally did. So now not only do you have some measurable results to be happy about, but (what's ultimately more important) you've built u...

Congratulations, Deb! Good behavior is eventually rewarded: suddenly, when you don't expect it, and in unaccountable spurts. That's why it's so important to focus on behavior rather than pounds, as you've been doing. Your title scared me... I thought for a second you'd fallen off the plateau and plu...

Welcome, Mr. Tut.

Hope you wind up with something good to report...

Don't sweat that first FAILURE too much. It can take a few till you get the habit down.

Reinhard

Sorry to hear you overdid a bit... maybe I need to added the dreaded blink tag to my warnings :wink: Give yourself a good rest before trying again. The last thing you want to do is injure yourself. You get surprisingly strong doing this, after a while. The 12 pounder I used to use felt very tough at...

That certainly works! -- and will keep you safe in 2 Sprachen. It's also what I say probably 80% of the time (if you say it really fast, it kind of blends into "noes," which is the other 20%). From the home page: http://nosdiet.com/#pronounce How do you pronounce "No S Diet?" It's a pun, you can pro...

Good to see you here again, Mike. What cured me of 95% of my impulse spending was making a budget. It is very depressing to see how little money one has left over after just the most necessary expenses. If you're insufficiently depressed, try maxing out your 401k, roth IRA, and setting up 529s for y...

I have to confess I enjoy sweets more than I ever did. They're only bad if they dominate your life, which they no longer do, in my case. Now they're pure pleasure. Tip to keep the overindulging down: buy a generous but limited quantity of the fanciest, most desirable sweets you can think of and affo...

Looking forward to it. Good luck.

Reinhard

I haven't, but it looks fun.

I imagine my opponent would need a lot of padding if I brought my warhammer...

Reinhard

Sledge-O, It is much, much better to start out a bit on the light side rather than go too heavy. This is a long term investment, and it's much better to get the movements down pat rather than risking injury for the sake of quick gains. On the home page I go so far as to recommend starting out with a...

I'm pretty excited about this. There's some stiff competition.

It's also #2 on weightloss.

And even the humble urban ranger has made an appearance it it's appropriate category:

http://del.icio.us/popular/walking

(#2 as I post this)

Thanks for the update, Vorpal.

Reinhard

Thanks for the link, Vorpal. Some of this I knew about, but a lot I didn't. What a great time to be an auto/audio-didact. My only (very spoiled) gripe is that I wish everything was available as audio files (some of the most appealing stuff is video). I have a decent amount of time I can share with m...

Be careful. Don't underestimate 1) the power of the "starts with S" clarity you're trading for this and 2) the fact that it may be good to have some prime time eating restricted. I eat well Friday nights -- but I find that's possible (and preferable) to do within N-day limits. Best of luck, whatever...

2 non-weekend S days since last checkin: valentines and presidents' day. Lot's of sick days again, unfortunately. No funny stuff diet wise, but another week was pretty much shot for shovelglove. The good news is I don't seem to have gotten much weaker. I'm almost up to my full routine again this week.

Welcome, hja. From the everyday systems home page: None of the systems require you to keep track of anything beyond the day of the week, what planet you are on, etc. You have too many things to keep track of already. But, in fairness, some people at some times in their lives get some benefit from it...

Laff, Unless you're following some other diet in tandem with no-s, this is all good news. It's ok to eat delicious things! It's encouraged. And you stopped with "reasonable quantities" -- that's fantastic. Congratulations on this triumph and on your big picture success of making it to day 45. Reinhard

Welcome, Sheepish. Technically, you can eat your meals whenever, but as carolejo points out, it'll be harder to form habits unless you keep more or less regular times. How important is this? I don't know, in your case. Do an experiment and see. If you notice it's a problem, then see if you can set y...

mstevens, "Borderline" doesn't mean forbidden. It means "ok unless you find yourself resorting to it in great quanities" and "probably not worth agonizing over." The clear cut offenders are a lot worse and give your worry much more bang for its buck. You don't want to be distracted from them by thes...

Kid, You can't fail on S days. So don't be crushed. It may not be an inspiring feeling to overeat like that, but it's not technically a violation of the rules. As your weekday habits build, episodes like this will get rare. Less will feel like more, and what used to be routine will feel like a binge...

Welcome, Juniebumble. Besides our fabulous native talent, "Mistress Krista" over at stumptuous.com has a couple of pages in which she describes how she incorporates shovelglove into her routine. http://www.stumptuous.com/cms/displayarticle.php?aid=47 http://www.stumptuous.com/cms/displayarticle.php?...

Thanks for all your responses! I'm touched by all the fervent support for keeping "sometimes" nice and vague, but I think it's also clear that some people could use (and are using) a little more. Reading "once" for "sometimes" (at least as a guideline) seems not only a reasonable, but now also a tes...

Congratulations, Sfunky.

I think the consciousness of having resisted temptations like this can be a greater pleasure than indulging would have been. And you'll have plenty of legitimate opportunities to enjoy that wonderful pizza.

Reinhard

Churning butter does it for me.

Welcome to the group, Misguided Angel (and welcome back home, soon). I don't think about carbs at all -- except that a meal would feel weird without some. I usually have bread or cereal with breakfast, oatmeal for lunch, and pasta/rice/or potatoes with dinner. More often than not, these are whole gr...

Welcome, Jan! It doesn't surprise me at all that no-s sounds like how you ate growing up. It's basically just codifying the way people used to eat back when social structures and scarcity meant you didn't have much alternative. You can certainly have chocolate (or anything you like) on S days. This ...

From: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8732&feedId=online-news_rss20 Complex decisions are best left to your unconscious mind to work out, according to a new study, and over-thinking a problem could lead to expensive mistakes. The research suggests the conscious mind should be trusted onl...

I just came across a funny (but also serious) article here about the 16th century humanist-merchant Alvise Cornaro and his diet book his book “La Vita Sobria.” It's never been out of print, apparently, for over 400 years. http://159.54.226.83/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060217/OPINION/60214027/1049...

Congratulations on your winning streak of No-s, but sorry to hear you're still sick. I can sympathize only too well... My daughter's been bringing something new home from day care almost every week. This is what I get for years of bragging "I never get sick" -- not something one should utter with an...

James, Sorry about the scale jumps... keep in mind that: 1. (as you just pointed out in "general discussion") it's winter and the body hoards fat. I don't think it's a coincidence that we've been seeing a lot of frustration with lack of progress just recently. Come spring, not only will your body be...

Congratulations on a solid start, nonskanse. Don't worry about portions yet. Worry about habit first, then portions (if necessary). You'll be amazed at how powerful a signal an empty plate sends to appetite once you've conditioned it to understand that means "all done." For now, you're doing the rig...

So sorry about the divorce... no system I can offer for that, just sympathy. Also sorry that your numbers have not been cooperating despite pretty excellent behavior. The good news is that if you're noticed muscle developement and weight the same, you are burning fat. If that's insufficient consolat...

What a beautiful, terse, and SUCCESSful log! Sorry I haven't popped in before. Love the "Can't fail on an S day," and your fence around the law strictness -- which you handle very well. It's not self-revenge, it's self triumpth.

Reinhard

Double welcome, schmiddtty.

We'll sort out that tiny detail of the negligible weight loss

.

With your high commitment and great habits, it should just take the tiniest tweak. Hope something posted in the "general discussion" forum helps.

Reinhard

want2bhealthy,

Wow. Closing in on a perfect score, right off the bat. I'm impressed! And holding my breath for 4 more days... (2 really, since 2 are S).

Congratulations!

Reinhard

Thanks for the suggestion, Kid. I would love to have a decent shovelglove t-shirt design. I'm even reasonably artistic (though it's a talent I've let deteriorate for a decade or so). Given the state of my skills and the state of my life, I just don't have the time to put together anything anyone wou...

Hi Deb, My weekend luddite rules were enough to do it for me. Keep in mind that in my case the only device I'm barring is the computer (narrowly defined): I'm allowed to watch netflix movies, for example, though I'm sure that technically the dvd player contains something that could be described as a...

" Don't be an idiot " doesn't seem to be enough for everyone... Anarchy (plus good weekday carryover habits) works fine for me, but I'm prepared to accept that some people might need a little extra guidance. One idea that's been tossed around is to read "once" (or some similarly small number) for "s...

schmiddtty, There's a simple way to settle this too much/not enough question. Since you eat pretty much the same thing everyday, it's not that painful to count calories just once. My strong suspicion is that it's (a little) too much for loss (barring a jot more exercise). But it's worth doing the ma...

It doesn't sound to me like you're eating so little that your body would go into "lockdown." I think it's more probable that you're eating 100% of what you need for maintenance, and 101% of what you need for loss. A tiny tweak or two, either from the diet or exercise end, should do it. You're very c...

Kid,

Don't worry about it. Recipes are fine, as long as they actually taste good. Yours sounds like it qualifies.

Reinhard

Welcome, Sfunky. If it's a choice between 4 meals and permasnacking, start with 4 meals. It'll be slow, but better than impossible. There can be something artistic, almost "zen," about the one plate rule. Glad you see it that way! I don't mean to be a killjoy, but 30 pounds in 8 weeks is probably no...

I don't know, that sounds pretty reasonable to me, but I guess it's not quite enough, or you'd be down by now. If you're eating less and moving at least the same amount as before, your weight should go down. It sounds like you are doing both these things, so I'm a little baffled. My suggestion would...

Thanks, Deb. I know there are a bunch I missed, and some of you have multiple excellent quotes to choose from. I'll continue to sift through the posts and add stuff as I find it (and feel free to direct my attention towards anything I might have missed). For those who haven't seen it: http://nosdiet...

I don't have much control over what shows up. It's basically just on or off and I have to have faith in google. I can request that individual site's ads not be shown (I've just added these guys to the list) but that's a pretty labor intensive way of filtering. I wish could say "don't show anything w...

Welcome, Vicky. Our great grandparents didn't know what a calorie was, and they were skinny. No-s (and urban ranger, and shovelglove) is basically just a way to approximate what they did to get and stay that way. They were "lucky," they had scarcity, inconvenience, and oppressive (at times) social s...

We had a mere foot or so in cambridge, nothing really. Light and fluffy, it was barely a warmup. I envy you!

Reinhard

bewildergeist, This is awesome. I particularly appreciate the pyjama homage. And you know the guitar isn't *just* goofy (valuable in itself as that quality may be). It'll also be great way to get the movements down before moving up to a heavier, more stressful, dangerous implement -- comic pragmatis...

Welcome, Dixie Amazon. Stumptuous and diet-blog are excellent sites, thanks for posting the links. Those of you who haven't checked them out certainly should -- not only are they excellent, but I owe them a lot of traffic from generous articles they've posted about my systems. So click on over and p...

Welcome, Apartment5f. The original inspiration for shovelglove was the abs on coal shovelers -- I'd say most of the moves hit your abs to some degree. Like the real world movements they imitate, they also hit plenty of other stuff. That's as it should be. My abs have somehow gotten pretty decent, an...

Welcome, Marie (and sorry for the delay)! I wouldn't spend so much time looking at the scale right now (especially for an excuse to binge!). It's much more important that you build the habit of moderate mealtime eating. Habit doesn't understand calories or pounds, habit understands routine. So focus...

Welcome, Sharon.

Eating meals instead of snacks is hardly a new concept -- if it seems novel it's only because it's much too old-fashioned, boring and obvious for the legions of quick fix diets and their secret formulae. I hope you'll find it as enjoyable and effective as I do.

Reinhard

OK, I eliminated the forum identifier. If you'd prefer something more specific but still concise, let me know and I'll mess around with it some more, this was the easiest thing to do. Deb -- RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication." It's a way to redistribute articles or posts from one site all ov...

Welcome, Michael. This diet has been baby-girl tested. Our daughter is 18 months now, and if anything I'm a few pounds lighter than when she was born. I'd recommend finding something similarly moderate and sustainable for exercise to do in tandem with the diet (like daily walking). Here's the diet-b...

OK, you can conrol the target forums via url parameters. I should probably make some kind of wrapper around this, but I don't want to jump in until I figure out what the standard best practice is. Nosdiet "general discussion" only: feed://everydaysystems.com/bb/rss.php?f=3 Shovelglove only: feed://e...

It works!

feed://everydaysystems.com/bb/rss.php

Wow, that *was* easy...

Working on the "extra points" you mentioned... all those daily checkins are probably not rss-worthy...

Reinhard

Hunter,

Looking pretty good here... your one "failure" (at the vegetable garden) was pretty virtuous, as failures go.

I like your suspenseful live updates with the question mark placeholders.

Reinhard

Guy,

Sorry about all the pounds swings. I see this too, and I've learned not to worry about it, but that's an easier lesson to really believe once you're down a couple score pounds. Long term, pounds will follow behavior, and your behavior has been great.

Reinhard

Welcome Guy and MerryKat!

Practice runs and grounds for whining notwithstanding, this is an accomplishment -- it fact, it's more of an accomplishments because of these difficulties.

Reinhard

Creaky,

Thanks for letting us know.

I still find it fun and look forward to it, and it's been years. I wouldn't have imagined such a thing could be possible.

Looking forward to your next update,

Reinhard

I for one need the sound effect... if I'm constantly glancing over at an hourglass I'm bound to whack myself in the head eventually. Would be nice to have an easy "pause" mechanism, though. At this point, if I'm doing one of my standard routines I have such a precise idea of how long it takes that I...

Here are some regulars for me: 1. Toasted mestemacher black bread with cheese and nuts (and salad if there is any leftover from last nights dinner, or cooked vegetables). I often "toast" this all up together in my cast iron skillet (lubricated with a bit of olive oil). Cashews are unbeatable. A piec...

Nicky, I wish there were a simple system 14 word system for dealing with human misery, but I'm afraid that's a problem that makes diet seem trivial by comparison. I don't know if I can offer anything besides encouraging you to follow Freakwitch's advice to identify another coping mechanism. "Emotion...

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a requirement, but it's close

.

I for one plan on overtaking those caribbean islanders in terms of cocoa consumption (at least for a day).

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic ... ght=#10202

Reinhard

Sound familiar?

http://kyw.com/seenon/local_story_040211246.html

I guess no-s is technically a "cheater's diet," but I'm not sure I want to emphasize that part. Catchy name, though.

Reinhard

I'm amazed at how much money I find lying on the street.

Here in Cambridge you could easily make more than the per capita income of some third world nation by just wandering around picking up change.

Isn't walking great? What other exercise is so cheap that it actually generates income?

Reinhard

Congratulations, silverfish! Thanks for letting us know.

So did you ever get that haircut?

Reinhard

Diet-wise, no funny stuff to report since last check-in.

Because of my virus/nosebleeds, shovelglove was reduced for two weeks and skipped for one. Probably the longest break I've had since I started about 4 years ago. This week I'm back at it, ramping up nice and slow.

Reinhard

Don't let that minimum put you off: anything helps, just get started. The hardest, most important part is moving from nothing to something, and doing it consistently. Scaling up from there (if you still think it's necessary, you might not) is easy. The only exclusive exercise time I have is 14 minut...

Didn't notice it (don't worry, I wasn't trying to [sic] you). Fixed now. Thanks for pointing it out.

Kevin,

I finally got around to adding your stats to the home page:

http://nosdiet.com/#howmuchless

Thanks again for posting this!

Reinhard

8wheels, I've been thinking about this for a while and agree that it would be a cool thing to add and it doesn't look too tricky. I guess I was just waiting for someone to actually want it (there's something very sad about an unconsumed rss feed) -- so thanks for the nudge. I'll try to get it done t...

It took me a couple months to lose 20 pounds, and the rest of the year (plus exercise) to lose the remaining 20. I'm going to have to put together a "testimonials" page... this question (rightly!) gets asked all the time, and not all of our big losers are as keen (or tuned in) as Navin to keep repea...

These guys seem to have an incredible selection (including brass and copper sledges for status conscious shuggers). http://www.hammersource.com/Sledge_Hammers.html Anyone have any experience with them? I think my 20 pounder (a gift) came from them, but I'm not 100% sure. Wish they had an affiliate p...

I was reading an article in the new york times magazine about this crazy Slovenian ultra endurance athlete (who can bicycle for days on half an hour's sleep and pushes himself so hard that he starts hallucinating that mujaheddin are chasing him or that his teammates are making fun of him), and appar...

Sorry I haven't popped in here before, Guy. 1. Great avatar! 2. Movie ranger sounds awesome. I do similar inspirational multitasking with audiobooks while doing dishes/vacuuming etc. Thanks for posting the imdb links... my netflix queue has been running dangerously low. 3. It sounds like you're bein...

Well, "flipping levers." But as you can tell from its original/alternate appellation, "No Name," verisimilitude to this (or anything) is not its forte.

http://shovelglove.com/flip_lever.html

Hi anniede, I rarely go that long at a stretch. I mean, it's great, but keep in mind that you don't have to. What you're already doing is plenty, and you don't want to up the ante until it gets painful. As for the weight, your walking means you've got half the battle won: the "output" half. You've g...

I've noticed the pushup carryover, too. I think for people who just want to be "country strong," shovelglove gives plenty of chest workout. But those who yearn for bigger chests should not be ashamed to bang out a set or two of pushups during their 14 minutes (and ignore my "degraded beast" comment ...

Beautiful! Thanks for the heads up, Pete. Here's the direct link for the positionally obsessed: http://del.icio.us/popular/fitness Reinhard P.S. if anyone knows any other social bookmarking or directory sites where shovelglove does (or should) show up, feel free (and encouraged!) to post them here. ...

Everyday Systems

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3 out of 3 dental websites agree, snacking is bad for teeth

Urban Mountain Ranger

Glass ceiling

When 7 breaths aren't enough... sleep on it

16th Century Diet

What do YOU mean by sometimes?

"Cheater's Diet"

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