Everyday Systems

oolala53

I'm humbled. Been failing a bit lately, but this is bolstering me.

oolala53

I lost my weight (over a much longer period of time) without exercise, too. Not the best way to live, but there it is.

Continued success with this sane way of eating and living.

oolala53

Glad to hear from you. Year 5 is a little shakier than I expected, but I too am hanging in there. Hope springs eternal that the last few months will straighten out. In the mean time, No S is still the backbone of my eating, and I'm pleased with that. I'm on your team!

oolala53

Thanks, all, for your kind words and wishes for me. I haven't been doing too well with no s's on weekdays, but I'm also not slipping too far backwards, either. In fact, people have commented recently on how I have kept the weight off for so long. I'm a bit in limbo, still not knowing what could make...

oolala53

I went to OA for a short time decades ago. It changes but when I went it was "three moderate meals a day, no eating in between." There were no restrictions on what you ate. I thought it was impossible! But it didn't have the safety valve of S days. And I heard much later that even years before I wen...

oolala53

Skelton, it's good to hear from you. Try t let yourself off the hook for now on getting down to three meals. Many people use an afternoon snack for quite awhile. I know of at least one who let it go and then went back to it, though she is religious about what and how much she eats for that snack and...

oolala53

Am feeling very blase. I got some things done over the past fews and then became very complacent again. It takes so many hours of gawd-knows-what to get just a few hours of productive work done. I know I'm not supposed to compare myself, but gosh, I do so little for anyone else in my life, and still...

oolala53

You are workin' it great.

oolala53

Was just browsing around. Does your not posting mean things fell into place?

oolala53

Sounds lovely.

oolala53

I went to a dance class Thursday taught by a West African dance teacher based in Seattle. I've sometimes thought I should be living there!

oolala53

You'll make it to Saturday next time.

oolala53

ironchef, one thing I will hold in my mind, and this is not ideal, but probably realistic, is what a colleague at another campus told me is his outlook: if "they" really wanted students to succeed, they wouldn't set up the system the way they do. As things are, we really can't expect to produce the ...

oolala53

Thank you for keeping up with us!

oolala53

I think you should just go ahead and plan minimeal at 4 pm until you feel you might let responding to "feeling snacky" drop relatively naturally. That is not hunger nor need. But it's better to relax about it for a bit until you have a solid gap from breakfast to lunch and dinner to breakfast. You c...

oolala53

I've been mulling over a lot about my job. One thing I had realized at the end f the school year. I had three students who were in English and history classes with me last year. I worried about them, tried to monitor them, offered them help every day, kept giving them cues to get on task, frowned, c...

oolala53

Not a disaster. Just an old habit. That's all it is. It is not a crime, nor proof of your weakness or inferiority, or anything else. Your eating is not YOU! Your thoughts about yourself are also not YOU. They are likely not even accurate descriptions of you. Your negative thoughts about yourself are...

oolala53

Why not ask this on a thread in the general discussion? But I'll answer here. It's up to you what meal times work into your schedule. Plenty of meal distributions will "work." No S is not about finding the meal times that make a person lose the most weight, but the meal times that allow a person to ...

oolala53

Many people have paradoxically lost weight when they relaxed about it while also having the goal to feel more energetic from their eating. It's hard to feel energetic when you're consistently overeating or eating too great a ratio of manufactured foods. It isn't that there's no sacrifice involved, b...

oolala53

Nice change! I still usually want to finish what's on my plate, unless I'm at a restaurant. But I almost always take the leftovers. It makes me feel very anxious just to think about leaving edible food to be thrown away. But I don't believe I'm overeating, either.

oolala53

Grothkat, hope it's okay if I blather on for a bit here with my opinions First, I staunchly believe, as you know, your weight is not the issue. It is a symptom of how many roles food plays in your life and which ones are taking precedent. And it may also be exacerbated by the mental strategies you u...

oolala53

Hi, Angel-girl! What does your CBT friend say about a tendency to "terribilize" and criticize yourself for your eating behavior? I gently suggest that that is a more important habit to change than your eating, at this point. It creates more stress and undermines your relationship with yourself. It i...

oolala53

Isn't it something how little food can matter when we are engaged in our life? I'm always paraphrasing a therapist who said the question is not why we do something but what would we do instead if we didn't do that something? How will we fill our time when we're not overeating, drinking too much, etc...

oolala53

175 cm = closer to 5' 9".

Sounds like you are at your perfect weight: the happy one.

oolala53

Lyra, try not to wonder where No S will take you in terms of weight loss. That is a vestige of diet head, most likely. We imagine how wonderful it is to be thin, but it can't be wonderful to be thin if the lifestyle to be that way doesn't work. I can tell you that every time that started to loom in ...

oolala53

Sleep is very supportive of exerting willpower. It is much harder to control any impulse if you don't get enough sleep. Possible, but harder.

Inch up, if you have to.

oolala53

This would all be playing with fire for me, but mazel tov! Do let us know how it goes.

oolala53

I humbly suggest that you spend some time and mental energy concentrating on how delicious the food you DO eat is before, during, and after you eat it. Be sure you are including savory foods you feel are knockout good. Revel in them as you eat. Be honest with yourself at the end of the meal: would t...

oolala53

I'd say it's rare to find someone who isn't/wasn't used to nibbling (or more) at night. Our desires don't suddenly go away just because we decide to change our habit. In fact, that's WHY we have to decide to change the behavior. If we didn't desire food at night, there wouldn't be an issue. Most eat...

oolala53

Just that. Overweight people often associate the sensations that slimmer people would call stuffed with being full. Over time, I think eating only three meals leads to feeling fuller on less food, as some part of us get assured we'll get enough. Reinhard never talks about it because he probably does...

oolala53

If I had a quarter (not a nickel, like my mother used to say. Inflation) for every time I've heard members say this. Before No S, I found Judith Beck's first book. As part of the plan, even before you started any diet (and she is a calorie-count-and-weigh diet fan- that's where I draw the line), you...

oolala53

BEE- YOO- TEE-FUL! I'm going to cut and paste this into an email to the NO S team on Sparkpeople. We have a teeny active group, and small passive one. Spark is not the smartest pond to fish in since the emphasis is tracking, and, worse to me, always seeking the way to weigh the lowest you can, which...

oolala53

This gets a little diet-y at the end, but still good support.

from Prevention magazine

http://www.prevention.com/weight-loss/d ... cks?page=5

oolala53

Please just CONSIDER dropping any responsibilities beyond family and job that don't serve to restore your spirit rather than continue to drain you. Is there anything you can do go to bed earlier so that you can get more sleep? Do the evenings have to be so full? Distinguish between being hungry and ...

oolala53

I am still working on my own advice.

oolala53

Try not to let yourself get too confused between No S and overcoming overeating. Don't they recommend letting yourself have free access to food all day long? I tried it for years! I could not determine what was enough at my meals and could not consistently wait until I was legitimately hungry to eat...

oolala53

I may be biased, but I think you are likely in a very good place in terms of readiness. You've really given up on the alternatives. That can go a long way. The good news is that you've chosen a kind, compassionate program to surrender to. I am a bit curious, though. Did you avail yourself of any goo...

oolala53

Oh, Eve, didn't I tell you not to eat of that tree in the garden? You went straight there, didn't you! :wink: I don't know if you kept going, but if you put in the weight it said should be your ideal, it will likely give you a new, lower number. For example, women at my weight, height and age think ...

oolala53

Re: quote above: almost the definition of joyless eating; SOME pleasure. No joy. And we often keep going because we think there will be joy in the next bite. It's that dang "seeking" center in the brain. Researchers keep calling it the reward center, but admit it doesn't deliver reward; it's not the...

oolala53

It was or wasn't?

Either way, if that's what you wanted, good for you! Though we are coming in to summer now... I still like a soda sometimes when it's really hot. But I don't have them mindlessly anymore.

oolala53

http://www.halls.md/body-mass-index/bmi.htm There are other pages to this site, one of which gives "ideal" weights according to one's peers' opinions. I highly recommend AGAINST looking at that page. It reflects the punishing expectations we have been brainwashed to desire. Taken to the hilt, women ...

oolala53

Might you have eaten two fresh peaches for your snack? If so, then 4 peach halves wouldn't be too much. However, if you're trying to cut down on sugar, could you have two peach halves with a touch of cottage cheese or Greek yogurt? Or with a couple of tablespoons of walnuts? Did you have any good fa...

oolala53

I'm glad it feels good. It's worth hanging on to these touchstone experiences as things flow in their way.

oolala53

Kudos to you, palmas, for being willing to try again, and so soon. I first tried No S back in the fall of '08 and I fell out of it from Thanksgiving until after Christmas a YEAR later. I've suggested recently that those having a hard time perhaps start with even smaller chunks, such as having only o...

oolala53

Just to be clear, you weren't ALWAYS feeling hungry, but just between lunch and dinner. It can really help to be clear with ourselves, so we don't give up on the whole when we need only adjust a part. I'm tickled that it sounds like you think you have some good suggestions to experiment with. If you...

oolala53

Wunnerful! Hoo, boy, you got to 145 from 161 pretty fast! Took me a lot longer, but I had already taken off my first 20+ pounds. And I wasn't in a hurry. In case you want to compare, you are now lighter than 78% of your same age/height peers, or alternately, in the top 22% for slimness. Keep enjoyin...

oolala53

finallyfull, I don't think I could have started with ANY of the adjustments I've made along the way. I think that is the nature of appetite change, the process and benefit of No S. If someone had told me I would eat as little as I eat now, I would have just regarded it as a diet and said No Way. (No...

oolala53

True, but you don't have to eat all day for it to be an S day. I was kinda kidding about that part.

So, any single or multiple desserts, snacks, or seconds on the 4th?

oolala53

I hope you shared that because you thought it was, in the end, funny, BrightAngel. My first big fails on No S happened after I had been at it for three months with NO fails, even after wild S days. It was another vegetarian retreat. They even had cottage cheese and eggs, and all the other food I lov...

oolala53

Uh-oh. Not to add insult to injury, but it's better not to talk about No S until you feel it's been working for you for several months. Don't give other people the power to hover and naysay it. They are operating from diet head, a painfully unsuccessful way of changing eating habits, with few succes...

oolala53

Not me. Don't have enough of a social life to justify eating all day.

oolala53

Great job! What wisdom for such a young person, though you probably don't feel that young. Please believe me when I say you will likely save yourself DECADES of discomfort or even misery by adopting this as a life plan. It takes French women through marriage, children, and into old age! It's funny h...

oolala53

Welcome! Hope we can help. I can tell you this: though I cannot claim to be a verified expert, I will claim that if you stop looking at diet books and start looking at research on willpower and habit regulation, you would see that this plan fits a better formula for success than much of what you've ...

oolala53

Tessy, willpower researchers have found that changing eating habits, especially decreasing food intake, is one of the hardest habits to change. The reasons are multiple. You are not alone. Personally, I think a person has to think that the eating plan is fair and reasonable. I would have to have a p...

oolala53

Glad the info on emotional eating helped keep you on track with No S. See you around the holidays.

oolala53

Noni, even today after all these years, I sometimes have to say to myself, "Just walk away." The miraculous thing is that I now do it.

oolala53

Just curious. Did you try any of the suggestions? Even if not, sometimes there's not much more to do than wait for the deluge to be over. I know I had many times in my life when I would wonder, WHAT is going to get me to stop? One part of me wanted to, and the other acted like the stop-part didn't e...

oolala53

Congrats on your efforts! Even with two fails, I'd bet those N days of eating were still a bit different than your days were a couple of weeks ago. Slowly slowly. For most of us, fruits are not "sweets." You are just getting going. Things will change and change and change. Cravings come and go and c...

oolala53

Roy Baumeister has said that studies show that changing eating habits for the purpose of weight loss is one of the hardest things to do. Even people who should change their eating for health purposes don't always do it. The author said she had failed many times at traditional dieting, so she decided...

oolala53

Thank you! But it will likely be awhile before I get from theory to praxis. Sometimes I wish I could go to a hypnotist to see if s/he could wipe the memory of all my problems with food and my noticing of bodies away. At this retreat, as with many of them, there is a majority of thi-i-i-in women. No ...

oolala53

I am still enjoying the book but I do want to point out that the author so far (and I am on disc 4 of 6) very much downplays, IMHO, the possible discomfort and difficulty in the moment of practicing the new habit for quite awhile. The behavior is supposed to have an immediate payoff, and I would bet...

oolala53

I don't know if obxervers of my thread have seen the thread on "fantastic set of articles," but it has helped me reflect on my mocha habit and reinforces what I've come to think about eating starches. I don't usually like to give too much attention to the deluge of contradictory health information, ...

oolala53

Deb, so glad to see you again, though I feel for the circumstances. No matter how wonderful an eating system is, relapse is possible, especially in an unsupportive culture. As Reinhard says, there is no such thing as before and after, only before and during. I had one period about two years in durin...

oolala53

got my 10 minutes of vigor in today. Some walking Sunday. No vigor yesterday, but a 20-minute hike at a slow pace with friend. It was HOT so I was just as glad to take it easy. I may take a walk by the water in San Rafael before I head up to the retreat center where I'll be staying this week. It loo...

oolala53

I remember 20 years ago at least reading of a guy who advocated increasing calories (3000-5000/day, but they were all WHOLE foods. No flour products.). And he recommended greatly upping aerobic exercise. Problem to me: just losing weight is not my ultimate goal. It took hours and hours to cook all t...

oolala53

I suggest that you think of the fruit as PART of your lunch or dinner, even if you eat it last. Just want to say that I had a "sweet tooth" as well before No S 4 years ago. I would eat a 20-oz. bar of milk chocolate at one sitting. Half a 9-inch cake. Nearly 1/2 gallon of ice cream at a time. I now ...

oolala53

Was on the road by 6:50 a.m., but had wanted to leave by 6. Brought some odds and ends from the fridge, mostly freggies. Those and mocha was all I wanted until I arrived. Very tired of sitting. Was I ever ready for dinner at 5, though! Had skreeeeumpshus (!) Indian food. Thank you, Bay Area! Then fr...

oolala53

I hope you are deciding not to have snacks and seconds on these S days because you really deep down know that you will not get any real satisfaction from having them. Otherwise, why make it hard on the weekends?

Whatever you decide, enjoy every bite!

oolala53

I've been listening to a book (Small Move, Big Change) on how to break "resolutions" down into doable steps, hoping it will be more grist for the mill on my non-food problems. (It will probably tell me something I already know but need to hear again.) The author says you need to determine a new, rel...

oolala53

If you go through the process with curiosity, honesty, and persistence, you will likely not have to worry about sugar calories even when there is no aversion. The process is not over in a few weeks or months. So what? The alternatives have even worse odds in the long run. This is as close to being "...

oolala53

I gently say that it's a little scary that you are so worried about it possibly staying hard on the very first day. Statistically, changing eating behavior permanently is hard! Witness decades of failure. No S-ers have very different experiences regarding when it gets easy. I would say it's better t...

oolala53

You can add or subtract anything you want. It's just not Vanilla. Also, what children do and what adults do are often different in slim cultures. And some things are easier to do when the whole culture is doing it and when there is no history of overdoing it. Children in France have a dessert at lun...

oolala53

Agreed.

oolala53

I hope you delight in everything there is to savor on vacation- sights and sounds as well as tastes and smells.

oolala53

I'm glad for you that you have not read through the sad saga of oolala53 and her years of misery and handwringing on S days. Things were so much better on N days that I regarded them as totally worth it, and still felt and feel No S is the bomb. But I struggled with what felt like wild S days for ab...

oolala53

I'm answering on your thread. The short answer is no, it did not happen automatically, and 4.5 years in, I still have to use effort, but that has more to do with problems in the rest of my life, not No S. But tolerating the urges is now the default, rather than eating. If I thought eating would make...

oolala53

I'm not sure children become obese from eating three moderate meals and even two small snacks a day It seemed to me he was saying it is not how big the meals are but the frequency of eating. I agree with you that if the eating events are bigger, it is going to compound the problem. As a child, I in...

oolala53

I can see there's a lot of fear here. Why else keep seeing boogymen where everyone else can see there are only shadows? BTW, I am facing that dang boogeyman in another area of my life right now, one in which you seem to have no real anxiety. It's all relative. I'm going to bow out and go take my own...

oolala53

I wonder if you've ever considered ti worth your while to determine a reason why the threads of some of the least successful members on this board get 10-20 times more attention than others. Is it because each one thinks s/he;ll be the one to turn things around for this obviously struggling member.I...

oolala53

I really want you to find your solution, but if it can't work while you are under the gun, it's not likely to work long run. You can't just wait for periods of time when everyone is gone and you have no pressing responsibility. How often will that happen? Whatever you do has to fit in your life! Whe...

oolala53

middleager, it hardly ever takes me very long to get to food by the time I get hungry! I had to get my teeth cleaned today. I thought I was going to brunch with a friend not long afterwards, so I didn't have breakfast. Then the meal got pushed back, so I lunch around 12:30 p.m. The meal choices were...

oolala53

Love your very action-oriented, practical suggestions, ironchef. Brief doesn't come naturally to me!

oolala53

I appreciate the articles, but I went to elementary school in the 60's and all the children even then brought a snack with them to have at recess mid-morning. I walked to school, so I had breakfast around 6:45 a.m. I'm guessing that lunch was over around 12:30 p.m. It was typical even then for child...

oolala53

Nope, but I don't think about it much. When I was pushing myself to drink more water, I never felt the benefits everyone talks about and it was just a burden. But if it comes naturally, even better.

oolala53

First, try to stop saying "I can't stop eating." It ends up being counterproductive. If you have to, say "It might be uncomfortable and frustrating to stop how much I'm eating, but it's probably possible to decrease it. I don't have to do it all at once. I'll take it a few hours at a time, if I have...

oolala53

Of course, violet. Welcome.

I did a longer workout than I normally do yesterday but the DVD stopped with 10 minutes left in the workout. I felt all day long that I should have just added on my own 10 minutes but never did. Felt incomplete all day! Weird. The mind can sure mess with us.

oolala53

Because I was trying to eat only from hunger today, I decided to track what I ate. If my calculations were right, I ate 634 calories, and I wasn't even really starved by the time I had dinner. Believe me, I'd much rather have a bigger appetite and get to eat more! But it's not very satisfying to me ...

oolala53

Oh, man! What an offer, ironchef! I'd take you up on it in a shot. My friend did come over for dinner. I had been to an open house and was given a couple of cookies baked by a local bakery, so we got to have dessert! I made a meal salad with turkey, yellow zucchini, mushrooms, and cranberries served...

oolala53

I was bolstered once reading the blog of a young woman (who seems to have conquered her obesity) that even though she has been comfortably slim for several years, she sometimes still misses overeating. I can't remember the details but it reminded me of a time I thought I would have a little business...

oolala53

Sounds like you got plenty of enjoyable food to eat and didn't miss the S's. That's the most important point. You don't have to have them just to have them! It's when you're feeling like you've been robbed if you can't have them that the freedom of S days comes in handy.

oolala53

What about combining the oatmeal and fruit with whatever you might have had as a snack and having that at 9 a.m.? If you don't really have time to sit at 7:30 but you do at 9, it sounds okay to wait. (When I first started, I put my afternoon snack in with my lunch. Eventually, I dropped the snack fo...

oolala53

Oh, I envy that consistent exercise!

oolala53

missed today

oolala53

Try not to be afraid of S days, though you might find that you go crazy for a bit. It's perfectly normal, but it's also normal to get tired of it and to start liking the feeling of N days enough that you tone down S days either naturally or on purpose. This isn't a diet, which forces you to eat less...

oolala53

You are obviously eating less than you're burning despite your red days. Just keep going!

oolala53

Mamie, that is exactly it! The gaps between the failures get longer, and the failures themselves become less severe. That's weaning yourself off extra food and it's the most we can hope for. You can't wish your way to being satisfied with less food, although different motivations at different times ...

oolala53

I'm pretty sure the film talks about all the sugar added in so many packaged foods, as well as the rest of the issues. I dunno, I had a pretty good fish sandwich at Carl's Jr. this week. I was surprised that it wasn't breaded and fried. Good enough in a pinch. One thing I wanted when I set out on No...

oolala53

Testify!

oolala53

This is currently playing here in San Diego. I'm not sure I need to pay premium prices to see this on a big screen. I mean, though I'm not a purist about sugar, I'm basically in the choir. Of course, being anti-Holocaust didn't stop me from watching The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. Has anyone else se...

oolala53

Also depends how the concoction was made. I sometimes make a shortcake (no sugar) and cover pieces of it with fruit with a dusting of stevia or a teaspoon or two of sugar and plain yogurt. I do not consider that a fail. But I definitely eat less starch in the rest of the meal, just because otherwise...

Everyday Systems

Search found 10047 matches

a registered dietician on board

belated curiosty: who took a NWS day on the 4th?

"Microsolutions" book

the documentary "Fed Up"