Everyday Systems

i started noS at my goal weight 19.5bmi and 20.7% body fat that i had reached with calorie counting over a period of a year or so (slowly, with 500calorie deficit per day and never under the total of 1200cal/day) and IF (16:8 version, that i still do most of the days)...
at my heaviest, the year when i started the calorie counting diet, i was bmi 22.5... not high at all but that is very uncomfortable weight for someone who is used to being light all their life...

this was all the dieting i have done in my life, exactly in my mid 30s when my metabolism slowed down a bit...while my eating habits remained the same... and a bit less activity than during the dance, music and theatre years of my life...

i still live an active life (i work with children in afterschool daycare and im unavoidably but also purposefully very active in my work for my and childrens' sake) and i go often for walks/runs in "my" forest... as of recently even much more often as i have adopted an active sweet dog in our small family...
i am used to different types of exercising as i was doing dance and theatre in my 20s and beginning of 30s... i love yoga, doing it more or less actively since i was 17...
and me and my friends have always been urban rangers of a sort - the value of walking, biking etc. was always "cooler" than wasting time in cars and traffick... in europe that is very easy to do...

i started noS for the maintenance and sanity...

after maintaining on calorie counting for 6 months after achieving the goal and seeing that i hate it... developing the dietheat mentality... and fearing that i might regain if i stop doing it... and, for me even worse, to become the person who obsesses about weight, as i could see in some (luckily not many) people around me... i refused to think that life will boil down to that... that is how i started researching the internet as to what sounds sane to me and stumbled on noS... the only thing i found that sounded sane, to be honest!

and it works perfectly for me...
i'm even sorry to not have found it earlier and avoid all the calorie counting drag and potential mental health damage...

i have even lost some more weight and quite a bit more of body fat, as you can see in my signature stats... currently im down to 18.5bmi and 15.5% body fat...
i even have to add sometimes purposefully more food to regain some weight as i dont want to go under the healty 18.5 bmi, although all my life i have been under it without even knowing what it is, not owning a scale nor calipers then but the pictures show it clearly...

since on noS i eat mostly from 9 inch plates, but they are packed if im having a hungry day... visuality of noS and 3 plates a day is an amazing trick...

my weekends are moderate but relaxed... i dont think about putting any restrictions on them as they add to the sanity part of maintenance...
but i have never had problems with binge eating that i remember of...

the most important benefit of noS for me is not in the amazing results of weight management so far... but the mental space it opened for me...
i have:
-taken better control of my finances (budgeting and planning to have even more fun with my money)...
-decluttered my home...
-adopted a dog (something i have been wanting to do for years)...
-getting some help in working on my career (long term project but some results are already here)

as a single mum living in a foreign country i could not have done this in a year if i was counting spoons and pinching my rear every day...

thank you, reinhard, for all of it!

Wonderful, inspiring testimonial, kaalii! Congratulations on all your accomplishments!

lifeisablessing, thank you!
and great to have you here to share the road together!

Well done Kaali!

kaalii,

I am so happy to read this -- congratulations and thank you for letting us know!

I think even people who are considerably overweight should put "maintenance and sanity" first as you have done. Weight loss, though important for some, is never *as* important, and (to paraphrase C.S. Lewis) you can't get second things unless you put first things first (in which case, as in yours, second things often come as a bonus).

It's also great to hear about the other areas in which No S has inspired/enabled changes.

Best wishes going forward and looking forward to next year's update!

Reinhard

Nicely done kaalii! Your updates are always fun to read.

oh, than you skelton, reinhard and whosonfirst!!

reinhard wrote: Weight loss, though important for some, is never *as* important, and (to paraphrase C.S. Lewis) you can't get second things unless you put first things first (in which case, as in yours, second things often come as a bonus).

It's also great to hear about the other areas in which No S has inspired/enabled changes.

funny, that seems to be the point of it all in the end...

you are making a great mark on people's lives!
thank you!

Wow, kaalii, what an amazing first year. Well done.
I always look forward to reading your insights.

oh, thank you, ironchef!
you are my inspiration, too!

I'm really happy to hear about your success with No S. It gives hope to the rest of us