No S Diet Results--no pictures ;-)
Posted: Fri Jan 23, 2009 3:28 pm
I know that I get encouraged when I read about others' successes, so I thought I would share my own.
After five children in 10 years, I found myself 50 lbs heavier than I ought to be. When the youngest was out of the nursing stage, and I realized that doing nothing was not helping, I engaged in a weight-bearing exercise program and generically "watched" what I ate. I had real success with that, but after 2 years, I injured myself doing the weights and had to stop. Guess what? 2 years later all the weight had returned, attempts at merely "watching" what I ate were failing (still couldn't get back into exercise due to shoulder, neck, and elbow pain). I knew that my meals were pretty good nutritionally, mainly home-cooked, and I never got on the "diet train" bandwagon, so didn't have those bad habits to break. Thus, I was at a complete loss on what to do next.
Just at the time, I had to undergo a required physical (for life insurance purposes) and discovered that I had an underactive thyroid. Aha! thought I. That is my problem.
Well, six months on thyroid therapy showed that while I had many improvements (including the pains in shoulder, neck, and elbow), my weight wasn't one of them and it wouldn't budge.
In desperation, I decided I *would* have to get on a restricted diet of some type, follow it precisely, and learn to live with it. I also decided (knowing that some exercise is better than no exercise) that I would start counting steps, as that didn't aggravate my shoulders, neck, or elbows.
On one website I began reading posts about various diets everyone was trying out. Most sounded dreadful and I really couldn't see myself realistically doing any of them. There was one post with the title "No S" but I skipped it until I had read all the others, because I thought the S stood for sugar and I knew that was completely unrealistic for our family. (We live overseas and there are NO sugar substitutes here--sugar and honey are our choices). With a sinking heart, I clicked the post, followed the links, and well, the rest is history.
FINALLY, a truly sensible, sane plan. I read the entire website (sans archives) over the next few days. Totally doable living overseas, with weird schedules, all kinds of different foods, all kinds of social occasions, with the food we already liked. Really, it was a slightly more codified version of what I had done on my own. Plus, the plug for urbanrangering completely resonated with my decision to use walking as the backbone of my "fitness" plan.
All that was in July '09, and I've been following NoS for six months and am thrilled with my results so far.
1. Finally, a normal relationship with food--no "good" foods or "bad" foods with all their emotional connotation. Following NoS really boils down to eating a good meal, enjoying it, and then saying "no" until the next meal!
2. An understanding of what caused me to be overweight. I don't fall into the category of an "emotional" eater. I guess I fell into the category of "glutton", just plain eating too much. Although not a snacker of snack foods, in preparing meals (especially), I would routinely pop half a carrot in my mouth if I was fixing veggies, enjoying the heel of bread that no one else would want, scraping the last few tablespoons out of the pot at the end and eating it so it wouldn't be "wasted."
I've also learned to beware the "It's really not that many calories" call. One little extra bite of anything really isn't that many. But as Reinhard has pointed out, and I demonstrated by weight gain, that all those "little" extras add up alarmingly. And, they didn't prevent me from enjoying a whole meal's worth of food at the table. Everything I ate became an *addition* to a wholesome meal, enough to make me gain a pound or two every month, slowly, surely, and to me, inexplicably.
3. Real weight loss--about 20 pounds thus far. I think my loss is slightly more than avg for women my age (close to 50) because I added exercise in at the same time.
Some things that have helped me in this continuing journey:
1. Regularly updating my habitcal. I follow NoS with very little tweaking. My S days are Friday and Sunday because that fits in with our already existing life style--Saturdays are by no means a day of relaxation here and thus, not a danger.
2. Regularly checking the discussion board, even though I post very little. I get my daily dose of "others are in this with me" which I find helpful.
3. The first month, I slowly went through the archived posts. I found all sorts of little encouragements--eg. one post about feeling more thirsty than usual--I found that same thing to be true for me and reassured me that nothing bad was going on.
4. Weighing myself only once a month. We have a dial scale that isn't super accurate in the details, only in the long run. So, four weeks is enough for the scale to show a change--weekly wouldn't.
5. Measuring success by green days. It is the N days that build the habits that will *eventually* carry over into weekends and life in general. I no longer like feeling stuffed. I like feeling satisfied, not gorged--and I am learning to achieve this. I enjoy the bit of hunger I bring to my next meal because then I am even more satisfied. Really, it is a wonderful cycle.
6. Since I was a couch potato, I added exercise--first walking, and now, after 6 months of specific stretches/therapeutic movements, I've added shovelglove. I started at 3(!) minutes with a modified shovelglove weighing at most 5 pounds (remember--scale not super accurate in the details!), added approx. 30 seconds every day (except Monday, because of the weekend break) and am now up to 10 minutes. No injuries or pain so far. Hurray!
To show my thanks, I bought the NoS book this past Christmas, not so much for myself, but so I have an easy way to explain (show) what NoS is all about.
Here's wishing us ALL continued success,
After five children in 10 years, I found myself 50 lbs heavier than I ought to be. When the youngest was out of the nursing stage, and I realized that doing nothing was not helping, I engaged in a weight-bearing exercise program and generically "watched" what I ate. I had real success with that, but after 2 years, I injured myself doing the weights and had to stop. Guess what? 2 years later all the weight had returned, attempts at merely "watching" what I ate were failing (still couldn't get back into exercise due to shoulder, neck, and elbow pain). I knew that my meals were pretty good nutritionally, mainly home-cooked, and I never got on the "diet train" bandwagon, so didn't have those bad habits to break. Thus, I was at a complete loss on what to do next.
Just at the time, I had to undergo a required physical (for life insurance purposes) and discovered that I had an underactive thyroid. Aha! thought I. That is my problem.
Well, six months on thyroid therapy showed that while I had many improvements (including the pains in shoulder, neck, and elbow), my weight wasn't one of them and it wouldn't budge.
In desperation, I decided I *would* have to get on a restricted diet of some type, follow it precisely, and learn to live with it. I also decided (knowing that some exercise is better than no exercise) that I would start counting steps, as that didn't aggravate my shoulders, neck, or elbows.
On one website I began reading posts about various diets everyone was trying out. Most sounded dreadful and I really couldn't see myself realistically doing any of them. There was one post with the title "No S" but I skipped it until I had read all the others, because I thought the S stood for sugar and I knew that was completely unrealistic for our family. (We live overseas and there are NO sugar substitutes here--sugar and honey are our choices). With a sinking heart, I clicked the post, followed the links, and well, the rest is history.
FINALLY, a truly sensible, sane plan. I read the entire website (sans archives) over the next few days. Totally doable living overseas, with weird schedules, all kinds of different foods, all kinds of social occasions, with the food we already liked. Really, it was a slightly more codified version of what I had done on my own. Plus, the plug for urbanrangering completely resonated with my decision to use walking as the backbone of my "fitness" plan.
All that was in July '09, and I've been following NoS for six months and am thrilled with my results so far.
1. Finally, a normal relationship with food--no "good" foods or "bad" foods with all their emotional connotation. Following NoS really boils down to eating a good meal, enjoying it, and then saying "no" until the next meal!
2. An understanding of what caused me to be overweight. I don't fall into the category of an "emotional" eater. I guess I fell into the category of "glutton", just plain eating too much. Although not a snacker of snack foods, in preparing meals (especially), I would routinely pop half a carrot in my mouth if I was fixing veggies, enjoying the heel of bread that no one else would want, scraping the last few tablespoons out of the pot at the end and eating it so it wouldn't be "wasted."
I've also learned to beware the "It's really not that many calories" call. One little extra bite of anything really isn't that many. But as Reinhard has pointed out, and I demonstrated by weight gain, that all those "little" extras add up alarmingly. And, they didn't prevent me from enjoying a whole meal's worth of food at the table. Everything I ate became an *addition* to a wholesome meal, enough to make me gain a pound or two every month, slowly, surely, and to me, inexplicably.
3. Real weight loss--about 20 pounds thus far. I think my loss is slightly more than avg for women my age (close to 50) because I added exercise in at the same time.
Some things that have helped me in this continuing journey:
1. Regularly updating my habitcal. I follow NoS with very little tweaking. My S days are Friday and Sunday because that fits in with our already existing life style--Saturdays are by no means a day of relaxation here and thus, not a danger.
2. Regularly checking the discussion board, even though I post very little. I get my daily dose of "others are in this with me" which I find helpful.
3. The first month, I slowly went through the archived posts. I found all sorts of little encouragements--eg. one post about feeling more thirsty than usual--I found that same thing to be true for me and reassured me that nothing bad was going on.
4. Weighing myself only once a month. We have a dial scale that isn't super accurate in the details, only in the long run. So, four weeks is enough for the scale to show a change--weekly wouldn't.
5. Measuring success by green days. It is the N days that build the habits that will *eventually* carry over into weekends and life in general. I no longer like feeling stuffed. I like feeling satisfied, not gorged--and I am learning to achieve this. I enjoy the bit of hunger I bring to my next meal because then I am even more satisfied. Really, it is a wonderful cycle.
6. Since I was a couch potato, I added exercise--first walking, and now, after 6 months of specific stretches/therapeutic movements, I've added shovelglove. I started at 3(!) minutes with a modified shovelglove weighing at most 5 pounds (remember--scale not super accurate in the details!), added approx. 30 seconds every day (except Monday, because of the weekend break) and am now up to 10 minutes. No injuries or pain so far. Hurray!
To show my thanks, I bought the NoS book this past Christmas, not so much for myself, but so I have an easy way to explain (show) what NoS is all about.
Here's wishing us ALL continued success,