Third year
Posted: Fri Jul 13, 2012 1:08 pm
Well, it's that time of year again: July 2012 is my third NoS anniversary. Last year's post is here:
http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=7816
Not much to add, this year. I had a blip of weight gain, brought on by throwing moderation to the wind during a family trip to Greece. But when we got back and I got back to my standard NoS eating, the weight came back off, and I'm now back where I've been for the past two years, about twenty pounds down from where I started three years ago.
One of these years, I'm hoping to report having shaved off another five or ten pounds, but this year in particular has been a challenge in terms of the number of colds/flus and the amount of travel. If I had to pick my two biggest outstanding challenges with NoS, it's those two: travel, and illness. I admire people who can stick to NoS while on a family vacation, but so far I've been tending to just treat the whole trip as a bunch of S days. As I learned the hard way, this can lead to trouble. (Baklava is so darned tasty, but man, it sneaks up on your waistline!) Similarly, there are times when I'm sick and grant myself an S day when I don't really *need* to eat sweets or snacks, and I find myself doing it just in a misguided effort to make myself feel better (or to gain an energy boost, etc.)
On the travel front, I doubt I'll ever go full-blown NoS while on the road. For one thing, we tend to do these crazy road trips spanning continents and time zones (Greece to Thailand to the Philippines, for example), and with all the flights and such, it can often be hard to keep track of the concept of "day", let alone "N day". ("Is it still Friday? Why is it dark outside?") I can, however, get back to being more moderate while on the road. I think the problem on the recent trip was me getting complacent: on previous trips, I'd done the all-S-day approach with no weight gain at all, and I figured I was safe doing that. But on those previous trips, every day was a pretty *moderate* S day, at most. In this one, I just let myself go a little too crazy. So that's fixable by just paying attention a bit better.
With illness, I'm going to make a concerted effort to resist random "S stands for sick" days unless I really need them -- like if I've been unable to eat regular meals, so trying to stick to my standard meal-times becomes impractical, that sort of thing. If I can avoid using illness as an excuse to eat badly, and remind myself that it isn't actually helping me to either feel better or recover faster, I should be fine.
Still, aside from that blip and those things to work on, this is basically another year of maintenance. NoS is certainly hard-wired into my life, and it takes essentially no effort to do it; it's just the way I eat, now. I fill in my habit-cal in advance at the start of each month out of, well, habit, but it's quite rare that I need to actually change a projected green into a red (about three times since January, looks like).
So thanks again for this simple, sensible system!
(Oh, one more bit of news: I made my first "convert", this past year. An old friend of mine, hearing about NoS from me, has used it to lose at least forty pounds! And he's still going strong. I don't know if he'll ever post a testimonial here, but I'll encourage him to do so, and it's been exciting to see how well it's worked for him.)
http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=7816
Not much to add, this year. I had a blip of weight gain, brought on by throwing moderation to the wind during a family trip to Greece. But when we got back and I got back to my standard NoS eating, the weight came back off, and I'm now back where I've been for the past two years, about twenty pounds down from where I started three years ago.
One of these years, I'm hoping to report having shaved off another five or ten pounds, but this year in particular has been a challenge in terms of the number of colds/flus and the amount of travel. If I had to pick my two biggest outstanding challenges with NoS, it's those two: travel, and illness. I admire people who can stick to NoS while on a family vacation, but so far I've been tending to just treat the whole trip as a bunch of S days. As I learned the hard way, this can lead to trouble. (Baklava is so darned tasty, but man, it sneaks up on your waistline!) Similarly, there are times when I'm sick and grant myself an S day when I don't really *need* to eat sweets or snacks, and I find myself doing it just in a misguided effort to make myself feel better (or to gain an energy boost, etc.)
On the travel front, I doubt I'll ever go full-blown NoS while on the road. For one thing, we tend to do these crazy road trips spanning continents and time zones (Greece to Thailand to the Philippines, for example), and with all the flights and such, it can often be hard to keep track of the concept of "day", let alone "N day". ("Is it still Friday? Why is it dark outside?") I can, however, get back to being more moderate while on the road. I think the problem on the recent trip was me getting complacent: on previous trips, I'd done the all-S-day approach with no weight gain at all, and I figured I was safe doing that. But on those previous trips, every day was a pretty *moderate* S day, at most. In this one, I just let myself go a little too crazy. So that's fixable by just paying attention a bit better.
With illness, I'm going to make a concerted effort to resist random "S stands for sick" days unless I really need them -- like if I've been unable to eat regular meals, so trying to stick to my standard meal-times becomes impractical, that sort of thing. If I can avoid using illness as an excuse to eat badly, and remind myself that it isn't actually helping me to either feel better or recover faster, I should be fine.
Still, aside from that blip and those things to work on, this is basically another year of maintenance. NoS is certainly hard-wired into my life, and it takes essentially no effort to do it; it's just the way I eat, now. I fill in my habit-cal in advance at the start of each month out of, well, habit, but it's quite rare that I need to actually change a projected green into a red (about three times since January, looks like).
So thanks again for this simple, sensible system!
(Oh, one more bit of news: I made my first "convert", this past year. An old friend of mine, hearing about NoS from me, has used it to lose at least forty pounds! And he's still going strong. I don't know if he'll ever post a testimonial here, but I'll encourage him to do so, and it's been exciting to see how well it's worked for him.)