Some thoughts after a couple of months..

sheepish · Post by **sheepish** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 11:36 am

I've been doing this for a couple of months now - some failures in the first month but now I'm almost at 21 days all green/yellow - and I wanted to note down some of my thoughts at the moment, would welcome any comments/help/etc. I gave this a go some time ago (maybe a couple of years ago?) and then things got a bit stressful in my life generally and I stopped.

Some background on me: I'm vegetarian, I am not hugely overweight - I don't weigh myself but I'd guess that I have around 20 pounds to lose to get down to a BMI of 23 or so, I've gained steadily over the last few years but especially in the last year, since moving in with my husband, I think largely due to wine and sharing meals with someone a lot larger than me, I'm 5'2 and have PCOS so it's very easy for me to gain weight, my husband is over six foot and has a much higher metabolism. I don't do weighing, I have a few items of clothing that used to fit and look good on me but which now look very tight, my goal is to fit into them comfortably again - I have taken a photo of how they look on me now and I'll take further photos every now and again to track progress. Mostly, though I think I'll be able to tell whether it's working from how I look.

What I find easy about No S -

Doesn't interfere with my life very much because I can eat anything for my meals.

Giving up the sweets during the week. I don't have much of a sweet tooth so I kinda thought that I didn't really eat sweets but I've been keeping a list of "things I didn't eat because I was doing No S" for motivational purposes and a lot of it is sweet things, things like cake/biscuits in the office/at meetings. I don't really miss this stuff, it was easy to give up.

I also love Habitcal. I work with stats and I love stats. I also love making it green!

What I find hard about No S -

The plating thing. I eat a lot of food that doesn't really lend itself to this - Gujarati (Indian) food (that's my cultural background) generally involves eating curry with bread and then hot dhal with rice and putting it all on one plate leads to the dhal getting cold before you eat it and my family would think I was totally weird! I also like and eat a lot of Lebanese style food which involves mezze - lots of small dishes on the table - and, again, that's difficult.. So, at the moment at least I'm pretty much going for asking myself the question "would it fit on a plate?" and the answer is generally yes. I think for the moment, I'm going to go with this and start tightening up on portion sizes once I've got the general habit working for me.

Fruit. I've commented about this before on here. I loooooove fruit, it's my favourite food but I find it difficult to eat as part of a meal, it's just not how I've typically eaten fruit before and it adds to my general difficulty with plating. Mostly, though I'm dealing with this by eating some fruit as part of a meal - e.g. an apple with lunch and a couple of clementines with dinner - and eating lots of lovely fruit at the weekend.

Social stuff. I find it really difficult to know what to do about things like being invited to a dinner party during the week at which the host serves three courses. At the moment, I am trying to schedule as much stuff for the weekends as possible and, if necessary, just taking an S day for something that I really want to attend but know that it will be hard to avoid eating more than one course. This does result in me taking more S days than I think is ideal, even though I tend not to go crazy with those days, I pretty much limit myself to the event. I think, ultimately, wosnes' approach of taking S events might work better for me than vanilla No S and I think it's very much within the spirit of No S, so I am considering it but probably won't until I've given vanilla No S a longer trial.

Holidays/family stuff. Related to the social stuff, really. I find it hard when we go on holiday to stick to No S properly. Recently, we went on holiday for a week and it involved a lot of seeing family/staying with family which made it hard to stick to No S without causing offence - e.g. my husband's 81 year old aunt baked for us, especially, and I would just have felt bad saying no.

What I find hard generally -

Alcohol. I think a large part of my weight gain over the last year is to do with alcohol - British social life revolves around it, I go to lots of parties and dinner parties, we often have wine with dinner at home.. and I just end up drinking quite a lot. I think I usually average about 12 glasses of something per week and often those are large glasses of wine.. Just a rough adding up of the calories tells me that that's around 3,000 calories a week. I don't think I'm likely to be able to lose weight without cutting back on it, the question really is how to go about doing that. I don't think glass ceiling would help me that much because I think my main problem is the wine that we drink with dinner at home and I very rarely have more than a couple of glasses of that anyway. I also think I'd find that easier to give up than drinking at parties which is where I drink more than a couple of glasses.. So, I'm thinking that I might go for making sure that a couple of days a week are alcohol-free. But I'm going to wait to start this until I've got the No S thing more settled as a habit. It's not at all that I'm going to France for a few days..

wosnes · Post by **wosnes** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 12:45 pm

I'm going to address the plating and social things. For at least the first year I followed No-S, I didn't realize that there was a one-plate rule. By the time I realized it existed, I couldn't think of a reason to change what I was doing: eating one serving of whatever was being served.

The habits and traditions of other cultures haven't been considered because this was designed by an American. I'd follow what's typical for your culture, but limit yourself to one serving of each thing. You may be handling the mezze in the best way possible.

There's also something to be said for meals being served in courses. Supposedly, it slows down your eating and people actually eat less. I know some cultures serve meals in courses normally.

I'd suggest that you eat one serving of whatever is being served in the way you're accustomed to eating it, and not worry too much about the one plate rule. You may want to cut down on the wine some -- maybe smaller amounts in the glass or fewer glasses. Whatever works best for you.

sheepish · Post by **sheepish** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 1:04 pm

wosnes wrote:I'm going to address the plating and social things. For at least the first year I followed No-S, I didn't realize that there was a one-plate rule. By the time I realized it existed, I couldn't think of a reason to change what I was doing: eating one serving of whatever was being served.

The habits and traditions of other cultures haven't been considered because this was designed by an American. I'd follow what's typical for your culture, but limit yourself to one serving of each thing. You may be handling the mezze in the best way possible.

There's also something to be said for meals being served in courses. Supposedly, it slows down your eating and people actually eat less. I know some cultures serve meals in courses normally.

I'd suggest that you eat one serving of whatever is being served in the way you're accustomed to eating it, and not worry too much about the one plate rule. You may want to cut down on the wine some -- maybe smaller amounts in the glass or fewer glasses. Whatever works best for you.

I think you're probably right. I don't think portions are really a big problem for me, that's why I'm mostly not worrying about it too much. I like two course meals a lot - I find it helpful to get a variety of food as it makes me more satisfied and two savoury courses are a good way to do that, as long as the total amount is still reasonable.

The problem with three course meals at other people's houses is that they involve dessert and I find it really socially awkward to say no to.

wosnes · Post by **wosnes** » Thu Dec 17, 2009 2:12 pm

sheepish wrote:The problem with three course meals at other people's houses is that they involve dessert and I find it really socially awkward to say no to.

Maybe just take a few bites and leave the rest -- or take the remainder home to be finished later.

It seems that you think alcohol is the biggest problem in terms of excess calories. Smaller servings would be the best answer -- and just sip it to make it seem to last longer.

marygrace · Post by **marygrace** » Fri Dec 18, 2009 6:25 pm

sheepish wrote:
The problem with three course meals at other people's houses is that they involve dessert and I find it really socially awkward to say no to.

This happened to me last night. I had just gotten to my parents' house for dinner (had flown into NJ from TX and hadn't seen my family in 6 months) and my mom had whipped up a nice dinner plus dessert that she knew I loved. She made a point to say that she'd prepared the dessert especially for me, so I just couldn't say no (I usually take 2 or 3 S events per week on any day I want, but had already planned them for the week--and this wasn't in the plan). I just improvised and had smaller than normal portions of dinner food and had a very tiny serving of the dessert--a few spoonfuls. No big deal, my mom was happy, and after tasting the yummy apple ginger crisp I was too.

sheepish · Post by **sheepish** » Fri Dec 18, 2009 6:40 pm

marygrace wrote:
sheepish wrote:
The problem with three course meals at other people's houses is that they involve dessert and I find it really socially awkward to say no to.
This happened to me last night. I had just gotten to my parents' house for dinner (had flown into NJ from TX and hadn't seen my family in 6 months) and my mom had whipped up a nice dinner plus dessert that she knew I loved. She made a point to say that she'd prepared the dessert especially for me, so I just couldn't say no (I usually take 2 or 3 S events per week on any day I want, but had already planned them for the week--and this wasn't in the plan). I just improvised and had smaller than normal portions of dinner food and had a very tiny serving of the dessert--a few spoonfuls. No big deal, my mom was happy, and after tasting the yummy apple ginger crisp I was too.

Did you count is as a successful day or a failure? (Or as an S day?) Just out of interest.

I think my problem is that these things come up a LOT for me. If it was just once every couple of months, I don't think it would be a big deal but it's actually more like once a fortnight.

Today is my 21st day straight with all greens/yellows. A very difficult day. I'm working late and people keep offering me Christmas related office sweets. It's been quite tough but I'm nearly through to dinner time..

wosnes · Post by **wosnes** » Fri Dec 18, 2009 7:01 pm

sheepish wrote:
marygrace wrote:
sheepish wrote:
The problem with three course meals at other people's houses is that they involve dessert and I find it really socially awkward to say no to.
This happened to me last night. I had just gotten to my parents' house for dinner (had flown into NJ from TX and hadn't seen my family in 6 months) and my mom had whipped up a nice dinner plus dessert that she knew I loved. She made a point to say that she'd prepared the dessert especially for me, so I just couldn't say no (I usually take 2 or 3 S events per week on any day I want, but had already planned them for the week--and this wasn't in the plan). I just improvised and had smaller than normal portions of dinner food and had a very tiny serving of the dessert--a few spoonfuls. No big deal, my mom was happy, and after tasting the yummy apple ginger crisp I was too.
Did you count is as a successful day or a failure? (Or as an S day?) Just out of interest.

I think my problem is that these things come up a LOT for me. If it was just once every couple of months, I don't think it would be a big deal but it's actually more like once a fortnight.

Today is my 21st day straight with all greens/yellows. A very difficult day. I'm working late and people keep offering me Christmas related office sweets. It's been quite tough but I'm nearly through to dinner time..

It sounds like marygrace does what I do. I don't take regular S days on the weekends, but allow 2-3 S "events" per week.

sheepish · Post by **sheepish** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 12:59 pm

wosnes wrote:
sheepish wrote:
marygrace wrote:
sheepish wrote:
The problem with three course meals at other people's houses is that they involve dessert and I find it really socially awkward to say no to.
This happened to me last night. I had just gotten to my parents' house for dinner (had flown into NJ from TX and hadn't seen my family in 6 months) and my mom had whipped up a nice dinner plus dessert that she knew I loved. She made a point to say that she'd prepared the dessert especially for me, so I just couldn't say no (I usually take 2 or 3 S events per week on any day I want, but had already planned them for the week--and this wasn't in the plan). I just improvised and had smaller than normal portions of dinner food and had a very tiny serving of the dessert--a few spoonfuls. No big deal, my mom was happy, and after tasting the yummy apple ginger crisp I was too.
Did you count is as a successful day or a failure? (Or as an S day?) Just out of interest.

I think my problem is that these things come up a LOT for me. If it was just once every couple of months, I don't think it would be a big deal but it's actually more like once a fortnight.

Today is my 21st day straight with all greens/yellows. A very difficult day. I'm working late and people keep offering me Christmas related office sweets. It's been quite tough but I'm nearly through to dinner time..
It sounds like marygrace does what I do. I don't take regular S days on the weekends, but allow 2-3 S "events" per week.

But surely you can still fail if you take more than that number of S events?

wosnes · Post by **wosnes** » Sat Dec 19, 2009 4:47 pm

sheepish wrote:
But surely you can still fail if you take more than that number of S events?

Yes, you could. That's where some deciding in advance what will be S-events and what won't be enters the picture. I generally know in advance when I'm going to have an event that could be and S-event and plan accordingly. If something unplanned comes up, I get to decide based on how many S-events I've already had and how many more I expect to have.

When you decide to vary from vanilla No-S, you get to decide the rules. If we want to lose weight, we need to consume fewer calories than we burn. Exactly how you choose to do that is up to you. You might decide that a small serving of dessert is okay as long as its associated with a meal, but not just because it's in the kitchen. You might decide that 1-2 glasses (4-6 oz) of wine is okay with dinner, but no more.