I call my variation chocolate NoS. It is vanilla NoS with a little bit of extra sweetness to it. It begins, of course, with basic NoS –no snacks, no sweets, no seconds. This plan of eating makes a lot of sense because that is how we used to eat before the snack food revolution, and good science backs it up. No snacks, because I found when I first researched all this and was eating my six meals a day, I was hungry all the time. It seems that our bodies need those three long periods between eating – about 5,6 hours between breakfast and lunch and lunch and dinner and about 12 hours between dinner and breakfast – to get into fat-burning mode. Also, planning, shopping, cooking for all those meals was a real pain. In addition, adjusting from eating that way to No S’s 3 meals was very hard on me, and I never want to have to do that again, so I don’t mess it up.
No sweets- because our bodies need good nutrition to be healthy, and sweets tend to be empty calories or worse – the wrong kinds of fats and the wrong kinds of sweets that can make us obese or can lead us into diabetes. I figure if I eat no sweets for 19 meals, I can have sweets at 2 of them and be fine. No seconds because we Americans are visual eaters – when we take seconds our brains tend to trick us by minimizing in our memories how much we’ve actually consumed.
All this of course is in Reinhard Engels’ wonderful book and blog, which has transformed my life by bringing me back to sanity around food. But the real genius of the No S diet, in my opinion, is the exception clause (I’m a law student). The vanilla exception is “except sometimes on days that start with S.†Brilliant – because having the safety valve is what makes it possible to stick to what is very sensible but leaves out some of the fun in eating. Reinhard’s exception works for him because he works a regular 5-day week and socializes and relaxes on the weekend and his wife, says Reinhard, came us with the idea that he could relax the rules over the weekend and that has been very successful.
But Reinhard encourages us to take advantage of “founder’s zeal,†by inventing our own variations. I started out, of course, with vanilla No S and it was very successful for the first 5 weeks. Lost the weight I wanted to lose, discovered the joy of not having to count calories and plan in advance and just being able to put what called to me on my plate and eat it. One little wrinkle – between the No Sweets for 5 days and the single plating, I was hardly getting any dessert. But I thought I was cool with that until the 6th S weekend, when I went a bit nuts and couldn’t stop eating sweets. Didn’t blow No S, of course, and was back to the usual on Monday, except that I had gained back nearly all of what I had lost. But this time, instead of the usual repent, deprive, blow it cycle, I decided to just accept who I am, and I not only love my sweets, but it seems that some part of me buried deep somewhere keeps track of them, and in a few hours that weekend, I ate every single one I was “owed†for the past 5 weeks! So how to incorporate that into No S? I don’t work a regular schedule at all, and am working at home much of the time, including weekends. So instead of 5 N days and 2 S days, I decided to try having 3 “S†meals a week, spread out over the week – Sunday morning, Wednesday lunch, and Friday dinner.
Sunday morning tends to be very reasonable, just a change from my usual Mestermacher, eggs, and fruit. But Wednesdays, I have a dessert lunch. I drink a small whey protein shake mixed only with water, which seems to help my body manage having a dessert meal, and then eat a reasonably sized but indulgent dessert and I take seconds if need be until I feel satisfied. You would think it would be a disaster, but so far, it has worked very well. After 6 weeks of this, I got down quickly to what I wanted to weigh and I’ve stayed there without undue effort! When I want sweets during the week, I start daydreaming about what I want to make for lunch on Wednesday, and I am cool to wait until then. Friday night with my family I eat my usual one plate, but use a smaller plate (the inside of our nice stoneware dishes, not counting the rim, is 8 inches). Then I have a small dessert which I also serve my family.
But Wednesdays are only for me, even if Fridays have usually turned out to be smaller versions of Wednesday.
Three other things I do: I use 9 inch plates for almost all my meals. I eat these little 12-calorie bran crackers called “GG bran crispbread,†usually one with breakfast and one with dinner. (I don’t know that they actually control my appetite, which they claim to do, but they are a good source of bran and are very versatile so they taste good with a little cream cheese or jam or both or peanut butter or my latest – a little smear of peanut butter with some whey powder on top – or I tuck them into oatmeal or whatever sauce I am serving and they just dissolve.) And I drink all the tea and herbal tea sweetened with stevia and chew all the sugarless gum I want.
The last thing is that I have read that for women over fifty, exercise really helps to control their weight but it has to be about an hour a day. So I exercise hard – more detail in my daily report – for a good hour or so at least 6 days a week.
So far this has been really easy to follow. Last night, for example, I made a great dinner – grilled marinated London broil with mushrooms cooked in wine, plus chard and onions, salad and fresh corn, but I was craving ice cream after dinner and, to make it worse, Jess and Becky were having chocolate mousse for dessert that J had brought home from a bakery Friday night. But it was Sunday night. My first thought was just that I wouldn’t do it because I am committed to NoS, and I started thinking about Wednesday – bake cream puff shells with French vanilla ice cream and homemade hot fudge sauce? Reinhard’s good buddy Habit came to my rescue.
But then I also realized that I wasn’t hungry – I had eaten enough for dinner – I just wasn’t feeling well, and sometimes when I feel crummy I want the comfort of sweet food. But it never works- between the overeating and the guilt I would feel terrible. So I averted disaster and drank some Bengal Spice Tea with stevia and pulled out the Trident and was very grateful in the morning when I weighed myself and I am back to 115 pounds. But come Wednesday, I will thoroughly enjoy my dessert lunch!
I encourage anyone reading this to think about what it is that causes you to blow your S days, if that is happening, and about how to get what you need without overdoing the calories overall. Sweets, salty snacks, comfort foods – they’re all only food. They’re not evil in themselves and there is room for anything your soul needs if you make the space for it.
Sherry
Chocolate No S
Moderators: Soprano, automatedeating
Hi Sherry. Thank you for posting this. You may have covered this already, but do you enjoy your S weekend's also? I know you have a dessert lunch on Wed., but for Sat. and Sun. are you limiting your S's or haveing them as N days. Again, Sorry if I'm making you repeat yourself. I reread it when I get back from taking DS to Karate.
Thanx
Denise
Thanx
Denise
Denise
restart No S on 4/1 at 132#
goal is 120-123# doing vanilla NoS with Eat Stop Eat on Monday.
restart No S on 4/1 at 132#
goal is 120-123# doing vanilla NoS with Eat Stop Eat on Monday.
I just do the 3 S meals, no S days. One part of chocolate no S that I forgot to mention is what I call the "bite of least resistance." If I am at a social event and a luscious looking dessert is served, I will have a very small taste. If it's not an S meal, that works for me. Although I would not have believed it in the past, I really have no desire to cheat on my version of NoS. I enjoy my little taste, which usually amounts to about a teaspoonful to a tablespoonful of dessert, depending on the nature of the dish, and then I feel that I've had the experience and I am able to let it go. Like I wrote before, it's only food, and having a little taste of something special will not appreciably wreck the day's calories. But forgoing that taste could lead me to develop resentment and that could ultimately become very destructive.
On the other hand, if I am at home, I forgo the taste and save a decent serving in the freezer for the next Wednesday!
I am happier doing it this way because I am never more than about 2 days away from the next S meal.
I have my exercise worked out so I do the really intense stuff - my 5-mile runs and hour-long workout videos, during the part of the week when I eat more, and then have 2 easier days on Mondays and Tuesdays, when I tend to eat the least.
I didn't set out to keep Sunday mornings in check, it's just that I do a long run late in the morning, so I don't want to be too full. That way, too, if I have an extra bit of waffle or something, I know I'll be running so it doesn't matter.
It seems in reading people's posts that what really matters is very individual. For me, as long as I can satisfy myself on Wednesday with all the ice cream or whatever I want, I'm cool. And so far, I haven't gone wild at that meal, but I am always amazed at how important it has become to me to feel satisfied afterward, and I will have seconds or even thirds if that's what it takes. I worried that I would undo on Wednesday all the effort of the week, but so far I dropped all the weight I wanted to lose and I have not found that keeping to this is an undue effort.
My breakfasts and lunches are pretty routine - I usually eat 2 eggs which I steam with a tiny bit of butter and a toasted slice of Mestermacher, topped with some type of salsa, and a small piece of fruit, and one of the little GG crackers with some cream cheese and marmalade. The important thing is that I really like it, it keeps me satisfied until lunch, and it's very reasonable in size.
For lunch, I eat canned fish - herring or sardines or tuna - 3 days a week with sprouted wheat bread toast and a bit of cream cheese and fresh or frozen veggies. The other 4 days I have leftovers or oatmeal or peanut butter mixed with whey protein on a sprouted wheat English muffin plus the usual side of veggies.
Then I make a nice dinner for my family - usually a protein source and a whole grain and cooked vegetables and raw vegetables and salad, often with melon or other fruit for dessert. Taste and presentation are important to me, especially taste, and I really enjoy my dinners. I swear to you that I am capable every night of eating a second dinner as large as the first, but I just don't do it. I fill my 9" plate once. If I am still craving more after dinner, I drink my herbal tea sweetened with stevia and pull out the Trident and within a few minutes I find myself to be satisfied and glad I stopped when I did.
Before I started No S, when I weighed what I do now, I would wake up starving in the middle of the night every night and be unable to sleep. Since the first week of No S, that stopped and I do not get hungry after dinner until it's time for breakfast. It took me nearly the whole first month before I stopped getting shaky and weak by the time for lunch or dinner, but I am fine now and I usually exercise either late in the morning or late in the afternoon and am fine. The memory of that first month and how hard it was is a great motivator for me to not snack. I have given myself permission if I am really hungry to drink a glass of milk, but that has not happened since the first week of NoS, and I have just finished day 83!
If I have any advice to someone starting NoS, it is to start with vanilla NoS and pay close attention to what is important to you. Then modify the basic plan if and only if you find you are not getting what you need. The essence of NoS, what makes it work so very well and what makes it so different from any other "diet" plan, is that it is a very simple plan intended for lifetime maintenance, and it doesn't require that you spend hours every day either planning meals and calculating calories, or walking around asking yourself every few minutes if you are hungry or what you would like to eat. So figure out what is doable for you every day and then do that. For Reinhard, relaxing the plan on the weekends makes it work on the N days. For me, knowing I have my S meals, particularly my dessert lunch, makes it work for me. I was skeptical when Reinhard wrote that after a while it doesn't matter that much any more whether you get a bit too much or a bit too little at any given meal because you know will be eating again in a few hours, but that has turned out to be true for me, too. Whew! But I am a restrictive dieter, so maybe that is part of why this has worked so well for me.
Good luck to you. Make No S work for you, because when you figure out what you need, it will work. And you deserve to have a reasonable to follow way of eating that will allow you to maintain your weight in some healthy range that you can keep to without undue effort.
Sherry
On the other hand, if I am at home, I forgo the taste and save a decent serving in the freezer for the next Wednesday!
I am happier doing it this way because I am never more than about 2 days away from the next S meal.
I have my exercise worked out so I do the really intense stuff - my 5-mile runs and hour-long workout videos, during the part of the week when I eat more, and then have 2 easier days on Mondays and Tuesdays, when I tend to eat the least.
I didn't set out to keep Sunday mornings in check, it's just that I do a long run late in the morning, so I don't want to be too full. That way, too, if I have an extra bit of waffle or something, I know I'll be running so it doesn't matter.
It seems in reading people's posts that what really matters is very individual. For me, as long as I can satisfy myself on Wednesday with all the ice cream or whatever I want, I'm cool. And so far, I haven't gone wild at that meal, but I am always amazed at how important it has become to me to feel satisfied afterward, and I will have seconds or even thirds if that's what it takes. I worried that I would undo on Wednesday all the effort of the week, but so far I dropped all the weight I wanted to lose and I have not found that keeping to this is an undue effort.
My breakfasts and lunches are pretty routine - I usually eat 2 eggs which I steam with a tiny bit of butter and a toasted slice of Mestermacher, topped with some type of salsa, and a small piece of fruit, and one of the little GG crackers with some cream cheese and marmalade. The important thing is that I really like it, it keeps me satisfied until lunch, and it's very reasonable in size.
For lunch, I eat canned fish - herring or sardines or tuna - 3 days a week with sprouted wheat bread toast and a bit of cream cheese and fresh or frozen veggies. The other 4 days I have leftovers or oatmeal or peanut butter mixed with whey protein on a sprouted wheat English muffin plus the usual side of veggies.
Then I make a nice dinner for my family - usually a protein source and a whole grain and cooked vegetables and raw vegetables and salad, often with melon or other fruit for dessert. Taste and presentation are important to me, especially taste, and I really enjoy my dinners. I swear to you that I am capable every night of eating a second dinner as large as the first, but I just don't do it. I fill my 9" plate once. If I am still craving more after dinner, I drink my herbal tea sweetened with stevia and pull out the Trident and within a few minutes I find myself to be satisfied and glad I stopped when I did.
Before I started No S, when I weighed what I do now, I would wake up starving in the middle of the night every night and be unable to sleep. Since the first week of No S, that stopped and I do not get hungry after dinner until it's time for breakfast. It took me nearly the whole first month before I stopped getting shaky and weak by the time for lunch or dinner, but I am fine now and I usually exercise either late in the morning or late in the afternoon and am fine. The memory of that first month and how hard it was is a great motivator for me to not snack. I have given myself permission if I am really hungry to drink a glass of milk, but that has not happened since the first week of NoS, and I have just finished day 83!
If I have any advice to someone starting NoS, it is to start with vanilla NoS and pay close attention to what is important to you. Then modify the basic plan if and only if you find you are not getting what you need. The essence of NoS, what makes it work so very well and what makes it so different from any other "diet" plan, is that it is a very simple plan intended for lifetime maintenance, and it doesn't require that you spend hours every day either planning meals and calculating calories, or walking around asking yourself every few minutes if you are hungry or what you would like to eat. So figure out what is doable for you every day and then do that. For Reinhard, relaxing the plan on the weekends makes it work on the N days. For me, knowing I have my S meals, particularly my dessert lunch, makes it work for me. I was skeptical when Reinhard wrote that after a while it doesn't matter that much any more whether you get a bit too much or a bit too little at any given meal because you know will be eating again in a few hours, but that has turned out to be true for me, too. Whew! But I am a restrictive dieter, so maybe that is part of why this has worked so well for me.
Good luck to you. Make No S work for you, because when you figure out what you need, it will work. And you deserve to have a reasonable to follow way of eating that will allow you to maintain your weight in some healthy range that you can keep to without undue effort.
Sherry
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clarinetgal
- Posts: 1709
- Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 4:16 am
- Location: Western Washington State
You are totally right! I'm glad you found a way to tweak No S so that it works for you. I mostly follow No S, but I do count calories (just not super strictly), and I sometimes use Intuitive Eating principles. The other thing I do is I allow myself a small amount of sweets each day, because when I was doing Vanilla No S, I would overeat every single weekend, because I had felt deprived all week. My approach seems to be working for me. I've dropped a couple of more pounds, and I'm maintaining my new lower weight almost effortlessly.
P.S. What workout videos do you do? I have a decent sized collection of workout dvds, and I'm always curious when other people mention they do workout dvds.
P.S. What workout videos do you do? I have a decent sized collection of workout dvds, and I'm always curious when other people mention they do workout dvds.
This is really great hearing about other mod's. I am committed to following vanilla NO S with the exception of adding intermittent fasting. Saturday's are not a big S day. My biggy is Sunday's, but that from years ago following Body For Life and it just has seemed to stick. Sherry, thanx for taking the time to write out that post.
Denise
Denise
Denise
restart No S on 4/1 at 132#
goal is 120-123# doing vanilla NoS with Eat Stop Eat on Monday.
restart No S on 4/1 at 132#
goal is 120-123# doing vanilla NoS with Eat Stop Eat on Monday.
My favorite workout video is Jillian Michaels "No More Trouble Zones." They call it a 40-minute circuit, but with the warmup and cooldown exercises, the video actually takes 57 minutes and I think it's just a wonderful total-body resistance workout using light dumbbells and body weight exercises.
If I don't have time for that, I do Jillian Michaels 30-day Shred level 2, usually. Level 3 has a lot of jumping in it and at my age, I think that's asking for trouble. The level 2 jumps seem to be fine. Total workout time with warmup and cooldown is about 30 minutes.
I also have a book with great exercises in it - Joan Pagano's Strength Training for Women.
What are your favorite workout videos, and how long are they?
If I don't have time for that, I do Jillian Michaels 30-day Shred level 2, usually. Level 3 has a lot of jumping in it and at my age, I think that's asking for trouble. The level 2 jumps seem to be fine. Total workout time with warmup and cooldown is about 30 minutes.
I also have a book with great exercises in it - Joan Pagano's Strength Training for Women.
What are your favorite workout videos, and how long are they?
Groovy1, I just want to thank you for posting your modified version of No S. I agree with everything you said. The program is wonderful and with the same token there are people who just prefer chocolate to vanilla! It isn't a one size fits all program and allows for individual manipulation to work for people not just in theory. That's the beauty of this amazing way of eating developed by Reinhard, and it's brilliant.
I myself also follow a modified version but I don't have it down to a science yet. You have motivated me though to try and figure out what works for me. One rule I don't follow is No Seconds. I guess it's because eating too much at a meal was never really a problem for me. I know when I am full and have a good internal gauge so I am able to pick and choose at the dinner table (I use my boyfriend's phrase "eat till 100%").
I often have dessert during the week. I haven't found it to hamper my weight loss. The only time I gain weight is when I go off the deep end and just start snacking on everything. It's so deceptive, who would think all those years a snack here and there would wreak such havoc on our weight. It certainly did for me.
Thanks again for your insightful post!
I myself also follow a modified version but I don't have it down to a science yet. You have motivated me though to try and figure out what works for me. One rule I don't follow is No Seconds. I guess it's because eating too much at a meal was never really a problem for me. I know when I am full and have a good internal gauge so I am able to pick and choose at the dinner table (I use my boyfriend's phrase "eat till 100%").
I often have dessert during the week. I haven't found it to hamper my weight loss. The only time I gain weight is when I go off the deep end and just start snacking on everything. It's so deceptive, who would think all those years a snack here and there would wreak such havoc on our weight. It certainly did for me.
Thanks again for your insightful post!
Thank you for your kind words.
A zillion years ago I was on Weight Watchers (actually it was about 30 years ago). I struggled to stay on the plan because I was hungry all the time. I would talk to people who were successful and had been on it for a while and every one of them would get kind of embarrassed and admit that they cheated. It didn't sink in until many years later. Only the cheaters were able to stick with it! I'm not criticizing Weight Watchers and I am sure it works for some, but for me, it just wasn't enough calories. I managed to lose about ten pounds, but gained it all back because I just couldn't stick with the program and I didn't let myself cheat until I really blew it!
As I read what people have written here, that confirms what I suspected. It is the people who work with the plan to find how they need to adapt it to themselves who are the most successful. And we aren't cheaters - we are customizers!
Congratulations to each of you for finding what works and I encourage those who are having difficulty to keep tweaking the plan until they figure out how to balance their physical and emotional needs around food with the simple and healthy rules of NoS. And if I haven't expressed sufficient gratitude yet to Reinhard Engels for coming up with this plan and providing such excellent resources at no cost (I bought the book just as a thank-you, but was glad I read it and encourage any who haven't to buy it), let me express it again here. Best wishes for all readers that weight just ceases to be an issue for you, other than a source of satisfaction,
Sherry
A zillion years ago I was on Weight Watchers (actually it was about 30 years ago). I struggled to stay on the plan because I was hungry all the time. I would talk to people who were successful and had been on it for a while and every one of them would get kind of embarrassed and admit that they cheated. It didn't sink in until many years later. Only the cheaters were able to stick with it! I'm not criticizing Weight Watchers and I am sure it works for some, but for me, it just wasn't enough calories. I managed to lose about ten pounds, but gained it all back because I just couldn't stick with the program and I didn't let myself cheat until I really blew it!
As I read what people have written here, that confirms what I suspected. It is the people who work with the plan to find how they need to adapt it to themselves who are the most successful. And we aren't cheaters - we are customizers!
Congratulations to each of you for finding what works and I encourage those who are having difficulty to keep tweaking the plan until they figure out how to balance their physical and emotional needs around food with the simple and healthy rules of NoS. And if I haven't expressed sufficient gratitude yet to Reinhard Engels for coming up with this plan and providing such excellent resources at no cost (I bought the book just as a thank-you, but was glad I read it and encourage any who haven't to buy it), let me express it again here. Best wishes for all readers that weight just ceases to be an issue for you, other than a source of satisfaction,
Sherry
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clarinetgal
- Posts: 1709
- Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 4:16 am
- Location: Western Washington State
Sherry, I'm pretty eclectic when it comes to my exercise dvd collection. Lately, I've been into the Ultimate Body series (from Exercise TV). Pretty much all of the workouts are at least a solid intermediate level, if not slightly higher. All of the Ultimate Body dvd workouts are 10-20 minutes, plus each dvd has a bunch of mini workouts. I like to do at least two 20 minute segments, or more if I have extra time. I also really like the Caribbean workouts (filmed in Barbados!), Leslie Sansone, Tracey Mallett, etc...