Everyday Systems

I am not (yet) one of those overweight people who live a life of purity and light. I consider myself a junk food junkie. Maybe because junk food junkie-ing is the opposite of dieting and those are the primary forms of relating to food I have had in my life. Maybe because I'm "addicted" to sugar (though I doubt it). Maybe because I'm a lazy mo'fo' or because I can't be bothered figuring out complex things like what I want to eat each day. Maybe because, not so very deep down, I don't believe I should be taken care of, and that includes proper feeding.

I had a long, hard time on the dieting rockpile, starting at age 14 (when I was probably 10 pounds overweight) and ending, at the age of 59 (at about 100 pounds overweight), just this month. I can't really say I was on a diet the whole time -- more like I was dieting some of the time and cheating on my diet the rest of the time. My last notable "success" was in 1988-89 on Optifast when I lost 67 pounds in 14 weeks -- took me years and years to gain that weight back, but it all came back, plus 35 more pounds. I now know that this is as it should be -- bodies don't like to be rocked with a nearly 70 pound loss in less than 4 months. I've lost weight since then and gained weight since then. My body has been a battle zone.

I ask myself what I want for myself and it's an easy question to answer. In my ideal world, I am free from dieting, bingeing, eating junk food all day, worrying about what is in or not in food, contemplating the effect of any one choice, meal or day, and actually free to think about something else besides food, me, my weight, the scale, what I look like, what I might look like, what I could have looked like, what the focus on what I look like has done to my life and then refocusing on what I look like. Free. Kaput. Done. No more time, energy, money and emotional life wasted on such things.

How do I get there from here? How do I go from dieting, rebounding from dieting, pretending I'm dieting and then dieting again for almost 40 years? How do I stop inspecting programs and books for the "answer" to my weight? How do I stop blaming myself, my mother, father, people who hate fat people, the culture, America's Top Model, The Biggest Loser, advice columnists, ersatz research articles put out by drug companies, etc. for the way I feel? How do I learn to "eat sensibly," exercise and forget about the rest?

The answer may be the No S Diet. I am starting my third week and realizing that I can just eat 3 meals a day without snacking, I don’t have to eat junk food or sweets, hunger is not a reason to dial 911 and eating without rules doesn’t mean gobbling the world on the weekends. It’s really working for me and I’m excited about a future that includes discipline and sanity around food.

I would like to see a little less junk food on the weekends, but for now, I am learning what the No S way of eating has to teach me and I think the excitement about eating junk on the weekends will diminish over time.

Love your post!

I relate to you on so many levels.

Good luck on No S, look forward to hearing your progress updates.

Give yourself time and rejoice in compliant N days. A year of mostly compliant N days would be a huge improvement even if you S days remain ridiculously imperfect, no? (That's what motivated me for my first two years.) Progressive changes can get you the same place as overnight conversion. Progressive change is actually doable, while overnight conversions are pretty hard to force. If you don't have one, you're pretty much stuck with pc. It's not the worst that can happen!

I don't recommend a book I read recently on a personal story of weight loss except that the author said after losing about 60 lbs. at an average of 5 lbs. a month, she thought about how in her previous 30 years of dieting, she would NEVER have been satisfied to lose only 5 lbs. on average a month, and would have given up and ended up heavier.

I have never completely given up any junk food that I actually still enjoy before, during, and after I eat it. Some don't fit that bill and have dropped away. Some have remained. And so have I, five years in, after 38 years of mostly not being able to stick to any eating plan but deploring my eating- and gaining 55 lbs.

I can't say I never think about it or worry about eating, but I've put that expectation on the back burner. I don't think I'm a slave to it, and even slim people monitor themselves. The persons who never think about eating in between eating events are actually pretty rare. That is just about as hard to force as conversion. Try not to ruin your good days with that ideal. If you are getting from meal to meal without snacking, and are enjoying what you eat, well...

Thanks, mustloseweight and oolala53. I have been compliant on N days until yesterday when I woke up in the middle of the night and felt compelled to eat a small snack. But, today, I'm back on track. I agree wholeheartedly that just getting from meal to meal without snacking and really enjoying the food I eat is enough for now.

I can see how doing that all week makes the urge to eat less compelling on the weekends (at least sometimes).

In Reinhold's book, he talks about looking at the bigger picture of what is happening over a year or several years. A wild S day here and there isn't much compared to the daily excess I've been used to.