Well, I've been and gone and am coming back again.

Nell1223 · Post by **Nell1223** » Sat Sep 03, 2016 11:41 am

I've been a bit all over the place with my eating recently - I did 4 months of No S, but a few weeks ago I was floundering: no weight loss and urges to eat cakes on S and No S days. So I looked up intuitive eating and no diet diets etc and thought I'd have a go at them - i caught myself out from day 1 as I was supposed to only eat when I'm hungry but I didn't know when I was hungry ..... So I thought I'll not do anything - just follow my instinct. 2 weeks on and I don't know what I'm doing - I'm snacking on biscuits and acting in a bloody minded way eating cakes and things that are rubbishy and I don't even like them.
So.......I'm coming back to NO S. I need to think about why I went off the wagon and how I can keep myself on it what do you advise me to do?

I think when my life is a bit chaotic and stressful my eating becomes a mirror of it and I've been struggling recently to cope with a decline in my mums dementia and her general health - I think she's getting near to the end of her life - I'm expecting that phone call any day. Also we're house hunting and have sold our house but were let down on the house we made an offer on. We're helping my recently widowed sister in law move house too.
Here I am - back again - trying - not perfect, but trying

Merry · Post by **Merry** » Sun Sep 04, 2016 4:17 am

I'm sorry. It sounds like you have a lot of tough and stressful things going on right now.

One thing that has helped me was to decide ahead of time how to deal with a plateau. I decided that I would wait 3 months before making any changes, and that then the changes would either be contents of plates (like focusing on more veggies), size of plates, or exercise. That helped me when I plateaued for about 5 weeks last spring. I think we have to give the body room to make adjustments rather than expect it to behave in a certain way all the time--and ourselves too. I know I didn't gain this weight overnight--I won't lose it overnight either!

Anyway...if you can have a plan of attack ahead of time so that a plateau doesn't throw you into looking for something else, that might help. I do the same thing on a smaller scale with wanting treats etc... (I can have it but have to wait for my S day.) If you can find something else that's soothing (a cup of coffee or tea often feel like a treat for me, or sometimes a diet coke, or maybe a certain food at meal time), maybe that will help in the hardest times. If there's something non-food that's a treat (if you like baths, maybe some special bubble bath or bath soaps for example)--something that is a special way of taking care of you while you do the hard work of taking care of your mom.

Be gracious with yourself and realize that it's not the end of the world if you have an off day or week or month too. Here you are back again, for the sane, regularity of NoS.

Nell1223 · Post by **Nell1223** » Sun Sep 04, 2016 10:56 am

Hi, Merry. Thanks for replying You're absolutely right!! I think when I get like this I can't see "the wood for the trees" as we say in the uk. I do need to give myself a break and just coast - I've got where just thinking about diets or looking at diet books makes me want to run for the hills.

The advice you've given me here is what I'd tell other people but somehow I don't tell myself. - I'm my worst enemy😀
Again, thank you

RAWCOOKIE · Post by **RAWCOOKIE** » Sun Sep 04, 2016 2:02 pm

Start again on Monday - Day 1 No S: Three meals - No Snacks, No Sweets, No Seconds.

Aim for a 21-day streak of successes - three weeks of No S.

If you mess up, mark it down as fail, and start again. Your brain will soon learn if you give it consistent feedback. There's no limit on how many times you can re-start - just keep re-starting until you stop stopping!

PS simplifying your eating (three meals a day) will take some of the stress off of you, so you are strong enough to cope with what's going on for you at the moment. Life is rarely devoid of crises!

oolala53 · Post by **oolala53** » Sun Sep 04, 2016 6:29 pm

First, I recommend you post to this thread:
https://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=10878

Weight loss is not the only reason to try to bring some order to eating. IMHO, it's not the best one at all. In fact, it's very low on the totem pole. Losing weight alone has rarely led anyone to eat better permanently.

I gently suggest that you convince yourself that No S is actually the BEST way to deal with unpleasant or difficult life events. When we say we eat because of this problem or that problem, we kind of set ourselves up. We tell ourselves, "Oh, as long as life is problem-free, I can eat moderately, but as soon as it's not, how can I possibly not give in to the desire to overdo it? It's too hard. I need that outlet. Nothing else is pleasant. I need that pleasure." Etc. Sunk!

I don't pretend I always keep to this, but believing that at stressful times, it's even more important to make the effort to keep to regular meals, even if they aren't the best foods, can be a life saver. I personally think that is better than even snacking on the best quality food. My first successful years on No S were some of the most stressful of my life. I know it would have been worse if I had still been eating compulsively. At the end of a day, feeding my body well and allowing those gaps, even when I had to really hold on, was better.

I hope you can hold on for a couple of weeks at least to find out if it's true for you, too, weight loss or no, with urges for cakes or no.

Nell1223 · Post by **Nell1223** » Sun Sep 04, 2016 10:34 pm

Thanks Rawcookie for keeping me on track, and thanks Oolala for the kick up the bum - you're absolutely right and I need to reminded of this sometimes.
I've always been greedy/ enjoyed my food, and my weight has gone up and down in the past 30 years or so, although only by about 35ib maximum either way. But i was doing OK til my mum got taken into hospital last summer then my eating went a bit haywire and the weight crept up. I'd get to the hospital most days for visiting at 3pm (it was a 100 mile return trip). After the visit I'd then have a coffee and a Danish and then set off for home, getting back before dinner, have some cheese and biscuits as I felt that I'd missed my lunch, then at 8, have my dinner and some wine. I got into a bad bout of insomnia during this period that went on til April this year. I still get it but not so bad, thankfully.

Like you say, Oolala, I can't blame my eating on whatever stressful things are going on in my life - as there'll always be something going on - it's rarely perfect or calm(who want perfect and calm?😀) BUT I think that during this time when my mums illness got worse, my dysfunctional eating habits reared their heads and I'm still working on bringing them back to some semblance of normality. I know that some of the stressful things in my life could go on for a time and, therefore, in spite of them, I've got to live my life as best as I can and not let these unpleasant stressful things cause my eating etc to go berserk and affect my health and happiness. It's a struggle but I'll keep working at it.
See you later folks

oolala53 · Post by **oolala53** » Sat Oct 01, 2016 12:52 pm

Didn't really mean it to be a kick up the bum! Just a way to think about it differently, from someone who used stress (mostly just anxiety) for decades as a justification for eating. We're not alone in it; it's a pretty accepted cultural habit, as are all the S's.

I still use it (sometimes it's a red, but I try to just keep it to hefty plates at my meals).

I'll check to see if you have more recent posts somewhere but hope you're doing well.

pinkhippie · Post by **pinkhippie** » Wed Oct 26, 2016 6:42 pm

oolala53 wrote:First, I recommend you post to this thread:
https://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=10878

Weight loss is not the only reason to try to bring some order to eating. IMHO, it's not the best one at all. In fact, it's very low on the totem pole. Losing weight alone has rarely led anyone to eat better permanently.

I gently suggest that you convince yourself that No S is actually the BEST way to deal with unpleasant or difficult life events. When we say we eat because of this problem or that problem, we kind of set ourselves up. We tell ourselves, "Oh, as long as life is problem-free, I can eat moderately, but as soon as it's not, how can I possibly not give in to the desire to overdo it? It's too hard. I need that outlet. Nothing else is pleasant. I need that pleasure." Etc. Sunk!

I don't pretend I always keep to this, but believing that at stressful times, it's even more important to make the effort to keep to regular meals, even if they aren't the best foods, can be a life saver. I personally think that is better than even snacking on the best quality food. My first successful years on No S were some of the most stressful of my life. I know it would have been worse if I had still been eating compulsively. At the end of a day, feeding my body well and allowing those gaps, even when I had to really hold on, was better.

I hope you can hold on for a couple of weeks at least to find out if it's true for you, too, weight loss or no, with urges for cakes or no.

I totally agree with this. I think this is what led me away from no S last time when I was being quite successful and really changing my habits. I wanted faster weight loss... sigh... Sometimes it is easy to forget the other reasons we want/need to set up sane reasonable eating habits, its definitely a wonderful form of self care that we need during stressful times in our lives.