Everyday Systems

Hi. One notification I am going to start from today is one small treat per day. It’s usullly sugar I crave so will be a biscuit or small chocolate bar or a latte. I will not have any have any S days at weekends.
1- do u think it’s possible for the plan to work and for me to lose weight with this mod?
2- roughly how many calories should the snack be. Is 200-250 calories of a sweet snack too much for the plan to work ?


All views appreciated.

Hi babybird! And welcome back to the NoS forums!

1. Absolutely yes! Speaking from experience, it has worked for me; I'm now in my third year of maintenance and still use my mod successfully to maintain my weight loss.

2. 200-250 calories for a treat can work, but this is highly dependent on what your personal total daily caloric needs are. The shorter and less active you are, the less calories you need. Only you can determine if your treat takes up too great a portion of your daily calorie allotment to keep you on track towards your weight loss goal. Be sure to weigh yourself frequently (I prefer daily; minimum should be once a week) to see that you're still losing with the inclusion of your treat. You can adjust accordingly based on that number.

For me personally, I found it extremely helpful to set a general calorie goal benchmark for weight loss initially, and now I keep around it for weight maintenance. Here is a fantastic calculator that takes into account all relevant information to determine your daily caloric amount for weight loss. From there, you can build your three meals with a treat around that amount, adjusting accordingly to your own food preferences and speed of weight loss desired.

Good luck!

Third year of maintenance! That's inspiring.

Thanks Life, very inspiring that you are still maintaining. I like this calorie calculator..it allows me atleast 200 more calories than any other calculator I've looked at! ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜

It is possible, but I have to tell you in eight years here, I have seen that strategy fail more than not. A little often led to a lot and either it was abandoned or No S was abandoned. Now more succeeders will come out of the woodwork, but I am reporting my observation. I don't have stats, and am not going to comb through.

If any strategy leads you to take in less than your body needs- and that calorie need can be driven by multiple influences-, you will lose. As said, there is no way to know what the sweet portion should be without knowing what the rest of your day is like. You can't eat the same size meals plus a sweet and get the same results as without the sweet. (That's true for booze, too, and even more so because it is even less satiating than solid food.) Something's gotta give! But going without may not be sustainable for you, even if it does result in weight loss. What else on your plates will you eat less of? What will bring you enough pleasure and vitality?

It is certainly theoretically possible to eat little enough even with sweets to lose weight. It's just that for some, as I say, most people I've seen here, a little is not enough. It is so easy to overdo it. I myself find it more annoying to have just a couple of bites. I always want more later. So I go for what helps me feel satisfied with what I DO eat.

I hope you would not have to become dependent on calorie counting, though for those who seem stuck, it can help them see which foods they are eating too large of portions of, if their fullness isn't guiding them enough. Then they can set guidelines for the serving size on your plate. That''s how it's worked out for me, though it's not the way I planned it. I was already in the habit of eating rather balanced meals. It was overdoing sweets especially and every day that was my big problem.

And it can be shocking how little is needed to sustain weight, especially for shorter, older women who have lost weight. For example, with my stats, I would have to AVERAGE a little over 1200 calories a day to lose a pound a week, if i had never lost weight. And that's with NO extras on S days. If I was willing to go more slowly, but I wanted sumptuous S days, N days would need to be quite spare. Having lost weight, I'd need even less. No S can't defy the laws of physics.

A 250-calorie sweet a day for me would account for more than entire day's food if I was trying to lose.

You asked.

It's a difficult one, it has obviously worked for someone and will have for others.

I would strongly recommend having it as part of a meal too.

I'd say try it and when the habit is established try missing one day a week just for the hell of it. Then if you can do that miss another.

For me losing my need and urge to have something sweet and seeing what I put in my mouth as a treat or reward has been the thing that has made my relationship with food more normal.

For me I wanted a way of eating that lost that diet mentality. It's my normal way of life now.

If you need it to get you going do it but do consider your reasons for not being able to go without.

Good luck

Jx

I normally don't chime in on this particular mod (when it is discussed), because I know everyone is different. But I'm going to go out on a limb today and say - it sure seems unhealthy for us to need to have a sugar-load at least once every day. When I started NoS, I needed to moderate seconds and snacks, but eating dessert everyday (even then) would have seemed kind of .... dependent to me.

I'm against it instinctively, but then again, we are all different and I have great friends on this board that have been successful with having a dessert every day. Babybird, let me say this - here on these forums we all support each other in finding what works for us. If it works for you, yay! But if it doesn't, be honest about that, reevaluate, and try something different. You won't know until you become the ultimate health scientist, experimenting with your own body.

I don't want to sound preach-y or scold-y, but I do agree with automatedeating on this one. Needing processed sugar every day doesn't seem to be a good thing, especially if it's displacing other calories, but even if it's not.

It's only when I stop having candy, cake, cookies, ice cream, whatever every day that my palette gets rebooted and I can 1) taste my food better and 2) truly enjoy the sweetness of healthy things like good-quality fresh fruit.

I'm not sure a daily sugar spike is necessarily great for your body either. I imagine it depends in part on whether or not you're creeping into insulin resistance.