Everyday Systems

Here are a couple of things that have occurred to me over the month-plus I've been No-S'ing. They're thoughts that have probably been thought before, but I think every successful dieter has to reinvent the wheel to some extent so I'll just share my own discovery of these established truths here.

1) Time is the ultimate luxury.

This, sort of a Mindful Eating 101 principle, first came to me when I bought a box of clementines about a month ago. I'd eat one with every meal, trying to go through them before they went bad. It came to feel like a treat, unwrapping the peel, taking the juicy sections out one by one and removing the pith and the threads before popping each one into my mouth, breathing in the gorgeous perfumey scent all along. Then there's breakfast. I'm taking a lot longer to make breakfast for myself these days: cooking oatmeal, measuring out the fixings for my smoothies and blending them up, and/or heating up soysage in the oven. And these breakfasts are the best! I feel a lot happier now as I start my day, even if I have less time to dawdle on the Internet the way I used to before work. My meals generally have been more slow and leisurely lately--when you eat less, you want to make every bite count--and I'm getting a lot more out of them than I would from a calorie-packed salty-sugary grease attack from the drive-through, snarfed down in the car. Which leads me to number 2:

2) No-S has freed me from obsessing about food.

Beyond making sure I have enough to eat at each meal (and for me that includes keeping a list of restaurants in my head where I can get a reasonable portion of something not too unhealthy in a pinch), I don't spend all the time thinking about food anymore. When the answer to any sweet or snack craving is, "No, not until S-Day", it nips things in the bud and frees me up for more productive daydreams, like the unfairness of the Best Cinematography Oscar awarded to Pan's Labyrinth or my next knitting project. It's nice, really, to be free of the constant scheming and rationalizing about snacks and sweets. It reminds me that there's a lot more to me than my snack preferences and weaknesses. I'm not just that strange person who craves cheese instead of chocolate, I'm that strange person who loves taking her dog out for a walk in cold weather and likes to read big fat 19th-century novels and has no problem wearing high heels.

If I didn't have S-Days for indulging my cravings, I know the deprivation might get to be too much. But for now, on N-Days, I can just put off dealing with the cravings until S-Day, secure in the knowledge that if the craving is still there, it will be indulged then. It's pretty liberating when you look at it like that.

Flora, I absolutely agree.

Oddly... cooking real food takes more time. That's a common complaint/excuse for not eating healthy food. BUT limiting "eating as a default activity" makes discretionary time more noticeable and MUCH more available. I'm certainly willing to spend some of it cooking. (I actually like cooking, though.)

Along those lines, I am finding that making myself decide "so... what DO I want to do?" is a really healthy alternative to stuffing my face. And I don't just mean healthy physically (which of course it is), but healthy mentally. It was a little uncomfortable at first... which is probably why I was eating, as an easy avoidance of a question that was a little bit hard at the time. It has gotten much easier to answer.

Flora, i totally agree, and I'm only 1 week into this
Your item 1) reminded me of a fascinating lecture given by Thich Nhat Hanh on mindful eating. Where he says look at the orange and see the sun inside. Beautiful!
Then your item 2) expresses exactly what I feel. If given too much leeway, I tend to complicate my eating, so I need rules. No sweets on weekdays, period. I guess sometimes I just need to be bossed And I don't have the despair of thinking I'll never eat my treats again - it's just wait till the weekend.

Flora,

It's funny that while most diets don't succeed in making us any thinner over the long run, they do succeed in making us hate and obsess over food.

One of the reasons I can recommend the No S Diet to just about anyone with a clear conscience is because even if it doesn't wind up working for them in terms of weight loss, at least it's not going to have that awful side effect. In fact, as you point out, it has the opposite effect.

I've also been noticing recently that I eat much more slowly than I used to. I use to be racing to get as many portions in as possible before the meal was over. Now I'm often the last person finished, even if others have had seconds or thirds. I think knowing that there is no point in rushing because this plate is all there is, that in fact you should eat it more slowly to draw out the pleasure, makes a big difference. This was totally unconscious. I didn't decide or try to eat slowly and "mindfully." It was a side effect of that one simple "1=done" rule.

Reinhard

Flora, Great post! I agree with you totally! It takes longer to eat for me because I am taking the time to make and consume a full, complete, and balanced meal-because I know I won't be eating again for several hours, so I'll need the energy.

I find myself ENJOYING the food *so much more* than when I was gobbling up something quick just to fill the hole in my stomach till I would have time to eat something good. Invariably that time never came! So I basically ate junk continuously every day, and wound up feeling like a slug. Now I can actually see what they mean when they say the French (for example) *enjoy* their food-they don't feel guilt, or worry about whether it's healthy or not-and yet they stay slender.

I am loving this! Many Many THANKS Reinhard!!!!

KCCC wrote: Along those lines, I am finding that making myself decide "so... what DO I want to do?" is a really healthy alternative to stuffing my face.

That is SO true. Constant eating, and the excess bodyfat that goes with it, make a convenient excuse for not answering that question...for the afternoon, for a living, for life.

Hello to a fellow knitter, flora!

Your post reminds me that the biggest thing I'm getting out of NoS is that no matter WHERE my weight levels off (I'm letting my body reach it's own 'goal', while I just plod along happily eating NoS)---------I will be fine. I no longer have obsessions about food, I no longer am afraid--"will my body respond to THIS way of eating--will THIS be the magic key to weight loss?" (Meanwhile panicking, which causes the body to make cortisol and hold onto weight--tsk!)

I can just relax and go about my life, knowing (and seeing) that eating this way and getting a moderate amt of exercise in daily work and play and errands (I like to bike to the store) will GUIDE my body to it's ideal weight!