Everyday Systems

If I were considered overweight, it is only about a couple pounds. I’m 5’4†and 147 lbs. At the most I’m about 152 lbs, which is a BMI of about 25. That is JUST at overweight.

So my question is, will this diet work for me?

SNACKING—I don’t do that much heavy snacking. I eat, say, a banana or a few peanuts or a low-fat mozzarella sting cheese stick for a snack (2 snacks a day). There ARE times, however, where I go overboard and eat more snacks than I should. Or that I break down because I’m so hungry or need energy that I get a Nature Valley bar from the vending machine.

SWEETS—I do have a weakness for ice cream and chocolate, and eat them once or twice a day, and in moderate doses. BUT, of course, there are days that are worse than others and my ice cream bowl is filled. Plus, DQ Blizzards once a week of about 700 calories are NOT helping me.

SECONDS—At dinner, I do have seconds… I can eat half a large pizza… and do about once a week! Ugh.

So, if I followed this diet, will I see results too? How “bad†do your habits have to be to see results?

BTW, ideally I’d love to be 140.


EDIT: I forgot to mention I work out 30 or 60 minutes about 5-6 days a week.

Short answer: yes.

Longer answer: I've never been more then slightly fatter than I'd like, and my diet has always been reasonable. This has simply cleaned up a few areas where I hadn't really been paying attention to my overall eating habits.

From what others have said, I gather progress will be slower than if you were extremely overweight. I didn't start to see visible results for a couple of months, but I'm still improving in health.

FYI I started at BMI 26.5 and am now down to BMI 23, 15 months later. So, yes, it could make you lose weight. Or maintain. Of course it depends on many variables... is the noS way of life something that appeals to you and that you could sustain for the rest of your life?

I would LOVE to down to a BMI of 23... that would put me at about 135 lbs. I know that no two results are the same, but that's an inspriring success! I recalculated my BMI online & it turns out I'm at 26 at my heaviest (152) and right now I'm at 25 (148).

And yes, I this way of eating definitely appeals to me. I think I could sustain this for the rest of my life. When I think about it, it's the way I used to eat. My mom never kept a lot of sweets in the house and I hardly EVER snacked.

Sure!.
I'm just at 25 on the BMI scale and I had already lost a little bit of weight.
But if weight loss is not what you are looking for, there are other perks, too.

If you are worrying about some habits, eating the NoS way will put an end to it.
If you are on your way to gain weight over the years, it will put an end to that, as well.
If you just want to maintain your current way, NoS is just the way to do it.

My habits were just about like yours, that caused me to have a slow but unrelenting weight gain over the years, even though I've been exercising for so long and just about the way you do.
But at some point you may ask yourself: if I keep gaining a little bit of weight every single year, how am I going to be in 10 years, in 20 years?

Well, eating this way (which is to say: in orderly fashion and in moderation) takes care of that question nicely.

Well, health I'm not too worried about, because my numbers are great and exercising definitely keeps me healthy. but you brought up my concern about gradual gain!

I tell that to my fiance and he thinks I'm being silly when I say, "if I'm this now, how much will I be later?" It would just be nice to get to 140 or 135 and stay there!

Oh and I do have a wedding dress to fit into! I'm getting married in December. This is good motivation to get down to 140, let me tell you. And don't worry, I bought a wedding dress that fit, not a dress that's a size too small hoping I'd lose 20 lbs, like many girls do.

And yesterday I did my no S day. I had NO snacks and NO seconds. I felt a little hungry between lunch and dinner, but the feeling went away long enough until my dinner, at which I had one plate. I was at a baby shower and I felt good eating SLOOOWLY and sticking to my one plate, while others went back and forth two or three times. I didn't tell anyone about what I was doing, b/c those conversations usually get bad and I didn't feel like being discouraged. I did have a little bit of sweets, by the way, but only a tiny piece of cake and a tiny canolli. Who has showers on Friday nights anyways?!? I'll start officially on Monday.

Don't start Monday, start today. You CAN start on an S day. Psychologically I think it makes more sense because you CAN'T fail. Your first two days will automatically be a success. With two successful days under your belt you will have added confidence to get through the N days. You also don't set yourself up for feelings of deprivation because you don't think of these two days as "last days before the diet" the way you do on diets. You won't feel deprived because you know you CAN eat the treats you want on No S, because you ALREADY HAVE, and will again next weekend.

Also, having a slip up is part of the process. You are building a habit. If you did it perfectly all the time you wouldn't be building it, you would already possess it. The "fad diet mentality" makes us think that if we don't follow it perfectly it is an automatic failure and we should "be bad" until Monday when we start again. This is what got us here. This is not what is going to get us to lifelong healthy relationships with food. You had one slip up. I did too yesterday. It's okay. The thing is, when you slip up, you recognize that right away and get back on track immediately.

Of course, depending on if you are close to the shower's guest of honor and how routine showers are for you, that could be an S day. It probably is. Special days are part of the program too. But given that "fad diet mentality" is (in my oppinion) the biggest challenge when building the No S habit I wanted to emphasize the other points.

You are so right. I'll consider yesterday and today part of the S-Diet way of life. . . Today I had ANOTHER shower (bridal this time!) and I had no seconds, hardly any snacks, and since it's Satruday, I had two little cupcakes. This is a lot less than what I usually eat at showers and since I'm not depriving myself of anything, I had on my plate exactly what I wanted. So liberating!!!



Thanks everyone for all your feedback! I really like this forum and glad I found it!

Nichole

nfalcone wrote: So my question is, will this diet work for me?

SNACKING—I don’t do that much heavy snacking. I eat, say, a banana or a few peanuts or a low-fat mozzarella sting cheese stick for a snack (2 snacks a day). There ARE times, however, where I go overboard and eat more snacks than I should. Or that I break down because I’m so hungry or need energy that I get a Nature Valley bar from the vending machine.

SWEETS—I do have a weakness for ice cream and chocolate, and eat them once or twice a day, and in moderate doses. BUT, of course, there are days that are worse than others and my ice cream bowl is filled. Plus, DQ Blizzards once a week of about 700 calories are NOT helping me.

SECONDS—At dinner, I do have seconds… I can eat half a large pizza… and do about once a week! Ugh.

So, if I followed this diet, will I see results too? How “bad†do your habits have to be to see results?

BTW, ideally I’d love to be 140.


EDIT: I forgot to mention I work out 30 or 60 minutes about 5-6 days a week.

Nicole, I think that if you saved the sweets, snacks and seconds for S days, you'd be surprised at how much weight you would lose. I wouldn't be surprised if you got to LESS than 140.

One of the best reasons for No S, I think, is maintenance. It's really hard to gain weight when eating this way barring some drastic change in metabolism or diet.

Look at it this way. A banana, mozarella sticks and sweet goodie add up to about 200 calories a day or 1000 calories a week if you eat that about 5x a week. If you reduce just three days of snacking you will come out to 400 calories.

If you don't think that 600 calories count, read Mindless Eating by Brian Wasnick (sp). It's available through the No S Diet store. He does the math on how these small daily overloads on calories cause that invisible weight gain that we can't account for. As you get older, as you have kids and time for working out shrinks, as you get busier, you can still maintain.

This is not a recommendation to start counting calories, btw. I'm just doing that to show why No S is effective.

Blithe Morning wrote:One of the best reasons for No S, I think, is maintenance. It's really hard to gain weight when eating this way barring some drastic change in metabolism or diet.

Look at it this way. A banana, mozarella sticks and sweet goodie add up to about 200 calories a day or 1000 calories a week if you eat that about 5x a week. If you reduce just three days of snacking you will come out to 400 calories.

If you don't think that 600 calories count, read Mindless Eating by Brian Wasnick (sp). It's available through the No S Diet store. He does the math on how these small daily overloads on calories cause that invisible weight gain that we can't account for. As you get older, as you have kids and time for working out shrinks, as you get busier, you can still maintain.

This is not a recommendation to start counting calories, btw. I'm just doing that to show why No S is effective.

I think you make a wonderful point. After college and juggling an internship AND a part-time-job at Boston Market which basically involved only 3 meals a day (if even), I settled into a regular 8-hour job sitting around all day and added snacks to my diet. That is probably where my weight snuck back up to 150 lbs. So hopefully I'll get back to my comfortable weight of 140 and stay there with this super easy diet. This morning I was 147.4.

Blithe Morning wrote:One of the best reasons for No S, I think, is maintenance.

One of the best reasons for No S, I think, are the good habits -- which can be taught by example to others! Think of it: good habits + good food and all of a sudden you've got a much healthier and saner way of eating!