I lived it.

[Lilly]

I am 58 years old. I considser myself in DIETER'S REHAB. Reinhard is right. I do not need statistical proof. I lived the no s diet 1950-1970. I weighed 115 pounds just doing "what comes naturally." We didn't own scales. We didn't weigh. The only time we weighed was as a requirement for physical fitness in gym(which is how I know I weighed 115 pounds). The only other time I was weighed was in the gynie's office for my pre-marital exam. I never saw anyone with anorexia while growing up. I am sharing this because if you are younger than me, I suspect "snacking" was part of your upbringing and the no s eating may sound foreign and even scary. What IS scary is how the diet industry took over. When I was a kid there were no "supermarkets." We have supermarkets now to have shelf space for the 1,000's of snack food that weren't available before. The only milk that we had was milk. In other words what is now called full fat milk. The first time I ever even heard of ff or skim milk, it was called "blue milk." I felt the need to let the younger people know that it wasn't til the 70's and Twiggy(look her up) became popular that the diet craziness started. The diet industry is a cancer.

[Nichole]

23-year-old here. I know who Twiggy is! (Even before she was a judge on America's Next Top Model)... I was . . . kinda raised with snacking. I mean we had snacks in pre-school, but I never heard of it again. Mom discouraged the eating of too many sweets and potato chips. I only got into snacking the last couple years when "diet-gurus" started hawking them.

[Lilly]

Have you seen pictures of Twiggy when she was a Twig?
I was just ruminating how every friend I have(in my age group) who is fat/obese today, has a wedding picture of herself at a normal weight.

[Nichole]

Yeah... I always thought she had a beautiful face, though.

And I'm getting married in December... I hope I don't end up like that! Which is why I want to get to 140 and stay there (well I know I'll put on SOME pounds with changes down the road). I'd like to think I won't lose control, but you never know what life will throw at you. My mom's pretty thin though (a size 6!!), so who knows.

[lmt2pt]

Lilly, thank you for posting this. It reminds me *why* I look to my grandmother and great grandmothers (we have kids young in my family, one is still alive and I knew the other growing up) as my inspiration to follow No S. My great grandparents did not believe in snacking. Hors d'ouevres were only for cocktail parties and holidays. Desserts were a Sunday treat. They lived this way throughout their lives. That is why my great grandmother still turns heads at almost 90!

My grandmother was a hot mama until the 70s when she tried to diet to support my mother's efforts. My mother got fat eating Doritos and drinking Pepsi whenever she got the chance. Then her doctor put her on a diet and they would be good for awhile, start losing weight, then end up binging. Since she was a teenager they were on every diet imaginable. Learning my eating habits from her, I gained weight as a teen and the three of us dieted together.

Well, my great grandmother talked my mother into stopping the madness and just eating "normal", like she does. It worked, she dropped the pounds. It took me longer to figure it out. Actually, it was finding this website and seeing someone who doesn't live off social security doing it before the lightbulb really came on for me. (Yes, I admit I've been wooed away by quick weight loss promises, but I came back to what really works and I've stayed put this time)

[Lilly]

Someone here said "Don't stuff your face. Face your stuff". That is what I have been doing since seeing The No S Diet in WW.
Thank you for letting me share my memories.
1. We had a real turkey ONCE a year(skin and all) and all the fixings on Thanksgiving. Turkey never tasted so good to the body and soul as it was really a treat.
2. I have no memory of what we ate on Christmas day. The highlights were the midnight service, Christmas Day service and PRESENTS! I do remember Mother made a mean fruitcake soaked in something, Rum?, weeks before Christmas Day so it could cure.
3. Easter was about Sunrise service, egg coloring/hunt and finding your Easter Basket and ham.
4. Cake was called Birthday cake. There was no "just" cake. You enjoyed it on birthdays.
5. Chips and soda(today's Big Gulp would have served 4 easily) were what you had at a picnic like say July Fourth.
6. If you were foolish enough to try to eat a piece of lunchmeat or cheese Mother said you had to make a sandwich and it was called one of your 3 meals.
Just like Reinhard says. There were S days.

[cornelia]

I'm 64 and totally agree with the Lilly. Back in the 50's there was no "fast food". Restaurant eating was very rare. We had breakfast, lunch and supper. We ate to live, now we live to eat. We didn't even have a tv until 1957, so there were obviously more things to do than sit and stare at a box. I probably weighed 100 lbs soaking wet and stayed that way well into the 60's, even after 3 kids. Somewhere along the way, food became an idol and we got fat. I liked it better when we weren't so "super sized".

[Lilly]

and we drank our full fat milk, orange juice etc., at meal time, in a SIX ounce jelly jar. Yes, SIX OUNCES. You can begin to see the problem and how much bigger portions have gotten. Let's just say as portion sizes have increased, so have we.
Speaking of which, NO ONE carried bottled water anywhere. Hmmm. We did just fine drinking from a fountain when we were actually thirsty.

[Blithe Morning]

Eating out was a treat when I was a kid in the late 60's, early 70's. If we were out and about and I said "I'm hungry" the standard answer is "We have food at home. Just wait."

Mom went to work outside the home when I was 10 but our lifestyle did not change that much. We still ate at home. I would say the major change is we had pizza once a week; One large cheese pie to serve 4 - 5 people.

And yes, I remember the incredulity when Perrier first came out. PAY that much for water???? Unthinkable.

[joasia]

Lilly,

Would you be willing to post a typical breakfast, lunch, and dinner back when you were a kid in the 50s-70s? Sure would love to see it. What did your mother make?

[mjn]

I've really enjoyed all of the thoughts on this. I grew up in the 60's and 70's. We ate 3 meals a day and very rarely had snacks. Then, I think in the mid to late 70's alot more fast food places started showing up and Dorito's became popular!! We did alot more snacking and guess what??? I started gaining weight along with many of my friends. For meals growing up, we had a meat, vegetable, maybe potato, salad (lettuce or jello) and that was it for supper. We had treats for special occasions. I didn't grow up drinking pop, either. I remember having a small bowl of popcorn on Sunday nights and that was a big treat. I work in an elementary school as a nurse, and the kids get 2 items for morning snack one is healthy such as fruit or vegetable and one is processed, for example sunchips, Trix yogurt, etc. The kids have very large portions at lunch and there is so much waste. The food is not homemade like it was when I grew up. Our school lunches were great. Now everything gets thrown from the box, to the oven or microwave. Wow, what a culture we live in.

[blueskighs]

Wow, I love this thread.

I was born in the early sixties and my parents divorced when I was 2 1/2 I dont' remember any regularity about eating .... except when my dad remarried and then the family did the dinner thing but it was super stressful and I rarely liked what we had to eat...

my stepmom FORCED me to eat many many foods that I hated and were actually unhealthy.

I would sit at the table for hours refusing to eat ...
at some point I gave in and just started eating anything put in front of me

I was responsible for my breakfast and lunch .. I mostly prefered to buy candy on the way to school and lunch was an eskimo pie, chocolate milk and a star crunch.

I know GROSS!!!!!!!!!!!!

it wasnt' until I got out on my own and started to learn to cook that I started even approaching anything like food sanity.

It has taken me over twenty years to learn how to feed myself ... I have really needed the NO S diet to build a sensible structure ...

Blueskighs

[Jamiebf]

Thank you for sharing all you memories from the past. I really enjoyed reading them all. It is so true. We have all fallen into the whole food obsession. Thank God I feel there is a way out.

[Lilly]

milczar,
Breakfast was scrambled eggs and 1 piece of toast or Wheeties(yum-not) or cheerios and a 6 ounce glass of milk or juice.
lunch was a sandwich with a piece of fruit.
Dinner was always a one serving(one plate event). And the plates were smaller than the dinner plates are now. On that plate was always a serving of salad, casserole or piece of chicken, fish, or meat and one slice of buttered bread with milk. And it all fit on the plate, to show you serving sizes. This is an for instance menu but pretty accurate in concept. A rare after school treat was a 9" coffee cake divided 7 ways.
Mother had 5 children, herself and Dad, til I was 13, to feed. Mother made just enough to feed seven so seconds didn't happen. Leftovers(except for holidays) didn't happen.
And regarding my comment on water, I think we are having water pushed on us in copious amounts to be able to wash down all the excess food we now consume. When I was a kid we were told to drink water if we got hot lest we suffer sun stroke. No one I ever met suffered sunstroke and we drank water only when were were thirsty. Bottled water and daily requirements would seem to be part and parcel in cahoots with the diet industry. Someone decided we needed 64 ounces(now down to 48 ounces) of water daily and the bottled water industry was born. We had PE every day, walked several blocks to and from school, played outside til dinner was ready getting far more exercise than kids today,(not once carrying a bottle of water) but they need more water than we did?

[cornelia]

In the 50's we usually had oatmeal or malt-o-meal for breakfast. Lunch was brown bag, peanut butter and homemade jelly. Supper was meat, potatoes and gravy (watered down) and whatever veggie and fruit we had canned the previous summer. Mama cooked just enough for everyone to have 1 serving of meat and potatoes. Desserts were for Sunday. Snacks? Maybe popcorn. There was penny candy and candy bars, but we didn't have it in the house as a snack. Pizza Hut had just opened a little place across from the college in Wichita (it was the only one in the world at that time) and I got to go there once when I was a junior in High School. We thought it was wonderful and they "might" need to find a bigger place if it caught on. (who knew) Drug Stores had soda fountains and usually served just drinks, malts and floats. That was a treat on Saturday nite. BUT, everyone lived the same way and ate the same way. It's harder now. This isn't about food, but we could pool our dimes and nickles on Fri. and Sat. nights and cruise around all evening with a dollar's worth of gas. It was 25 cents a gallon. Those really were happy days.

[Lilly]

I forgot to mention that we also has S days only we obviously didn't call them that as Reinhard wasn't even born yet.
On the weekends we might have popcorn after dinner or jello with fruit or cocoa etc. We also seldom ate out. Probably a dozen times in 20 years.
On reflection, it boiled down to potion size and when we ate. Sound familiar?

[silver]

lilly, you just made me realize one thing that never crossed my mind ever before. i'm 31 and i remember these time only because in my country they ended only in 1989. that's when we overthrew communism. before that we has only 2 types of milk, full fat and half fat. two types of yogurt, white one and fruit one, one type of butter, made from milk. no margarine. and everything just had to be consumed fresh because the communist didn't use preservatives mostly. only when it comes to preserved fruit and such things.and we never heard of twiggy. sweets were available, quite a variety of them, but they were considered special and we had maybe 3 chocolate bars a week. so you made me realize i already lived no s. till 1989. since then everything changed. and we have this eating mess here. it's not as bad as what i've seen in the states.but we are maybe getting there step by step.

but anorexia did exist. i had it back than. that's why i don't think we should only give credit to twiggy for it.i even lost my periods. that was when i stopped. the only difference was that they didn't really regard it as anorexia. i was in hospital and the were so nasty to me, because they didn't really know what was wrong with me and because they thought i'm just a spoiled brat (which i might or might not have been) that it also contributed to my subconscious fear of being too slim. i'm still somehow afraid that skinny = unhealthy = hospital = depression. eating disorders were very rare and i think that's because they didn't receive so much media attention. so if you got an eating disorder back then it was "genuine". now it might be a kind of fashion. just a guess. i'm not saying media shouldn't discuss it but maybe they should change the way it's done. sometimes it's just not clear how bad this way of life is. i don't know i never really thought about it to be honest

[silver]

oh, and one more thing. not only that there were no supermarkets, but people bought a lot of things straight from producers. for example my grandmother sold milk, eggs, vegetables and flowers at a local marketplace. everything from her own garden and animals. and she had a lot of regular customers, that she used to visit at home and bring them the stuff. people simply knew that it was better than what you buy at shops and behaved according to this knowledge

[stevecooper]

This is really interesting. You've been kind enough to explain the norms. Could you explain how people reacted when those norms weren't followed?

What were the attitudes to someone who didn't eat the traditional way? Imagine that you'd seen

- an adult walking the streets, eating a snack
- someone eating a meal not at a table with the family?
- a child or adult fixing themselves a snack between dinner and bedtime?
- someone who frequented restaurants regularly?
- someone who asked for seconds?
- someone who asked for puddings?

How would they have been perceived? How might you or your parents have described them? What language would you have used?

[wosnes]

This is really interesting. You've been kind enough to explain the norms. Could you explain how people reacted when those norms weren't followed?

What were the attitudes to someone who didn't eat the traditional way? Imagine that you'd seen

- an adult walking the streets, eating a snack
- someone eating a meal not at a table with the family?
- a child or adult fixing themselves a snack between dinner and bedtime?
- someone who frequented restaurants regularly?
- someone who asked for seconds?
- someone who asked for puddings?

How would they have been perceived? How might you or your parents have described them? What language would you have used?

I also grew up in the 50s and 60s, but the norms were a little different. Unlike many people who grew up in that era, all my friends had working mothers. So, instead of having dinner at 5 or 6, most of my friend's mother's were getting home at 5 or 6 and dinner was about an hour later. After school snacks were pretty normal, but they weren't meal-sized. Maybe a couple of cookies or a slice of bread with butter or some fruit -- nothing more. My dad and a friend of the family had a dish of ice cream nearly every night. It was a small dish. I also remember that both my dad and his friend were heavier than others.

My mom was one of the working moms. My dad was self-employed and she worked for him. They typically worked 12 hour days, 5-6 days weekly. So, we ate out a lot. There were no chains at that time in our area, The restaurants we ate at were small, family-owned restaurants. The food was similar (and in my case, better!) to what mom would have cooked -- with smaller servings and better quality ingredients. Dessert was available, but was usually simple: fruit pies or other fruit desserts, ice cream and puddings. Once a week they might have cream pies. No "death by chocolate" creations or huge pieces of cheesecake or other decadent desserts.

Seeing anyone walking down the street eating was extremely unusual, except at the county fair. You never saw anyone driving and eating. Even snacks were consumed at the kitchen table. Grocery stores were much smaller -- even those that are the smallest in my area now would easily hold 2-4 or more of the stores we frequented. There were maybe 2 aisles at the store. Snacks weren't so uncommon, but smaller and it wasn't permasnacking. When eating at home, kids usually had two choices: take it or leave it.

As I recall, breakfast was usually cereal (hot or cold), toast, and juice. Anything that required much cooking was reserved for weekends. Lunch was usually soup and a sandwich. Salads weren't real popular. Dinner was meat, potatoes, vegetable and bread. One plate. Seconds weren't out of the question if there was anything leftover after everyone was served.

The town I lived in had one pizza parlor (which is still there and has great pizza!) and two root beer stands or drive-ins with girls who served you at your car -- the precursors to McDonald's and so on. They were open only during the warm months. It was a big treat to go get a root beer or a root beer float on hot nights in the summer. We had a Dairy Queen, too, also only open in the summer months. Drug stores and dime stores had soda fountains or lunch counters. Lots of working people ate there at lunch; in fact, with the exception of one night weekly, all were closed before 5 PM. Our town had two dairies. You could have your milk delivered or buy it at the dairy or the grocery. The dairies also sold and served ice cream and various ice cream creations. Choices were limited!

The food we ate -- at home or away from home -- was served in smaller quantities and tasted better than most food served now. There was a lot less variety and things were available more seasonally. If you wanted fish, you either had canned tuna or salmon or something caught in a local river, lake or stream. You didn't have to worry about what it was contaminated with. If you wanted shrimp or other seafood, you went to a restaurant (I'm in the Midwest). We had good bakeries that made everything from scratch. Being in the midwest, we had no fish markets and I really don't remember any butcher shops, but all of the groceries had butchers. You got your meat from the butcher rather than picking up a prewrapped package of anything. All of the neighborhoods had groceries. No matter where you lived in a town, there was a grocery within walking distance.

I've been trying to get back to some of those ways. I'm enjoying my food a lot more!

I remember reading about foods available in other parts of the country or other countries and wishing I could try them. I'm almost sad now that I can go to the grocery and buy just about whatever I want from other regions, countries and cuisines.

[KTina]

I am 33 and lived this way as a kid. My mom is skinny as a rail eats whatever she wants and lives this way, my sister too. They have never been on diets they have never gained weight. I have a different body type from them and always thought I was fat in comparison and started dieting at 13. I grew up in the 70s and snacking became habit in the 80s when my mom went back to work and I didn't have any supervisor when I got home from school.

I hope to be able to follow this and return to feeling like a kid with eating. I remember the days when sweets would be given to me on days that weren't special occasion and thinking "this isn't good for me, I won't enjoy this, I don't even want this, this is not the appropriate time for sweets".

I am so glad I literally stumbled upon this book that gives clear guidelines for behavior. I had just finished eating too much at a restaurant and thought "I don't want to live this way anymore, maybe there is another new diet book out there"--thank goodness I found No S on the top shelf. While I have tried many diets, this is the only one that clearly defines behavior. I believe it's what I need to go back to Normal eating, no more bulimia, no more gluttony and shame.

However,I will add that the only other diets that really worked for me (but I couldn't stay on them) were Suzanne Somers and Body for Life. Suzanne Somers makes you wait 3-4 hours between eating meals, much like the No S diet. Body for Life gives you a free day of sweets on the weekend. I am wondering now if it's behavior more than the food that made these diets successful.

I am thankful for all the preceding diets because I know what good nutrition is.

Other diets that "look" like No S are: French Women Don't Get Fat and The French Don't Diet, these would probably bee good for all of us to read in addition to the No S Diet. However, these other books give the "eat unitl you are full and satisfied"--which is an important skill to learn, but still not a clear definition. If you have been bulemic, like me, you don't know what "satisfied" means! What I really like about the No S Diet is that it gives CLEAR BEHAVIORAL GUIDELINES that the other books don't.

In fact, I think it's a blessing that the diet is written by a computer programmer; by nature of his work he is familiar with the input/output mode and rules of making programs run successfully. The references to computer programming in the book are really helpful to understand why the behaviour and structure of the diet are important.

I tried No S for two days so far and am on day 3. The RELIEF I have had from not having to ensure I eat the "wrong" food at a meal is wonderful. I find myself choosing nutritious food because I know it has to last me 6-7 hours.

Actually, my wieght is within a healthy range, people would think I am skinny while I think I have 10 lb to lose--I have been on a diet for the last 20 years. I am excited about the idea of being free from the food cages.

If I coud add one S to the No S--I would say eat Slowly or don't eat with Speed.

That's all I have to say for now. Thanks for listening.

[eizzo]

I am 48 years old, and as everyone mentioned we did not snack as children, we ate 3 meals a day and that was all. But the funniest thing I read in all the posts was the cake thing, so true you had birthday cake and that was it.

The other thing I heard all my childhood and I was one of 5, when we asked for something to eat my mother said no she was cooking and it would ruin your dinner, and sometimes it might take her 2 hours to cook dinner...yes she cooked from scratch and she use to watch Mike Douglas as she started to make dinner. I htink in my whole childhood we went out to dinner at best once or twice a year.

Wow, this whole stream has been an eye opener.

[Lilly]

Silver,
Of ourse anorexia existed. I did not mean to imply otherwise. I simply never knew anyone who had it. So by definition, it did not exist in "my" world. I was discussing the things that stood out in my memory. Of course Twiggy wasn't responsible for the frenzy to be stick thin. (Although in an interview years ago, she said she wasn't responsible-Americans just eat too much.) But she was responsible for many of my friends who were of normal weight becoming uncomfortable in comparison. We were young and impressionable. I imagine that this is the position young hollywood is taking for the incredbly negative influence they are having on young impressionable minds too. So I am not saying that lil Leslie Hornsby was responsible for eating disorders. Only that she negatively impacted my world which is why she stands out in my memory.

[wosnes]

Lilly, you and I are about the same age (I'm just a tad bit older) and while I remember Twiggy, I don't remember my friends being much influenced by her weight. In fact, I most remember her being ridiculed for being so thin. Most folks I knew thought that her size made her unattractive. She was certainly an exception. I think my friends were more influenced by Cheryl Tiegs -- who was slender but not stick-thin.

[OrganicGal]

This has been a really interesting read. I was born in 1963, so I remember having Sunday dinners with a roast, together as a family. Then we watched Wild Kingdom and Walt Disney World afterward, again as a family. That is most likely when we would have dessert. But my Mom went back to work when I was 5 or 6 (I am the youngest of 6), and that's when things began to change. More snacks, more desserts, more fast food etc. But luckily enough we were still outside and very active. Then along came tv and cable and bigger portions at restaurants, and less activity, etc. Thankfully I played competitive volleyball, so that probably saved me, but once I was done high school, well, that was the beginning of the end for me. I became less and less active, ate more often and more "convienent" processed garbage or out at restaurants and of course started the whole diet "wheel of hell" lifestyle, lol

Now I am beginning to feel like I have found something good, sane, normal, easy and realistic. Here's to No S-ing for life and health.

[Lilly]

stevecooper,
The norm in my world:
I will address a few of the questions that you raised that I have a memory of.
1. Adults DID walk. Alot. So did kids. My transportation was my two feet. There wasn't a car in my life from the ages of 13-19 so walking it was. Grocery shopping and hauling was kid powered. There were buses but you had to walk to them also and you had to spend "your" money to ride. Otherwise you walked. Now as far as an adult walking and eating, I have no memory of seeing this, so obviously it didn't matter to me if someone did. I have no memory of seeing people walk and eat. People were walking with a purpose, ie. to get home to make/eat dinner, not as a social event or a meal. I want to segue here. Other than Jack Lalanne no one was "into" physical fitness. We didn't have time to be. We were too busy walking to get where we needed to be. No one drove to a gym. We didn't have gyms. We would have had to walk to a gym and back if they were available so a gym wouldn't have been necessary. It strikes me as odd that people will go to a gym and then spend several minutes looking for the closest parking space.
Much of what we have today(in many areas) did not exist when I was growing up. Somehow we managed to survive.

2.There was a man who would be sitting on the curb outside a small market eating cold hotdogs and drinking coke at 8ishAm as we walked to school. We thought this was creepy, hence we thought he was creepy and avoided him. He avoided us too so perhaps he thought we were creepy.

3. When someone showed up at dinner time, more water was added to the pot so as to have enough dinner for them. If we weren't having a soup or chili the "guest" was told we were having dinner and they left. People in general didn't come by at mealtime. Times were more or less established. In my memory and in my world stevecooper, seconds weren't the norm and firsts got the job done. So to answer your question stevecooper, if someone did ask for seconds, seconds would be them licking what was left on a plate.

[wosnes]

We either walked or drove. The small town I lived in didn't have buses in my lifetime. There were no gyms. There wasn't a gym there (other than the YMCA) until the late 90s.

Not only did we not have time to be into physical fitness, there wasn't much need for it!. People still walked, pushed lawn mowers, shoveled snow and raked leaves, got out of the car and opened garage doors, hung laundry out on clothes lines, carried clothes up and down the basement stairs to the washer (which may have been a wringer washer) -- and got up to change the channel on TV. My dad's remote was me. He'd call me to come from my bedroom to change the channel! I complained about it a lot, but always did it.

Even though things were a lot more convenient for us than they had been for our folks, most things were still done "by hand." No food processors, no bread machines, blenders weren't common until later. I do remember my mom having a Sunbeam stand mixer.

You know, I'm glad I know how to do a lot of that stuff by hand.

[Lilly]

Ditto, wosnes.

[jazzys mom]

This is such an interesting topic and has brought back a lot of memories -- all good!

I too grew up in the '50's. Things were certainly a lot different then. Water was from the tap or a drinking fountain - when you were thirsty. Sweets were in the house in limited amounts --- a pkg. of cookies, some homemade pudding (with full fat milk), tapioca which was my dad's favorite. Cakes were for special occasions and then were not as fattening as todays cakes are. I can remember my mom having afternoon guests. The ladies would sit around the dining room table that was set with china and crystal. Coffee was served along with a home made angel food cake with a small amount of some kind of yummy green icing that tasted like peppermint. Then my mom would dribble melted dark chocolate around just the edges. I was usually allowed a piece of that cake.

My breakfast (I hated breakfast) was usually cream of wheat with vanilla added to it and full fat milk. Lunch was either tomato or green pea soup and a peanut butter sandwich. The peanut butter was NOT and inch think on the sandwich either as it is today! Dinner was a casserole, meat loaf, chili or sometimes my dad would make a dinner of corn beef hash and hominy grits or maybe french toast.

Weekends were a bit different in my house. My dad was home and he LOVED breakfast so he and I would have a breakfast of milk toast. This was toast with butter put into a bowl and warm milk poured over it and then sprinkled with sugar. Some days he would make cinnamon toast. He made his own cinnamon butter with real butter, sugar and cinnamon. I would have one, maybe two pieces - not 4 as is served today. Sunday dinner was our big meal of the week - fried chicken, ham or roast beef served in the afternoon instead of at night so it wouldn't lay in your belly all night long.

It was a treat for me to go the the penny candy store with a dime or quarter. For that I'd get a huge bag of penny candy and my parents would be beside themselves thinking of the dentist bills.

For a snack I would have a banana or a cookie or two or my favorite snack was sliced Viadelia onion on a piece of buttered bread with salt and pepper.

Anyone remember the milk being delivered to the back door along with the lard with the little food coloring "button" in it? I would wait for that to come so I could break the food coloring into the lard and squeeze it until it looked like butter!

Jazzys Mom

[wosnes]

Anyone remember the milk being delivered to the back door along with the lard with the little food coloring "button" in it? I would wait for that to come so I could break the food coloring into the lard and squeeze it until it looked like butter!

I remember the milk man, only the milk came to the front door. I don't remember the lard with the food coloring button, but I always remember butter.

Another thing we lived without: the microwave. I'm so glad I learned to cook before microwaves. I have one, but rarely use it.

This is way off the food topic, but does anyone remember mail being delivered twice daily?

[jazzys mom]

I had forgotten all about that! Yes, it was delivered twice a day but I think in our area that was around Christmas when the mailboxes would be heavy with Christmas Cards! Now we all just send virtual cards!

Sad, isn't it?

Jazzys Mom

[cvmom]

I love this thread!

Thanks all for sharing.

Sadly, we did eat a lot of Swanson's frozen TV dinners as kids. They were so gross. I was probably skinny b/c I couldn't stand them. To this day, I still hate peas...LOL

This thread has got me thinking a lot about my kids and how much they snack. Strangely, if there aren't any "snacky" foods in the house then they won't eat. (And, usually there aren't, except on the weekends). Hmm...kind of a revelation, huh? They will go for toast or a piece of fruit or I will make them a yogurt smoothie.

My goal has been to try to eat at home as much as I can. As a family we eat out a lot. I don't mean fast food. We don't eat that. I mean, restaurants and deli sandwiches, Whole Foods Hot meals, etc. Think of all the money I could save by just cooking! I'd better get to it!

[cvmom]

PS. I don't remember the evening mail, but we had the paper, the Evening Outlook, delivered in LA.

Also, we had the "Helms" Bakery truck that used to drive in our neighborhood and my mom would buy bread.

I have a vague memory of a milkman, but I don't think we had milk delivery service too long.

[Lilly]

Yes wosnes, twice a day. And from a special Beau, he sent it same day delivery.

[babyprrr]

I love this topic...so interesting!

I have a slightly different story. I'm 21, so I don't have memories of growing up in a different era but I was born in a third-world country and lived there until I was 16. We were very well off compared to the general population and certainly not starving ( although lots of other people were), but the point I want to make is that, food in general was regarded in an entirely different way. People DID eat to live, and lots of people didn't even have enough for that.

Back then , I never thought of food as 'good' or 'bad' or as a reward. Food was just food. I never had any urges to binge like I do now. I didn't exclude any food groups..regularly had french fries, oreos, ice cream without the guilt. But if I had french fries, I'd either have a smaller dinner or no dinner, oreos would be for an (unhealthy) breakfast, but I'd never have more than two or three at the most, and we only had ice cream at this nice cafe, never at home, and if u had more than one scoop, u were seen as greedy. Dessert after dinner was usually fresh tropical fruit..mangoes, watermelon, ,pineapple, etc. We very rarely had/bought any chocolate..apart from nice Belgian chocolates we got as gifts/for Christmas etc. And as mentioned, cake was mostly birthday cake and from a nice bakery, never store bought. And we rarely snacked if ever, because there wasnt the abundance of snack products you get here.

I was never more than 100 pounds ever without dieting. Then at 16, moved to the States, gained 20 pounds , and have been yo-yo dieting ever since. I don't think I ever developed such a weird relationship with food, or binged so much, before I attempted to diet.

I feel that NoS is the way food was always meant to be dealt with, before this diet mentality took over.

[Dory]

I'm 51 and my mom worked from the time I was in kindergarten. Other than in the lower grades K-2 I don't remember having snack time. You had breakfast at home, lunch at school and maybe a snack when you got home from school and dinner. In my house we didn't have dessert on an every day basis nor did we drink soda. Soda and dessert were for when company came over.
I wasn't able to finish a small soda in those days and would only eat 1 slice of pizza. I remember in high school a friend took me out to have my first Wopper. I didn't know what to do with it. I didn't know how to eat it or how it was going to fit into my mouth. Needless to say I learned.

[Mavilu]

Now, I was born in '69 so I don't have all these '50s and '60s memories, but, as I wrote in my intro, I was born into a country that (still) is comparatively old-fashioned when it comes to eating, and I'm curious about something: for those of you growing up in the good ole times in which good rules for eating and being active applied, can you tell me if there was a "finger food" concept when it came to toddlers?.
We don't have that concept, since toddlers eat like everyone else: at the appropiate times and I find this concept to be the worst of them all.
Is this another concept fabricated by the food companies, you think?, to get us used to eat, eat, eat all the time early on?.

[blueskighs]

I am excited about the idea of being free from the food cages.

ahhhhh yes... the food cages

If I coud add one S to the No S--I would say eat Slowly or don't eat with Speed.

what is really interesting about NOS is that it seems to be my experience that Slowing down while eating kind of happens naturally. Like when you realize you are not going to eat again til next meal... you just kind of naturally slow down and savor. It is kind of cool!


Blueskighs

[wosnes]

Is this another concept fabricated by the food companies, you think?, to get us used to eat, eat, eat all the time early on?.

When we're eating all day long, they're making more money. If they train us early to permasnack, they're definitely making more money throughout our entire lifetime. Then as we age, the pharmaceutical companies will be making more money treating our diet-related diseases.

[Rheba]

Oh my, what memories you have all brought back to me! I was born in 42 so I was also raised with the 3 meals a day...besides which I had a single mom supporting me and my sis...so money was tight. We had no frills for most of the time. I do remember when mom had extra money our big treat was to buy a pint or maybe it was a half pint of butter brickle ice cream and we divided it three ways....still my favorite! And no car meant you walked every where and no tv meant playing outside and going to the library and getting lots of books to read. We rode bikes if we didn't walk and how many of you remember the keyed rollar skates? we would go to school on them and when recess came...we put them on and had a ball for the 10 minutes or so. Breakfast was almost always cereal of some kind....oatmeal or cream of wheat or cheerios. Lunch was a sandwich and fruit or maybe just the sandwich. And supper (can you tell I am a midwesterner?) was single portions of whatever mom fixed. And the funny thing is, none of us felt like we were being gypped out of anything! We were happy and content. I was a "heftier" child than my sister and did feel some stigma attached to that...especially after my mom remarried..there were times when I did take seconds and was critized for it...the start of the "feeling bad about myself" scenario. For some reason I lost weight between my sophmore and junior year of high school and kept it off until after I married. Then the weight battle began in earnest. So now I am back into the 3 meals a day and a single plate and learning to feel better about myself. And reliving my childhood through this forum!!! Thanks for the memories...as Bob would say.
Also........I truly think we all need to go back to the NO additives or preservatives if at all possible. For me it is necessity...I have developed contact eczema and there are 5 "chemicals" that I have to stay away from. I have always enjoyed cookiing so this will not be a problem for me. We never had "good" or "bad" foods, either. It was just food and that was that. Must retrain the brain to remember that!!
Rheba

[Lilly]

Rheba,
You and I are twins. Separated by 8 years. I remember everything you talked about! Yes, we got lots of play time in(now they call it exercise) and loved it. We ran, we skipped we jumped because it was fun. We played. Pity the children who sit on their behinds, eating watching tv, playing computer whatevers or need "play dates." I wasn't allowed to "play" on a date til I was 16. ROTFLOL

[Bumpkyns]

Lily that was cute... Like all of you, memories, wow! I'm 51 now, and totally have to retrain my brain. My mom didn't work, so it was a hot breakfast every school day, lunch at school (which often was rice with so much sugar in it, it scooped out like ice cream and stayed stuck, but it was soooo good). Always a hot meal for dinner, meat and 2 stuff unless my dad made his legendary spagetti or lasagna. His sauce would have made us millionaires if he'd just marketed it. Then on some weekends, he'd get up and fix pancakes from scratch with bacon or sausage I think, and eggs with fried potatoes to die for.

If I ever had seconds on anything I wasn't criticized or teased til in my teens, and 2nds were usually just with Dad's spaghetti or lasagna. I weighed only 115-120 which I know NOW was perfect for me. But my very critical/judgmental brother who thot every woman should be twiggy basically, made the statement one day to mom that I need to lose weight. Since all he thought was what mattered (for some reason with both her and me) then it had to be true. Thus... the diet/feel badly about myself/ never feeling good enough roller coaster began, most of which kept me just bigger and bigger than ever. I've resented this and my sick relationship with food for 35 yrs now. That's a long time to think life sucks because you think you look like crap and never have confidence, which ultimately impacted many decisions in my life that I now regret. My sweet mother was an angel and I loved/love her dearly, so I know she meant well, and that's ok.

So for now, I am trying to make myself let go of all that baggage, particularly after nearly dieing from Leukemia a short while back, but I beat it. I often wonder now if all the crap my body absorbed over the years had anything to do with it. All I know is I was given a 2nd chance at life, and I'm going to go back to the old fashioned way (and now current way) of NO-S living. This thread has been an amazing trip back in time for me and is the only one on here since joining a few weeks back that I've thru its entirety rather than just scanning. That says a LOT..

Ok, that's enough for now.. gotta go post a new thread, also the first in awhile... I think you all are the DABOMB as my students say.

[Rheba]

lilly, neither was I! (play dates) do you remember hop scotch and jacks? And when we did play outside, we used our imagination as we didn't have all the wonderful play houses that they have today! But we were outside!!!! and in the sun and didn't matter how hot it was we were out there playing. And drinking water from the hose!!! It's a wonder we have lived so long, right?
Rheba

[Rheba]

Bumpkyns: YOU are SPECIAL!!!! You go girl!!! Yes, when you get something like you have been through, you do start to wonder just how much of the "crap" we put into our bodies in search of the "so-called perfect" body causes the problems we have. Back to the basics is definitely what is called for here and you are doing that as are the rest of us. Onward we go together!!!

Rheba

[wosnes]

I wasn't allowed to "play" on a date til I was 16. ROTFLOL

Gee, you were lucky! My dad didn't want me to play until I was older -- and married!

[Dory]

"G-d" you sparked my memory Rheba when you said we used our imaginations. In my neighborhood when someone got a new refridgerator, Stove or anything big it was like the best day ever all the things that the box it came in became!
Who stayed inside on a sunny day? Unfortunately kids have to be a little more carefull then we were. Not as many moms are home to look out the window nor are the neighborhoods as safe. But it seems today that on a nice day kids go to the mall. That 's being out.

[Lilly]

wosnes,
Dad wasn't in the picture. Mom set the mandate of no dating til we were 16. The "playing" was my idea. Or rather my pick and choose as ALL males were randy goats. Btw, just to set the record straight we pinched and tickled nothing that could cause a pregnancy or an STD.
WARNING!!!
Don't read this if you will be offended.
Mom told me that if you let a boy French kiss you that that meant you would go "all the way." Kissing was a battle of wills. Me with closed teeth and locked jaw and boys with banged tongues.

[Bumpkyns]

TOO FUNNY Lilly... and Rheba, oh yes...all the fun playing we did. I forgot about hopscotch, and of course DODGE BALL, my all time favorite and I loved it too. Had no idea all that twisting and jumping were so good for me. Can't twist now without hurting my back, or hip. YMCA here I come, or better yet, my sweet doggie needs walking. which I just posted about somewhere... how beneficial that would be for both of us.

[jazzys mom]

What wonderful memories!

Roller skate keys - remember putting them on a string around your neck?

Refrigerator boxes - played in them until they were cardboard DUST!

Hopscotch - one of my favorite games!

Jacks - played those al the time

Now, who remembers................

Clove and Blackjack gum, playing ball against the house, Roly Poly and making scotters from orange crates put on a roller skate? Anyone remember Lik-M-Aid!

jazzys Mom

[wosnes]

What wonderful memories!

Roller skate keys - remember putting them on a string around your neck?

Refrigerator boxes - played in them until they were cardboard DUST!

Hopscotch - one of my favorite games!

Jacks - played those al the time

Now, who remembers................

Clove and Blackjack gum, playing ball against the house, Roly Poly and making scotters from orange crates put on a roller skate? Anyone remember Lik-M-Aid!

jazzys Mom

I remember all of the above. How about Teaberry or Beamen's gum?

[jazzys mom]

Oh my gosh! How could I have forgotten those! Teaberry was my favorite gum.

One of my best memories as a child was of Christmastime. The smell of the "real" trees permeated the whole living room! Instead of going to party after party my mom, dad and I used to go drive through the neighborhoods at night to see the Christmas lights. Today the kids would view that as boring!

New Years Eve we had a few friends over and everyone actually dreased up! Sunday clothes! My mom would serve glasses of wine then later at around the midnight hour she would serve coffee and either cookies or her famous angel food cake around the dining room table. No one got sloshed, out of line, no swearing, just good clean fun! What happened to those days? I want to go back to "Happy Days" times!

Jazzys Mom

[blueskighs]

So I guess I am just curious, all of the posts about eating naturally NO S and getting in movement naturally,

what made you stray?

Blueskighs

[wosnes]

I think a lot of it was convenience foods and fast foods and then having more to do. One thing our moms weren't doing was driving kids here, there and yonder to all manner of activities (from pre-school on). Betty Friedan hadn't written The Feminine Mystique or our mom's hadn't read it. Women's Lib hadn't happened. Our mom's weren't expected to be Superwoman. The food companies and the media hadn't told our moms that cooking and homemaking were drudgery and that they had better things to do -- and they would ease women from the drudgery.

Only thing is -- they didn't tell them (or us) what it would cost.

[Lilly]

Great, Great questions, Blue.
I know EXACTLY when I strayed.
I started SNACKING, at first just eating peanuts on the way home from work "to tied me over" til dinner. Then to lose the extra weight I gained from snacking, I joined WW and descended into "dieter's Hades and the rest is history. So the single most insidious thing that happened was the advent of snacking.

[blueskighs]

Lilly,

wow! that means from your personal real experience you are pretty much validating exactly what Reinhard sez in his book, i.e. that the advent of our weight problems in this country coincided with the rise of snacking, and why he has that NO SNACKS precept in the diet.

that if you cut out SNACKS you really just cut out of a lot of excess calories and thus you will lose weight.

Lilly thank you for being so concise and sharing your insights and experience

Blueskighs

[wosnes]

I think I mentioned this in another post. On The Today Show last week they had a segment about snacking and showed how some pretty benign looking snacks could easily add 800 calories daily. The only one that was obviously high in calories, and therefore not something one "should" snack on was a few French fries.

[Lilly]

Before, it was don't "snack" you will spoil your appetite. Then it was have a snack to tied you over from one meal to the next. Snacking at it's worst, is as Reinhard says, one long meal ,all day long.

[wosnes]

Before, it was don't "snack" you will spoil your appetite. Then it was have a snack to tied you over from one meal to the next. Snacking at it's worst, is as Reinhard says, one long meal ,all day long.

That reminds me of something I've heard. Years ago when people parted company they would say something like "Work hard!". Then it became "Don't work too hard!" and then "Take it easy."

Interestingly, when people were encouraged to work hard is when they were encouraged not to snack; when they were encouraged to take it easy, they were also being encouraged to snack.

[blueskighs]

"Work hard!"

wosnes,
ooooooooooooh I like that! Kind of akin to the native american indian idea that labor is the greatest prayer!

Blueskighs

[Rheba]

Work hard and play hard.....two of the best things about being raised in the days of 3 meals and no snacks! And it is still the best way to go. Just got home from my first walk in I don't know how long and feeling good...tired but good. Definitely out of condition!!
I also remember the gums....they were so good and it didn't lose it's flavor overnight...got a lot of mileage out of that stick of gum.
Do you also remember the Archie comics.....they cost a quarter but were twice as big as the regulars and had paper dolls in them! Wow, that was a real treat. Boy, are we ever "dating" ourselves but they were the good old days....we had time for each other and life was much simpler then...and the food didn't have all the chemicals on them and in them. And it tasted better because you had to work to prepare it...it didn't go from the garden to the table by magic.
My lunch out today went well. The conversation was the highlight of the meal...which is also becoming a lost art. We even discussed the NoS article from WW....she is an avid reader of the magazine...and she agreed with it too. Hopefully she will start trying to implement it in her life as well.

Rheba

[mjn]

I started to go downhill in the late 70's. Our school had open lunch for 10th thru 12th grade. Pizza Hut, Godfather's and Hardee's had just opened and where do you think we headed?? Exactly, and that's when the weight started creeping up. We didn't have the money to go there with our friends everyday, so we would get chips or junk when we were out for lunch break. That really changed my eating habits. My folks would also go out to eat alot then and we either had to go out with them or rummage around on our own to find things to eat. That meant more junk!

[bonnieUK]

23-year-old here. I know who Twiggy is! (Even before she was a judge on America's Next Top Model)... I was . . . kinda raised with snacking. I mean we had snacks in pre-school, but I never heard of it again. Mom discouraged the eating of too many sweets and potato chips. I only got into snacking the last couple years when "diet-gurus" started hawking them.

Hi nfalcone,

I'm 29, and I too only got into snacking during the last couple of years after buying into the "little and often" nonsense (well, maybe that works for someone who can really eat little and often, but I find it just makes me eat often!) and guess what? that's when the weight crept up

As a kid I ate a mostly healthy balanced diet (3 meals a day including home cooked dinner at the table in the evenings) and I don't think there was this snack mentality we have now. I do remember eating a lot of sweets, cookies and ice cream but as treats at the weekend mostly. Things changed a bit when I got to secondary school though where they had vending machines, I'd often use my bus money to buy chocolate (I had a weakness for kitkats), however, I think the 45 min walk home incurred as a result more than burned off the excess calories

The reason I spent the bus money was because I was sent to school with a packed lunch and not given money for vending machine snacks because I "didn't need them" I'm now very grateful about that! It also meant that a snack had to really be worth it when the price was a long walk home in the rain

p.s. this is a nice thread, thanks for starting it Lilly

[reinhard]

I think it's clear that there used to be norms around eating, and that (very roughly) they consisted in limiting food to social meals, with sweets and other treats largely limited to holidays.

Why was this the case? I think the answer is simple. Food was scarce. It was expensive, both in terms of money and in terms of the time and effort it took to prepare.

Discreet social meals probably originally arose from the following pressures:

1) probably as a simple "economy of scale" in terms of food preparation. It was hard enough to cook for a family all at once. To cook for them each individually would have been impossible.

2) to ensure that everyone could keep tabs on what everyone else was eating, that no one was sneaking more than his or her fair share. Until very recently, gluttony was a social as well as a personal "sin", because you were depriving someone else of what they needed.

3) more positively, as a form of social glue. Sharing food creates strong bonds. Social bonds weren't just "nice," they were necessary. You would die unless your family/community was together and coordinated enough to wrest a living from the earth.

All of these pressures have receded to a large degree today. But I think they were so deep, and lasted so long, that they've left a deep imprint on us all. Pushing ourselves back into that pattern with explicit rules isn't that hard, and it's profoundly satisfying.

Reinhard

[Beckycan]

Great discussion! I was born in 1960, so I can sure relate.

Sodas were something you had at Christmas or on your birthday. When we got home from school in the afternoon, "Starving"-- Mom's reply was "wait for supper." Desserts were a special treat with Sunday dinner. McDonalds hamburgers were something you ate when you went on vacation once a year. Eating out was rare -- usually reserved for special occasions like an Anniversary or visiting a relative from out of town.

We had whole milk delivered to our door each morning and drank whole milk 3 meals a day! We didn't get a second glass because milk was expensive. Everyone had their dose of vitamin C with breakfast in a 6 oz. glass -- again, no seconds because oj was expensive. If we got thirsty between meals, there was water.

Long story short, I went from 145 lbs. in high school, to 290 now at age 47. Enough already, time to return to my roots!

Becky

[wosnes]

I think whether there was an after school snack depended a lot on when school let out and when dinner was.

[Mavilu]

Why was this the case? I think the answer is simple. Food was scarce. It was expensive, both in terms of money and in terms of the time and effort it took to prepare.

Reinhard

Oh, sure!, in my country still is expensive, that's partly where the No Seconds come from; when you make a meal for more than one, you make one extra portion, that's to make just a little extra, just in case there's a big appetite on the table or, simply to make a bigger portion here and there, you know, just in case.
But, that's it, no one would ever make enough food to give seconds to everyone, it's just spending money people don't have.

But, that come tied up with another aspect that is sadly lacking most everywhere in the U.S.: we are used to buy ingredients for our meals right before we cook them, simply because that's how society is structured, we have individual stores (meat, bread, vegetables, etc.) always at walking distance, so, it doesn't make much sense to cook extra and keep it on the fridge.

Whereas here I can see how a harried adult that juggles commutes, work, kids' school, kids' extra-curricular activities, errands (all driving), house, husband/wife, would make more food to keep and reheat later, just so she/he doesn't have to hop (again) on the car and drive to the store to buy more food that she/he will have to cook again.
Or over-eat, because he'she doesn't know when there will be time to do so again, or snack for the same reason, or eat out/order pizza or wallow in a pint of ice cream because they feel they need a little credit.
The life many americans have nowadays is just not conducive to orderly eating without an conscious effort to keep it orderly.

[maura007]

I was born in the 50"s too. I remember Clark bars as well as the gums. And I can remember playing outside every day after school. We ran, we slid down the hill on cardboard. We played games, rode our bikes.

I can remember 3 meals a day. Cereal for breakfast during the week. A hot lunch at school that had things like meat loaf and spinach and mashed potatoes. And dinner -- anything from the worst chow mein you can imagine(my Mom thought you boiled it all together) to the best shrimp curry in the world(when she got a dish right, she really got it right).

I remember going out for pizza as a spcial treat. I don't remember a lot of snacks. Three meals a day. The main thing was we didn't sit still after school. We moved, we ran, we skipped, we had fun.

It wasn't until puberty that plumpness and the concept of dieting entered my life and became a permanent fixture there.

[Rheba]

I remember the hot lunch program too....it didn't start in my small town school in Iowa until I was in 5th grade. My mom had a rule when we went someplace else to eat (like my aunt's, mostly) that if I took something on my plate, I ate it even if I didn't like it. I remember not eating her coleslaw and then doing the hot lunch program and asking her why she never fixed that wonderful salad that we had at school....you guessed it! It was cole slaw. We weren't asked what we wanted at school lunches, it was given to us! Don't remember much food being wasted there either. Not like it is today! And yet, most of us really weren't "fat"....like you said, we ran, biked, rollar skated, played tag, whatever until it was too dark to play and then we sat around and told ghost stories. But we weren't idle! And housework was done and dishes were done and we did those chores and didn't ask to be paid for them...it was part of our job to help out mom. Especially in my case....my mom was a single mom and worked as many as three jobs to make it so my sis and I had to do things. Didn't kill us either!!!! Course, housework has NEVER been my long suit!!! Didn't mind doing the kitchen or the bathroom (?!) but oh, how I hated dusting and vacuuming...still do! Loved to cook and still do but I remember when I was growing up, it was never fancy cooking or baking...just the good old fashioned basic cooking which is still my favorite way to cook. No additivies or preservatives were used. And very seldom did we snack but there were special times and events when we did.
Time for breakfast now so will check in later. I am hungry!!!

[wosnes]

The thing I remember absolutely hating from the hot lunches at school was cooked cabbage. It wasn't so much that I disliked cooked cabbage in general, this was way overcooked cooked cabbage. Lordie, I hated it so!

[Nichole]

23-year-old here. I know who Twiggy is! (Even before she was a judge on America's Next Top Model)... I was . . . kinda raised with snacking. I mean we had snacks in pre-school, but I never heard of it again. Mom discouraged the eating of too many sweets and potato chips. I only got into snacking the last couple years when "diet-gurus" started hawking them.

Hi nfalcone,

I'm 29, and I too only got into snacking during the last couple of years after buying into the "little and often" nonsense (well, maybe that works for someone who can really eat little and often, but I find it just makes me eat often!) and guess what? that's when the weight crept up

As a kid I ate a mostly healthy balanced diet (3 meals a day including home cooked dinner at the table in the evenings) and I don't think there was this snack mentality we have now. I do remember eating a lot of sweets, cookies and ice cream but as treats at the weekend mostly. Things changed a bit when I got to secondary school though where they had vending machines, I'd often use my bus money to buy chocolate (I had a weakness for kitkats), however, I think the 45 min walk home incurred as a result more than burned off the excess calories

The reason I spent the bus money was because I was sent to school with a packed lunch and not given money for vending machine snacks because I "didn't need them" I'm now very grateful about that! It also meant that a snack had to really be worth it when the price was a long walk home in the rain

p.s. this is a nice thread, thanks for starting it Lilly

Ah, someone responded to me. The snacking definitely helped my weight creep slowly up, too. I wasn't given money for snacks and never gave it a second thought while I was in school. I didn't have a part time job my first two years of college, so I didn't spend money on food then, either. I gained weight at the caf with the abundance of food and going up for seconds and lots of desserts. I lost a lot of weight when I moved off campus. Then I started snacking and having seconds and eating ice cream every day again and recently the 10 lbs jumped back on. Exercising took off a good amount, but I haven't been able to get down to 140 and I didn't know why. I realize now it's the snacks, sweets, and seconds and I've lost 2 lbs. I haven't been 146 in so long!

Oops, sorry this is so long...

[Dory]

Everytime I read a post here it sparks another memmory that I haven't thought of is ages. Staying out until after dark and sitting on my neighbors steps (middle of the block) and telling ghost stories. I have to admit that we did snack. I was one of the youngest on the block. Me and one or two of the other little kids had to go and raid the yard at the end of the block that had all the fruit trees and raspberry bushes. I actually climbed trees in the dark. Can't believe I did that at one time! This was one of the big treats of the summer. Then everyone was afraid to walk home because of all the ghost stories. We only lived like one or two houses apart.

[Lilly]

Reinhard,
To cook for each family member wasn't so much impossible as no way was Mom going to go one inch out of her way to cater to any one person. We had two things for dinner every night. "take it, or leave it."
If you were dumb enough to turn up your nose at a food, Mom said, "you'll eat it when you get hungry enough." And we did. For the most part, turning up your nose at a food was a clear indicator that, surprise!, you weren't hungry. Our bodies self regulated. Food always tasted better when we were hungry.
Does any one actually remember "being" hungry. Pre-Nos?

[Stacy Jo]

I was born in '62. My fondest memory from childhood was "rolling houses"...toilet papering the trees on summer nights...almost got caught...yes we were trouble makers, but nothing malicious...we were such trouble-makers

Stacy

[Beckycan]

Yes, we rolled yards on Friday nights after football games. Only got caught once, and had to go over in the morning and clean up their yard!

Becky

[BrightAngel]

I'm now age 63 and my first "diet" that I can recall was in 1953 at age 9.
I was 5'0" tall and 105 lbs, and had just entered puberty.
My mother said I was getting fat and put me on a diet...which began my lifetime of yo-yo dieting.
Of course, I was a perfect healthy size, but scary for the mother of a 9 year old.
She began feeding me:

a breakfast of - 1 egg and dry toast with 1/2 glass of milk or 1/2 cup of cold cereal and 1/2 cup of milk;

a lunch of - 1/2 sandwich with no mayo or cheese or 1/2 cup of cottage cheese with half a canned peach or a sliced tomato, with a glass of water

a dinner of - a broiled hamburger patty and lettuce, tomato and mao salad, or a small (1/4 to 1/2 cup) serving of what the rest of the family were having for dinner, with a glass of water

I was given tiny servings of the families' normal snacks and desserts...
accompanied by lectures of how I shouldn't eat them...
which I shut-out as much as possible while I made slient plans of how I could secretely acquire more of the restricted substances.

Thus began my lifetime of dieting.......HOWEVER,

During the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s,
The normal foods of my family and friends weren't very "healthy" or low-cal.
While it's true we seldom ate at fast food places or in restaurants.
We went to lots of church socials that served many rich casseroles and desserts.
My family's normal foods were not as healthy as some of you remember.
Our normal diets consisted of lots and lots of high-calorie foods.

Examples of our family's foods In the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s....

normal breakfast was bacon and fried eggs with biscuits and gravy made of bacon drippings and whole milk with a glass of whole milk;

normal lunch was a sandwich with Wonder white bread, real mayo, baloney and cheese and lettuce along with potato chips, and a glass of whole milk;

normal dinner was roasted or pan fried meat, fried chicken, or a meat casserole like meatloaf or meatballs,
together with mashed potatoes, fried potatoes, or pasta, and a cooked veggie like green beans or carrots, and slices of wonder bread and margarine, and an iceburg lettuce and tomato salad tossed with a mayonaise dressing, and whole milk

We often had desserts that were ususally served as after-dinner snacks or afternoon snacks along with whole milk, like:
homemade cakes and pies along with store-bought ice-cream. and homemade plates of cookies, donuts, and cinnamon rolls,

We also often had in-between meal snacks, like:
plates of toast and jelly;
a plate of saltine crackers covered with peanut butter;
a sleeve of ritz crackers or a big bowl of cheese-its or potato chips;
a sleeve of storebought cookies like fig newtons, oreos or other sandwich cookies,
a plate of homemade candy like fudge and divinity;
storebought candy like a bowl of chocolate covered peanuts, gummy orange slices, or giant broken up chocolate Hershey bars or individual candy bars.
also, oranges, bananas, apples, strawberries, and grapes.

Just because people didn't eat lots of fast foods in those years, doesn't mean they didn't normally gourge themselves with lots and lots of rich foods.

[wosnes]

Bright Angel -- were your family members overweight?

I think the quality of the food was better back then, even the store-bought foods weren't as full of junk as they are now (of course, no nutrition or ingredient labels, so...). Plus, everyone was more active.

But after WWII is when more and more processed foods started to be available. That's when things like weight and heart disease began to increase and levels of health generally began to decrease.

[Rheba]

Wow, Bright Angel! Wish I had lived closer to you back in the "olden" days! We probably had cakes and cookies around...my grandmother lived only blocks from us...mom didn't have time to bake! But I can't say that I remember having such a large variety of foods at mealtimes. A lot of our lunches on weekends consisted of rice...just plain old rice which we ate with cinnamon and sugar and milk. Also a lot of creamed tuna and peas on toast....could feed a lot of people with one can of tuna. My grandmother was BIG...guess I took after her. Mom and my sis were skinny. I looked 16 when I was 12 so that tells you how early I matured. Made life difficult...I was one of the heavier girls in my class and yes, kids can be cruel! But I truly didn't get into the "diet" mind frame until after I married. Managed to keep my weight down from Sophomore in high school until marriage.......then two kids and god knows how many snacks later...here I am at almost 66 still fighting the battle. But I have had all No S days since Friday and am thrilled.
I'm trying to take this one day at a time and told my hubby I really do want to weigh on Friday just to "see" if it is working but I am not going to do it..........will go for once a month. I used to hate it in school when they weighed us in front of EVERYBODY! I was always one of the heaviest. Thus began the love/hate relationship with the scale, too.

[Dory]

Bright Angel,
My family kept kosher so there wasn't any bacon or gravy made from bacon drippings in milk. To tell you the truth that doesn't sound good to me at all and I don't keep kosher. My mom worked in a bakery and it was a treat when she would bring home a loaf of hot sour dough bread, just out of the oven. My sister and I would eat the whole loaf in one sitting. She never brought home cake unless we were having company sometimes there were cookies but it wasn't a usual thing that she would do this. I was not a skinny child and by high school I had about a 20lbs. weight problem. Even so I don't remember eating and snacking the way I've done in the past 20 years. I now have a 100lbs. weight problem.

[wosnes]

I remember a lot of rice with milk, cinnamon/sugar and milk. It's one of my favorite things to eat when my tummy isn't happy -- or even when it is! Sometimes just a bit of butter, too. Really, the only thing between it and rice pudding was maybe some eggs and longer cooking time!

[BrightAngel]

Bright Angel -- were your family members overweight?

No, not at that time.

My father and brother have never been overweight.

When my mother aged, she put on a bit of weight, but at 5'4" she was never above 160 lbs.

I developed a weight problem after puberty....but with effort...stayed only "plump", didn't become obese until after the birth of my first child. My major food problem has always been sweets and snacking.

My sister who was born when I was age 10, became a bit overweight around age 7 or so, but did not become "obese" until after she married.
10 years ago she also had a gastric bypass. Though we have the same family, she's never had a sweets or snacking problem, her major food problem was large quantity meals.

Neither side of my family had weight problems, except for my paternal grandmother, who was obsese.

[Blithe Morning]

Even though people ate saner portions back in the day, processed food was in the diet, though certainly not to the extent that it is now. Convenience food was seen as a great boon to the homemaker and better than the homemade equivalent.

The major food companies had a lot to do with this. The home economics movement was born in the early part of the 20th century and it wasn't long before the commercial potential was developed. One of the most enduring example of this is the icon Betty Crocker, developed by the Washburn Flour company in 1921. If you wrote a letter to the company, their home economist Betty Crocker would reply.

When I first visited my husband's Midwestern family as his fiancee (I was an East Coast girl), I was shocked to see "salads" with nary a vegetable. The definition of salad was a dish tossed in mayo (or salad dressing) or congealed in jello. Even better if it had marshmallows. And these were all from women who had learned to cook during the 30's and 40's.

My mother recently told me when we were talking about eating that we did not start having regular lettuce salads until I was in elementary school. And even then, I remember them being iceberg lettuce with tomato quarters. So, nutritional knowledge was perhaps not as extensive as it is now.

But in a way this proves the value of No S. We know so much more about nutrition now but how many people are eating well? Obviously, at least 66% of us aren't (or haven't).

In ruminating on this, I'm thinking that public health educators have focused on the wrong thing. The model has been "Give people nutritional information and they will eat better." We should try "Give people quantity guidelines and they will eat better."

As everyone knows, challenging the snacking mindset is going to be waving a butcher knife at a sacred cow. I'm not one to rip down other diets but when I went to the book store to look for NoS, I did see a book that advocated losing weight by snacking more. And there were recipes for snacks in the book. All kinds of snacks! Creamy ones, and salty ones and sweet ones! It was written by a woman with an MS RD who had her own nutritional consulting firm in NYC and was CEO of a company that produced a line of snacks that were (I'll need to double check this) named for her.

I have no idea how to shoot that cow.

[Lilly]

Don't worry about shooting the cow, Blithe. Just leave the gate open.

[joasia]

"dieting wheel of hell" never have I heard something described so well. I can honestly say I feel your pain.

[DianeA2Z]

What made me stray? The first time I married I was 19 and I got pregnant on the honeymoon. For the first 3 months of that pregnancy I was sick 24/7 so when the morning sickness left the eating began. I gained 60 lbs w/my first son and lost 50 when, sonofagun I got pregnant again! Another 60 lbs and by that time snacking seemed to be the only thing I knew. Sad, huh?? So, I figure I've lost that last 60, gained, lost, gained, lost...must be 1000 pounds by now.

I was an emotional eater, and reading Reinhard's take on that sure did open my eyes! Brilliant work!!

Still haven't told my mom I'm doing this... she likes to remind me she's right.

Diane

[Rheba]

Growing up as I did in the midwest...the only salads I remember were pea salad, potato salad, coleslaw, carrot/pineapple/jello salad or jello salad with fruit cocktail in it. I think it was probably just lettuce wedges with a 'french" style dressing on it if we ever did have lettuce salads. Lettuce was more or less reserved for blt's!
My hubby grew up on a farm and he definitely remembers "snacks" if you want to call them that between breakfast and lunch and lunch and dinner. Course, a lot of the times it was brought out to the fields where they were working!
As a townie, I don't remember snacking except for the time we lived with my grandmother...that woman cook cook and bake like nobody else! But she was also very heavy. I think when I got home from school, I was so anxious to get outside and play that I didn't think of eating. Boy, would I like to have THAT attitude again!
I too was and am and probably always will be an emotional eater so that is something that will have to be monitored in a big way for me. The book is still on my table by my chair so I can grab it and go to it whenever I need to reinforce my thinking. I'm tired of using food to cope with life.

[wosnes]

Convenience food was seen as a great boon to the homemaker and better than the homemade equivalent...

My mother recently told me when we were talking about eating that we did not start having regular lettuce salads until I was in elementary school. And even then, I remember them being iceberg lettuce with tomato quarters. So, nutritional knowledge was perhaps not as extensive as it is now.

But in a way this proves the value of No S. We know so much more about nutrition now but how many people are eating well? Obviously, at least 66% of us aren't (or haven't).

In ruminating on this, I'm thinking that public health educators have focused on the wrong thing. The model has been "Give people nutritional information and they will eat better." We should try "Give people quantity guidelines and they will eat better."

The food companies did a great job of making us believe that their products were better than we could make -- and without the effort, too. I think originally, lots of them weren't too bad, at least in terms of taste. I'm amazed how bad they really taste.

Whereas our knowledge of nutrition has certainly increased in recent years, I'm not sure it was lack of nutrition knowledge that had us eating iceberg lettuce salads. It was lack of availability of other salad greens. The ability to ship them and getting them to their destination without spoiling had a lot to do with the increased availability -- especially year 'round availability.

I'm not sure nutritional information or quantity guidelines are what's needed to get people to eat better. I think nutritional information will probably be least helpful. People don't eat "nutrients"; they eat food. They also don't pay much attention to quantity guidelines.

At the end of the day, I think what people want is food that tastes good and to be able to get it on the table quickly. People need to be educated that you can use real food and get tasty meals on the table in a timely, not to mention cost-effective, manner.

Real, whole food is much more satisfying than convenience foods, so people would automatically eat less. Even something as borderline as white bread: homemade white bread is far more satisfying than Wonder Bread, so you don't need to eat as much to be satisfied. Even white rice -- the non-instant is more satisfying than the instant.

As the quality of our food has gone down, our consumption of it has gone up. We need better quality foods and education on how to get them on the table quickly.

Depending on your age, your mother, grandmother or great-grandmother didn't have much nutritional education or knowledge of portion control. What they had was (mostly) good quality food to cook, recipes that they learned from their mothers and some habits surrounding eating (similar to No-S). That model has worked for several thousand years -- until "experts" got involved.

The more the experts have gotten involved, the worse everything has become and the less we're able to make food choices without their assistance! That's something that really bothers me: we don't know what or how to eat unless some expert tells us. Look at the questions on this or any diet-related discussion board. No one knows what they should eat. Can you imagine some adult ancestor asking if it was okay to eat fruit or a potato or mayonnaise or whatever? If they did ask, it would be more along the lines of "do you have any plans for this?" instead of "is this healthy for me to eat?"

In the book Reinhard says that he's not a healthcare professional, he's not an expert. He came up with a few rules, a few habits, surrounding eating that enabled him to lose weight and keep it off. He shared it on the internet and now in a book. He really doesn't even mention specific foods to eat or avoid. But we ask questions of him like he is an expert in diet and nutrition.

I mean no disrespect to Reinhard. No-S is brilliant. But all he's really done is point out the obvious. Things we grew up with. Things that were normal in the past. Why couldn't we figure this out? Oh, yea, we were paying attention to the "experts."

Many of us probably have been dieting (or at least eating) longer than Reinhard has been alive. We grew up following similar rules. We remember when food was just food and you didn't have to ask if it was okay to eat something. Not only that, but we ate food because it was tasty, not because it was full of antioxidants or lowered cholesterol or improved intestinal health or whatever. The most important nutrition advice we got was "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" or our grandmothers telling us to eat our oatmeal because we needed the "roughage."

It amuses me that some of the most influential people in the field of diet right now are people who have no education or expertise in the field.

[Rheba]

wosnes, about the only thing that needs to be added to what you wrote is a resounding AMEN

[BrightAngel]

In the book Reinhard says that he's not a healthcare professional, he's not an expert. He came up with a few rules, a few habits, surrounding eating that enabled him to lose weight and keep it off. He shared it on the internet and now in a book. He really doesn't even mention specific foods to eat or avoid. But we ask questions of him like he is an expert in diet and nutrition.

I mean no disrespect to Reinhard. No-S is brilliant. But all he's really done is point out the obvious. Things we grew up with. Things that were normal in the past. Why couldn't we figure this out? Oh, yea, we were paying attention to the "experts."

Many of us probably have been dieting (or at least eating) longer than Reinhard has been alive.

I've spent 54 of my 63 years dieting, and have read hundreds of diet books.
I enjoyed and agreed with your comments, and
I compliment Reinhard on his excellent plan and book.
I love the fact that he claims no expertise other than personal experience,
and I feel this gives him added credibility.

This is day 2 for me, and quite honestly, I don't know if I am able to follow the plan.
63 years of daily snacking is a hard one to break.
However, I do believe IF I can,
I'd have an easier time with Maintenance.

[wosnes]

This is day 2 for me, and quite honestly, I don't know if I am able to follow the plan.
63 years of daily snacking is a hard one to break.
However, I do believe IF I can,
I'd have an easier time with Maintenance.

Here's the thing: Once you start -- you're on the maintenannce plan! Now isn't that great?