Everyday Systems

I haven't started the No S Diet yet and am awaiting the book to arrive from Amazon on Tuesday. Question -- I have to eat lunch early (around 11:30, which is the time I get for lunch at work.) I'm usually not that hungry at lunch, but am ravenous at 2:30pm when I usually have a snack. Is it okay to save part of what I would have eaten at lunch and have it for a snack in the afternoon? To be more specific, instead of eating my Lean Cuisine and some Fage yogurt at lunch, I would save the yogurt for a 2:30 snack.

Personally, for me, the snack at 2:30 would be a no-no. Have you thought about eating something more substantial than lean cuisine at lunch? What time do you eat breakfast and what time do you eat your evening meal? Make your noon lunch somewhat larger for the next while to tide you over your 2:30 snack attack. Eventually, your body will adjust to not having that snack. Just a thought. Hope it helps you.

I typically eat breakfast around 7:30 and then we don't usually have dinner until about 6:30, so I'm usually famished by the time dinner rolls around if I don't have an afternoon snack. Maybe I'll try to go lighter on the breakfast and heavier on the lunch so it will hold me over until 6:30.

I have lunch at 11:45 or something, so quite early too. And on the days that I go straight from work to the gym, I'm not coming home until 19:30. So I have a smaller lunch and then something to eat at 16:00 to keep me from fainting at the gym.

Also, I have low bloodsugar so my doctor ordered me to eat regularly.

But:
- at what time do you eat dinner? can you eat earlier? When I do not go to the gym, I try to have dinner at 17:30-18:00.
- maybe you should eat more at lunch, because 14:30 is very early to be hungry again.

Why don't you try having the yogurt with your Lean Cuisine at 11:30? You won't be eating less food, you'll just be eating it at once instead of spaced over time.

I have a set time for lunch due to work too. I eat a small breakfast, a large lunch and if I am still hungry I'll have a V-8 or milk in the afternoon to hold me over until dinner. A yogurt at 2:30 would be a snack. If it is truly a problem you can have a mini meal lunch and a mini meal in the mid afternoon, but I don't recommend that unless you have a medical reason to eat 4/5/6 smaller meals during the day. It makes it hard to learn the habit of not snacking. And a mini meal is not a yogurt, it is a small meal, like half a lean cuisine.

bell4030 wrote:I haven't started the No S Diet yet and am awaiting the book to arrive from Amazon on Tuesday. Question -- I have to eat lunch early (around 11:30, which is the time I get for lunch at work.) I'm usually not that hungry at lunch, but am ravenous at 2:30pm when I usually have a snack. Is it okay to save part of what I would have eaten at lunch and have it for a snack in the afternoon? To be more specific, instead of eating my Lean Cuisine and some Fage yogurt at lunch, I would save the yogurt for a 2:30 snack.

While that seems really reasonable to me,
it is EXACTLY what I'm trying to learn to avoid doing.
My preference has always been for lots of small snacks
rather than large meals.

A common pattern for me is to save my 0% Fage from breakfast
until I'm hungry around 9:30 or 10 a.m.
Then at 9:30 or 10 a.m. I talk myself into having a small muffin with it.

Then at lunch, I decide that snacking in the morning was okay,
so I'll save some of my lunch for later.
Then when I eat what I saved as a mid-afternoon snack,
it's not quite enough and so I go get more food and snack some more.

Unfortunately, by the end of the day instead of 3 meals,
I've had about 3 tiny meals and 5 to 10 snacks.

I'm new at this too,
and I'm working to rid myself of the snacking habit.
by trying not to snack.

lmt2pt wrote: A yogurt at 2:30 would be a snack. If it is truly a problem you can have a mini meal lunch and a mini meal in the mid afternoon, but I don't recommend that unless you have a medical reason to eat 4/5/6 smaller meals during the day. It makes it hard to learn the habit of not snacking. And a mini meal is not a yogurt, it is a small meal, like half a lean cuisine.

For the purposes of No-S, what you eat at a 4th (or 5th or 6th) meal isn't as important as the fact that you must have these every day -- including S days.

A Lean Cuisine type meal without something added (salad, vegetables, fruit, yogurt -- whatever) wouldn't hold me from one meal to the next. I'm sure that's true for many people. They reinforce the snacking habit.

As Reinhard says, you have to train your body and your mind not to snack, not even a carrot. Saving part of your meal to have later is defeating the no snack rule.

Once you read the book you will see what seems like a reasonable idea actually masks a larger problem. I thought I was so smart about a lot in regards to dieting, after all I've been doing it for 30 years. After reading the book I realized I wasn't so smart, which would explain why after 30 years of dieting I was still overweight, duh! I can't believe how much of what I was doing was simply habit and nothing more. The stricter you are, the sooner it will be easier. Can't wait for you to read the book, it's one ah ha moment after another.

The stricter you are, the sooner it will be easier.

Dawn, I agree.

I find that being strict really helps,
Blueskighs