Everyday Systems

Yesterday was day 21 for me (in absolute terms, not days-on-habit terms). I had one red day, one NWS day, and one idiot weekend in that time. But I do feel like the 3 meals habit is sinking in--my body now gets hungry at consistent times each day, and I'm used to the cycle of hungry-->meal-->full-->gradually less full-->gradually more hungry-->meal rather than permasnacking.

I also haven't lost a single pound. When I started, I was 4 lbs above what I consider my "usual" weight, and in the first week I dropped back to my "usual," and then promptly bounced back up and have held steady at my Day 1 weight (I weigh myself every day and have started graphing a moving average to be less affected by daily fluctuations, although there haven't been any fluctuations at all in several days). My goal is to get 10 lbs down from my "usual" weight, so I don't have a tremendous distance to go, and I think the habit-building in the first 21 days was really valuable, so I'm certainly not throwing in the towel yet, but the lack of results on the scale is a little annoying.

So the question is what now. The two tweaks I'm thinking about are:
1. Making sure to eat more vegetables/fruits on N days, and
2. Trying harder to get exercise in regularly.

Until now I really haven't been controlling the composition of my N day meals, beyond no sweets, and there have been a few days when I've had some "junky" food. So I'm thinking of trying to make a fixed fraction of my lunch and dinner plates vegetables/fruit, either one third or one half, I haven't decided yet.

Exercise-wise, I've been doing a little when the mood strikes, but could definitely stand to do more. It's been difficult because of school and other commitments and because I just threw my back out again, but it's also not something I've been focusing on or pushing myself to do at all.

The other thing I'm thinking about is a time limit. I can commit to sticking with it until the end of May, but if by then I'm still at the very same weight, I'm not sure this is the plan for me. If I were holding steady at the same weight I'm usually steady at, that would be one thing, but so far I'm maintaining this 4 pound gain from the beginning of April (spring break) which might well have corrected itself if I'd gone back to my usual eating habits rather than started No S. If absolutely nothing happens in another month, I feel like I might have been better off with what I was doing before.

Any feedback on those plans, or advice for how to approach the coming days/weeks?

Check out the post "a lil discouraged" it was posted 5-5-08 (I think).

You'll find there are more just like you!!!

You have so little to lose it may take longer.

Before I started tweaking, I'd work on very stringent compliance with "vanilla" no S.

But exercise and more veggies can't hurt.

Do look at some of the other threads on how long it took to see results. Three weeks is not very long - it's just a start on habits.

I think you're being very wise...the important thing is to get the habits down, and then maybe do some tweaking.

That's ALL I've been doing right now. Not even any exercise though I do try to walk.

Just do a little bit at time, it's so much easier to maintain your habits w/o feeling deprived or punished when you go slow.

JD4,

Sorry the scale hasn't been more cooperative, but do remember that you shouldn't really expect to have lost much more than one and a half pounds in three weeks (half a pound a week)-- well within the margin of error of a typical household scale.

It sounds like you've got the habits largely down -- which is hugely important, and represents important progress. My suspicion is that "more of the same" is all you need. It can take some time for the sight of excess that you're now confronting yourself with to do its whittling down. But if that turns out not to be the case, that you still don't see any loss in another week or two, you've at least 1) halted the typical first worlder status quo of gaining in its tracks and 2) built a solid foundation of habits from which to proceed further.

I'd be careful about piling on extra rules, though, because sustainability is the hardest part. The best thing to do, as you've suggested, is to add a little pressure from the exercise angle. Two moderate efforts are much more sustainable than one extreme effort, and give benefits that either one by itself could never produce. I find a daily time quota of exercise to be the most important structure rather than any particular kind of exercise-- nothing very ambitious, say, oh, 14 minutes every N-day. You can make that 14 minutes shovelglove, you can make it jogging, weight lifting, yoga, bodyweight exercises, whatever. And because the only hard requirement is the time (and not very much time) you have no legitimate excuse not to do it.

If you do want to add a little extra from the diet angle, something positive, like "intelligent dietary defaults," is a good place to start. Though there are some that are relatively moderate and No-s compatible (like lowercase and capital S-days), I'd be very cautious about piling on extra prohibitions. There's a huge risk in trying to do too much.

Reinhard