Everyday Systems

I was on Amazon looking at a gazillion diet books (some find their way to Malaysian skyscrapers but I end up on Amazon looking at diet books). The diet books were awful, awful, awful. Eat all you want except for....the list is endless. UNTIL I notice the S diet. I was not planning to buy but....

This is exactly what I was looking for.

A little history. I have always struggled with being 20 to 50 pounds overweight, bouncing back from dieting faithfully to saying the heck with it and just eating whatever. I especially enjoy the bad fats and the bad carbs -yummy. I actually don't do a lot a lot snacking but every day I eat like it is Thanksgiving. I know it is from years of dieting and just deciding I had it and dammit, I was going eat what I wanted. Okay, so I gained more and more and found myself 100 pounds overweight. How could I NOT know this??? People give you that "don't you realize how fat you are" look all the time. It is easy not to "know" you're fat. Don't weigh yourself for 2 years, never look straight into a mirror, estimate your clothes size and buy 3 sizes bigger. Freakin ouch! Gee, I figured out I was fat.

After New Year's I say "I'm gonna handle this." I go to Weight Watchers. I never go back after the first meeting. I look at what I can eat and more importantly what I can't eat. Low fat, count points, low fat, count, obsess over points, low fat, obsess over points. Lather, rinse, repeat. Knowing I will not stay on it, that is the end of that. I am not wasting my money. I despise low fat diets. I don't like the low carb either but I really hate the low fat eat-cold-cereal-skim-milk-for-breakfast kinda diets. It tastes like sugar coated dog kibble and I'm hungry an hour later. (No offense to the cereal eaters - I know some people love it). Low fat is tasteless and low carb gets boring. South Beach wants you to eat eggs every morning- 7 different egg recipes to get through the week. Not. Gonna. Do. It.

About 2 years ago I had tried the French style diet and actually did pretty well. People told me I was crazy and that you could never lose weight if you did not cut out the evil fats or the evil bread and pasta. They were wrong though. I had three meals a day that I cooked from scratch with moderate fat, moderate portions and I lost 4 dress sizes in 4 months without a lot of suffering. I don't know how much weight I lost but I imagine around 30 pounds or so. When I ate like that I had no desire to snack or even take seconds. However, the problem was that ANY convenience or processed food was considered "evil" and so again, it is hard to stay on any food program when you start having to put restrictions on what you can and cannot eat. It got old to cook from scratch with fresh unprocessed ingredients every single day. Okay I'm lazy and there are days went I don't want any dishes to clean up. Now some days I loved it and the food tasted so much better than anything processed. The French go to market every day so it is easier to have fresh. Living in the suburbs it does not work well with the American lifestyle. I am lucky to get to the grocery store once a week, not to mention the hard-to-find ingredients which sometimes meant a road trip. Since I could not stay on it I just abandoned the program. It was not hunger or cravings, it was too time consuming.

When I read the no S concept I think this will work. I am going go over to the check in board and check in daily and track my progress. Why do I think I will succeed? It makes sense and I know I can do it for two reasons. My walking shoes are calling. My plan is to cook as much as I can and use unprocessed foods when available but not obsess when I can't and still stay on the plan.

I have been reading the boards and this is a nice group of people. I like the concept of moderation and support for it. I'd like to be one of Reinhard's success stories.

flightisleavin wrote:My plan is to cook as much as I can and use unprocessed foods when available but not obsess when I can't and still stay on the plan.

Welcome aboard! It sounds like you are heading in the right direction with No-S. I, too, bumped into it on Amazon last year, and haven't looked back since.

Just a small example of how well No-S can work because there are no "evil" foods: I was out shopping and mall walking last week. It was way past lunch time when I finished, and I was thinking I had to get home and have my unprocessed homemade lunch, even though that would mean lunch at 4 pm. Too late! In my past diet life, I would have figured "oh what the heck, I can't have my food, so I'll get a steak & cheese sub with a ton of fries in the food court. But that was then. Now, I had the small Subway turkey sandwich with lots of veggies, was perfectly happy with just that, and didn't obsess about it at all. In the past, I would have counted even the Subway meal as "off plan", and that would have led to disaster for the rest of the day, if not the next two days. Ah, the peace of mind that No-S brings!

Anyway, best wishes to you -- I hope you enjoy No-S as much as I do! Winnie

Thanks for the welcome Winnie96 and Reneew.

Winnie - that is exactly how I used to think when I semi did this plan - since I it would be 11 o'clock at night before I would finally get my dinner (if I had to prepare it myself) I would say to the heck with it and just get a big bad meal.

I feel like the S diet was the missing piece that I wasn't figuring out.

The thing that Reinhard said that resonated with me was he said to figure out how much to eat so you don't give into snacks without overeating. And he said the plate of food would get smaller.

I would never survive if I had to do a deprivation diet, food elimination diet, no coffee diet or spend your entire days counting everything while eating nothing good diet. But I can see what Reinhard is saying.

I worked with a woman who used to be what I thought was "naturally" slim. Well into menopause but never had a weight problem. She would always eat lunch and ate at all the office parties but did not pick at the food all afternoon like the rest of us. While I liked her I secretely hated her because I thought she can eat "anything" and not gain weight. I remember once we were discussing which kind of ice cream was the best (we all had our nightly t.v. snacks) and she said "Oh, I close the kitchen at 7:00 and we don't eat watching t.v.. There is no eating after supper in our house." They would also would take a walk after dinner in the summer and swim at the Y in the winter. She walked to work most days. She said the only time her family had ice cream was when they made a special trip to the ice cream parlor on Sunday. We thought she was nuts and depriving her children who needed a bedtime snack. How could you not have an evening snack? We argued that if you ate a little less at dinner you could have the ice cream. The irony here was that we were all overweight telling her how to control weight and she was slim. Go figure.

I never attributed her weight to anything to do with her eating habits but that she was genetically blessed. Maybe there was something to that but I think she was eating the old fashioned way and that had a lot to do with why she did not struggle with weight gain the way we did.

Nice to see enthusiastic newbies around here, Welcome, Flight !

Eliminating some food choices is really not a good idea, my plan is I can have anything I want as long as I watch my portions of course. This is more like what people would do in day to day situations instead of being too harsh and promising not to eat pizza ever again for example, those promises are usually broken and lead to a lot of frustration as well.

The other day I heard of the BABY FOOD diet, lol ! The plan is to eat one of those lil' containers of baby food for breakfast and then lunch ... and then have a reasonable dinner. Now does that sound like a reasonable idea ?? No !! But it seems Jennifer Aniston has been doing it. Celebrity diets and extreme methods like using diet pills seem very unhealthy to me. I prefer the good ol' method, portion control and exercise.

Cheers !

Marc

Disclaimer : I am following a more extreme version of the 'No-S' diet.
I made my own personal modifications to the original plan (Diet & Exercise)
What I am doing should not be misinterpreted as being a typical 'No-S' diet experience.
11/01/2008 : 280.0 pounds - - - 06/16/2009 : 211.6 pounds
7 months 16 days / 68.4 pounds

Welcome 'fightisleavin'! I've only followed the No S for just a week, and I must say It is the most stress free way to eat. I haven't lost any weight yet but after the countless number of diets I've tried, this is the first thing that took away all the stress. I don't constantly worry about what I'm going to eat, and secretly praying nothing comes up to interfere with what I had planned out for myself for the day. I've lost a lot of weight on other diets, but I've gained double the amount back and I was at a place where I was just ready to forget about being a comfortable weight. I've dieted off and on for 20 years and now the No S way has freed me from the mental agony I was under.

Forgive me. I tend to ramble on sometimes. Anyway, WELCOME! You've made a wise choice.

P.S. If you know anyone in need of diet books, I have quite a few I need to UNLOAD! LOL!

Welcome Flight!

Deprivation was NOT the way. I too stumbled upon No S an it just made sense to me. As a Child spending summers in the country, this is how we ate. Three meals, there was always desert after supper, but no snacking during the day.

No S is teaching me to LISTEN to my body. It will tell me when it is hungry and if i don't get in the way, I will learn a way to lead a much healthier lifestyle

Welcome Flight! Spend some time reading through previous posts - particularly on the NoS General Discussion Board. You'll learn a lot and pick up lots of tips. Good luck with your NoS journey!

Mimi

Welcome!

About 2 years ago I had tried the French style diet and actually did pretty well... I had three meals a day that I cooked from scratch with moderate fat, moderate portions and I lost 4 dress sizes in 4 months without a lot of suffering.... However, the problem was that ANY convenience or processed food was considered "evil" and so again... The French go to market every day so it is easier to have fresh. Living in the suburbs it does not work well with the American lifestyle. I am lucky to get to the grocery store once a week, not to mention the hard-to-find ingredients which sometimes meant a road trip. Since I could not stay on it I just abandoned the program.

I think you've put your finger on the problem with diets that are based on a particular, remote culture. They don't always travel well. They require ingredients, social structures, etc. that may not exist locally.

I don't want to knock the French diet at all: I love french cuisine and I think it works wonderfully for people in the right external circumstances. And it shares a lot with no-s. In particular, the emphasis on discreet, deliberate meals. In a way, no-s just abstracts out the common eating structure shared by all traditional ways of eating. It insists on just that one, most important thing, and so you can do it anywhere, in any circumstances, and still get the most important benefits of French and other traditional ways of eating. You could do French no-s Monday, "Mediterranean" no-s on Tuesday, and good old American comfort food no-s on Wednesday, etc. Paying attention to ingredients is nice, and I think meal focused eating nudges you toward that, but lack of some particular ingredient is never an excuse.

Reinhard

Nice to meet and post with all of you.

I have been poking around the boards and there is a ton of great info.

I decided that for me it is learning to eat moderate portions and how that looks on a plate. In addition to purchasing the S book I took Reinhard's suggestion to cook from regular recipes and not "diet" recipes. I kinda knew that already as being a good idea but here was the problem before - I was cooking for 4 as most recipes say "serves 4". It is really hard to guage sometimes. You know, the package or recipe that says serves 4 and you end up eating the whole thing even though the 2 ounce serving was appropriate. That is where I was slipping up. Or I would eat 2 portions instead of 1, so I wouldn't have as much left over food.

I got a got cookbook that had regular recipes that appealed to me that serves only 2 people. I can plate half and freeze the other half for my own frozen dinner later on when I don't have time to cook. With four servings I would have 3 left over meals but one is fine or I would end up eating half because I did not want waste food. God forbid I do that. Even when I make soup and freeze it, I end up throwing half of it out and that bums me out. So what I do? I eat more of it or I end up throwing it out because I am sick of it. Isn't that stupid? Either way, it's too much food. It's like being on automatic pilot.

I love the idea of being able to plate the food, being mindful of not overloading it and just let it be without worrying about fat, calories , carbs or waste.

I know so many women who are on the low carb craze and are still struggling to lose. What they end up doing is eating ice cream or some form of sweets every day. I imagine this is because they are in such carbohydrate deprivation. A lot of Gary Taube followers who supposedly has done all the research and is the one who has it right. I am not so sure though.

Far be it from me to say anything about losing weight as I am overweight myself but if the plans works (I am confident that it will) and they see my results, they will ask. I will gladly tell them what I am doing and let them know about the S diet.

Welcome!

This by far is the best diet plan for me as well. Look forward to your posts!

Welcome indeed.

I have been here for eight weeks (yesterday) and it has been wildly successful.

To your health,

SR