I've been no-Sing, or trying to, for about two weeks now. So far I've had some good days, but I've also had a lot of failures. What I've noticed is that there are three and a half main kinds:
1) Thoughtless errors: taking a bit of something while making dinner or taking seconds by accident, because the habit isn't strong enough yet, I suppose.
2) Failures of the body: getting faint or shaky from low blood sugar... this happens to me once in a while, and the temptation to eat rather than, say, have a glass of milk is pretty strong.
3) Failures, pure and simple: I eat that cookie or have a snack between meals.
3.5) Failures, neither pure nor simple: I have that cookie and then the snack and then the whole day is one long binge because it's a failure, anyway.
Three kinds of Failures
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The Great Fatsby
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Three kinds of Failures
July '09: 67 kg (148lb)
Goal: 60 kg (132)
Goal: 60 kg (132)
I find that I have these kind of failures:
1- mindless... the times when I eat and don't even notice it... then when I do, I freak and want to spit it out. These come only when I am not fiemly in a good streak of doing no S. The bad habit takes over.
2- defiance... when I tell myself that I'm sick sick sick of food restrictions and I deserve to enjoy! Bad place to be in!
3 - On a roll... this is when I have done one "failure", say one bite of food, and I tell myself that I've already "failed" and colored my habitcal square red for the day (in my mind) so I might as well make the most of the rest of the day.
The best way to combat all of these in my opinion is to very strictly follow vanilla no S (that's without adding any of your modifications at all) for 21 days or a month, then the habit seems to take over and they all become smaller problems it seems. I used to have very colorful habitcals until I started my challenge in April and decided to do all green days for a month. I didn't quite do it, but I did the next month and they are green now as default. The No S plan has taken over. I still have failures, but not many. The S days are on my hit list.
1- mindless... the times when I eat and don't even notice it... then when I do, I freak and want to spit it out. These come only when I am not fiemly in a good streak of doing no S. The bad habit takes over.
2- defiance... when I tell myself that I'm sick sick sick of food restrictions and I deserve to enjoy! Bad place to be in!
3 - On a roll... this is when I have done one "failure", say one bite of food, and I tell myself that I've already "failed" and colored my habitcal square red for the day (in my mind) so I might as well make the most of the rest of the day.
The best way to combat all of these in my opinion is to very strictly follow vanilla no S (that's without adding any of your modifications at all) for 21 days or a month, then the habit seems to take over and they all become smaller problems it seems. I used to have very colorful habitcals until I started my challenge in April and decided to do all green days for a month. I didn't quite do it, but I did the next month and they are green now as default. The No S plan has taken over. I still have failures, but not many. The S days are on my hit list.
I guess this doesn't work unless you actually do it.
Please pray for me
Please pray for me
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guadopt1997
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Jammin' Jan
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What a wonderful thread!
How I fail:
1) meal schedule is unexpectedly changed
2) don't put enough food on my plate, or there's plenty of volume, but it's all low-fat vegetables. Filling but not sustaining.
3) defiance, yeah, I know about that one. :
It's nice to be in the mix with others who have failure days, too!
How I fail:
1) meal schedule is unexpectedly changed
2) don't put enough food on my plate, or there's plenty of volume, but it's all low-fat vegetables. Filling but not sustaining.
3) defiance, yeah, I know about that one. :
It's nice to be in the mix with others who have failure days, too!
"Self-denial's a great sweetener of pleasure."
(Patrick McGoohan's "The Prisoner")
(Patrick McGoohan's "The Prisoner")
Variations of failures
Recently someone posted about "marginal failures". . . this is the post that I once again reposted on that thread.
I think this concept is in line with what seems like my idea that I keep posting!
I reposted this idea recently in another thread about habit tracking. It doesn't give you a "pass" for having a red day but it does help you track just how off you might have been.
Hope this helps!
I think this concept is in line with what seems like my idea that I keep posting!
I reposted this idea recently in another thread about habit tracking. It doesn't give you a "pass" for having a red day but it does help you track just how off you might have been. I still think that being able to "SEE" the reds is pretty powerful. Ouch, I say! Also, regarding the idea of realizing your day will be red and turning it into a full blown binge. . . "If I back into a pole, I'm not gonna say,'Oh well, the car is wrecked' and drive into a brick wall!"My need has been to keep myself honest with my HabitCal yet wanting to have a clearer record of what I'm really doing. I have a solution that seems to be working for me. First of all, I should clarify that my issues with food have not been "bingeing" as such-like I don't think I've ever sat down with an entire carton of ice cream or eaten a giant bag of chips at one sitting. . . but I do have issues with portion size and unconscious eating/tasting while cooking/finding a "reason" to eat a little more.
I do want to have an honest record of my No S journey. Rather than do it on the daily check-ins. . .takes too long-I get so wordy (obviously!) and I don't have time to do that all the time! So I have made additional HabitCals. . . I created:
Strictly_Speaking_No_S--as per Reinhard's Fence Around the Law line of thought (I went back and copied my original NoSDiet Habitcal and deleted the original)
Not_an_Idiot_S_Day: Reserved for S days whether it's weekends of NWS days. . . to be able to track my habit of not going crazy on those days!
GREEN_Equals_Two_R_Less_S_Slips: My way of keeping track of little slips (ok-failures!) of the strictness of the diet--but so I can note whether this was a biggie or just one extra helping of one item and one healthy type snack, perhaps. . . I give myself a RED if my slip-ups were more massive!
At least by doing it by HabitCal, it's quick to record and a great visual version of my progress. And it tells a more complete story.
Hope this helps!
LA Loser. . . well on my way to becoming an LA Winner. 
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The Great Fatsby
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Three separate habitcal-explanation
I keep three separate No S type Habitcals/calendars, one with each of those tags. The first one is the Strictly_Speaking_NO_S one. It's the one that really "counts." However,I keep the others so that I can keep track of just how "off course" I might have been. For example, I may have to mark a RED day on a Wednesday because I had a dessert at a luncheon that really didn't qualify as a 'Special' day and maybe I had an appetizer that day as well. Those two items were enough to make my day RED but it wasn't as if I'd pigged out all day long. So by marking on my LESS THAN TWO S SLIPS Habitcal, I can mark that day green.
The Non Idiotic S Days Habitcal is a great way to record whether I went crazy on those days or if I managed to make smart decisions but did have dessert and maybe an extra helping of my favorite potato salad and enjoyed a big breakfast of biscuits and gravy with extra gravy. That's still not like an S day where I permasnacked all day long, stuck my hand in the cookie jar every time I passed it, had a huge pizza plus pepperoni rolls plus ice cream plus. . . yada yada yada. You know- the kind of day you sit back and say "Ugh, why did I do that?!" I try to keep my S days (except maybe for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years' Eve!) pretty close to my N days, with permission to have a few special treats on weekends and thus not feel deprived or restricted.
Early in your No S journey particularly, I think it really helps to be able to keep a visual record of just "how much" you might have messed up because it's easy to have some RED days at the beginning, sometimes without even thinking about it, then you can become discouraged by looking a your calendar with all those REDS, and sadly decide to chuck the whole idea. But if you can ALSO see that each of those REDS was a single or double S event, you can see that you're doing much better than you might have thought.
I found that as I progressed, if I was losing a little, that at least limiting my mess-ups was still keeping me on track to some degree and that by not being an idiot on S days, that I could stay on course.
At the beginning of No S, it's important to not even stress about your S days or even your portion sizes on N days. Just get your habits down really really well. Then after a few months perhaps, begin to concentrate on details!
But for me, keeping a visual record of just exactly how and when I followed the rules was more helpful than doing a daily check-in. I have always rebelled against writing down everything I ate and get lax and don't do it. The Habitcal can be checked off in just a few seconds and I'm done. Painless quick and a great image to examine.
The Non Idiotic S Days Habitcal is a great way to record whether I went crazy on those days or if I managed to make smart decisions but did have dessert and maybe an extra helping of my favorite potato salad and enjoyed a big breakfast of biscuits and gravy with extra gravy. That's still not like an S day where I permasnacked all day long, stuck my hand in the cookie jar every time I passed it, had a huge pizza plus pepperoni rolls plus ice cream plus. . . yada yada yada. You know- the kind of day you sit back and say "Ugh, why did I do that?!" I try to keep my S days (except maybe for Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years' Eve!) pretty close to my N days, with permission to have a few special treats on weekends and thus not feel deprived or restricted.
Early in your No S journey particularly, I think it really helps to be able to keep a visual record of just "how much" you might have messed up because it's easy to have some RED days at the beginning, sometimes without even thinking about it, then you can become discouraged by looking a your calendar with all those REDS, and sadly decide to chuck the whole idea. But if you can ALSO see that each of those REDS was a single or double S event, you can see that you're doing much better than you might have thought.
I found that as I progressed, if I was losing a little, that at least limiting my mess-ups was still keeping me on track to some degree and that by not being an idiot on S days, that I could stay on course.
At the beginning of No S, it's important to not even stress about your S days or even your portion sizes on N days. Just get your habits down really really well. Then after a few months perhaps, begin to concentrate on details!
But for me, keeping a visual record of just exactly how and when I followed the rules was more helpful than doing a daily check-in. I have always rebelled against writing down everything I ate and get lax and don't do it. The Habitcal can be checked off in just a few seconds and I'm done. Painless quick and a great image to examine.
LA Loser. . . well on my way to becoming an LA Winner.
I just completed 21 days, green and yellow across the board with no extra S days. I am absolutely there with all of the issues people have mentioned--mindless eating, defiance (and who am I being defiant against, exactly--more to the point, who gets hurt?), hopelessness, all of it. Prior to stumbling across No S, I was ready to just give up on trying to lose weight (and did, for a little while, which of course made things worse).
For me at least, the power of this diet is that the rules are absolute, and taking it as written, it's basically binary. You're either on the diet or your're off. The rules are also very clear and very simple. If you're having trouble with the diet, and especially if you've developed rules, cheats, or mods to try to deal with the difficulty, please consider making a commitment to 21 days of straight-up vanilla No S. I've done three weeks with no mods, and I don't anticipate making any down the road.
Every diet I've ever tried has been really complicated or difficult in some aspect of either planning it or executing it. This has been incredibly simple. The first couple weeks were a challenge, and I came really close to slipping up some days--but that "fence around the diet" is a really powerful thing. I know 22 days in doesn't make me an expert, but the simplicity and power of just three rules--and knowing I'm either on plan or off--is huge.
Part of it is my personality, I guess--I like clear boundaries--but I think Reinhard is right; the more mods you do or accomodations you make, the more likely that No S won't work (because it becomes like every other diet that's failed in the past).
Happy Noessing!
For me at least, the power of this diet is that the rules are absolute, and taking it as written, it's basically binary. You're either on the diet or your're off. The rules are also very clear and very simple. If you're having trouble with the diet, and especially if you've developed rules, cheats, or mods to try to deal with the difficulty, please consider making a commitment to 21 days of straight-up vanilla No S. I've done three weeks with no mods, and I don't anticipate making any down the road.
Every diet I've ever tried has been really complicated or difficult in some aspect of either planning it or executing it. This has been incredibly simple. The first couple weeks were a challenge, and I came really close to slipping up some days--but that "fence around the diet" is a really powerful thing. I know 22 days in doesn't make me an expert, but the simplicity and power of just three rules--and knowing I'm either on plan or off--is huge.
Part of it is my personality, I guess--I like clear boundaries--but I think Reinhard is right; the more mods you do or accomodations you make, the more likely that No S won't work (because it becomes like every other diet that's failed in the past).
Happy Noessing!
Agreed!
I totally agree with what Spleener says here. And I hope that it's understood that my multiple habitcals aren't designed to make it OK that those small slips are ok--it's just a way that I can analyze what I'm doing and how off I may be!
The goal is always to stay green, of course.
Happily, I remember a number of posts from from quite successful No Sers who have lost a lot of weight who admit that they didn't achieve daily PERFECTION but still managed to lose. But the idea is always to aim for greens and yellows. And it CAN be done. The longer I do No S, the more greens I achieve.
The goal is always to stay green, of course.
Happily, I remember a number of posts from from quite successful No Sers who have lost a lot of weight who admit that they didn't achieve daily PERFECTION but still managed to lose. But the idea is always to aim for greens and yellows. And it CAN be done. The longer I do No S, the more greens I achieve.
LA Loser. . . well on my way to becoming an LA Winner.