Everyday Systems

I love this way of eating in that it is reasonable, easy to follow and I feel good on it.

However, I weighed for the first time this morning after 2 weeks on the diet, and I've gained 2 pounds. I suspected I had gained b/c my clothes were feeling even more snug that when I started (and they were already snug).

I have been following No-Sing. I've had one other S day other than Saturday and Sunday. I've been adding fruits and veggies to my plate of food as it keeps me full longer. In short, I feel like I'm eating healthier, but I'm gaining weight!

I have been working out for a year or so on a regular basis. I'm continuing to work out 4 times a week, rotating 3 different workouts. (Cardio and resistance training). I don't think I'm gaining muscle as I'm doing virtually the same workouts that I've always done.

Please help! I so wanted this to work!

My BMI is 26.1 -- I'm about 6 pounds from a healthy BMI of 25.

Hi Shelly,

Two questions....1) Are you sure you are over the weight your body should be? I've never had this experience, but sometimes one might think the scale should be lower than what is truly healthy.

2) Have you read the book yet? This plan is very simple, but reading the whole book is a huge help.

I'm absolutely no expert on this, but I'm convinced this way of eating is the best. If you don't get some other answers to this thread, send off a PM to Reinhard. I'm sure he'd have some great insights for you.

Hang in there!
janie

Shelly, stick with it! I would say if you don't have a lot to lose you are definitely not going to see immediate results in 2 weeks.

I would keep a food and exercise joural. I do that so I can see where the fluxuations are. This diet definitely doesn't make you fat if you follow it. It takes a good month to get into the swing of following it correctly, even though it's simple.

I would add that one reading from the scale doesn't mean much. It could be water weight or the actual weight of the food you ate the day before or even earlier in the day.

Let me second wosnes (and Reinhard's past commentary) on this: your weight on a scale is a very noisy number, and can fluctuate all over the place. To draw any real conclusions from it, you need to try to separate out the "signal" (something related to your actual weight) from the "noise" (random water sloshing in and out of your body, errors in the scale, etc, etc).

The book "The Hacker's Diet" does a good job of introducing the concept of smoothing the information you get from your scale, and provides some Excel spreadsheets to do just that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hacker's_Diet . There are also various online sites (linked in the Wiki article) that will do the same thing. I wouldn't recommend the Hacker's Diet itself (it's a severe form of calorie-accounting that I personally would find far too brutal), but chapter 5 in the book (Signal and Noise) is a nicely-written survey of what it means to smooth out data, and it's definitely worth a look! There's an illustrative example where a guy is trying to lose 10 pounds, and the smoothed trend line shows that this is exactly what happened -- but if you look at the raw data, there are ups and downs, plateaus, periods of apparent weight gain, and so forth, so that the poor guy goes through all sorts of phases of joy and despair, when the real situation is that he's gradually losing weight, on average.

Having said all that, I'd have to say that the scale isn't necessarily the best way to decide if you're at a healthy weight. The BMI and weight tables both fail to take into account the wide variation among individuals. I much prefer the approach described in this post: http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=5349. (For those who don't want to follow the link, Reinhard says: "Follow No S and do some moderate exercise, and see what happens.")

I have some weight to lose, but I know that because I was stable at a particular weight for many years, then we had kids and I gained about 20 pounds due to a number of bad habits, especially snacking -- not because the BMI or a weight table says so. I would be *emaciated* at what the BMI says is my ideal weight, it's crazy. I'll be curious where I land under the "eat and exercise moderately" approach: it might be below where I used to be stable, but I'll bet money that it won't be anywhere near what the BMI says is ideal for me.

EDIT: Hmm, those url tags aren't working to turn the addresses into links, not sure why not ...

Don't give up yet Shelly! Like many people said, it can be so many many things that cause one's weight to fluctuate and this way of eating is so "normal" that I'd encourage you to give it a much longer try than any of the food-restrictive or calorie-counting diet.

Is it possible that you're getting close to your "time of the month"?

Thanks everyone for your helpful replies!

It is possible that this weight gain is water weight, but I suspect not. Usually with water weight gain, I don't feel it so much in my clothes. I definitely feel like I've gained weight.

I will definitely stick with this plan -- it makes sense to me and I feel like I can stay compliant fairly easily.

I've had to eat out at restaurants in the last couple of weeks. I wonder if that is the problem? I've been sticking to the virtual plate as much as possible, but still, maybe I'm eating too much.

Restaurant food tends to be higher in salt, fat and sugar than their homemade counterparts. Add to that a restaurant plate is usually larger than a home plate and it is VERY easy to overeat.

shelly_k wrote: I will definitely stick with this plan -- it makes sense to me and I feel like I can stay compliant fairly easily.

I've had to eat out at restaurants in the last couple of weeks. I wonder if that is the problem? I've been sticking to the virtual plate as much as possible, but still, maybe I'm eating too much.

Absolutely possible. But the great thing about NoS is that if you keep on with just your three meals a day, you will know where to look for the source of just too many calories....breakfast, lunch, and dinner...

I just realized after a month of not losing that the reason was my mealtime beverage--we've had LOTS of company ALL summer and we serve quite a few "lemonade" type beverages. Because of NoS, with its "limited input" moments, after thinking about it, I zeroed in on the drinks. I've been enjoying one right along with our guests--not just one day out of the week, but almost everyday. Without realizing it, that was the equivalent of an S every single day.

I've since gone back to our normal pattern of water at meals (milk for the kids) and guess what? I've started slowly losing again.

My point: if you keep gaining, you will be able to zero in and make small adjustments to the amount you are eating. Fifty less calories per meal adds up to a pound a month all on its own.... Moderation really does work if you give it time!

HTH,

Welcome Shelly!

Sorry you saw an initial uptick, but that's not necessarily such a bad/unusual thing.

a) The weight may just be an artifact of the scale -- it's not that much. Have you seen/heard this podcast episode?

http://www.everydaysystems.com/podcast/ ... .php?id=24

b) people tend to start out with LARGE single plate meals. This is a good idea, to build that literal habit, so you don't break down between meals and start snacking. But it can result in some extra calories up front. As you grow confident that you won't starve between meals, and your urge to snack decreases, the visual disincentive of looking at such heaping plates will probably be enough to whittle them down to size.

c) If worse comes to worst and you find that you're continuing to eat too much despite following the literal rules, you still have a platform to build on. Try identifying the next biggest/easiest excess to root out -- maybe the restaurant eating others have suggested, or caloric beverages at meals as vmsurbat suggested. But don't jump to conclusions. The fewer rules the better -- and you won't really know how well a moderate rule works until you've successfully complied with it for a month or more.

Reinhard