Everyday Systems

I'm am just completing my first real week of NO S and I did not have one day that was NO S although I got pretty close. One thing I am finding challenging is when I go off on an "N" day. I am finding that it gives me permission to continue with going off even more! For instance, I did fine today with NO S and then came dinner time: the turkey breast was taking too long to cook and I was starved so I ate some walnuts and a piece of cheese before dinner. Then I ate dinner but felt that I, too, could have ice cream with my husband afterwards since I had already gone off track. I know this all sounds like diet head kind of talk. Which it is! My feeling is that I should not allow a lapse to encourage further lapses that day. Any thoughts anyone?
- Marym

Accept this as your period of adjustment.

If you go off-program one minute, don't write off the rest of the day. Get back on the path. Eat the remaining meals and let it go at that.

We all fail lots and lots of times. You just have to get it into your head that you will not accept permanent failure, thereby ensuring eventual success.

Just keep going. Try your best. Some days, your 'best' will be better or worse than other days. Just don't quit!

Welcome to the No S board!

There's a discussion here about limiting failure:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=3804

And in the "Catch Phrases" thread, LA Loser posted something said by Joelle:

"If I back into a pole, I'm not gonna say,'Oh well, the car is wrecked' and drive into a brick wall!"

I think that's a great one, because that's really what you're faced with, isn't it? All is not lost because you've slipped up for the day. You still have a choice - between a fender bender and a major repair.

Hope this helps!

There's a great story in Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families. When you board a plane headed for Orlando, you expect to land in Orlando. The plane is off-course 90% of the time, but the pilot is continually making adjustments to get it back on course -- so you will deplane in Orlando. If you landed in Oklahoma City, you'd be upset!

Same goes for this. When you're off-course you make adjustments to get back on course. You don't wait for tomorrow.

It might help if you track NoS compliance and failure management separately for a while.
So you had only red days on the NoS calendar this week.
But on the failure management calendar, you might have some red days (when you gave up and totally overate) and some yellow or even green days (when you had one slip but promptly got back on track).

Sometimes the all-or-nothing attitude helps, sometimes it does not help so much. Anyway, keep trying.

Have you tried joining the wannabe club? For some reason that magic number 21 really helped to keep me on track. Just the thought of posting a red day and having to start all over made me stop and think.
Also, there really isn't written that you have to eat 3 meals a day. If you had put your walnuts and (I can't remember) other thing on a small plate, you could have called it a meal...

Something that I'm doing as well as HabitCal is keeping track of what I would have eaten but didn't eat, in order to motivate myself. E.g. If there's birthday cake at work and I would usually have eaten a slice but didn't in order to keep on No S, I write down "Tuesday - didn't eat a slice of birthday cake." It might help you to see that list getting longer even if your N days still aren't perfect?

I'm finding it interesting as well because I had thought of myself as not doing much in the way of snacking, eating sweets, eating seconds during the week usually but, in fact, while I didn't do it a lot, I did more than I thought I did.

One of my favorite sayings of my father is:
"If you find that you've dug yourself a hole, the first thing you do is: stop digging!"

You're just reverting to old habits before you have solidified the new ones. Don't worry too much about it. I solidified the habits then went back. That was dumb. Now I've stopped digging. Long term, it takes very little effort to sustain this diet, but it does take some effort.

Kathleen

I did that yesterday...I knew around 4:30 that I was going to call it a failure day. So, I had a cupcake at 10:30 because I really wanted it. And, since I was already on track for a FAIL, I ate it. If it wasn't a fail day already, I would have been able to resist.

So, that was silly. But, I'm not going to beat myself up.

Tricia wrote:I did that yesterday...I knew around 4:30 that I was going to call it a failure day. So, I had a cupcake at 10:30 because I really wanted it. And, since I was already on track for a FAIL, I ate it. If it wasn't a fail day already, I would have been able to resist.

So, that was silly. But, I'm not going to beat myself up.

Think of it as a learning experience.

You catch yourself AFTER the fact before you learn to catch yourself BEFORE and make a different choice.