Starting No S diet

Sandiko · Post by **Sandiko** » Mon May 23, 2011 12:12 am

Hi to all. I have done a lot of reading on eating 3 meals a day and have come to the realisation that snacking does me no justice. Snacking just causes me to spiral out of control. I am starting the no S diet today. I read about this diet in an Australian health magazine two and a half years ago but never started. I am looking at starting off with one S day on the weekend but will see how I go during the week. Eating, thinking and obsessing about food and what snacks I eat everyday has got me to where I am with my weight today. As Ive done a lot of reading - to avoid hunger, I will make all my meals protein rich, include vegetables at each meal, minimise fruit intake at the start, include whey protein at breakfast time. I will see how this works for my hunger. During meal times, I will attempt to drink more water and drink tea such as green tea. Wish me luck. I would like to lose 15 kilograms in weight.

oolala53 · Post by **oolala53** » Mon May 23, 2011 12:42 am

I suggest you don't drink too much during your meals. Make sure you eat enough in the beginning to get you to the next meal. You might get too full with water. Later, when you cut your food, you can up your liquids. Just my idea.

You will like this.

Sandiko · Post by **Sandiko** » Mon May 23, 2011 4:56 am

I meant to say drink more between meals

gratefuldeb67 · Post by **gratefuldeb67** » Mon May 23, 2011 12:31 pm

Drinking more water is a great strategy for health and digestion.
Do it

Good luck and welcome

Who Me? · Post by **Who Me?** » Mon May 23, 2011 12:32 pm

Why minimize fruit?

Nicest of the Damned · Post by **Nicest of the Damned** » Mon May 23, 2011 12:46 pm

I would recommend doing just vanilla No S, at least for the first month or so, with two S days per week. Don't worry about minimizing fruit, eating more protein, or anything else at the same time.

Vanilla No S isn't as easy as it sounds. It's simple, but it is not always easy. There will be days when it will require all your willpower to say no to snacks, seconds, and sweets. Your willpower is a finite resource. If you try to make too many changes at once, you spread it too thin, and end up accomplishing nothing.

When you've been on No S for a month or two, and not snacking, eating sweets, or taking seconds at meals is seeming natural to you, then is the time to start thinking about other modifications to your diet or lifestyle. It's tempting to try to fix everything at once, but that generally doesn't work. This is why almost all New Year's resolutions fail. People try to change too many things at once, spread their willpower too thin, and end up going back to their old ways. If and when you do start adding other mods, do it slowly. No more than three new mods at a time. If tracking all your mods makes you feel overwhelmed, drop at least one of them.

SkyKitty · Post by **SkyKitty** » Mon May 23, 2011 12:52 pm

I'm just now reading my way through the No S book, and in keeping with the ethos of the No S diet maybe you could keep it simpler by just having 3 meals a day and eating whatever you want at those meals, obviously trying to make them healthy.

If you feel hunger, you feel hunger and you will learn to adapt to it. It will not kill you.

I know part of my problem with my weight was that I was 'afraid' of feeling hungry so I constantly snacked, just in case I got hungry later. When I started doing No S I did feel hungry, but much to my surprise I didn't keel over and die from it. The positive feeling of being able to mark each day off as a success became a strong enough motivation to overcome the desire to snack.

It seems like maybe you're piling on the rules to avoid hunger, before trying No S in it's very simple form and accepting hunger as a perfectly natural feeling.

BrightAngel · Post by **BrightAngel** » Mon May 23, 2011 1:16 pm

Wishing you success.

Nicest of the Damned · Post by **Nicest of the Damned** » Mon May 23, 2011 1:32 pm

SkyKitty wrote:If you feel hunger, you feel hunger and you will learn to adapt to it. It will not kill you.

I know part of my problem with my weight was that I was 'afraid' of feeling hungry so I constantly snacked, just in case I got hungry later. When I started doing No S I did feel hungry, but much to my surprise I didn't keel over and die from it. The positive feeling of being able to mark each day off as a success became a strong enough motivation to overcome the desire to snack.

It seems like maybe you're piling on the rules to avoid hunger, before trying No S in it's very simple form and accepting hunger as a perfectly natural feeling.

I made a decision that being hungry sometimes wasn't as bad as counting grams of protein, carbs, or whatever. Hunger really isn't the worst thing in the world.

I also found that when I get hungry seems to have more to do with how bored or stressed I am than with what I've been eating. Eating to deal with moods and emotions is common. If the real problem is stress or boredom, and your coping strategy of eating to comfort yourself, eating more protein isn't going to help with that.

Blithe Morning · Post by **Blithe Morning** » Mon May 23, 2011 1:48 pm

Welcome, Sandiko! Well done on your snacking revelation.

hecarte · Post by **hecarte** » Mon May 23, 2011 4:12 pm

Nicest of the Damned wrote:
I made a decision that being hungry sometimes wasn't as bad as counting grams of protein, carbs, or whatever. Hunger really isn't the worst thing in the world.

I also found that when I get hungry seems to have more to do with how bored or stressed I am than with what I've been eating. Eating to deal with moods and emotions is common. If the real problem is stress or boredom, and your coping strategy of eating to comfort yourself, eating more protein isn't going to help with that.

I totally agree - I am sometimes fearful of feeling hungry, but now I'm learning that it's ok to feel hunger and that I won't pass out or anything. Sometime though I get to the point where my hands and legs shake - low bloodsugar maybe - but I find that is easily remedied with a banana.

When I'm at a loose end I often find myself wandering round the kitchen 'on the hunt' for something to eat. Now when I find myself doing htat I make a cup of tea and say to myself 'I am NOT going to snack'. It's really hard some days and I had a fail today, but it wasn't anything major.

Like a poster before me said - No S is simple, but it is difficult sometimes.

Thalia · Post by **Thalia** » Mon May 23, 2011 4:27 pm

I agree about the fruit -- it's quite filling, thanks to the fiber content, and this is the BEST time of the whole year for fresh local delicious fruit! Where I live the cherries are in, the berries are great, we're starting to get peaches ...

My lunches and breakfasts have been half-fruit lately. I haven't found that I get terribly hungry before dinner because of it.

oolala53 · Post by **oolala53** » Mon May 23, 2011 11:18 pm

Although real stomach-empty hunger is not an emergency, and can be tolerated, let's just be sure we're distinguishing it from urges to eat that do not arise from hunger. Many people new to No S only discover the difference by becoming compliant on N days. Those fake hunger signals must be resisted with steely reserve. They, too, are rarely prevented by adequate food, nor are they much appeased by food, either, unlike real hunger. Most of us will never learn to tolerate real hunger until we go through tolerating fake hunger. Good luck with both!

Nicest of the Damned · Post by **Nicest of the Damned** » Tue May 24, 2011 2:08 pm

oolala53 wrote:Although real stomach-empty hunger is not an emergency, and can be tolerated, let's just be sure we're distinguishing it from urges to eat that do not arise from hunger. Many people new to No S only discover the difference by becoming compliant on N days. Those fake hunger signals must be resisted with steely reserve. They, too, are rarely prevented by adequate food, nor are they much appeased by food, either, unlike real hunger. Most of us will never learn to tolerate real hunger until we go through tolerating fake hunger. Good luck with both!

The difference between real and fake hunger isn't always obvious, either. I still can't tell the difference. Fortunately, on No S, you don't have to. You eat at meal times and not at other times, regardless of whether you feel hungry or not.

Strawberry Roan · Post by **Strawberry Roan** » Tue May 24, 2011 3:23 pm

I think many (not all, unfortunately) in this country don't even know what it is like to be hungry as we eat round the clock.

I embrace the feeling of being empty, that means my body has used up the fuel I have given it, not stored it as excess.

As said before, no one who is eating three balanced meals a day needs to fear starvation.

Best of luck on your journey to better health.

oolala53 · Post by **oolala53** » Tue May 24, 2011 11:21 pm

I knew the difference even before I started No S. I think down the line it is very useful to know because it will make a difference in how much food you learn it takes to satisfy you. Ironically, if I start a meal without first being hungry, it actually takes more for me to feel full.

On S days in the last few weeks, after many months of rather wild days, I have finally been having the patience to wait until I am stomach hungry for meals. I find that if I eat richer food on the weekends, I am hungry for only two meals. It feels great to wait, and again the food is that much more delicious.

Fake hunger feels to me more like agitation in the solar plexus. There is little sense of hollowness, though there can be a sense that I "need" to eat. I disagree with some books that claim that it comes on fast while real hunger comes more slowly. I will be going along fine but after about 4-5 hours from the last meal, it will feel like the bottom drops out of my stomach and it feels hollow! One clue about fake hunger is that it often arrives within an hour or two after eating a meal. It's unlikely to come from a need for calories; it's fake and is more likely coming from a long-standing habit of staying mildly full, either as a way to cover other feelings or just because there are so many food cues that people have gotten used to eating all the time.

Hunger is a wonderful thing, esp. when you are lucky enough to live so that we rarely have to put up with it for more than a couple of hours.

FloralDsiner · Post by **FloralDsiner** » Fri Jun 03, 2011 10:01 pm

I started 5/31/11 this new diet, and I'm really excited about it! It is simple, no "can/can't have's", and makes sense. The more rules & regulations there are, the worse I'll be able to keep to a diet.

While this week I've been ever conscience of not eating between meals, and no sweets (no seconds is already something I do), it hasn't been too hard. The first couple of days I was STARVING and then ate too much at lunch, then regretted the lump in my stomach. But yesterday and today I noticed that I was just normal hungry.

Weight loss has been something that I've struggled with for most of my 28 years. The struggle also runs in the family, too. I've tried some methods, schedules, rewards, strategies, but I've never been able to stick to anything. Everytime it came back to the emotional and mental fatigue of keeping something so strict and not being able to do it long enough for results, and not seeing results so just giving up. I'm sure a lot are familiar with this cycle.

However, I love that this diet takes the focus off "dieting" and puts it back on the physological (?) - where the battle is anyway. Having 3 simple rules to adhere to will be much simpler than a whole list of what to eat, what not to eat, how much exercise, etc. I tend to "focus" on everything at once and then fail at everything.

And this way, my husband doesn't have to eat certain things that I'm eating! We went on a vegetarian diet and he couldn't stay away from his meat.

Doing the HabitCal, too. I need that visual stimulator to keep me going! I'm actually excited about this diet. Mainly because it doesn't seem like a diet at all! I don't see a reason to add extra rules & regulations to No S, so will be doing it just as the book says for the first month (got it at a library, too!). Not going to add exercise into the mix until I get the eating as Habit first.

Starting at 188, but going to focus more on Days on Habit than pounds lost, and expect pounds lost to be a result!

Any encouragement or tips would be appreciated!

mamamia · Post by **mamamia** » Fri Jun 03, 2011 10:57 pm

I have learned the value of doing Vanilla No-S these past couple of days. After my chinese buffet on Wednesday I felt awful Thursday morning and reflexively ate very light meals for breakfast and lunch - I 'feel' fat so I must not eat! Surprisingly, I wasn't hungry until AFTER I ate my dinner that day! I tried to eat a 'reasonable' dinner - plate was full but not with very satisfying food. I know I didn't eat enough yesterday. Today I have been hungry all day! These have been the first days that have been even a little difficult for me. It is SO hard to get out of the diet mentality and eat what you want - 3 times a day. But I am determined to do vanilla No-S and do just that for at least the first month. I think before you can tackle the physical, you have to overcome the mental! Stick to it and see what happens..

oolala53 · Post by **oolala53** » Sat Jun 04, 2011 12:41 am

It is very common for people new to a system be very excited. Try to realize you will have all kinds of feelings and thoughts for quite awhile. Please think of it in terms of months, as you seem to be. And then years. It accommodates so many personal quirks while allowing people to be social, too. Did you read the sticky thread, phases of No S? Very useful. Have fun!

Everyday Systems

Starting No S diet

Starting No S diet

Week 1 of No S Diet