Everyday Systems

I have been losing at a glacial pace on NO-S. (Female, short, middle-aged, chronic yo-yo dieter who enjoys alcohol. Not a recipe for swift weight loss even if fasting). I lost five pounds last year and I'm quite heavy.

S-days? Under control. I have a treat or two and they're small. I have some two-ounce martini glasses that I use for two purposes -- one: to hold my nightly drink, and two: to make dessert shooters. Dessert shooters are awesome because they're small and contained but seem so FANCY, so the treat aspect is played up and made special. (They're also insanely easy to make).

Exercise? I do Wii Fit Plus because I got sick of the gym. I am a nerd and can't help it, so don't laugh at me. I work from home, so I can do fifteen or twenty minutes when I need to take a break from work. I try to get in a minimum of an hour of activity a day. That includes Urban Ranger in nice weather.

Still losing SLLOOOWWWLY. Slower than I wanted to.

I bit the bullet and started using salad plates for my plates.

Boom. I'm losing at a pace I like now. No I'm not crazy with hunger. I wouldn't do that to myself. I still eat anything I want as long as it follows the No-S rules. (Had spaghetti and a salad last night and a really great quinoa and black bean salad for lunch). I don't eat special low-fat anything (I like REAL food, thanks). I had a burrito the other night with hot salsa and sour cream.

IF you're in my unenviable weight loss demographic, I urge you to give it a try. Though I wouldn't encourage it until you get your S-days under control, and are putting in some movement. That would be majorly putting the cart before the horse.

EDIT: WARNING WARNING WARNING DANGER WILL ROBINSON WARNING!

Do read KCCC's excellent "Phases of No-S" before you think this is a possible solution.

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=6437

Man, am I glad to read that. However, I don't get in the exercise that you do. However, I'm all for getting rid of my giant dish set and get new dishware with s-m-a-l-l plates for the dinner plates. I don't trust myself to use the salad plates when the giant dinner plates are sitting there!

I haven't found that small plates make a difference in the amount I eat.

wosnes wrote:I haven't found that small plates make a difference in the amount I eat.

I doubt any one system works for everyone. I think I have a broken hunger circuit.

(By the way, for the newbies? I've been working at No-S for several YEARS. This is NOT a mod you try after six weeks)

I'm glad this made a difference for you, Noel. Your perseverance deserves a payoff beyond the other benefits I know you've already experienced.

I'm into this 2.5 years and still finding it natural to make adjustments to the basics, as in how much I put on a plate of any size. (I tend to use my hand as the benchmark for servings.) It's almost a little scary at times how little is enough. But as long as my body has reserves (and it does), I experiment with amounts. And for me there's always mocha.

oolala53 wrote:I tend to use my hand as the benchmark for servings

You might really be in to something absolutely brilliant there, ya know. Bigger person might need bigger portions and smaller people with lower caloric needs tend to have smaller hands.

That's really got me to thinking...

I'm repeating myself, but my palm is for protein at a meal. Around 2 fists of volume of starch, tops. 2-3 fists of freggies, with 2/3 veggies. 1-2 thumbs of high fat food or an oil. (Usually less protein at breakfast). These are all ball park, but I think it averages out for me.

But I have found that smaller plates have been working recently, too, where they did not in the first years.

I pay attention to portions, too -- sometimes just knowing how much a 1/2-cup or cup is, sometimes using my hands instead.

I don't have too much problem with plates -- it's the bowls! Cereal bowls are almost the size of serving bowls.

wosnes wrote:I pay attention to portions, too -- sometimes just knowing how much a 1/2-cup or cup is, sometimes using my hands instead.

I don't have too much problem with plates -- it's the bowls! Cereal bowls are almost the size of serving bowls.

Oh, it's not just me, then! I was wondering. I got a new set of dishes and the bowls were enormous! I started using the coffee mugs for my morning oatmeal to get the portions right.

For cereal, side servings of soup (rather than main meal), yogurt and such, I have little dessert bowls or the bigger size of the bowls that are often used to hold chopped ingredients when cooking.

But the real measure for me is what combination and ratio of dense foods are going to satisfy me now and have me get hungry an hour to two hours before my next meal? If I'm not getting hungry, I cut down on the dense foods, but never the freggies. And if I'm out and it's hard or too expensive to get good freggies, I pretend they're on the plate, so I rarely eat more than half a plate of restaurant entrees and starch. I just get too full! And then it takes forever to get hungry. Harrumph. I'm getting more willing all the time to eat less at meals, and savor it even more than I do (I already take 30 minutes for lunch and dinner) just so that I can protect my appetite. I like eating enough that I want to do it three times a day! And I want the pleasure of being really hungry.

I don't know if this sounds too calculating. Maybe just using smaller plates way back when would have done the trick. I'll never know now if I would have come to similar proportions without paying attention to the details. Reinhard doesn't claim the microdecisions don't have an impact, just that he'll leave them up to us. He didn't start this board until he'd been at it 4 years, I think. I don't know if he omitted the details of his process because he thought it would just be a distraction or if he just forgot. I'd like to think in another year and a half, I'll have forgotten a lot of it, too.

NoelFigart wrote:

wosnes wrote:I pay attention to portions, too -- sometimes just knowing how much a 1/2-cup or cup is, sometimes using my hands instead.

I don't have too much problem with plates -- it's the bowls! Cereal bowls are almost the size of serving bowls.

Oh, it's not just me, then! I was wondering. I got a new set of dishes and the bowls were enormous! I started using the coffee mugs for my morning oatmeal to get the portions right.

The bowls in the set of dishes we're using now hold a quart of food! The plates are big, but they have a 2-inch plus rim, so I keep the food within the rim -- that's not a problem. The mugs are large, too. They hold well over 2 cups of liquid.

Oh, I forgot to say that I put the little bowls on my plate for lunch or dinner and fill the rest of the plate with other foods, whatever they are. If I'm really hungry in the morning, I might even put my cereal bowl on a luncheon plate and put other food on the plate. But that happens less often now.

Our plates are HUGE. So even the salad plates are pretty big (probably a "normal" size dinner plate) ... so I always use those. Been No-sing for 2 weeks now and have gone from 180 to 162 this morning (I am not kidding -- I'm also nursing a 4 month old baby and I started walking -- last week, I did 17 miles!) so I think all that is helping) ...

But even though I use those small plates, I STILL leave food on the plates. I try REALLY hard to focus on when I am feeling full so I just put my fork down when I'm starting to feel full. I've found that if I DON'T do that, I am just uncomfortable.

One other "mod" I TRY to do is to finish chewing a bite before putting another one on my fork. That way I am FORCED to appreciate each bite, and to think about it and it's not just mindless. It's not easy with 3 kids 4 and under at home, but I do try to be aware of it.

And it's working. I LOVE THIS DIET SO MUCH! (obviously, I'm a total n00b, but I love this way of life)

Careful about going balls-out on this kind of thing, ya know. It's one thing to put all your energy into something and another thing entirely to develop a sustainable lifelong good habit!

NoelFigart wrote:Careful about going balls-out on this kind of thing, ya know. It's one thing to put all your energy into something and another thing entirely to develop a sustainable lifelong good habit!

I believe that is what I'm doing. I'm doing what works for me, and -- well -- it's working.

BrightAngel wrote:

megran wrote: I'm doing what works for me, and -- well -- it's working.

Congratulations, I'm happy to hear you've arrived at a plan that is working for you.

Thank you! I used to be a personal trainer and have studied nutrition and advised it to others. "Lots of protein and veggies, lowfat dairy, count calories" etc etc etc.

This way of eating is so incredibly freeing. It's GREAT.