Everyday Systems

Two days of No S living plus walking ( Leslie Sansone DVD )
So far so good- any warnings you can give me about pitfalls I may run into??
Also, what does vanilla no s mean??

Vanilla No-S means No-S without any modifications. You need to do this for several months (or longer) before considering any modifications.

Pitfalls? Possibly overeating/overfilling your plate in an attempt not to be hungry between meals or overeating on S days. Don't worry though. I think everyone has done that at some time or another.

It's actually okay to be hungry, so don't worry if you're hungry an hour or so before a meal. Unless you have some kind of metabolic disorder, it's not a problem.

Hi Pasofan,

Welcome to the board and NoS.
Vanilla NoS means that people follow: No snacks, no sweets, no seconds except sometimes on days beginning with S (Saturday, Sunday, Non-weekend-Special days called NWS - usually people have a glass ceiling of 2 per month on average).
It's Vanilla because no modifications to that plan have been made.

As for warnings or tipps: My biggest pitfall by far has been running out of patience. I really had to force myself to stick it out and it has always paid off.

I'm a big believer in Vanilla NoS and for me it's taken nearly 5months to finally see my S days settle down. After an initial weightloss I've plateaued no doubt because of wild S days and now have started losing again. I didn't DO anything, I just stuck to the program and it did indeed seep through into S days. However, sometimes it was painstakingly slow. On the plus side, food started to be fun again from the beginning. I cook now, I finally enjoy meals with friends, and have a completely different relationship to desserts.

So I wish you lots of patience and a lot of fun on the way.

My big tip is to stick to it! I stopped and gained the same 26 back twice! Just keep plugging along. Also, don't start cheating. It snowballs.

Thank you !!!

pasofan wrote:So far so good- any warnings you can give me about pitfalls I may run into??

Watch out for the extinction burst:

http://youarenotsosmart.com/2010/07/07/ ... ion-burst/

It can seem like you're on the road to establishing your new habit, but you suddenly get an overwhelming urge to cheat. That's not a sign that No S isn't working for you, it's just the way habits go away.

Watch out for the "hey, I can do this, let's load up lots more mods" thinking. Don't add any mods for the first few months. When you do start adding mods, do them a few (ideally, one) at a time, and don't add new ones more often than once a month. Habits take at least a month to form.

There's a tendency to try to fix everything you don't like about your diet or lifestyle in one fell swoop. That almost never works. Think about how many people make New Year's resolutions, and how many are still keeping them in March. Divide and conquer- fix problems one at a time. You've got a certain amount of willpower (which may slowly increase over time). If you try to divide it between too many tasks, you'll end up accomplishing none of them. Work on one or a few bad habits at a time, don't try to fix all of them at once. There is a scene in the movie Apollo 13 that I like to think about for this. It's the one where the astronauts are arguing about why they don't have a re-entry plan yet. Jim Lovell says, "All right, there's a thousand things that have to happen in order. We are on number eight. You're talking about number six hundred and ninety-two."

There's a temptation to worry about what you're doing on S days, or to try to limit it. Don't do this at first. Your S days are going to be wild at first. That's just the way it is for most people. Get your N days right before you start worrying about what happens on S days. If you do try to limit your S days later on, limiting S days is like cooking a small fish- it takes a very light touch.

You might get some intense emotions. You might get resentment and rage about not being able to eat as much as you want (I did). You might get frustrated at seeing so many problems with your diet and not being able to jump in and fix them all right now. You will probably have days when you really, really, really want to break the rules. That's all normal and not a sign that No S isn't working. There can be no failure on No S that doesn't involve food going into your mouth. Feeling resentful, hungry, or discouraged is not failure.

A lot of people find themselves comparing their diet to some Platonic ideal of how they think they should be eating. When it inevitably doesn't measure up to that, they get discouraged. Don't compare your diet to some idealized diet, or to how you think someone else is eating. The right comparison is to compare how you are eating now with how you were eating before you were doing No S.

Some people think that, if they have a red day, they should lose an S day in the future. This won't work. Neither will saying you'll take your S day that you're supposed to get on Saturday today instead. The problem with this is that you can't lose weight by promising to eat better at some time in the future. We'd all be at our ideal weights now with no need for No S if that worked.

There are two kinds of people on No S who don't have any red days. Newbies who haven't had their first red day yet, and liars.

When (not if) you do have a red day, you might feel like you should beat yourself up over it. Don't. Just mark it and move on. Don't try to make up for it by not doing a future S day or by exercising. You can't make up for red days. What's done is done.

A red day is not the end of the world. If you admit to having a red day, you will not be banned from this board. The sun will still rise the next morning. Your family and your pets will still love you.

If you have a normal metabolism and are a normal weight or overweight, being hungry is not going to hurt you. It will not slow down your metabolism and make you unable to ever lose weight, the way some other diets imply it will. Being hungry is not a red emergency alert situation that has to be fixed RIGHT NOW. Some people would like you to think it is. A lot of these people make money by selling snack foods. I wonder why someone who sells snack foods would want you to think that being hungry is an emergency, hmmmm?

Wow, some great advice here.

Nicest of the Damned wrote: There's a tendency to try to fix everything you don't like about your diet or lifestyle in one fell swoop. That almost never works.

I wanted to second this. I've eaten greasy meat pies, chunky potato wedges, duck and coconut cream curries and all sorts of things on N days, and as long as they aren't sweets and they fit on a plate, that is OK! In time (and I mean, weeks or months), you'll probably find that you prefer how you feel when you've had a meal that includes some nice fruits and veggies. Don't fall for the trap of thinking that not only does the meal have to fit on a plate, but it has to be "health food" (whatever that means to you) as well. Get the three meal habit down, then worry about what's on your plate if it needs it.

Thank you all so very much for the advice !!! What a wonderful group of folks here..

You can lose weight eating what you're eating now, just less of it. A professor of nutrition proved this a few years ago by losing weight on a diet of junk food:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/tw ... index.html

Conversely, you don't necessarily have to eat junk food to be overweight. The mainstay of the diet of sumo wrestlers is a stew called chankonabe:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chankonabe

It's a healthy dish. The sumo wrestlers just eat much, much more of it than someone who does not wish to look like a sumo wrestler should.

There is no food you are required to eat on No S. Therefore, No S is completely compatible with any dietary restrictions you may have for reasons of religion, ethics, allergies, culture, or just plain old pickiness. I know for a fact that you can do No S and keep kosher- I've done it for two and a half years.

One of the great things about No S for some of us is that it's not immediately obvious to the casual observer that you are on a diet. There are no common food groups you have to avoid or odd foods you have to eat. This means that, if there is someone in your life who you think will be less than supportive, you don't have to tell them you're on a diet. "No thanks, I'm full" generally works with reasonable people for declining seconds and desserts. Or, if you know someone who is a crashing bore on the topic of diets, and you don't want to bring it up around them, you don't have to tell them you're on a diet. You might even be able to get away with not telling people you live with, if they don't know about No S and aren't terribly observant of your eating habits.

Set yourself up to succeed. Don't keep stashes of food outside the kitchen, and don't hang out in the kitchen except when preparing, eating, or cleaning up after meals. When you're surfing the net or watching TV, there should not be food around to tempt you, since you know you shouldn't be snacking while you do those things (at least not on N days).

Don't buy junk food at Costco or Sam's Club. If you're going to buy sweets or snack foods, buy the smallest package of them you can find. Doritos or Oreos can be part of a healthy diet, but large quantities of Doritos or Oreos on a regular basis is a whole nother story. More snack food or sweets for less money is not something you want, so it's not a good deal for you.

Emotions can masquerade as hunger. Boredom is particularly good at this.

Wow... I'm so glad I read this thread.

Nicest of the Damned, I so needed to hear your great advice! I had a perfect green week last week as my first NoS week. But this week has taken me for a tail spin - haven't had a green day yet. Your advice is so encouraging. I keep panicking because me meals aren't "healthy" about, the amount of food doesn't seem small enough, the weight loss won't be fast enough.

But then I remember the habit is more important than the weight loss! Weight loss would be the symptom of the habit. So important to keep that in mind!

"Some people think that, if they have a red day, they should lose an S day in the future. "

yeah... see.. I was just planning this exact thing. Like I should atone for a bad week by S days until Thanksgiving. But I think I'm just going to keep plugging away as is and trust that the habit will eventually come.

And pasofan, the people here really do seem to be a winderful group of folks! Lots of wisdom on these boards!

JustForToday wrote:I had a perfect green week last week as my first NoS week. But this week has taken me for a tail spin - haven't had a green day yet.

Would it help to hear that this is common? Last week, you had all the initial enthusiasm that anybody starting a new project has. A week or two later, life has happened, and that has faded. And you haven't been on No S long enough to have the habits established. It's common to hit a rough patch sometime in the first month, but usually not till after the first week. This is the time when it's hardest. "These are the times that try men's souls," as my mom used to quote from Thomas Paine to us when we were doing something and finding it difficult. It will get easier when you establish No S as a habit, and you don't have to think about it as much. Unfortunately, it takes at least a month to establish a new habit.

But then I remember the habit is more important than the weight loss! Weight loss would be the symptom of the habit. So important to keep that in mind!

This is absolutely right. You don't have direct control over whether or not you lose weight. What you do have control over is whether or not you are putting food in your mouth at any given time. Focus on changing what you can control, not what you can't.

Realistic expectations are important. You're not going to never have a red day. You're not going to have every plate be the healthiest it can possibly be (aside from that being unrealistic, there isn't scientific agreement on what foods are healthiest, so there really is no way to do that). You're going to hit rough patches. Unrealistic expectations just make you feel bad when you inevitably don't measure up to them.

Use the HabitCal, or some other way of marking your successes and failures, at least at first (you can drop it later if it gets too tedious, once you've got your habits established). This accomplishes a couple of things. It makes you aware of when you're veering off the straight and narrow and need to make a course correction. It can also give you encouragement when things aren't going so well. You can look at your HabitCal and see that you were able to do this in the past, so you should be able to do it now. If you're the sort to be motivated by gold stars, you can get medals for your performance in the Stats view. HabitCal also gives you a way of tracking what you directly control (whether you eat snacks, sweets, or seconds), rather than only being able to track your weight, which you do not directly control.

Mark your S days in advance if at all possible, and give yourself non-weekend S days only when there is a real reason to have them. If you can have a non-weekend S (NWS) day on the fly, any time you feel like it, you'll probably end up with too many S days to lose weight. When I was doing HabitCal, I marked my S days for the month on the calendar at the start of the month. You might get the occasional on-the-fly S day, but that shouldn't be a regular occurrence.

Plan treats for your S days. Plan a meal that you know you would like to have seconds of. Buy a special treat and save it for an S day, or plan a trip to a bakery, ice cream or frozen yogurt place, or something like that for an S day. Give yourself something to look forward to.

Eventually, you will have the No S habits so well established that you will have occasional S days when you don't have any sweets, snacks, or seconds- it just won't occur to you to do so. You probably won't notice this until you're thinking back, after it happened.