Everyday Systems

Congratulations on your engagement!

Congratulations!

Hi Eschano, thanks very much again for stopping by my thread. And congratulations on your engagement!

I am very encouraged to read that No S has helped you overcome perfectionist tendencies. I struggle a lot with this (and in fact it's the main reason I've given up No S in the past - not doing it perfectly). But of course being 'all or nothing' usually means you end up with nothing. Reading that No S has helped you in this way is very encouraging!

Keep up the great work.

PS What are LAM and AD if you don't mind me asking?

OMG I'm SO happy for you!!!! Congratulations big time! Your finance sounds so wonderful and I know you both will be very happy for many years to come!!

Did you tell your family yet?

Btw, absolutely love this:

eschano wrote:
So in order to get ready for my wedding I will do the following diet-wise: absolutely nothing. Vanilla NoS it is.

Enjoy your engagement--it's such a fun time!

Linda

Yay!! Congratulations!

Thank you so much for your congratulations!

Linda, yes, they are over the moon about it. The met my fiancé (hehe - still feels weird) a few times now and get on brilliantly with him. Also, as it happens my mum is visiting since yesterday so it's good timing.

Good Enough, I completely know how perfectionism can throw you off course. LAM is my system to deal with perfectionism. It is short for Looking After Myself and basically means that no matter my behaviour (perfect or not) I aim to do something kind for myself every day. It tought me and teaches me self-compassion and makes life so much easier. I have a list of things that count for me buried somewhere here.

I created AD to deal with the fact that I sometimes get systems-fatigue. It stands for Adventure. I try to do something adventurous every few days. It can be something very small like eating a new fruit or taking a new route or something bigger like visiting a new country.

I think it's very helpful to have my own systems that work to keep me on the NoS track. I needed something for my perfectionism as I let it ruin my life by sabotaging everything I started. If this system doesn't work for you make your own. Just notice when it is easy to be on track - what you need (such as feeling good about yourself) and then decouple it from the perfect behaviour. So I felt good when I was kind to myself and I stopped ONLY being kind to myself when I behaved perfectly. And voila, now I feel good no matter what and funnily, my behaviour is sustainably closer to perfect, alas still with some fails, than ever before. I hope that makes sense!

Good luck with that.

All green. Only I am failing at NoCoffeeMonth. Had some coffee on holiday and also since. Might not bother for now with it but trying not to make it a daily habit.

eschano wrote:LAM is my system to deal with perfectionism. It is short for Looking After Myself and basically means that no matter my behaviour (perfect or not) I aim to do something kind for myself every day. It tought me and teaches me self-compassion and makes life so much easier. I have a list of things that count for me buried somewhere here.

I love this idea! I will look for your list, I think I'd like to implement something similar.

I'm late to the party... but most sincere congratulations! I've been engaged for five years now, hope you won't try to break my record

Thank you Imogen!

I'm doing well but because I took a week off with celebrations before my weight has crept up one kilo. Time to vanilla NoS with fencing around the law again. I'm very relaxed about it. Weighing only every second week has been very liberating for me.

Otherwise I'm doing fine but I did abandon my Coffee free month

I will do DancingYogi again every day and go to the gym on Sundays.

congratulations on any coffee-free days. I don't think I could face the world without coffee. I finally managed to (more or less) make diet sodas a rare treat--coffee is my last safe vice!!!!!

Yes, I don't think I could give up coffee either, unless it was for health reasons. It's great to see you so relaxed about your weight! Very inspiring!

Just out of interest I weighed myself again today - that kilo has evaporated. Funny how that is ha! One more reason to a) not assign much value to the number and b) not weigh too often.

Mitchelll, Heather, I am with you - I clearly need it too. Although, I do feel good when I don't have it but sometimes I'm just too tired in the morning.

All good yesterday. Did DancingYogi as well.

It's going really well, mainly because I am busy with all the fun wedding preparations. We have a venue and a date and I'm sailing through NoS at the moment because there is no time to snack and I am so incredibly excited there are no cravings.

I know these phases don't last but I'm riding it out and won't be on the boards too much. It shows again that it's all about having a full life. Instead of focusing too much on diet it's my daily life I should fill with love, excitement, and meditation.

I'm sorry I can't keep up with all you amazing ladies and gentlemen at the moment but I'll think of you!

Congratulations on the engagement! I just got engaged to my fiancé (!!) in August, it is very exciting Although I've been finding the planning process quite stressful so it's not doing hugely good things for my eating habits unfortunately!

I'm glad things are going so well for you! Yes, it should be all about enjoying life.

Congratulations on your engagement! (and thank you for your reply to my meager thread.)

Four of our children have married within the last ten years and the preparations included many happy moments. Be sure to take pictures of everything. One of the cutest/funniest is of our three teen-age sons and my husband in the lobby of the bridal shop--waiting to see our daughter in the chosen gown. Priceless.

Back to business-your good attitude seems to have lead to success. It's encouraging. Thank you.

Congrats wonderful eschano! He is a lucky man!

Thank you so much Milliem, Heather, Anna and auto!

Miliem: Congratulations to you and your fiance!!!
I, too, found the venue hunt and date setting pretty stressful but we opted for an all-inclusive package at the venue so I'm quite relieved now. My one tip to avoid stress: Do not read any wedding forums! People are mental in their spending (money and energy wise) and it gave me a weird image of what I NEED to have at my wedding. Now, we are opting for a very simple, intimate ceremony that is very much an expression of us as a couple so I stopped comparing our wedding to others et voila! all the stress went out of it.

Anna: such a great tip! You're completely right. I have been quite lazy on the photo front.

Another big tip for anyone getting married: appy couple. It must be the best app and website combination out there. Our guests love it.

So back to NoS: it's going really well. I had some minor indiscretion on Thursday last week but no WTH and my weekends are less heavy. I also started to take up spinning again on Saturdays (the only day I can make) so I can get into shape. We want to start a family soon and I want to be as healthy and fit as possible before. That said - I'm sticking 100% with vanilla NoS.

Sounds like you are really settling into the NoS lifestyle, nice work! I'm early days to be back into it but hoping my weekends become less heavy soon (gotta work on those N days first!)

As for the wedding, I think where we went wrong was doing the exact opposite to you - choosing a venue where we have to do EVERYTHING ourselves! It is beautiful and we both love it, but basically comes only with the ceremony room and space for a marquee, and we have to organise everything we want separately... eek! Thanks for the app tip as well I will definitely look into it

Good luck to both of you! We had five weddings in the family this year, and it is amazing to me how elaborate weddings have become! There is so much attention to detail now and special little touches. It can be fun but also a lot of work!

Milliem, you are my hero. Doing everything yourself is stressful but I bet in the end you get exactly what you want and you'll have a good relationship with all of your suppliers, which is priceless.

Jean - I am planning a very low-profile wedding so while I love all those little details at other people's weddings I admit that I'm not that kind of person. Unfortunately, I never had this attention to detail (also why calorie counting was catastrophical for me! I could never remember anything) However, as long as my fiancé is there I don't really care about anything else

Such an exciting time! I loved planing my wedding and I have such great memories from that day.

I love that you're focusing on what's important--the coming together of two people that love each other. I know you'll have an amazing future together. ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜

Eschano
Even a simple wedding requires a lot of thought and planning, and here is hoping that all goes well for you! I congratulate you on focusing on the important aspects and not all the frill.
Jean

Wow eschano, things are really moving along - how exciting I'm so pleased you're sticking with vanilla No S, wedding websites would have us all believe we must fad diet before the day.

You've already picked up my top wedding tip - don't look at other people's weddings / plans / budgets / dresses. My other tips are:
- Enjoy being engaged. Spend time with your man (not on wedding stuff) and savour the moment. You get to be married for ages, but you're only engaged for a short time.
- Despite the best laid plans of mice and men, something will slip up. For us, a car overheated, and 20 too few chairs arrived. Expect some minor glitches; they will make no difference to your celebration.
- Opinions are like *ssholes, everyone has one. Everyone will give you there 2 cents on how to do things (hell, I'm doing that right now!). I had second cousins weighing in on how I should have had a bouquet toss. If they offer a good idea, cool. If not, ignore them and focus on you and your man (it's good practice for parenthood).

Hi everyone!

I'm back. Most of the wedding planning has been done and I am doing well on NoS.

Thank you Linda and Jean!

Ironchef, your tips made me laugh out loud, especially the one about opinions. It was interesting to plan a wedding over the Christmas period - so many opinions from even the remotest relations! But in the end I learnt to laugh about them. There's only so often you can hear an exasperated "You won't have a 6man band??? But I was so looking forward to that!" before it becomes comedic.

As for NoS: I was letting it slide a bit from mid-December to last week as I have done every year since I started but thankfully I haven't gained weight. I'm very committed now and my one New Year's resolution is to eat more vegetables. This is more out of a skin concern (my skin has gotten bad) than anything else. The sugar intake definitely affected it.

So NoS it is.

Another thing: I have treated myself to the yoga app "Salute The Desk" that is supposed to be great to get relief of tightness and bad posture for office workers. So far I'm really into it.

I'll try to catch up with everyone's thread now. Missed you guys!