Everyday Systems

Just starting No S and 2 days into it, it seems pretty easy.
But I have a hard time believing that I can lose weight without counting calories.
We'll see how it goes - I have planned on giving myself an entire month before my next weigh in to see if this is going to work for me.
I've tried losing weight and failed so many times, it's embarrassing. I feel foolish trying again - because I know that chances are, it's going to be yet another failure. But if I don't try, I'll never have a chance..... for what that's worth....
I hope that taking this approach, I can lose the weight for real, albeit slowly...

Psalm139! wrote:Just starting No S and 2 days into it, it seems pretty easy.
But I have a hard time believing that I can lose weight without counting calories.

Hello, and welcome. I'm new here...on my 21st day today, actually. I am weighing myself here and there because I am trying to "un-demonize" the number on the scale. And after 21 days I can tell you that my weight has exactly stayed the same.

We'll see how it goes - I have planned on giving myself an entire month before my next weigh in to see if this is going to work for me.
I've tried losing weight and failed so many times, it's embarrassing. I feel foolish trying again - because I know that chances are, it's going to be yet another failure. But if I don't try, I'll never have a chance..... for what that's worth....
I hope that taking this approach, I can lose the weight for real, albeit slowly...

I think this is wise. It's fairly easy to stay on this plan, and what has been so very cool for me to realize is that I can stabilize my weight eating three meals a day plus sweets and snacks on the weekend. In other words, I am slowly no longer feeling that panicky "omg I'm going to gain weight" feeling each and every time I open my mouth to nourish my body. The fact that I can feed myself in a moderate way and maintain my weight is in and of itself astonishing. Hopefully over time and with some awareness I can slowly add habits that will contribute to weight loss instead of weight maintenance, but for now even that is a huge relief (and fwiw I have done intense calorie-counting for years and lost 65 pounds at one point, but have gained most of it back).

Take it slow and easy is my advice, focus on the habit at first, see what you learn, and then take it from there...

I didn't loose weight at first but really built the habits & along the way got rid of some bad ones like the "what the hell" moments & anything that resembles a cheat day. It was really important for my success to have those first couple of months of building the habits without the added pressure of too much focus on weight loss.

After a couple of months, I found that my N days were only good enough to cancel out my S days so I had to tighten up just a little. I didn't want to spend my weeks counting down the seconds until the weekend so I focused on not having too big of S days so that I didn't have to have too small of meals on N days & I started to lose weight.

Good luck!! It's by far the best plan I've ever been on.

Stabilizing is key. I know I came here at least with this problem of, yes, counting calories and losing 20 pounds, and quickly at that, then gaining it all back after I stopped and then some, and then going back to it. Then I end up feeling incredibly down and frustrated by that.. and ashamed really. Yo-yo dieting is not good!

I have been on No-S for a while now too, several months and my weight has gone down, but not much, and that's an amazing thing for me. I never feel deprived and I am not gaining weight, in fact, I'm down still a couple pounds. I've been a little on and off No-S recently, but this is SO FAR from the yo-yo dieting before and so much healthier, especially psychologically. If I stick to it more, I know I can look forward to more loss, but hey, I've got some vacation coming up.

That is a huge, huge.. and I'll say it again: HUGE WIN for me! And this forum, such amazing and helpful, encouraging people here. Magic!

Glad to hear you're enjoying the benefits of the No S diet!

I've been a little on and off No-S recently, but this is SO FAR from the yo-yo dieting before and so much healthier, especially psychologically.

That's a fantastic revelation, and one I'm striving for myself. Great job and thanks for the inspiration!

I'm in the "infancy" of my conversion to No S as well. I share some of your frustrations, but they say you only fail when you stop trying.

Good Luck!

There is absolutely nothing like this plan for changing from diet mentality to living life. It has made a big difference in my life, in the couple of months I've been at it. As Rhinehard explains in podcast 34, the No S thing is much more to do with developing unconscious habits, rather than tasks such as counting calories.

Now I realize that this is profoundly different way of looking at things from what most other diets do it. When you count calories or carbs or whatever, it's a purely conscious activity. There's no training involved. It starts out pretty easy, in fact. You're as good as you'll ever get at counting stuff or reading labels on day one. The problem is that conscious activity is very expensive. It gets tedious very fast. You want to use it for other more important things. And eventually you do. And that's the end of your diet. That's why no-s is about habit, instead, about training unconscious behaviors. And it can be hard at first. And slow. But it gets easier and easier. And I think "starts hard, gets easy" is ultimately vastly preferable to "starts easy, gets hard."

In other places, Rhinehard talks about not trying for results, but letting the habit be the center, and results will follow. This is truly the only system I've ever tried that really conquered my bossy, overbearing, cranky, spoiled appetite. It's just amazing.

also, as for the scale...it didn't move for my first weigh in, but I loved how I felt SO MUCH...with me in control, and not my appetite; going to bed feeling light, not bulging from too much food, too late at night; food no longer the center of 90% of my waking thoughts. Oh MAN it's nice...so when the scale didn't budge in my first 21 days, I kept at it...and now I have begun losing weight. Four pounds so far and I have counted a grand total of zero calories

Thanks everyone for your comments and helpful hints. It's very encouraging.
I agree whole heartedly that changing the focus from shedding pounds to changing habits has really been an encouraging paradigm shift for me - and I hope for all other No S Diet followers.

If I haven't lost weight, I have already made improvements by just changing how I view things.

I look forward to everyone's updates!

Hi Psalm139! Glad to see you here, and great job on all the revelations you've been discovering following NoS! It truly is a sane and doable plan. I agree with everyone that establishing the habit is most important, then you can focus on the weight loss. It does come--I did vanilla NoS before, and it wasn't until I modified the plan a bit that my weight and fat loss results came. But it was important that I kept to the habit of the three meals a day first before thinking of changing things up.

Keep up the good work!