Everyday Systems

Hi,
for anyone reading this post. I'm new here but not new to Reinhard Engels' genius. I found his No-S Diet years ago, and had a few failed tries, then went on to try something else, and, well, years later -I don't know how many- I'm here.

I don't know what I weigh. I'm not in the right place - psychologically- to face the scale, but I know my clothes don't fit right. I'm hiding behind stretchy leggings, long skirts and stretchy clothes.

I'm here because I'm ready to tackle what I can change, versus what I can't change. I can't change the fact that I am - I suspect- overweight. Not overnight. I can't change the fact that my family and I are not in a very good place. Again, not overnight. But I can change what I am doing about it, and one of the things I'm doing is eating too much, spending too much time feeling bad about my eating and feeling bad as a resulf ot my eating, and I'm setting a very poor example as a mother.
My thirteen-year-old son commented "mama, you never sit down to eat with us. I never actually see you eat a meal.... why?". "Oh, son", I want to say, "I've been permasnacking all day. I'm not hungry and I'm so sorry I'm such a bad example to you". But I generally say "I'm just not hungry right now, but I did eat dinner with you all yesterday... remember?" Yes, I did, but it was a small bowl of salad, which I ate after having permasnacked all afternoon, and it made me feel uncomfortably stuffed.

No S makes sense. I like that it takes the focus off the weight, which we can't change immediately, and places it on the habits, which we can change now, if we are so inclined. I like Reinhard's straightforward, common-sense way of putting it.

My goal is to stick to what you all call "Vanilla no-s" to form that habit of 5 green N-days a week. A particular No-s blog inspired me very much. The lady's story is very similar to mine and her honesty with herself simply struck a chord with me. I'm ready to stop making excuses and wallowing in self-pity.

Here we go! It's an S day today: Sunday.

Hello and welcome. I think you'll be pleased with your decision to join our little band of merry wo/men. You'll be eating with the family from day one. I was just commenting to my daughter yesterday that I am happy we retained the " eating together as a family unit" habit. It really is a pleasant way to connect to each other after a busy day of running in different directions.

Good luck to you in your endeavours.

Hi Gingerpie,
thank you for your warm welcome. Yes, I look forward to our return to eating together. Just this evening, while nibbling on a homemade croissant in the company of my son and daughter -eldest son was with a friend, husband had already left for work-, we talked about our snacking and how it's a really bad habit and we need to go back to doing things as we did them when they were younger and we all sat down at the table together for meals.
I recognize that I'm responsible for not only providing meals (which I have continued doing over the years) but also for setting an example of healthy eating.

I look forward to this challenge. We have 6 weeks of school holidays to work on doing three meals a day, sitting down, together.
I also look forward to interacting with other nos-ers.

Welcome! And what an awesome motivation to have your sweet son want you to join the family for meals. You don't need the scale right now--success will look like meals with your family--such a beautiful thing.

Hi Merry,
thank you for your warm welcome!

Today was a successful day. I ate breakfast, a leftover croissant and a cup of coffe, with my daughter. My sons had already left for their school and things were too busy to sit down with them too.
Lunch was a good plate of salad with hardboiled egg and cheese, with some sauteed greens, also with my daughter. My sons arrived later and had eaten their lunch at school.
In the evening, we all sat down together for a dinner of chicken and avocado salad, which we thoroughly enjoyed.

You are right, Merry, I don't need the scale, and I don't know if I'll go out and buy one. I might wait until my next doctor's appointment in September and see what I weigh then.

Like many people, I have mixed feelings about the scale, but you seem to have such a great attitude that you concentrate on fixing the things you can fix. I agree with you that we can't change the fact we are overweight, we can only change our actions. As long as you are taking care of following No S and getting your actions right, you don't need the scale, it can't tell you anything helpful.

Congrats on your great start, was the nice dinner with your family, what you hoped it would be?

Hi Skycat,
thank you for your kind comment. Yes, the scale is not always helpful and I've found the food scale, counting calories and having taboo foods can cause similar anxiety.
ETA: yes, the family meals have been very enjoyable so far

Yesterday it got to be too late to log in and post here, but I managed one more green day. Today I was a bit less successful. I had a second breakfast (first one was too small and I was very hungry mid-morning) and ate too much for dinner. On a more positive note, the second breakfast didn't turn into a "well, I've blown it now, I might as well go all out", and I had a reasonable and healthy lunch (no trying to make up for my "sins"). I have to work on timing my meals so that I'm satisfied most of the time and don't get so hungry in between, besides, I have to figure out what a normal amount of food looks like. I'm guessing it won't always look the same. At 7:15 I was done with my last meal of the day.

I'm really touched by the comments you've left on my thread and for the warm welcome. Thank you! I will try to interact more on here when this week is over. It's very busy around here and I'm getting up at 4 am!

Greetings

I haven't posted in two weeks... I'm still around, still working on NoS. , but I've slowed things down.
The first Friday I ended up snacking because my son, who had taken part in a cooking class over the week, wanted me to taste the things he had cooked. So I snacked.
Last week, I had four pretty good days, except that I snacked a few times on strawberries - from our garden, they are soooo good right now!-
And I finished my daughter's plate a couple of times, and on Friday it was a pudding.

So, I slowed down and decided that I would take week 1 (last week) and focus on not having sweets on N days, and to keep meals to meal times. A handful of fruit between meals is still ok. I managed four green N days. Not bad!

This week, my focus is on no sweets on N days and fruit must be part of a meal, thus eliminating snacking.

To prevent my finishing my kid's meals, I'm going to have them serve their own plates of food in the hopes that less food will be left over on their plates. I hate to throw food away, but I have to stop eating it up...

So, green days for this week will be no sweets, no snacks and no eating the leftovers off my kids' plates!

Tomorrow we will be celebrating my son's 12th birthday at a really nice indoor-outdoor swimming pool with slides and waves and such. We already celebrated the birthday with cake on Sunday, so no more sweets for me!

Have a wonderful week, everyone!

A small suggestion for the leftovers, I use washing-up liquid. As soon as I take leftover food into the kitchen. I squeeze washing-up liquid over it (first I make sure nobody else wants to eat it, and then I tell them what I'm doing so they know not to change their minds). I have found that I can do this immediately, and it prevents cracks in willpower later on.

It is sad to waste food but if you eat it when you don't need to, that's kind of wasting it too.

Hi, onemama! It looks like we started on the same day.
I don't have kids, but I also hate wasting food. Before no-S, leftovers were pretty much nonexistent. I ate absolutely everything or I would have intentions of saving the food for another meal/day and would cave a couple hours later and finish it off. This past weekend, I got takeout and had leftovers that I actually didn't touch until the day after like I had planned! As you keep being successful, maybe you can get the point where you take their leftover food and put it in a container to eat another day. That would make lunch/dinner the next day a breeze!

Hi everyone, happy Sunday evening..... well, very early Monday morning.

Skycat, I don't know if I'd be able to pour dishwashing liquid on leftovers, except, perhaps, the little bites left on people's plates, but I'm less inclined to have those. I agree with you that eating leftovers when I don't need them is a form of waste.

bd88, I had a few small victories this week, putting leftovers away and keeping them for another meal.
I guess, as I get more and more comfortable with feeling satisfied and not full, I'll be less inclined to keep on eating when I've had my plate of food. This aspect of noS is especially difficult for those of us who prepare meals for our families because we're a lot more exposed to the food, both during preparation and clean-up.

This past week I had another 4 green N-days. Darn those birthday cake leftovers.....
As for my S-days, I was feeling pretty deprived by the time Saturday arrived, but not deprived enough to ruin my morning and my exercise. I had a reasonable breakfast of coffee, then I exercised and had four scottish shorbread fingers with my second cup of coffee. I ended up having too many sweets (ice cream in a chocolate cup and chocolate cookies) and decided to postpone the baking of a dark Molleux au chocolate for next weekend. Sunday was a lot more tame. I had a good brunch with the kids and one plate of food from the potluck dinner after our afternoon Church service.

I have something to look forward to next weekend, and I know I don't want to overdo it. That's one step in the right direction for me!

This week, my goal is to have 5 green N days. I think I can manage that!

Well, hi, I'll get this one done and over with quickly. Yesterday, Monday, I ended up having a lot more for dinner than I had planned. I wasn't going to post about it, but I've decided to do so, not because I want to beat myself over my head, but because I want to be honest and be able to come back here and see the progress I've made.

Yesterday I was upset. I rode my bicycle out to the post office, shopped for dinner (chicken salad with some crushed chips in it to entice the kids). I had some nibbles during preparation because I was hungry and upset. Then I filled my plate with more than I knew I needed and ate it all up. I ate too much and ended up feeling pretty bloated.

But I didn't extend it into a binge. I put the rest of the salad away, washed-up, and that was it. I didn't wallow in self-pity or wish I could just curl up in bed and sleep off the bloat, I went on to finish my day, as usual.

So, even though I overate at dinner time, I'm going to put it down as a green day because my overall behavior was not at all what it would have been before NoS.

onemama wrote:Well, hi, I'll get this one done and over with quickly. Yesterday, Monday, I ended up having a lot more for dinner than I had planned. I wasn't going to post about it, but I've decided to do so, not because I want to beat myself over my head, but because I want to be honest and be able to come back here and see the progress I've made.

Yesterday I was upset. I rode my bicycle out to the post office, shopped for dinner (chicken salad with some crushed chips in it to entice the kids). I had some nibbles during preparation because I was hungry and upset. Then I filled my plate with more than I knew I needed and ate it all up. I ate too much and ended up feeling pretty bloated.

But I didn't extend it into a binge. I put the rest of the salad away, washed-up, and that was it. I didn't wallow in self-pity or wish I could just curl up in bed and sleep off the bloat, I went on to finish my day, as usual.

So, even though I overate at dinner time, I'm going to put it down as a green day because my overall behavior was not at all what it would have been before NoS.

I love seeing the successes like this one along the way. I think we gain strength when we see that we can exercise those self-control muscles.

It's easy to overfill a plate too, and not fully acknowledge it until afterward. It's still just a plate though and not technically wrong--and I love that you are using it for a growing experience!

Hi! At this stage, IMHO it's essential you regard even eating too much at a one-plate meal as a success. It's when we have too many strictures too soon- Reinhard uses the computer term "premature optimization"- that our psyche can get discouraged. We keep raising the bar before we're good at the height we've chosen to mastery first. Who wants to work hard for a task master that's so seldom approving? It does mean we have to be more patient regarding other results, though.

But how to determine what a normal amount of food is. That's for down the line, really. Diet head says we should get it all figured out in a few weeks. Yeah, that's worked well in the past, right? It CAN happen, but as with most serendipitous things, it's hard to impose.

Is it terribly personal and old biddy-ish of me to suggest that there is some good reason to promote the idea that you do not have be the only one in charge of food prep, storage, and clean up in your house? That you could be an excellent mother without taking on all those tasks all the time? Though I haven't had children, I do know of households in which those kinds of contributions by children are considered as helpful to their concept of what it means to be part of a household as it is to the primary caretakers, even when kids are pretty young. Families that prep, eat, and clean up together stay together... Maybe not every meal, but some. I think they'd be glad to do it if you felt you could be honest enough to explain how grateful you'd be for supporting your efforts. (Judith Beck has a lot of good stuff on working on feeling justified to ask family members for help or to make some sacrifices.) Getting kids to serve themselves is a great step, IF you can handle that their eyes might be bigger than their bellies, or the opposite, that they don't eat enough of what you prefer they do. Ellyn Satter says a good policy is that parents provide the what and when. Children decide how much and if they eat what's offered but they are not offered alternatives. Older children can be allowed to make their own quick alternative, and children can be allowed sometimes to plan the meals.

Nothing like someone without kids to go spouting off!

BTW, I lived in Iran back in the late 70's. There were small delis all over the place, and it was not uncommon for it to be run by a family, and for that family to have a child obviously under TEN sitting at a little table behind the counter cutting up food with a BIG knife! I don't mean they kept the kid there all day. But it was assumed he could be smart about it, just like French families assume their children can sit at the table and eat with utensils and participate in dinner conversation at a much earlier age than we do. At least until recently, even teens in France preferred eating with their parents than doing anything else during meal time.

I'm really impressed that you were able to change gears and put off making the cake until the next weekend.

Merry wrote: I love seeing the successes like this one along the way. I think we gain strength when we see that we can exercise those self-control muscles.

It's easy to overfill a plate too, and not fully acknowledge it until afterward. It's still just a plate though and not technically wrong--and I love that you are using it for a growing experience!

Thank you, Merry!

I decided to start noS again, not so much as a weight-loss tool, but as a tool to help bring some order into my life. All these experiences are as valuable as a green day, in my opinion

oolala53 wrote: - It's when we have too many strictures too soon- Reinhard uses the computer term "premature optimization"- that our psyche can get discouraged. We keep raising the bar before we're good at the height we've chosen to mastery first. Who wants to work hard for a task master that's so seldom approving? It does mean we have to be more patient regarding other results, though.

But how to determine what a normal amount of food is. That's for down the line, really. Diet head says we should get it all figured out in a few weeks. Yeah, that's worked well in the past, right? It CAN happen, but as with most serendipitous things, it's hard to impose.

- Is it terribly personal and old biddy-ish of me to suggest that there is some good reason to promote the idea that you do not have be the only one in charge of food prep, storage, and clean up in your house? That you could be an excellent mother without taking on all those tasks all the time?


I'm really impressed that you were able to change gears and put off making the cake until the next weekend.

Hi Oolala,

Thank you for your wonderful comment! I especially enjoyed reading your observations about family life in other countries. As the 2nd eldest of 10, I was expected to help with food preparation and clean-up from a fairly early age. My kids do help out, as does my husband, when he's around.
I still feel that providind food is one of my responsibilities but I don't do it all on my own. My almost-10 year-old daughter likes to help out in the kitchen. My 12-year-old son is our official pancake maker and my 13-year-old has been doing the dishes very often. I still do most of the cooking and sorting of food, though.
Your suggestions got me thinking about how involving my kids in preparation and clean-up on a regular basis may help me avoid nibbling, so thank you! And no, don't feel like you can't share your opinion

I agree with taking things slowly. As I wrote in my comment to Merry, NoS for me is not -primarily- about weight loss. I'm happy to be changing my approach to food and finding balance. Last night I enjoyed a homemade lasagna that I wouldn't have allowed myself to have a year ago! It was a full-fat, taco-seasoned number and it tasted GOOD! Of course, I served it with salad!

I still didn't get the cake baked last weekend... more about that in my update

Last week was my first 5 green day week! Followed by a crazy Saturday and a very mellow Sunday.

The 5 green days were not easy to achieve and I was feeling very deprived by Friday, so deprived that I already shopped for my S-day treats. Mistake!
Can you believe I got up early on Saturday to have my cookies?
My reward was an awful dizzy feeling that lasted the whole day. I guess my body is losing some of its tolerance to sweets because I used to be able to down a full roll of cookies (200 grams) with no side effects. It took something a lot more sugary, like milk chocolate, to give me that buzz.
On Sunday I woke up craving healthy foods and only had some dark chocolate after dinner.
I still didn't bake the cake. When I do, I want to enjoy it!

This week started out well, but I had a red day yesterday. I got home from three hours of tutoring and I was very hungry and cold. I made myself a cup of hot tea to warm me up and started cooking dinner. I ended up nibbling on the bits I cut off from the tortillas I used to make the lasagna.
Later on, I had two cups of instant chai latte while watching a movie with my daughter. The first cup was my conscious decision to turn the day "red" because my daughter so wanted me to have that cup of tea with her, but the second cup was my son's.
Anyway, I guess that is also part of NoS. Sometimes I'll make an exception, but I want to be honest with myself about those exceptions and keep them at exceptions, not something I do regularly.

Thanks for reading my update!

onemama wrote:Last night I enjoyed a homemade lasagna that I wouldn't have allowed myself to have a year ago! It was a full-fat, taco-seasoned number and it tasted GOOD! Of course, I served it with salad!

Can you post a recipe? Sounds yummy!

Great updates!

I used to justify staying up past midnight to start in on the chocolate, and I'm not talking a dainty square or two. It wasn't canonical, but was something I imagine Reinhard didn't anticipate people doing, so he never stated it outright. I recommend against it. Anyway, it didn't last.

The tolerance or lack of it for sugar will likely not be a linear progression. There's no way to anticipate what your experience will be over time. Just keep going!

Merry wrote: Can you post a recipe? Sounds yummy!

Great updates!

Thank you, Merry!

As for a recipe.. I sort of winged it.
Ingredients:
for the meat sauce:
1lb ground beef
1 small chopped onion
taco seasoning to taste. I used this recipe
1 can chopped tomatoes

For the cheese sauce:
2T flour
2T butter
approximately 1/2 L milk.
1 C grated cheddar cheese
salt, pepper

Flour tortillas. I used the ones they sell at Lidl. They're prettty big so I only need one for each layer.
Brown the meat with the onion, add the seasoning and the can of chopped tomatoes and let it cook on low heat while you prepare the cheese sauce.

In a small heavy pot, melt the butter, add the flour and stir, allowing it to cook a little without browning. Take the pot off the heat and whisk in the milk, a little at a time, making sure to break any clumps. Return to the heat and bring to a boil, stirring very often to prevent burning and sticking to the bottom of the pan. When the sauce is thick, add cheese and season to taste.

Assemble your lasagna:

Pour a little bit of cheese sauce on the bottom of a casserole dish. Round is best if you use tortilla wraps.
Place a tortilla wrap over the sauce, cover with meat sauce and cheese sauce, add another wrap. Continue layering until you've used up all the meat, reserving some cheese sauce to cover the last tortilla. Sprinkle with about 1/2 cup cheddar cheese.

Place in preheated oven (200C/ 380F) and bake until bubbly and the cheese on the top starts to turn golden.

Serve with a big green salad.

I think I'll add some corn and kidney beans next time I make this lasagna. The taco seasoning gives it a really nice flavor!

Have a wonderful Sunday, everyone.
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Sounds yummy, I'll have to try it!