Third year

(New!) Read (or post) about people who have stuck with No-S for 10 or more months, lost 10 or more pounds, or 10 or more percent for their starting weight. Periodic updates strongly encouraged -- you can think of it as "Yearly Check In."

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DaveMc
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Third year

Post by DaveMc » Fri Jul 13, 2012 1:08 pm

Well, it's that time of year again: July 2012 is my third NoS anniversary. Last year's post is here:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=7816

Not much to add, this year. I had a blip of weight gain, brought on by throwing moderation to the wind during a family trip to Greece. But when we got back and I got back to my standard NoS eating, the weight came back off, and I'm now back where I've been for the past two years, about twenty pounds down from where I started three years ago.

One of these years, I'm hoping to report having shaved off another five or ten pounds, but this year in particular has been a challenge in terms of the number of colds/flus and the amount of travel. If I had to pick my two biggest outstanding challenges with NoS, it's those two: travel, and illness. I admire people who can stick to NoS while on a family vacation, but so far I've been tending to just treat the whole trip as a bunch of S days. As I learned the hard way, this can lead to trouble. (Baklava is so darned tasty, but man, it sneaks up on your waistline!) Similarly, there are times when I'm sick and grant myself an S day when I don't really *need* to eat sweets or snacks, and I find myself doing it just in a misguided effort to make myself feel better (or to gain an energy boost, etc.)

On the travel front, I doubt I'll ever go full-blown NoS while on the road. For one thing, we tend to do these crazy road trips spanning continents and time zones (Greece to Thailand to the Philippines, for example), and with all the flights and such, it can often be hard to keep track of the concept of "day", let alone "N day". ("Is it still Friday? Why is it dark outside?") I can, however, get back to being more moderate while on the road. I think the problem on the recent trip was me getting complacent: on previous trips, I'd done the all-S-day approach with no weight gain at all, and I figured I was safe doing that. But on those previous trips, every day was a pretty *moderate* S day, at most. In this one, I just let myself go a little too crazy. So that's fixable by just paying attention a bit better.

With illness, I'm going to make a concerted effort to resist random "S stands for sick" days unless I really need them -- like if I've been unable to eat regular meals, so trying to stick to my standard meal-times becomes impractical, that sort of thing. If I can avoid using illness as an excuse to eat badly, and remind myself that it isn't actually helping me to either feel better or recover faster, I should be fine.

Still, aside from that blip and those things to work on, this is basically another year of maintenance. NoS is certainly hard-wired into my life, and it takes essentially no effort to do it; it's just the way I eat, now. I fill in my habit-cal in advance at the start of each month out of, well, habit, but it's quite rare that I need to actually change a projected green into a red (about three times since January, looks like).

So thanks again for this simple, sensible system!

(Oh, one more bit of news: I made my first "convert", this past year. An old friend of mine, hearing about NoS from me, has used it to lose at least forty pounds! And he's still going strong. I don't know if he'll ever post a testimonial here, but I'll encourage him to do so, and it's been exciting to see how well it's worked for him.)

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reinhard
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Post by reinhard » Sun Jul 15, 2012 12:11 pm

Congratulations, Dave!

"Years on habit" is my favorite success metric -- even more than pounds. So I very much appreciate this update. It's especially impressive considering all the traveling you're doing, levels of Baklava exposure, etc.

Give my regards to your friend -- we'd love to hear from him too (and thank you for your converting zeal!).

Reinhard

vmsurbat
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Post by vmsurbat » Tue Jul 17, 2012 5:40 am

Glad to hear you are still going strong! Congratulations on 3 years of NoS success.
Vicki in MNE
7! Yrs. with Vanilla NoS, down 55+lb, happily maintaining and still loving it!

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DaveMc
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Post by DaveMc » Fri Jul 20, 2012 12:58 pm

Oh, and one thing I was going to note for the record: My mod of taking S days on Fridays and Sundays is still going strong, a little over two years after I started using it. It still works better for me to have one working day a week be an S day, and to have the two S days separated by an N day.

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reinhard
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Post by reinhard » Fri Jul 20, 2012 2:08 pm

Good to know! This mod has been much discussed, mostly in the abstract, and it's interesting to hear that it's been sustainable and effective for you.

vmsurbat
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Post by vmsurbat » Sat Jul 21, 2012 6:09 am

DaveMc wrote:Oh, and one thing I was going to note for the record: My mod of taking S days on Fridays and Sundays is still going strong, a little over two years after I started using it. It still works better for me to have one working day a week be an S day, and to have the two S days separated by an N day.
This is how I set NoS up from the very beginning--it just fit into our family's lifestyle right from the very beginning. I never even considered it a mod--just two normal S days that happened to be Friday and Sunday. But I do agree, that the one day in between is very helpful--I don't really enjoy two days in a row of sweets or treats--too much for me too soon....
Vicki in MNE
7! Yrs. with Vanilla NoS, down 55+lb, happily maintaining and still loving it!

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DaveMc
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Post by DaveMc » Tue Jul 24, 2012 1:27 pm

vmsurbat wrote:This is how I set NoS up from the very beginning--it just fit into our family's lifestyle right from the very beginning. I never even considered it a mod--just two normal S days that happened to be Friday and Sunday.
To make it really canonical, we should change the spellings to sFriday and fSaturday, that's all. :)

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