Fourth 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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Fourth year

Post by DaveMc » Sun Jul 07, 2013 1:51 am

Hi everyone,

Well, here we are again: my No S anniversary. I started on July 6, 2009. If you want to see previous annual posts, here they are:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=122076
http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=7816
http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=6595

Another year of maintenance to report. No further losses, but no major gains, either, and I've stuck to the habit like a very sticky thing stuck to another even stickier thing. (The only casualty has been my ability to formulate similes.)

No S continues to be just the way I eat, embedded firmly into the fabric of my existence. I was thinking the other day that it's interesting how comfortable my family is with the concept, by now: they aren't shy about eating a cake or something right in front of me, on a Tuesday. They know full well that's it's not going to cause me to suddenly eat sweets on an N day, and it's not some sort of lash-me-to-the-mast siren song that I need to resist like torture. If it's a Tuesday, I don't eat sweets, it's not even a question. Someone else eating sweets has nothing to do with it. (Late in the week, we'll sometimes make a point to put something aside for the weekend, so I can taste it later.)

I'm gradually trying to get the rest of the family to incorporate some No S principles into their eating, especially what I consider the real secret: not eating *randomly*. That's the central problem that No S fixes, for me. I used to have no idea when I was eating, or how much, because it happened at random times all day.

There are a couple of pieces of good news about maintenance: 1) I can keep this up indefinitely, and I see no reason not to; and 2) just by staying where I am, I'm gradually moving into a lower percentile of the population, as the average weight for my age goes up. I'm about to enter my thirty-teens (a term for ages 43-49, that I may have invented myself, I'm not sure), and the percentile ranges creep up every year: I think I've gone from 51st to 49th percentile over the past couple of years, just by staying at the same weight rather than getting heavier! :)

Sorry I haven't been around on the forums more often, but it's been a pretty busy year. And I think I'm experiencing what I've sometimes seen other people say just before they've cut way back on posting: I just don't spend any time thinking about how I eat, any more, so posting about it online doesn't really occur to me as something to do. Once in a while I feel guilty about not getting back in there to try to offer help and encouragement to those just starting out, and I'm going to try to remember to do that from time to time. But at first, posting here was a big part of the process: I was doing this immensely hard thing, rewriting my eating habits, and talking about it was very helpful. (It sounded so simple on paper but as we all know, it's actually a very steep climb for those first (say) six months!) Posting frequently was a kind of therapy: I needed to talk about it a lot, to discuss things with other people, as a way to keep going and keep myself on track. Now, though, maintaining No S is as hard as maintaining the habit of brushing my teeth.

Oh, and there is one habit change to report: I had, for years, been implementing a mod where I took my S days on Friday and Sunday. It worked well for me, but around the start of this calendar year I went back to the "canonical" pattern of having S days on Saturday and Sunday. I started having regular social events on Saturdays, ones where I wanted to have the option of S-ing, so the Friday-and-Sunday mod no longer fit the pattern of my life as well as it had when Saturdays were mostly shopping and errand days. So I changed it back to the canonical version. No problem, though it took my a couple of weeks to get used to having five days between S days again, rather than four. But it was no big deal, and certainly no problem at all compared to setting up the habit in the first place!

Thanks for being such a great community, and I can't emphasize enough how much everyone here helped me when I was first getting started. I'm a big No S evangelist, though my number of converts is still hovering at a single one. I do think that if more people adopted the principles of No S, we North Americans could get our out-of-control eating to be much more moderate.
Last edited by DaveMc on Mon Jul 08, 2013 3:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

vmsurbat
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Post by vmsurbat » Sun Jul 07, 2013 5:23 am

No S continues to be just the way I eat, embedded firmly into the fabric of my existence.
Thanks for chiming in. I think testimonies like yours, after years of practice, are a tremendous encouragement for everyone trying to ingrain new habits.
I'm gradually trying to get the rest of the family to incorporate some No S principles into their eating, especially what I consider the real secret: not eating *randomly*.
There's hope! I started NoS when my kids were teens; so at the age of making many of their own food choices. Everyone was very happy FOR me with my NoS success but none wanted to adopt NoS principles. In the five years since, I can't say that they've jumped on the wagon as strictly as I have, but they now purposely skip snacks before a meal because they don't want to ruin their appetite AND they've gotten much more discerning about sweets and treats. Junk food, when you are not used to it, really does taste junky....

Good to hear from you. Look forward to next year's post! 8)
Vicki in MNE
7! Yrs. with Vanilla NoS, down 55+lb, happily maintaining and still loving it!

finallyfull
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Post by finallyfull » Mon Jul 08, 2013 3:21 pm

Awesome, thanks for posting! I read your previous years and was intrigued by a blip weight gain during vacation followed by a return to normalcy with a return to No S -- it's the exact opposite of what happens to most people, who take a "vacation" from insanity with a diet, but return to normal by gaining BACK the weight.

I appreciate your posting despite having lost a desire to talk about food all the time. It is very encouraging and exactly what I want. Lifelong moderation. And maybe a decadent trip to Greece here and there.

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reinhard
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Post by reinhard » Wed Jul 10, 2013 11:09 pm

Dave,

First off, apologies in advance for my brevity-- I'm on vacation with miserable connectivity and typing into my phone.

More importantly, thank you for overcoming your very natural, hard won desire to stop talking about diet already and remind us of your continued, encouraging success! There's a great story in the buddhist tradition, I think, about the highest kind of saint not being the one who attains nirvana and stays there, but the one who attains it and then from pure generosity, comes back to tell others about it. Getting some of the details wrong, I'm sure, and perhaps it seems excessive when applied to diet, but there is a point of similarity.

OK, slightly nervous this isn't actually going to post when I hit send, so that's all for now. Congratulations and thank you!

Reinhard

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DaveMc
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Post by DaveMc » Mon Jul 15, 2013 1:35 pm

reinhard wrote:Congratulations and thank you!
No, thank you! First for creating NoS, and second for the over-the-top flattery. (You've now compared me, in different to testimonials, to both Odysseus and Buddha. It's too much, but I appreciate it. And heck, I'll take it. :) )

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reinhard
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Post by reinhard » Tue Jul 16, 2013 7:39 pm

You've now compared me, in different to testimonials, to both Odysseus and Buddha. It's too much, but I appreciate it.
You're not going to BELIEVE what I come up with next year. So don't screw it up! :-)

oolala53
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Post by oolala53 » Tue Jul 16, 2013 8:39 pm

Dave, I appreciate your checking in and appreciate that you're proof there is life beyond overeating or talking about it. Maybe year four is the charm.

Being a lapsed Catholic, I'd say it doesn't get much better than Buddha, so I'm curious who a Goethe-reading computer-and-habit specialist extraordinaire will come up with. Although that may have been trash talk between guys.

Differing definitions of bodhisattva:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bodhisattva
Count plates, not calories. 11 years "during"
Age 69
BMI Jan/10-30.8
1/12-26.8 3/13-24.9 +/- 8-lb. 3 yrs
9/17 22.8 (flux) 3/18 22.2
2 yrs flux 6/20 22
1/21-23

There is no S better than Vanilla No S (mods now as a senior citizen)

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DaveMc
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Post by DaveMc » Wed Jul 17, 2013 4:09 pm

Heh. Well, after all this self-congratulation (and non-self-congratulation), I went and had a failure, today. I was feeling sick, but not enough to really qualify it as an "S for Sick" day, yet I went and ate some chocolate anyway. I put myself down for a red in my HabitCal, because I consider intent when doing this kind of judgement: I knew that I didn't in any sense *need* to eat sweets (and between meals, so it was a snack, too!) in order to feel better, but I was feeling run down and gave in to the temptation. So, OK, red day.

On the bright side, this is part of the whole approach, too: the occasional red day isn't the end of the world, and tomorrow I'll be green again. (Huh, that sounded unintentionally poetic. "Tomorrow I'll be green again." Has a nice ring to it, actually.)

I'll turn in my bodhisattva badge at the door, but otherwise I'm going to keep on truckin'. :)

eschano
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Post by eschano » Mon Jul 22, 2013 3:18 pm

Dave, it's such an inspiration to see how long you're on NoS now and it's clearly working. The most mind-calming thing about it - you had one red day and right back on the horse. I love this sane diet!
eschano - Vanilla rocks!

July 2012- January 2016
Started again January 2021

r.jean
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Post by r.jean » Tue Jul 23, 2013 2:50 pm

I also enjoy reading your posts. You are an inspiration!
The journey is the reward.
Maintenance is progress.

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DaveMc
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Post by DaveMc » Mon Sep 30, 2013 9:37 pm

DaveMc wrote:Heh. Well, after all this self-congratulation (and non-self-congratulation), I went and had a failure, today. I was feeling sick, but not enough to really qualify it as an "S for Sick" day, yet I went and ate some chocolate anyway.
On the other hand, I just spent an absurd two weeks getting over some sort of flu/cough thing, and I didn't take a single unscheduled S day that whole time. So I am capable of not caving when I feel sick. Good for me. :)

(Unsolicited advice: congratulate yourself once in a while. It's a reliable source of congratulation, and you deserve it.)

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