New To "No S Diet" but Already Extremely Pleased

[Elyssa]

Hello everyone! I'm new here but I actually feel a little bit acquainted with some of the members, as I was browsing through some of the posts prior to joining. There is so much wisdom and encouragement here! Also, I can just feel that the "No S" approach is just what I needed.

I was a successful WeightWatcher for close to ten years. I still have a lot of good things to say about WW. I learned so much about nutrition and had followed their Core/Simply Filling principles. However, over the last year or so, I ended up more & more into a problem of seemingly uncontrollable binges, night-time eating, and/or endless snacking after dinner. Nothing totally new but it got out of hand, so I gained 30 lbs from Oct. 2016-Jan. 2017 & none of my clothes fit. I am still 35 lbs under my highest-ever weight but it's been disorienting to go from normal to fat again. My entire self-image is warped now, as I had successfully transitioned to seeing myself (and being) a more normal-weight person.

Today is my 6th day of "No S." I started Monday, which was a holiday here. On that first day, I still hadn't really educated myself that much, so I kind of didn't have a very good or meaningful S Day. Then it was Tuesday, and had Tues. to Fri. largely successful N days. Today my first "real" S Day. I can already say I love being hungry before meals. Had not had that experience in a very, very long time. And it's not too hungry, just pleasantly hungry for about the last hour before I serve myself my plate.

Hope to be around a long time & hope to be one of the success stories.

[Merry]

Welcome Elyssa! It sounds like you're off to a great start . I hope you'll enjoy both the freedom and the structure of No-S.

[oolala53]

I, too, felt that I had learned some good lessons on WW, though they had been heavily influenced also by Volumetrics, the Omega Diet, 40-30-30, and the Zone Diet. (I eat a lot less animal flesh now, though.) They probably share some of the Core/Simply Filling principles you alluded to, though maybe not. It's been a process to decrease the manufactured foods over time. I would probably have been better off going faster on that, but I don't know if I could have been convinced sooner. Hindsight is 20/20.

Those old brain patterns can sure do a number on us, if their wires get tripped. They thankfully sure have responded to simply not giving in for me, though that's often not comfortable. But it's more comfortable than feeling stuffed and regretful. As one of our members quotes someone else, choose your hard.

Gosh, how I love those first few slowly savored bites when I'm really hungry, even if it took practice to get there.

It does seem that it really helps most people to feel they have allies in their chosen eating pattern. If we had been raised in slim cultures, most of us would have been slim, I believe, or certainly slimmer than the highest weights we got to. I value the forum here even after all this time just as a place for us to keep reinforcing this method for counteracting the food-rich and failed diet-mentality culture "out there." The fact that it actually matches what has "worked" for far more people than any diet can claim is what has kept me on the path, with tweaking along the way. That continues for me. I'm not always ecstatic about that, but it's better than the alternative.

In other words, welcome! (Brevity is not one of my strengths.)

[Elyssa]

Dear Merry & dear Oolala:

Thanks so much for your kind welcome. Your words mean a lot, and it is good to know there are kind and like-minded people out there. (Oolala - brevity is my strength also not!)

I have been reflecting back the last couple of day & I realize that the times I did best on WW was when I just stuck to three meals a day with nothing in-between. (How or why did I ever get away from that? Hmm.)

I am also reflecting now that even though I was raised in Europe (West Germany at the time), I was overweight...because I myself would routinely sneak food outside of mealtimes, on my own. It used to drive my mother crazy, but I kept doing it. I was very sneaky indeed. It was just my own bad habit. Or maybe my genetic make-up, who knows!

The Germans do snack, e.g. they have this ritual called "Kaffee und Kuchen" (coffee and sweet pastry) but it does have its time and place. So it's not like the Germans are forever eating pastries on their own. Culturally, they were not free to eat everywhere and every place the way we do in the U.S.; and this is still true today, I think. In the USA, we have way less cultural taboos about stuffing our little --or not so little-- faces.

Here in the U.S., we also seem to have an obsession with snacking.

For example, I was bothered many times, while my son was younger, that even if there was a simple 2-hour activity scheduled at the school, one of the parents would be tasked with providing "snacks" -- as if children could not possibly go two hours without eating! Needless to say, those snacks were usually junk foods & I even had mothers text me photos of my son and their children demonstratively eating carrots together as a way to make fun of me -- because I did not like my son eating candies, crackers, cookies, chips, cheese sticks, and other items all afternoon long when visiting friends.

WW of course also has no problem with snacks, as long as they are healthy or low in points...

Then the issues of seconds. My dear husband grew up hungry in his country. For him, there is a natural tendency to consume seconds. (He is just pleasantly plump, and does not get obese - big difference.) From being with him, I kind of adopted that "second helpings are routine" mentality. Also, it is him who cooks and serves our food. However, I must say - now that I have implemented these new changes, he seems to understand that "that was my plate, honey - I am done."

Also, he is a man and I am a short, middle-aged woman... he may never understand how much less food I actually need than him. He is always erring on the side of more. But then, he really is supportive.

The reason I think I will be more successful with "No S" than anything else is because it was driving my husband crazy that I was constantly implementing new rules about what could NOT be on my plate/what could not be cooked: in turn no carbs, no wheat, no gluten, no oats, no potatoes, rice but not pasta, no fried foods, no hidden added sugar, no fruit, all fruit except mangoes, bananas yes or bananas no, etc.

Now, I think he can be more relaxed and cook what he wants, for everyone. We also consume very little meat, if any. And he really changed the way he cooks ten years ago with WW, but then I kept adding new rules. So with "No S," what EXACTLY is on my plate is less of an issue.

Finally, sweets... I could write a whole treatise on sweets. I have ordered Reinhard's book and will read it. From what I am reading so far here on the boards, he seems to have developed a common sense approach that will make me less miserable socially. (You know, when you are visiting someone and you cringe as you ask your host if you could look at the packaging to study if the smoked salmon may have had added sugar listed as an ingredient....talk about "orthorexia").

Anyway. I really do tend to be long-winded but I can report, happily, that I have not felt any need or urge to binge this weekend, and have been able to relax my "No S" rules to match the S-days. So, things are "so far so good" and I feeling much happier and more relaxed about food than I have in years.

Thank you again & talk to you guys soon!!!

[Marina]

I'm also amazed at how i feel having only just started on No-S. I keep wondering if this is what normal eating feels like to naturally slim people because i dont recall a time in my life when i felt truly satisfied after a meal. I'd feel sick from eating too much or hungry but never satisfied. To be honest, the concept of set meals was foreign to me because i was raised as a grazer.

[oolala53]

Where did you find this cooking husband who changes his cooking for WW, etc.? Will he pack your lunches with leftovers, too?

He is going to love No S.

[osoniye]

Where did you find this cooking husband who changes his cooking for WW, etc.?

No kidding! (Where's he from?)

[Elyssa]

Oolala - Hehe. Yes, he is a keeper.
Sonya - he was born and raised in Mexico. He used to cook for a living, so that is still what he does because he loves to cook. Or, one might say, he doesn't enjoy other people's food as much as his own, LOL. Anyway, I feel extremely blessed because yes, he does pack lunches...

He is liking No S a lot, as I am eating what's on the plate!
(And he is not even asking me anymore if I want more. Big change!!!)

Marina - I am also experiencing A STRANGE SENSATION OF SATISFACTION after eating, totally new for me. Like you, I would either still feel hungry (even after eating a lot and/or objectively enough) or I would feel stuffed.

This No S thing is so far working out very swell. And 3 lbs down thus far!!!
Bigger loss like this in the beginning is normal, I would think - as I do have a lot "to work with"

[oolala53]

It's so delightful to hear about this "strange satisfaction." I think that's what happens when when you let yourself have a nice but limited meal. You find out it's enough.