Everyday Systems

I think the really unusual characteristic of this plan is that the longer you adhere to it, the more you'll see internal changes. Instead of learning to count points or fat grams or avoid foods forever, your body will adjust to not wanting to eat snacks, sweets or seconds during the week. It ...

I drink filtered water at home too, and find the taste of chlorine in most tap water almost unbearable unless I mask it with lemon or something like that.

If you leave your tap water open to the air for a little while, the chlorine evaporates. In the summer, when I'm constantly hot and thirsty, I ...

Just thought I'd pass this on, in case it helps someone else. Sweets aren't a huge downfall for me, so the "No Sweets" part of No-S is generally manageable. Some of my biggest temptations are salty snacks -- I could easily eat tortilla chips like a bird. Which is to say "half my body weight". :lol ...

It's when I stop being enthusiastic that it becomes an issue for me. My goal now isn't the "perfect N days" in the beginning, but to maintain it until it's so ingrained that I just don't THINK about it any more.

I want this to be just... this is my life. The way I live and DO things forever ...

reinhard wrote:This is great, bookman -- I would have cited this in the book if I'd known about it (was going on mere common sense).

*chortle* Reminds me of something that Dennis Prager is fond of saying: most studies either confirm common sense, or are wrong.

Good bread is a lot harder.

IMO, once you get the hang of it, I don't find that good bread is hard. I make 4 loaves at a time about once/week, and over the years that I've doing that, I've found it to be pretty forgiving stuff. It does take time, but it's largely "time, not attention". Even if ...

When I buy groceries the rule is: Buy ingredients. Avoid mixes of any kind and just about anything that is ready-to-eat. I do just the opposite of Sandra Lee's Semi-Homemade. I call my cooking style Mostly Homemade and use 70% (or more) fresh ingredients and 30% (or less) ready-made products ...

Here's a tip if you'd like to avoid "cream of..." soups in your cooking. One of the blogs I read (in my constant effort to maintain a frugal but healthy diet) has a "magic mix" that she uses to make a substitute for canned soup. It uses non-instant powdered milk, but you could use the regular ...

This is encouraging news! I've been back to No-S-ing for about 10 days now, after a hiatus. I'm pretty sure that my problem last time was that I wasn't strict enough with the rules at the outset, and I didn't give my body time to adapt to a new schedule. I'd find myself starving in the mid-afternoon ...

I think this is a common-sense thing, rather than a rigorous-rule thing. If I'm having soup and salad for lunch, f'rinstance, then technically, it's a plate and a bowl. However, it's a reasonable meal. Bottom line, if I lay my whole meal out and it looks like a piggy feast, then it's too much. If it ...

I thought I'd post this here, in case someone else is as dense as I was. :P

One of my biggest struggles with No-S-ing is that loooonnnngggg time between lunch and dinner. (Due to my husband's schedule, we don't eat dinner until 6:30.) I'd tried a mini-meal when my kids have their afternoon snack ...

You guys are awesome! Thanks for all the great ideas!

You're right that compared to the permasnacking that is the status quo these days No-s is a kind of "fasting" -- though I think it's a little sad that things have come to that point. No one in previous generations would have looked at eating three meals a day as "fasting."

Reinhard

Yes, this is ...

This is an ongoing struggle for me. If I'm cooking dinner or a snack for the kids, it's going to be a time when I'm hungry. (duh!) It's sooo hard not to nibble while cooking. Half the time, it's completely unconscious -- I don't even realize I've done it!

It's a devilishly hard habit to break ...

Bushranger, it's not as easy as one would think to eat healthy in the U.S, especially if one is low income or has limited options in where you shop for food.

I HAD to chime in on this one, because I so strongly disagree. The healthiest foods are often the cheapest! Our family eats tons of whole ...

I posted too, but it looked to me like it was moderated. I had to laugh at their "cons". They clearly don't get it.

I would not consider eating three full meals a day to be fasting. There is plenty of evidence that No S is a good way to lose weight, in the form of results, but it's not because of some arcane metabolic effect -- it's because it limits us to an appropriate intake of food!

I guess what I was ...

I was surfing today (when I should have been doing something more productive LOL), and ran across some diet articles about intermittent fasting. (e.g. http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/02/health/he-fasting2) It occurred to me that No-S might be considered to be a form of intermittent fasting. If ...

I really love No-S, but would like to find a little more streamlined approach to HabitCal. Since I use Google Calendar, what I'd really like is to find a way to integrate HabitCal with Google Calendar. Anybody know of a nice clean way to do this? The only way that occurs to me at the moment is to ...