Everyday Systems

DaveMc

Me, too! I don't enjoy Facebook, and I don't see that changing any time soon ...

DaveMc

Hi all,

Here we go again: an update to report my 15th year on NoS (I started in July 2009). And we're back to having not much to report! I'm sticking to the pattern, no particular modifications, S days are crazy but not *too* crazy (largely, I think, because my definition of "crazy" has shifted so ...

DaveMc

Update: I've lost about 15 pounds over the summer, sticking to NoS and just putting a bit less on the plate. I'll be back down to where I was before I put on that extra weight, soon enough!

DaveMc

Wow, time flies ... 14 years on NoS, as of July 2023.

I checked in last year, here's the link (https://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=12621), and each update has links to previous ones, back to my very first annual NoS check-in ...

Apparently all the NoS "action" has shifted to ...

DaveMc

FB would be FaceBook? I'm afraid I'd never see anything happening over there, so I do appreciate that these boards still technically exist ...

DaveMc

Huh. I thought I was a bit late in posting this annual update, but I didn't know the half of it. I thought I was late as in "it's now August and my NoS anniversary is in July" -- but in fact, I appear to have missed my 2021 update completely, meaning that I'm over a *year* late! (Unless I posted ...

DaveMc

I'm a little off-sync, here, because I updated my tenth year check-in just recently:

https://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=12368

But things are much the same: I'm giving myself a third S day a week, in the form of sFriday, as a help in the not-going-crazy department. But I notice ...

DaveMc

OhioHeather wrote: Sat May 16, 2020 1:40 pm I‘ve worked through all this as an “essential business” (hospital employee) ...

Hang in, all!!

A double "hang in" to you, OhioHeather! I'm so grateful to everyone who has worked through this crisis, you've been doing so much to keep the rest of us safe.

DaveMc

I've gotta tell you, folks ... I'm sticking to NoS during lockdown, but I felt a need to give myself some sort of break, so Friday is now spelled sFriday and Fridays are S days for me. I can handle living surrounded by people emphatically not following NoS for four days a week, but that fifth day ...

DaveMc

That's incredibly annoying, sorry to hear that it happened to you!

Under normal circumstances, I've usually found that people aren't actually paying that much attention to what other people do or don't eat, so the most I've ever had to do is a quick "I'm trying not to eat between meals" to duck out ...

DaveMc

Hi everyone,

I'm back to report a full decade of NoS! Double digits! I started NoS in July 2009 ... hard to imagine. :)

Link to last year's check-in: https://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=11824

Another year on habit, and things are still chugging along nicely. One bump in the road ...

DaveMc

AdamChase wrote:The hosting of the product and its impact is vital for the future times. The ascertainment of the term and SPAM LINK DELETED is done for the provision of the challenges for the humans in life.

AdamChase, I hate to say this, but I don't believe you are a sincere human poster.

DaveMc

Thanks, Richard, but are you saying I need a better conclusion to my testimonial?

Because there isn't one, I'm not done yet ... (Or is "Richard" perhaps a bot?)

DaveMc

Wow, nine years already? I'm back to report another year on habit: vanilla NoS, no special rules or mods.

I don't have any numbers to report, since I no longer weigh myself and I don't think our scale is actually working at the moment. Qualitatively, I think I'm about the same as I was a year ago ...

DaveMc

Only in the NoS world would someone say they had been following it for "only" five years!

Congrats to you both.

DaveMc

Hi everyone!

Another year, another update. Another year on habit!

This year, the results are flat in term of my weight: no major losses, but no major gains, either. But given the [bleep] I've had going on over this past year, maintenance is a [bleep]in' triumph, and I will absolutely count it as a ...

DaveMc

I'm always curious about whether people are actually (maybe secretly?) aware that they are eating more and the weight gain is no surprise but maybe a confirmation. Or did you really feel you were eating about the same and the body turns out to need less at this point? I know my hunger levels have ...

DaveMc

Not having read all your years of reports, I apologize if you've covered this but have you altered at all over the years what you put on your plate or is it truly just less of the same? Fewer refined carbs or more veggies perhaps?

Not deliberately ... But then again, I was already trying to have ...

DaveMc

Hi everyone, I'm checking in after another "year on habit" with NoS. Here's last year's post in case you want to see that:

https://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=162007&highlight=#162007

(And that one links again to the previous year, so you can follow me back into the dawn of time if you ...

DaveMc

Congratulations, Vicki!

DaveMc

Greetinigs, NoSers!

I'm very late for my NoS anniversary update, this year. It's been quite a busy month.

When last seen, I had regained 10 of the 20 pounds I lost in my first year of NoS (followed by a good three years of maintenance):

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=151807 ...

DaveMc

Hi Noel, just dropping by to add a "welcome back" from another member of the "old guard" -- I think I can count myself as a member of that group. I'm still NoS-ing, and boldly verbing nouns and inserting hyphens where I'm not sure they're required.

DaveMc

Hi KCCC, congratulations on a great year!

DaveMc

Perhaps relevant snippet from the No S Diet book:

Hey, that sounds like a terrific book! :)

(I've bought it several times, now: the extra copies are to hand out to people I think might benefit from it. I was also thinking of leaving some on the subway, just to generally benefit humankind, but I ...

DaveMc

Hi all,

It's that time of year again: yesterday was my fifth NoS anniversary. If you'd like to see all my previous anniversary posts, here they are:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=134926
http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=122076
http://everydaysystems.com/bb ...

DaveMc

Welcome! I'm coming up on the five-year mark of following NoS, so I guess you could say that I've found it to be pretty sustainable.

DaveMc

The fourth S: "See? Told ya."

DaveMc

Yeah, sometimes I think, "OK, for this I'll take the red" and just go ahead.

DaveMc

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 ...

DaveMc

I'm amazed by people who can stick to NoS while on vacation, but it's not a trick I've learned, myself. I take vacation days as S days, and hope that it all averages out in the end. About the only concession I make is to sort of vaguely try to have especially moderate S days when there are a lot of ...

DaveMc

My turn to congratulate you! That's terrific.

DaveMc

Well, you've got one incredibly positive thing going for you: you don't have to wonder if you can succeed with NoS. You already have, tremendously well! You apparently want to succeed *more*, sure, but for most people succeeding in the first place is the hard part.

One day at a time! You can do it ...

DaveMc

Guy, here, and I've just celebrated my fourth NoS anniversary. I lost about 20 pounds over the first year, and I've kept it off for the three years since then. I've found it very effective, and it actually gets easier to maintain as time goes on, rather than harder. Most diets get harder and harder ...

DaveMc

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 ...

DaveMc

(im hoping to lose about a stone,but am not in a great hurry)

You may need to remind yourself of that last bit, as you go along: NoS has many virtues, but speed is not (usually) one of them!

On the other hand, what other approaches are usually fast at doing is bouncing your weight up and down ...

DaveMc

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.

)

DaveMc

Congratulations, that's great!

I remember that I used to think, when I saw some thin person walking down the street eating a giant ice cream cone or something, "How can they eat that sort of thing and not be fat?" After starting No S, I realized that there's actually an answer to that question ...

DaveMc

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 ...

DaveMc

That's funny!

One of the comments on the article over at the NYT site was interesting (italics mine):

Weight Watchers own scientists--ie, not objective, third-party scientists--can only document a success rate of about a five pound loss over a two year period. If I spent two years thinking about ...

DaveMc

oolala: "cattywompers"! I love it. Is that a common term where you live, or is that your own invention? Either way, I'm stealing it.

DaveMc

Something we often note about hunger: it can help to think of it, instead, as "having an appetite". This is something people used to do, between meals. They'd work up an appetite for the next one. Looking forward (even keenly) to your next meal is definitely not an emergency.

DaveMc

I voted "Stick to vanilla", and I think you should hold out for as long as possible before you start making mods. It's all too easy to mod yourself right out of NoS and back into a too-restrictive "diet" rather than a sustainable pattern of moderate eating.

But congratulations on how well you're ...

DaveMc

I think this is one of the things can be most surprising about NoS: The fact that it's *simple* does not in any way mean that it's *easy*. Especially when you're first getting started, it's incredibly hard to get out of the habit of snacking.

It's probably not much consolation, but it really does ...

DaveMc

When I saw "Aztec diet", I went and looked up the typical mass of the human heart. Turns out to be well under a pound, so the amount of weight loss due to having your heart ripped out on a sacrificial altar would be minimal.

The chia seed thing makes more sense, I guess.

DaveMc

Hi all, I was just reading this article and it made me think of NoS:

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/11/alt-text-healthy-sugar-water/

A bit from the beginning:

I still find it hilarious that Coca-Cola was invented as a health drink. Itâ€™s as if someone set out to invent a device to restore ...

DaveMc

It's like shameless self-promotion, but with added shame!

Here's the thing: I'm a scientist, and I'm currently involved in a somewhat peculiar grant selection process. We had to write a research proposal, but in addition to that, we were asked to produce a two-minute video describing the proposed ...

DaveMc

Male, here.

DaveMc

I like concrete metaphors *and* abstract metaphors.

DaveMc

There may be people in the world for whom intuitive eating would work, but I'm definitely not one of them. I'd venture to guess that most of us are here because we don't intuitively eat just the right amount of just the right foods.

NoS gives me just enough structure to be effective, and it's ...

DaveMc

I always enjoy a good civil engineering metaphor! Thanks for sharing.

DaveMc

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 ...

DaveMc

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.

DaveMc

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 ...

DaveMc

Well, I weighed myself the other day, and the number was 7 pounds lighter than what I saw a month ago. So there. :) Take that, scale!

[Strictly speaking, if the one a month ago could be anomalously high, the one a week ago could also be anomalously low, but I'm choosing to assume that the high one ...

DaveMc

Hi everyone, I'm not dead, I've just been away from the boards for a long while, during a particularly busy stretch at work. But I thought I'd drop by to mention something (then I really need to get back to work!): I put on about ten pounds on a family vacation in December, when I dropped NoS for ...

DaveMc

walkerlori wrote:I'm a big fan of pomegranates. I'll eat the seeds as my lunchtime dessert or mix them in yogurt for breakfast.

I guess that's fine, if you don't mind spending six months of the year in the underworld.

DaveMc

Yes, everyone here is terrific. Well, except that one person. You know who you are.

Kidding, kidding! It really is a remarkably nice group, here.

DaveMc

I think it would count as a problem if you start writing yourself into scenes where you're forced to eat entire pies in the name of comedy.

DaveMc

"Oh my, I *gained* weight!" is probably the single most common cause of panic (and premature quitting) in newcomers. Your conversation with yourself about being less obsessed with food sounds exactly right, to me: remind yourself that you aren't defined by the number on the scale!

As I've often ...

DaveMc

I find fruit a lot sweeter-tasting than I used to, probably because of the lack of contrast with sugary-sweet other stuff during the week.

DaveMc

Another thing to bear in mind is that is *does* get easier over time! When I started a couple of year ago, those gaps between meals were *tough*, and if dinner with the missus was going to be delayed for some reason, I'd often have to eat ahead of her, 'cause I just couldn't wait. Now, going six or ...

DaveMc

Please assure me I really can make it from lunch to dinner. I need to know that it's possible.
Let me assure you, it's possible, and you can do it! Lots of people do. Virtually *everyone* used to, before eating between meals became the norm -- that was around the time when everyone in the west ...

DaveMc

The idea is to avoid snacking in between meals, but there's nothing that says the number of meals needs to be three. It could be, for example, two. I guess if you're eating dessert every day you're doing a sort of "one S diet", but if that worked for you there'd be no reason not to try it -- but ...

DaveMc

Your approach and attitude strike me as exactly right! You've given it enough of a run that considering changes isn't premature, and you're wisely looking for ones that you can sustain, rather than panicking and lurching into huge changes that would probably never last.

Best of luck! (EDIT: Y'know ...

DaveMc

Huh, I hadn't thought about the anoxeria angle (possibly because anoxeria wouldn't be among the top 200 ailments anyone would suspect me of!) But yeah, keeping yourself perpetually starving isn't moderation, it's being extreme in the opposite direction. Fortunately, there's quite a lot of room on ...

DaveMc

Congratulations to you both, you're well on your way to being as weird as a lot of us around here are.

If we were the Scouts, you'd have just earned your "Enjoyed Feeling Peckish" badge.

DaveMc

I recently read how DaveMc has S Days on Friday and Sunday (which doesn't sound too bad to me), which then reminded me that floating S Days could be an option as well.
For the record, I introduced that mod after a good while on "vanilla" (unmodified) NoS -- I think it was after most of a year ...

DaveMc

The other thing that seems obvious to us NoS-ers is that 240 calories doesn't need to be all *that* steep: most people probably eat at least that much in the form of snacks every day. So stop doing that.

DaveMc

I commented on this is my two-year "testimonial":

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

In brief, if you're talking about real *pain*, most people find that passes in the first few weeks or so. If it doesn't, you may have a medical issue that needs to be resolved.

But after that ...

DaveMc

It's definitely a matter of refining your personal definitions and seeing what works for you.

That said, I think muffins have gotten a free ride for long enough, darn it. Nobody thinks cupcakes are health food, but somehow because some muffins have bran in them, the entire category basks in a ...

DaveMc

If you like wry-ranging-to-snarky commentary on the cultural detritus of the past, I'd highly recommend James Lileks' stuff. His "Gallery of Regrettable Food" is a tour through mid-twentieth century American cookbooks, with hilarious remarks on each hideous new dish:

http://www.lileks.com/institute ...

DaveMc

I'm glad they emphasized that this effect was because it led people to eat less later in the day. Too often, the "eat a hearty breakfast" advice is presented as if it's straight-up magic: eat more, and lose more weight! "Eat more, then eat less" is a lot less glamorous, but makes infinitely more ...

DaveMc

Just to chime in with another point of reference: I lost about 20 pounds in my first year (and I've been stable ever since, into year two). So that's less than half a pound a week.

DaveMc

I guess if I gained 5 pounds overnight I would know that it can't possibly be 5 pounds of fat. Is it physiologically possible to gain 5 pounds of fat in one day? :shock: I don't know?
I don't know, either, but it's at least unlikely!

This is my understanding, too: that is, that it's a question of ...

DaveMc

Thanks for the link, that seems like a conceptual extension of the earlier study Reinhard often cites in support of the proposition that most of the increase in eating comes in the form of snacks. This more recent study comes to a similar conclusion.

PLoS (Public Library of Science), where this new ...

DaveMc

I thought I read somewhere that drinking water before meals can actually hinder the body from taking in all the nutrients from the food we are about to eat..now, I don't know if that is true...
The Mayo Clinic seems to think it's not:

There's no concern that water will dilute the digestive ...

DaveMc

"Paleo blogosphere" makes me picture the Lascaux cave ...

DaveMc

I started in July ... of 2009. Hang in there!

DaveMc

Thalia, tell your husband if he wants to gain weight to limit his calories enough to make him feel cranky and preoccupied with food for a week or two and then let go and gorge for a few weeks. Then repeat the cylce several times. It's worked for millions of dieters; it should work for him.
That's ...

DaveMc

How long do I need to stick with this before I start seeing results?
A lot longer than a week, I'm afraid. I'd urge you to give yourself time to establish the habits firmly, before you worry too much about weight loss. Months, anyway. The more you can think long term, the better this will work ...

DaveMc

Congratulations! That's great to hear.

DaveMc

I didn't really keep track, but I think it was over at least the first six months or so -- maybe longer! Two months is probably too soon to worry. Are N days now fully under control, for you? If not, that's always the recommended place to start ...

Truly I find my weekends quite discouraging to ...

DaveMc

And thank you for being a "Gideon" of no-s. :-)
Hotel rooms! I was just wondering where else one could deposit NoS books ...

My local library, unfortunately, can't offer me any guarantee that they would actually put donated books into the circulating collection, rather than selling them to raise ...

DaveMc

Come now, we Americans aren't the only ones who still occassionally use the Queen's measurements.

I asked the Queen last week, and she said it's OK to start using metric. "It's just simpler," she said. :)

However, I don't actually care what units people use. Sometimes I put on my Exasperated ...

DaveMc

Welcome! I think you're going to like NoS, and I hope it helps you as much as it's helped so many of us.

I introduced all three S's at the same time, but everyone is indeed different, and in general the idea is that the bar should be set at a point where you think, "Gee, I can do *that*, no problem ...

DaveMc

I had to look up what a "pint" is, by the way. For anyone else in the same boat, it's apparently 473 mL (in the U.S.) -- nearly half a litre! So a 2 L tub of ice cream is just over four servings? Yikes.

[EDIT: Unless, of course, they mean the "dry pint", which would be 551 mL. Ice cream is a bit of ...

DaveMc

Y'know, it's almost as if the food industry does not have the public's best interests at heart ...

Food designed to support you in being as thoroughly gluttonous as possible -- it's like the anti-NoS!

DaveMc

Fantastic! I love hearing long-term success stories like yours, I think it's where NoS really beats the competition most decisively. Well done, and congratulations on your continued success.

DaveMc

WHAT CAN I TRY TO SUBSTITUTE FOR SNACKING????
The smart-aleck answer, of course, is: Not snacking.

More seriously, that feeling of being hungry before your next meal is something that you can grow accustomed to. Maybe try reframing "being hungry" as "having an appetite", and see if that helps you ...

DaveMc

KCCC wrote:We should be a writing team. I'll call it like it is, then you can make it sound catchy.

I'm happy to supply headlines, whenever needed!

DaveMc

Congratulations, that's great!

DaveMc

I wouldn't get too concerned over the dr's scales - they are notorious for adding 10 lbs to one's real weight (at the very least, from my own experience!)
Alas, in this case I think this has not happened. In honour of my up-coming anniversary, I'd weighed in a few times over the previous week ...

DaveMc

(I will stop hijacking this thread after this)

I have occasionally found myself working on computers where the language is set to US English and I just find it really confusing!
Too late, this thread is jacked! I normally don't apologize (we spell that either way, here, but I tend to use the "z ...

DaveMc

A truer headline would be something like "Is over-estimating your calorie burn and using a minimal amount of exercise as an excuse for eating the maximum amount of extra food making you fat?" It wouldn't sell, but it would identify what the real problem is.
Maybe we can make it catchier ... How ...

DaveMc

When last seen, our hero had just completed his first year of NoS eating:

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

And now, the saga continues ...

July 2011 marks my two-year anniversary on NoS. (My NoS anniversary is the day after my wedding anniversary, so it's easy enough to remember ...

DaveMc

Thanks for the support, guys and gals.

The macro breakdown of the meals is something I'll shoot for, but not let it ruin my day if I don't hit that mark.
That sounds like exactly the right approach. The main "danger" of trying to change too many eating behaviours (sorry for the extra "u", I'm ...

DaveMc

I've often heard the thing about muscle burning more than fat, but one should be a bit cautious about getting too excited about that as a source of calorie burning. Estimates vary widely -- spend some time following the search term "how much fat does muscle burn" down various rabbit holes around the ...

DaveMc

My first thought was "No, no it's not" -- but I realize that that's because I'm following NoS, so how much I eat has nothing to do with what else happens during the day.

DaveMc

I thought I remembered someone posting that they'd been very successful with the "one S at a time" approach, and sure enough, I found a link to it from the main NoS page:

http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=6287

Reinhard's comment on the front page is:

"I've often thought that gradually ...

DaveMc

Fantastically well done! (Both your success in your first year, and in how wonderfully you've presented it. Great stuff.)

It's stories like this that awaken the NoS evangelist in me ... I want to get the address of everyone in North America and mail them a copy of the book ...

Seriously, if Oprah ...

Everyday Systems

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