Everyday Systems

So I know most will say "why eat one meal a day, No S is three," but I started doing one meal a day after I went through some emotional toil, had no appetite and only ate one meal. I felt better physically during that time, less cravings, enjoyed one large meal, and lost five lbs easily. I have attempted to continue with one meal but have been binging the last few days and am now wondering what to do. I want to lose weight and feel a lot of pressure to lose before September when I go to Hawaii but am going to gain if I keep binging. Agh, how do you deal with the pressure to lose while trying to live sanely?

Side note: I have gone through short term extreme weight loss 10 years ago then binging, dieting, binging, dieting all the way to 200 lbs (I am female and 5'9"). I obviously have lots if emotional eating issues as well.

Eat three meals day. You are torturing yourself. The starvation diet mentality is going to backfire. From what you are saying it already is. If you practice sane habits by September you may lose some weight and feel better emotionally. If you continue in this panic mode, you can bet you will have gained weight and extra stress/self-loathing to boot.
Take a deep breath and do NoS. Read these message boards and testimonials when you feel out of control. Feed your body with love and kindness. You deserve a better way to live and eat.
With much love,
Kat

One meal a day is not working for you now. It may have worked short term in the past but it no longer does. Time to stop hoping it does.

I think No S can help those with emotional eating issues IF:
1. They commit to doing vanilla No S
2. Refocus their goals to normalizing their eating patterns rather than weight loss
3. Are willing to do the hard work of addressing other emotional issues.
4. Get professional help if they need it
5. Make a long term (like a year) commitment to the process.

There is no short cut. There is no easy way out. There is no miracle secret.

grothkat, your side note reads like my own little bio. I too have gone through the short term extreme weight loss (several times though) followed by several years of binge/diet/binge. (I also am female and 5'9"!)

I also keep trying to short myself out of meals. I get panicky about three meals - it seems decadent and excessive.. as if I am only worth one or two meals a day and to indulge in more than that is greedy. The irony of course is every time I tell myself that today "I'll just eat two meals" or "I'm going to fast for the next 24 hours", I throw myself off of any hard earned NoS sanity for WEEKS at a time.

It's beginning to dawn on me that giving myself three meals a day is a way of respecting myself. I would never in a million years try to feed my children less than three meals a day, so what on earth makes me think that I somehow deserve less?

But as Blithe Morning says, I have to refocus my goals to normalize my eating patterns rather than weight loss. For people such as myself I think this is the hardest but most important part.

The real clincher is I'm pretty sure that if I had just given myself three nutritious meals a day and avoided all the hoopla of intermittent fasting I'd have lost weight anyway just by eliminating all the binge triggers.

As Kittykat said, stop torturing yourself! I'm working on doing the same thing right now.

I believe NOS does not require three meals. But if one meal is not working for you change to 3 and see what happens.

Katrina,
You may want to go back and reread some of your old posts. . . to refresh my memory about your journey I looked at some of your former posts. Here's one where Oolala gave you some great advice and you even gave yourself some good advice on your 2013 check-in.

You said on Christmas day, 2012: My goal is to actually dampen down the diet chatter in my head and accomplish a normal eating life.

A couple of days later:
I was experimenting with a mod of one s thing per day but it gets too confusing and can turn into snacks. I think I need much more vanilla no s first.

Then another thread: http://everydaysystems.com/bb/viewtopic ... ht=#126942

It sounds like YOU know what you need to do just as much as we do! But that diet head mentality is just such as a distractor. It's like we need to stick our fingers in our ears and say "I can't hear you, I can't hear you!" Maybe it's the only time it should really be ok to say "so shut up already, you evil diet word!"

You've tried to convince yourself that you felt better when you were eating only one meal a day-yet you said you started when you were having emotional issues and one meal held you and you felt ok with it. . . well, hello, you were ok with it because your brain (and heart) was probably so focused on the emotional turmoil and you weren't even thinking about eating. It's strange-just yesterday after I'd had a moderate S day meal, I had a personal situation come up that had to be handled and although I knew it would resolve itself by today-and it did, thankfully, by the time my husband made a nice Sunday dinner, I had zero appetite-didn't eat a bite and didn't even miss it. I read your initial post here about this right before I went to bed and I thought to myself-ah, I had one meal today and I'm not hungry-but I KNEW I'd wake up otherwise. Sure enough, I had the leftovers for lunch today. I knew that was a short term side effect and I wasn't about to decide, "maybe I should try this all the time." Maybe that's because I learned from you that it doesn't work!

Also I noticed when you were detailing on your check-in page, you were still doing the 1 tablespoon of this, 4 oz. of that detail. Again. Work on getting that out of your head. As I looked at a bunch of your meals, I must say that my grandmother (may she RIP) would have said, "Now, honey, that's not enough to keep a bird alive." Take a cue from Oolala's signature-"I count plates, not calories. Three a day." . Note she doesn't say, itty bitty plates. . . or half-filled plates with carefully counted foods.

Just trust the habit building process. Stay off that scale-hide it-toss it. Over time, see how your clothes fit! Scour these boards for inspiration. There are dozens of posts of a similar bent that pop up all the time. . . then you can go to the testimonials page and find those wonderful success stories where folks talk about their long but steady road and the ways they continue to make progress. Decide to "have what they were having!" -- they being the success stories!

Please don't take these comments as criticism. I thought if you saw that even you yourself have given yourself good advice before! (And it's not like the rest of us haven't fallen into that trap before too!)

You are in the caring business-care about yourself as much as you do about your patients and your loved ones! YOU MATTER! And we've got your back!

Everyone here is right. Skipping meals makes you hungry and you make bad decisions. Had small dinner then skipped breakfast. Boom quarter pounder and large fries for lunch. I'm with you. I can easily binge when I get too hungry. Really this diet is about stopping the binging. I think most people get to a certain weight because they binge. No-s might be called the anti-binge diet. Each meal is really a step for you not to eat outside meal times and not binge. I'm learning that. It's tough. Mistakes can lead to what the hell and take off the rest of the day to hang out at the ice cream shop. You aren't alone in having a tough time. I hope that you solve your problems and saying a prayer for you. You can do it. You've had the discipline to do one meal a day at times....I know you can do three. May God bless you.

One meal a day is the premise of the Warrior Diet. One large meal in the evening. I tried it for a day. I didn't make it to breakfast.

You guys are so wise and dedicated, looking at my old posts and pointing out goals I mentioned then. Thank you for all of your knowledge, and I definitely see how diet chatter has never left me and is influencing me greatly,