Diet Progress Report

My diet is still going strong, and I am right on target having lost 12 lbs in the 12 weeks since the beginning of the year.

One problem that I am coming across is an increasing tendency to cheat. The trouble is that after one has cheated once it becomes easier to cheat the next time. Cheating of course is self-defeating in this diet as all that happens is that the rules get tighter and tighter.

So I am going to be really strict with myself from now on: NO CHEATING! 

(Full details of the diet I have been following are given in my article Can I Improve on the “No S” Diet.)

Related: 

Other posts about dieting

Update on Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 19:30 by Mark Forster

See my May 22 Update for how I overcame the cheating problem.

Comments

[Mal]

Sonja Lyubomirsky's remarkable new book has a possible answer to this. She quotes a diet guru who found his students were cheating because they were getting bored with the diet -- just as everyone gets bored with doing anything for any length of time (Sonja and other positive psychologists call it the hedonic treadmill).

So why not try changing the diet? Maybe that will keep you interested so you will be less likely to cheat,

Last year I tried a crash diet to lose 10lbs in five weeks. This year (having put it on again!) I'm aiming to lose 1lb a month. So far so good!

[Mark Forster]

This would be "The How of Happiness", would it?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1847441939/026-1386493-4534806?ie=UTF8&tag=markforstthet-21&linkCode=xm2&camp=1634&creativeASIN=1847441939

I've not read it but it sounds interesting. Good luck with the new diet.

[Melissa]

Hi Mark,

I've looked at the diet. I like it. It's simple and yet uncompromising.

I take it one drops the rules at the bottom of the list first. I'm not sure I could make a habit of 'skipping all meals'!

Regards,
Melissa.

[Mark Forster]

Hi, Melissa

Yes, you've got it! The rules are cumulative and you add them one at a time. Then you take them off one at a time in the same order you put them on.

Actually I've never yet got as far as skipping all meals!

[Reinhard]

Hi Mark,

I'm sorry vanilla No-s didn't do the trick for you -- though I take some comfort in the thought that your successful, heavily-modded personal version at least took inspiration from it.

As for your compliance difficulties, I came up with a concept/tool called the "Habit Calendar" which I think might help.

The basic idea is for every new behavior you're trying to turn into a habit, you mark each day green/yellow/red for success/exempt/failure (the "habit traffic light"). You can use a paper calendar and colored markers, or the free online version here:

http://everydaysystems.com/habitcal

Hope this helps -- best of luck in any case!

Reinhard

P.S. The No S Diet book is now out -- not sure if it'll make vanilla any tastier to you, but people tell me it's entertaining even if they don't wind up following the system to the letter.

[Mark Forster]

Hi, Reinhard

Yes, there's not a great deal of resemblance left between "my" diet and your orginal No-S. It reminds me of the many attempts that people come up with to combine Do It Tomorrow with Getting Things Done. The result may work for them, but I always feel they've missed the point of DIT!

[Experience diet diary]

I'm from Japan.
Glad to meet you.

Please link to this site.
Keep it up please.

[Fletcher]

Hi Mark,according to me dieting is not at all a problem.It will be easier until we cheat. when we start cheating ourselves,its a great loss for us only.