Reinhard Engels

I am oh-so-tired of dieting, and I usually never read diet books because I know that it merely a matter of calories in/calories out in the end. However, counting calories is extremely tiring AND boring - - and it is nearly impossible to do for restaurant meals. But I won't do a diet that cuts out particular foods (because I know I won't sustain that for life).

So, basically, I exercise and exercise and sort of maintain my weight that way (but never lose).

It's just one big exercise in frustration. So yesterday, I was browsing in Barnes and Noble, and this little tiny book grabbed my attention. The title was the No S Diet. The subtitle is:
No seconds
No sweets
No snacks
Except on days starting with "S"

My initial thought was - - really? - - someone is really selling this as a "diet"??

I walked away from the book at the store, but the subtitle just stuck in my mind. Could it be something as simple as that? So, later, I bought the book on my Kindle. I read it all last night. And I came away thinking that there might be something to this S diet. Something worth trying at a minimum.

The basic plan is that on weekdays, you are permitted three meals and only three meals. The meal is the size of a plate. You fill a regular sized dinner plate with what you want. All foods EXCEPT treat type foods where the primary ingredient is sugar are permissable. No snacks are permitted AT ALL. No seconds are permitted. No sweets (desserts really) are permitted.

Except on the weekends, you can basically eat as you wish and are encouraged to have some of the sweets you haven't had all week.

The BIG ideas behind the book (in my mind) are:

1) Forming great habits is the most important thing for sustained weight loss and doing something five days per week ingrains the habit.

2) Snacks are a huge boondoggle in that people generally eat unhealthy ones AND they do not reduce your caloric intake at meals. But worst of all, they let you FOOL YOURSELF into believing you are eating way less when you are in fact, not. Whereas making a huge pile of food on your plate really shows you WHAT you are doing and uses a bit of embarrassment to encourage you not to do that.

3) Use the fact that sweets are desirable and a treat as a motivator to get you to do good behaviors the majority of the time. Because the majority of the time is what really counts.

I don't know. The whole thing is resonating with me. No counting calories. Simple, easy to follow rules that make it easy to eat anywhere. Liberal rules on weekends when you are likely to be socializing.

So why not 5 stars? Well, first, I haven't tried it out yet. But I'm going to try it for a month and see what happens. I will report back! Second, there is a website - - the no S diet - - and it seems to me that you can get 90% or more of the information that is in the book, from the website - - albeit with more digging around. So not sure if buying the book was necessary or worthwhile, but it did answer questions that I had i.e. how to handle soup? what is a sweet really? can I have coffee?

The website has lots of testimonials from real people. It seems as though this route to weight loss is a slower route than many diets, but it also seems to be very sustainable. I am excited to try it out. I ate a nice big breakfast - - hope I can make it until lunch!!!… (meer)