Via someone who recently started following me on Twitter, I came across the No S Diet:
No funny science or calorie accounting involved, just a few simple and mnemonic tricks for giving your willpower the upper hand.
There are just three rules and one exception:
- No Snacks
- No Sweets
- No Seconds
Except (sometimes) on days that start with “S”
Check out the diet’s page for a lot more re the rationale. I mention it here because I find parts of it intriguing.
For one, this recent post from Matt Metzgar briefly discusses a rat study showing how a high-fat diet without sugar did not cause leptin resistance. And of course, this ties in nicely with Lustig’s theories re the role of sugar in obesity
For another, J Stanton makes a persuasive case that snack food is addictive and makes you both fat and weak.
Also interesting, the exception (for weekends and “special” days) reminds me a lot of the 4 Hour Body’s cheat day — but without the implicit binge encouragement.
On the negative side, the No S diet doesn’t educate people about healthy foods and what they should eat. Then again, for many people the problem isn’t the knowing, it’s the doing.
And the diet seems to work for some folks; it may be that people who aren’t eating sugar, snacks, and seconds may be easily reducing calories. Or, as with exercise, doing these “healthy” behaviors also leads to others, such as eating more fruits and veggies.
From my perspective, the No S diet isn’t the perfect diet (the Jaminets’ Perfect Health Diet is a lot closer to perfect ;), but it is simple! I suspect it might be a good first step down a path towards health and weight loss, especially because it reinforces lifestyle change over a short-term diet.
Great post! Someone posted a link on the No S discussion forum for us.
I don’t know if No S is the perfect diet either, but it solves the problem of overeating for me, and that is what its main goal is.
Improved eating sometimes comes along with, as a side benefit of limiting your eating opportunities.
Getting it right becomes more of an obvious issue, and the innate disadvantages of low-value food become more clear when you can notice exactly how sustaining it is (or isn’t), without the backup of snacking.
I think I get some benefit of improved eating because of No S, but I’m working on problems of overeating before I try to solve the problem of ideal eating. :)
Clarica, thanks for the nice comment! Re your last point, I’ve found that the two are closely related. I consider myself the poster child of binge eating, but find that the more nutritious my diet, the less I’m tempted to overeat.
Another No-S-er here… I think it’s a chicken and egg issue, and we’re starting from the other end.
When up eat more nutritiously, you’re less likely to binge. When you limit snacks/seconds/sweets, you’re more likely to eat nutritiously.
Partly, that’s because when you reduce to eating one plate 3x/day, you notice that you’re not eating enough healthy food. (It’s easy to lie to yourself when you snack. You think you don’t have to eat carrots at your meal, because you’ll snack on them. Then you reach for Snickers at snack time… You can’t do that when “This is IT.”)
You also just learn to pay attention to what you eat and its effects on you.. You find that it’s hard to make it to the next meal if you don’t include some fat and some protein and some fiber… you start experimenting to see what is most satisfying for you. Lo and behold, it ends up being rather nutritious stuff for most people.
So, while the main focus IS simply portion control, No-S gently leads to better eating. And let’s face it, cutting out the most egregious junk (snacks/sweets) is an incredibly good start toward better nutrition all on its own.