Another failed attempt!
Thanks for pointing out the website, I've taken this from it, I found it very hopeful and will try again
Sometimes it takes a false start (or 12)
Some people, like me, get No S the first time they try it. It works and it sticks. But most people have a bit more trouble than that. In fact, you might do best if you assume you'll screw up the first time, so you don't get too discouraged. Consider it a reconnaissance mission, a trial run, just to feel out how hard it's going to be and where problems are going to arise. If the enemy, appetite, turns out to be such a chump that your reconnaissance mission routs him, great, you've succeeded. It might be that easy, you won't know until you try. If not, you've learned more about him, where he's likely to ambush you. You're stronger, better prepared for next time. Don't feel stupid for trying and failing. Success is the sum of many failures. This isn't just pep talk. According to a recent article I was pointed to (thanks, Valerie):
Studies show that altering eating habits for good requires 10 to 12 concerted attempts to succeed - which is to say about a dozen failures come before the eventual success. "That's not reason to despair," said John Norcross, professor of psychology at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania and a researcher on self-initiated change. "If anything, it's reason to say, 'I'm not doing so bad.' "
So quit dawdling and get some failures under your belt!
Need something more inspirational than another pseudostatistic? Try Winston Churchill: "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."
The Right Level of Abstraction
Most commercial diets are too complicated for people with outside interests to follow ("eating = math"). Most conventional wisdom rules about diet are too simplistic and vague to be useful ("only eat when you're hungry"). The No S Diet finds the happy medium between the two. It's simple and specific. As a computer programmer, I'm always looking for the right level of abstraction for the problem at hand -- the simplest way of conceptualizing a problem that will actually solve it. For diet, I think this is it.
As a thoughtful poster to the No S Diet group put it:
It reminds me of a Buddhist proverb: "Before I studied Zen, a mountain was just a mountain...after I began to study Zen, a mountain was no longer just a mountain, then, when I completed my studies, the mountain became a mountain again." All that means is, if you look at the problem of weight loss in very short terms, No-S looks like a great solution. If you start studying it, things get confusing and it may look like No-S isn't the best solution any more. After you've spent a few years on the problem, you realize that No-S is a great solution, and that there are a bunch of fairly complicated things you can do to make it marginally better. But is it worth years to figure out how to make a great solution marginally better?