Ordinarily, in our house, the Christmas season
begins the weekend after Thanksgiving.
That's when we start decorating the house,
putting up the tree etc. 

Yesterday I decorated the Christmas tree,
and got out the Christmas candles, etc. 

This unusual behavior has happened this year
because I've been so incredibly busy
with all of my online activity. 

In just 9 days it will be Christmas,
and I have not yet bought ONE present.
Christmas shopping isn't going to happen until next week, 
because the next couple of days
I need to work on getting the videos done
that are supposed to go online on Christmas weekend. 

 Who knew that all of this would take so much time? 
My web-genius son keeps telling me that 
soon I'll become more efficient at maintaining my YouTube channel
and this will all take less energy and effort.

It had Better.
Because there are new diet books out there to read,   
and many other things that I want to do. .
....like write and post articles here in this website
on more interesting topics ....

My Dieting Hobby is a Lifestyle...that means
it continues throughout all of the many changes and activities of my life.  
Every day I log in all my food into my DietPower software.
I keep working to keep my calories down,
...sometimes successfully..and sometimes not...
I keep putting forth the Effort it takes to maintain my weight-loss. 

The Christmas season involves exposure to many additional food treats,
and handling that without an enormous weight gain is just as difficult for me now, 
as it has been in all of my previous Christmas seasons. 
My change body weight hasn't changed 
the food desires of my mind and my emotions.

People don't spent a lot of time telling us that. 
The mindset is..."I'll just take off the weight, and then it won't be a problem"
My own experience, and my observation of others 
tells me that this mindset is just totally wrong. 

It will always take work. 
It takes more work for some than it does for others
but it becomes intuitive for almost no one.

I Accept that, and I am willing to do what it takes
to enjoy myself and my life
while engaging in my Dieting Hobby. 

 

I read a lot about various Diet Plans, and I've spent a lot of time experimenting with them. I am not a fan of the Intutitive Eating Diet (and it is a Diet, although proponents like to label it a "non-diet"). 

My research and personal experience with it  has proven to me that "Intutive Eating" is an absolute disaster as a weight-loss plan for almost every person who struggles with obesity.  In my opinion, even "Faith Healing" has a better track record.

People who embrace the Intuitive Eating concepts sometimes develop Peace of Mind about their eating...but that usually lasts only until they realize that, not only are they NOT losing weight... they are Actually becoming fatter.

However, adding some simple guidelines to that concept can help stop the Intuitive Eating runaway train to Fat City.

I think that embracing the No S Diet plan is a useful strategy that can be helpful for people who have bought into, and found themselves trapped inside, the Intuitive Eating fantasy mindset.

Here's a very insightful quote by a long-time member of the "No S" forum:

When a thin person says she eats as much as she wants, it is a different "as much" as the typical overweight person.

Most thin people have a different definition of what full or stuffed is. Most of them hate the feeling of being stuffed. And most of them will routinely wait a long time to have a meal, if necessary. If they have to wait longer for dinner one day, they just get hungrier and wait. They will leave even food they love on their plate when they are full.

If eating as much as you want routinely means eating when you are hungry and beyond full or slightly less than full, you will not lose weight.

In the meantime, when you are intermittently reinforcing the habit of overeating, eating just because you have an urge that has nothing to do with hunger, responding to environmental cues, etc., you are making that habit stronger and stretching out the time it takes to help establish and solidify the habit of allowing yourself to get hungry several times a day by eating moderate amounts and then waiting an appropriate amount of time.

I spent years looking at why I ate. It wasn't until the No S Diet that I realized that it didn't matter. The best way to cut the cord between multiple reasons to eat and eating was to surrender to the one-plate 3-meal structure.  I won't ever be able to remove all the reasons I would like to eat.  On N (normal) days, most N days, they are irrelevant.  The problems don't go away.  The random eating has.

I eat my meals, some light, some heavier.  I get hungry, I satisfy the hunger.

It is ten times easier (but not easy at the start) than anything else I've done and that includes several years wasted trying to just read my body's signals. It is too easy to lie to yourself or to just not be sensitive enough. Besides, on that system, I was routinely getting hungry even fewer times per day because I would overeat the wrong foods all the time. Do you think you can get used to that?

Then again all the experimentation did finally make me see the futility of the other methods for me.
 

Sharing the Truth with you today. 

Today I posted a news article about the progress
at DietHobby's companion site at YouTube. 
I've been spending a great deal of time working on that channel,
and as a result, haven't posted much here this week.

I am now shooting 4 videos every week and posting them there.
You can find every one of those videos here at DietHobby
under RESOURCES, Videos, or you can click the link in the recent news article
and go directly to my YouTube DietHobby channel. 

My current video release schedule is:

Ask Grandma:  Fridays
Recipe:  Sundays
Words of Wisdom:  Tuesday and Wednesday

Somewhere around those days, I also share the videos here at this website.

Learning how to prepare for, shoot, edit, and upload those videos
has been challenging, and even after learning how,
there is a great deal of work involved in the process. 

Also, it has been necessary for me to spend a great deal of time
reading and responding to the comments of the YouTube viewers. 
Because of this additional activity, I've had to be less active here at DietHobby.com.

There isn't enough time for me to write an insightful article here every day,
and do all of the other things I need to do,
so my current plan is to keep this website active by continuing to post here frequently,
to share the videos I make here, along with some personal comments,
and to work toward posting a thoughtful article at least once a week. 

FYI, I read all of the comments anyone makes here, 
on all of the articles, no matter when they were posted,
and I also respond to them as soon as possible.

This is a picture of one serving of food from my new cooking video,
Pot Roast
which is located at DietHobby, under RECIPES,  Mealtime.