Week 3 of the No Diet Diet begins

Inky Flower by Caroline using the Sumi-e brushes in Corel Painter

Well I'm another three pounds or so down - hard to be accurate as my scales are a bit wobbly but my weight is heading in the right direction! I won't claim its all been plain sailing this last week, it hasn't, but I'm still on course.

Week 3 on the No Diet Diet starts off with a questionnaire to help one decide what proportion of people tasks to doing tasks to go for over the next 7 days. If I was working I'm sure I'd be going for more people tasks but, as it is, my emphasis is on the doing tasks. There's also a list of 26 other things to do with the suggestion that one incorporates 2 of them into the next week as well. This is the general plan for the next seven days:

1. Change - this is today and I've decided to change the bedroom around a bit
   
2. Create something
3. Listen (this is the only people task I've got this week)
4. Activity - try some new activity
   
5. Walk
6. Learn something - one of the examples is to learn more about how to use some gizmo one owns. I could choose my mobile phone, camera, Corel Painter....
7. Stand - one of their suggestions is that on getting home from work one avoids sitting down... I'll avoid sitting down after breakfast instead.

On the people side though there is someone who might be joining in with me - she ought to be getting her book today or tomorrow.

Earlier this week I read some of the reviews of the No Diet Diet on amazon.co.uk and was amazed at how many people were prepared to slam it without even trying it - saying it couldn't possibly work because it wasn't food / exercise based!

Another way it won't work is if you off-load all the responsibility for weight-loss onto it.

The whole idea is to become more aware of one's habits and in breaking some of the non-food ones to have more of a chance of exerting control through gaining awareness generally which will probably include some of the food and exercise habits.

One or two of the success stories in the book give the impression that they have no idea how they've lost weight but I've certainly gained in awareness of feeling full and felt like eating different things - so although there is no prescription for what or how much to eat I'm sure that my eating (apart from the pizza episode last Saturday!) has been much more in tune with my needs.

Here are some food habits I've spotted or was already aware of, and that I'm attempting to avoid falling back into:

1. Difficulty noticing when I've had enough - especially if the radio is on or I'm reading...
2. Not chewing sufficiently.
3. When eating on my own I find myself standing up to put the plate away before I've finished chewing my last mouthful.
4. Eating whilst standing.
5. Preparing a hot drink tends to trigger me to also want a hot cocoa which is of course a lot more food-like than just a hot water!
   
6. Tending to prepare too much of one thing when what I like is variety.
7. Mindless eating of crunchy things like crisps or Pringles...
   
8. A tendency towards all or nothing - finding it much easier to give something up completely than to simply have less. Or indeed to finish the whole tube of Pringles rather than stop and put the lid back on...
9. Pacing myself against other people rather than being aware of what I need...
   

Other non-food habits (many of which I hope I've now broken or at least dented):

1. Switching the radio on, even when I'm quite likely to turn it off again once I've heard what's on. And even stranger having turned it on in one room and turned it off again, I'll turn it on in another room - as though its Radio 4 will be more satisfying than the Radio 4 I've just rejected!
2. Reading despite physical discomfort. I'd say this is actually one of my very worst habits. I can push myself to keep on reading when my whole body is yelling at me to stop!
3. Waking up in the night to go to the loo.
4. Sitting in the same seat at the dining room table.
5. Surfing the web too much.
6. Holding the phone to my left ear only.
7. Sitting in strangely uncomfortable positions - ones that I'm sure if someone told me I must do I'd be very reluctant to hold!
   
8. Putting off sorting out financial things.

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Yesterday started and ended with lost animals.

In the morning I went out for a walk before breakfast and a man asked me if I'd seen a small brown dog. As I wandered around I heard him calling to her and caught sight of him again towards the end of my walk - still looking for her. I hope he found her.

And in the evening there was an appeal on Radio 4 about an African grey parrot that had gone missing in Bristol. They mentioned it on Radio 4 because it likes the pips on the hour! (Checking on the web it seems the parrot has now been returned.)

I grew up with lots of animals but haven't had any in recent years... getting a pet would definitely be doing something different.... what animal(s) would you recommend and why?