Slowly, slowly catchy monkey

[bill_schubert]

One of my favorite British idioms.  It sounds vaguely racist but it also applies here.  I lost 8 or so pounds immediately mostly due to lots of water ingestion and reporting everything I ate.  Then it leveled off.   

Flat enough to be a plate of pastry

The thing with Noom is, ultimately, is isn't a diet.  South Beach is a diet.  MetaFast is a diet.  Weight Watchers (aka WW) is a diet.  This is a way of thinking, a way of moving sand one grain at a time back to where it should be to balance the scales.  It is a mediocre app with a sometimes questionable database of caloric and exercise measurements.  But what it excels at is a very slow, fairly well executed, course in nutrition and psychology delivered in 10 to 15 minute segments every day with the intent of changing the game entirely.  

So, not just more protein.  Not just more or fewer carbs or this bean or that rice.  Eat it all!  But with intent and presence and understanding of the trade-offs.  

My attitude has gone good to bad to frustrated to happy. I'm fairly sure I'll end up where I need to be, below 200.  But more so I suspect that I'll stay there.  The nice thing about hitting a plateau is that I know what it takes to maintain a weight.  I just need to get to the one I want.

No quick fix.  No magic pill.  Just an incremental change to daily life.  Slowly, slowly catchee monkey.

Comments

[stainsteelrat.livejournal.com]

I was intrigued enough to look up the origin, and apparently it dates from colonial days when British soldiers used to try and catch monkeys as pets. Probably lost in the mists of time.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

Yeah, reminds me of 'Kim' or 'The man who would be king'. No idea if it is one of those expressions 'one does not use anymore' but I suspect it is. No matter. I'm an uncultured Yank so I can get away with it.

[stainsteelrat.livejournal.com]

It's one of those phrases from my parents generation, but I do hear it here every now and then. In these super PC times people may well be thinking the same thing, that there's a racist connection.

[susandennis]

i'm impressed with your tenacity. i lost about 30 pounds last year and then plateaued and then started gaining it back pound by pound . one day - before i'd gotten all the way back, my scale quit talking to my phone. i put in new batteries. no joy. so i took out the batteries and shoved the sucker under the bed and haven't weighed myself since. turns out it was an app issue that they quickly fixed but the goose was way cooked and et by then. maybe one day i'll start again but not today

[timbear.livejournal.com]

Sounds like progress, and that's good, it's a journey not a competition.

As to the idiom I used when I was younger but it's gone out of fashion. I think it's because the cultural reference has been lost in time rather than perceived racism. But then again I was brought up with white privilege in the colonies. What would I know?

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that is kind of how I thought it might be.

[daphnep.livejournal.com]

Noom totally is a diet. Every diet claims they’re not a diet. There are some great takedowns of Noom’s claims online, if/when you ever want to investigate—some stuff particularly around the way the practices follow long held eating disorder practices, and how the program is particularly triggering for people with past EDs.

I mean, it’s totally ok to be on a diet. Just know that it’s a diet, and it works…like a diet.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

Wow, thanks for telling me all that.

[lenine2.livejournal.com]

About 20 years ago I decided to try Atkins. There was an online application (no smart phones then) where I would enter every damned thing that went in my mouth. I realized it was genius. I would think before I grabbed a handful of Skittles — how many is this? I have to count them and enter them. Ugh, too much trouble. Or — I've had 20 potato chips? Really? That's a lot.

I think this is Noom's philosophy, too. THINK! (hear Arethra singing that in Blues Bros) It's amazing what being conscious does. This is something you can do for the rest of your life. It's not like being born again, or starting law school. It's just opening your eyes.

In other words, good for you!

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

Thanks. That is so much of it. And the fact that I can eat whatever I want. No restrictions, no special food I've got to buy from them. Etc.

I'd forgotten about Atkins. They kind of championed the high protein thing. Problem with that is if I don't have carbs (usually in the form of bread) I start to feel like I've got the flu. Ketosis, or whatever it is, just makes me feel like crap and it doesn't go away. So the buddhist middle way of eating, like the middle way of living, just makes sense.

[mollywheezy.livejournal.com]

How do you get the graph to show up like that?

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

Ah, back to the crappy app comment. The only way you can get the graph is to ask for it. I requested it through my coach so it would reflect the end of September (missed by a couple of days) and got it in a message reply. I'll get it again end of this month too.

So strange that you can't download it directly. They have some weird weak points that would be so easy to fix.

[mollywheezy.livejournal.com]

You also can't print recipes which is a pain, but the recipes I've tried have been good.

I'll ask for it when I've been using it a bit longer. You saved me from messing with the app or getting my computer engineer husband to mess with the app. Thanks! :)

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

I've not tried many of the recipes. Probably should work them more. I do like how it gives a rating of how it will effect your current day. But, yeah, be nice if you could forward it to a PC for printing or something other than the phone. I'm not much of a phone person for things like cooking instructions or entering a long message. That is what PCs are for. But they save money by not supporting more than Android and IOS and it is a pretty good price so I tolerate it. My current plan is five months which would be mid-January. I figure to have gone through the course twice by then and saved what I want from it. So I can last that long anyway.

[msconduct.livejournal.com]

From a British point of view, it *is* racist, I'm afraid. Basically it's mimicking in a mocking way the way Indians are supposed to speak. It's the equivalent of Trump saying "We want deal!" to mock the Chinese speaking pattern.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

Yeah, kind of what I thought.

[zoefruitcake.livejournal.com]

Well done