The No S Diet

A while back, way back in my low-calorie days, I heard about a new diet book called The No S Diet.  The idea behind the book is extremely simple, and in fact, as this website will tell you, it's probably the type of diet your grandma followed. 

So what's the No S Diet?  There are three simple rules:

No Sweets
No Snacks
No Seconds

Except occasionally on days that start with S.

At the time, I was a hardcore snacker.  I literally couldn't get through the day without having at least two snacks.  If I skipped them, I would get incredible headaches that would leave me useless for the rest of the day, seriously.  Also, I had the world's largest sweet tooth.  So when I heard about the No S Diet, I thought it was a load of crap and mostly forgot about it.

But I started thinking about it today.  I've been kind of experimenting with my diet lately.  I've been having trouble with hunger for the last month or maybe even two.  I don't know why, but I've been getting strange pangs of what I think might be hunger half way between meals, even though I'm eating a high fat, low carb, moderate protein diet.  So I've been eating far more often than I'd like to.  Some days, I'll eat two or three times between lunch and dinner.

Hoping that I could maybe get my crazy hunger pangs under control, I've decided to eat only at meal times, with no sweets (of course).  I'm not limiting how much I eat, though, so I have had seconds.  I basically am eating until I'm very full, sometimes up to 2 times what I would normally eat at meals, to get myself through to the next meal. 

So far, it's been going very well.  I still feel those odd hunger pangs, but I've figured out that if I make myself busy with something, those feelings go away completely.  It's only been two days, though, so we'll have to wait and see how this will affect me.  I'm really hoping to train my body to only be hungry at meal times, and to stop bugging be the rest of the day.

One problem I fear I may have, though, is something that's out of my hands.  When I was 14, I had my gall bladder removed.  It's been long enough now that my body can handle digesting fats without any problems, but I do worry a little.  You see, the gallbladder is the holding tank for bile, which is a substance secreted by the liver to help break down oils and fats that you eat.  The gallbladder's job is to hold on to, and then when it's needed, to release the bile.  With the gallbladder gone, the liver still secrets bile, but it's a slow constant drip since there's nothing there to catch it.  This makes me wonder if this is the reason why I'm hungry so often.  Am I getting a build up of bile?  Does the body need food to help keep a balance?  I've done lots of research, but the only thing close to an answer that I've gotten is that people without gallbladders shouldn't try fasting.

But I'm going to continue trying this experiment.  I really hope it works.  I don't want to be ruled by hunger the way I was when I was a low-calorie dieter.