Maria's Last Diet

Gained Back Weight. Lost Heart.

by Maria's Last Diet

All is lost!

This is the painful cry of the woman who, after all she lost (pounds, that is), found herself back in the old condition of gaining back weight—and she just lost it (hope, that is).

Oh, she might, as time goes by, go on another diet, and another, and another. But for the time being, now that all is lost (hope, that is), she says to herself, “what’s the difference. I have nothing more to lose” (hope, that is), and she eats up a storm, putting on even more of what she lost (pounds, that is).

If this is you, please don’t believe all is lost (hope, that is). When all that was lost (pounds, that is) comes back, all is not lost (hope, that is)—or at least it doesn’t have to be. It depends on what you believe.

Reminder: it’s only a setback, and if you can think of it this way, then you haven’t really lost it all (hope, that is).

So, see if you can set your mind—not to mind setbacks—at least not to the point of crying “all is lost”. Use what you've gained (hope, that is), and put it toward all you have left to lose (pounds, that is).

 

Weight-Loss Guidelines—For When You Need Help Losing Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

Would it help you to have a set of guidelines for losing some weight?

If so, try these on for size.

• Specify realistic weight-loss goals — not just number of pounds to lose, but also the changes you will have to make in the way you eat, think, plan, react, keep motivated, etc

• List the possible positive outcomes and use these as motivation

• Identify what will get in your way of achieving your goals, and think of ways to overcome them

• Plan out the actions you will take to avoid the old triggers

• Practice your new behaviors (attitude, thinking, feeling, ways of coping) each day

• Monitor your practices and keep a diary of how you did

• After a week, review how you did and revise your plans and practices accordingly, making sure you note and work on anything that is still getting in the way

• Review all of this openly and honestly with a trusted confidant

• Keep this up, week after week until you’ve reached your goals

 

Helping a Friend With Unwanted Weight Gain

by Maria's Last Diet

Maria remembered the time when her good friend Wendy dispensed with all the small talk. She was calling Maria back then to talk about her weight. So there was none of the usual chitchat about the mundane and the politically mundane, Wendy got straight to the point. She was alarmed because she had started to gain some of her old weight back. Maria picked right up on this and asked if there was something eating at her. Get that? Eating at her. Wendy said that’s why she was calling Maria. She learned from her struggles with weight, from knowing Maria, and from reading Escape to Thin that emotions and emotional patterns were heavily involved in weight control. So Wendy and Maria made a date to talk more about this.

When they met a week or so later at Wendy’s house, Wendy took Maria into the den, where the two women settled themselves, Wendy on the couch and Maria in an overstuffed rocker close to Wendy. At first, Wendy rooted around for an answer to her weight gain. Maria asked her friend, “Has there been anything different going on in her life?”

“No,” Wendy said. “Not that I can think of.”

Maria followed up by asking Wendy to “Try to name, guess at if you need to, any changes in your life since you started putting on weight.”

Wendy couldn’t think of any changes, and Maria encouraged her to work at it some more. “Try,” Maria exhorted her friend.

Wendy ran through all the usual things in her life. Her children were fine, her marriage was okay, work was work, her parents were healthy. “No,” she said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

Maria took a chance at being a pain and tried to get Wendy to narrow down her observations, to think more specifically. Maria knew there had to be something that happened. But Wendy couldn’t get to anything else. She said to Maria that she was back on her old diet, the one that worked so well for her before. So, for the time being, Maria knew that she had to leave it like that. She had learned that people can’t be pushed. Pushing at them wasn’t a form of help. And it spoiled the possibility of helping at a future time.

 

Weight-Loss Failure—What to Do About It

by Maria's Last Diet

Once, OK. Twice, understandable. Three times, six times—getting pretty frustrated. More than this—you have a chronic problem. Whatever you do, you just can’t lose unwanted weight.

Diagnosis: Treatment refractory weight loss

In other words, you failed to respond to the usual forms of treatment—dieting, cutting portion size, practice not eating so much, using more willpower, following doctor’s orders, being part of a support group.

Looks like nothing can be done about it, because of all that you tried, and all the times you failed.

Helping someone in your shoes to have successful weight loss is going to require a transformation—from someone who can’t to someone who can take charge of her eating and weight.

This will call for careful attention to what’s been going wrong psychologically for you. Repeated failure is an indication that something needs to be brought to your attention, so you can see it for what it is and then learn to work on it so it’s not in the way.

Try doing it this way and see what you come up with. If you would like professional help, set up an appointment with a mental health professional.

 

Are Your Good Intentions Powerful Enough To Defeat Your Bad Eating Habits

by Maria's Last Diet

If you decide to eat less because you would like to lose weight, can your decision take precedence over your old habit of eating too much food?

What’s been your experience?

Most people would say that changing their daily habits is in no way easy, and deciding doesn’t add up to doing it. A habit is a habit, and it’s hard to break.

Then, does what you want to do, what you intend to do not matter? Are your intentions not strong enough to override your old weight-gaining behaviors?

A psychological research study on just this issue, of whether it’s possible to shield your intentions against habit interference, showed that a person’s intentions can indeed inhibit the strength of old habits.

So take heart from that. Intentions do count. But they don’t do the whole job.

The inhibiting power of your intention can be strengthened, though. They can be strengthened by the ways you choose to implement your intention. In other words, your intention can be fully supported by the plans you make to carry out your intention: the more specific the plan the better. For example: When (this happens), I will (do that).

Implementing your intention through smart planning is one way of shoring up your intention. Another way is to practice what you plan. You can do this through visualizing or mental rehearsal. You can also practice what you plan to do by actually doing it here and there.

With planning and practice, your intention is being implemented as thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that will, in themselves, become habitual. In other words, you are making some new habits. And remember, there’s only so much room inside you. So some of these new habits of yours are going to be taking up some of the space you had reserved for your old habits.

Get the idea? It all starts with your intentions, and it doesn’t have to end there.