Maria's Last Diet

Weight Loss Support for Labor Day - A Quiz

by Maria's Last Diet

The Labor Day holiday is here and you've probably made your plans. Are you doing the cooking this year or are you going out? In either case, it would be helpful to consider the following:

On Labor Day, how unpleasant would it be for you...

  to have one holiday treat
     not at all    slightly    moderately    very

  to not eat all you want
     not at all    slightly    moderately    very

  to stay on your diet
     not at all    slightly    moderately    very

  to miss out on seconds
     not at all    slightly    moderately    very

  to tell people you're trying to lose weight
     not at all    slightly    moderately    very

  to limit your drinking so you can stay in control of your diet
     not at all    slightly    moderately    very

How did you answer? Did you think of any other unpleasant possibilities?

Forewarned is supposed to be forearmed, but this is not always the case. It’s best to prepare for the unpleasant by making a plan for how you’ll cope. Make a good plan with lots of specifics.

Plan for what will keep you away from the “very” unpleasant and deliver you to the “moderately” unpleasant. And plan for going from “moderately" to “slightly” unpleasant as well. The more pleasant you make it the easier it will be for you.

After all, on Labor Day of all days you deserve a rest. Put the travails of the dieting work behind you, and stay on or at least close to your diet by anticipating the rough spots and planning for them.

Lose Weight, Gain Weight: Trapped by Weight Cycling (Yo Yo Dieting)

by Maria's Last Diet

Want to be a weight-stable woman? Good goal, ay? How to do it is the important question.

Not by weight cycling, that's for sure. Losing weight too often leads you right back to gaining weight. In fact, in the "Nurses' Health Study II" women weight cyclers gained significantly more weight than their non-cycling peers. (What's a non-cycling peer, you might ask? She's a nurse with a weight problem who has not lost weight but doesn't keep gaining. Or, she is a nurse who does not need to lose weight, and she also doesn't keep gaining.)

The issue of weight cycling is complex. We know that it takes more than a single try for most anybody to lose weight. It takes any number of attempts. (How many attempts have you made: in the last year, in the past 5 years, over your lifetime?) So how can you distinguish weight cycling from not being able to lose weight and keep it off successfully the first, second, third...eighth, ninth, tenth time out?

Can you construct your weight loss attempts so they are different from plain old weight cycling? If so, what would you do? Any ideas? Here's one idea. What if you designed your weight loss attempts so that each attempt would move you closer to your weight-loss goal? If this sounds like a good idea to you, your welcome to it. Just let us know how you decided to implement it...and let us know the result as well.

The Thin-is-In Thing is Guilty as Charged in the Overweight and Obesity Epidemic

by Maria's Last Diet

Here's something interesting to note: at the same time the number of obese and overweight people in the U.S. increased, the media continues to promote the very thin ideal body size.

Research on weight loss and body image links unrealistically thin ideals to disordered eating and body image disturbance in women. In other words, exposure to thin ideals portrayed in the media has been hurting women a great deal, leading to body dissatisfaction, overeating, and weight gain.

There seems to be no doubt that current cultural standards of beauty relayed by TV, movies, magazines, the internet, etc. have been negatively influencing eating behaviors and body image.

Successful Dieting is all About Not Procrastinating

by Maria's Last Diet

What's this, a new diet? Wow, I like this! Hmm. All you can eat just not this, and none of that. Sounds good. Recipes too! And look at the picture of those women. Boy, I want to look like that. I certainly look like crap now. Maybe this is the answer. I think it really is. Lose all the weight you want to lose and eat all you want - what's not to like about that?

I guess I'll start on Monday. No, maybe Tuesday is better.

Well, it's Labor Day weekend soon. Maybe I better start after that. Or, better yet, give myself a break until school starts and the kids are settled in.

So maybe I'll start in a month. That will still give me plenty of time before Christmas. I should be skinny by then.

The Overweight and Obesity Epidemic is Not Caused By Decreased Physical Activity

by Maria's Last Diet

Overweight and obesity come from an imbalance between what we take in as energy (food) and what we expend as energy (physical activity). This is not in dispute.

But hold onto your hats! Physical activity expenditure has NOT declined since the 1980's - in fact, it has increased.

The research that is behind this revelation was reported in the August 2008 International Journal of Obesity. The report further observed that physical activity expenditure is in line with the energy expenditure in wild mammals.

So what did the study report as its conclusion? Simply this: Since physical activity has not declined since the 1980's, a period of time in which obesity rates increased, then low levels of physical activity is NOT the cause of the obesity epidemic.

In the early 1980's, 8% of adults in the U.S. were obese. By 2005, the number had increased to 22%.

Since obesity is the result of an imbalance between intake of food and expenditure of energy, but the expenditure of energy has not decreased, doesn't this imply that food intake alone has been fueling the obesity epidemic?

Being Overweight: Is It Really a Health Risk?

by Maria's Last Diet

Here's a surprise: 51% of overweight individuals (36 million people) have relatively normal levels of blood pressure and cholesterol. And what's more surprising, is that one-third of obese adults are also in a healthy range when it comes to these health indicators.

And - perhaps most interesting of all, one-fourth the adults who fell in the recommended weight range showed unhealthy results on these same health markers. This means that at least 16 million people in the normal weight range are at risk for heart problems.

These findings were from a research study reported in the August 2008 Archives of Internal Medicine. One of the researchers, Dr. Judith Wylie-Rosett, said that for people who are overweight but do not have these elevated risks for heart disease, being overweight may be important only from a cosmetic perspective. For women, this cosmetic perspective has a lot of meaning. How a woman looks is tied up with her self-image, self-esteem, and feelings of attractiveness.

So maybe you are part of the 51% of people who are overweight but don't have those health risk factors. Even so, most important from a psychological point of view - are you driven to overeating by emotional issues that need addressing?

Holiday Weight Management

by Maria's Last Diet

Here's what you may have to look forward to on holidays, even after you've lost the weight and kept it off.

A study reported in the June 2008 Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology titled "Holiday Weight Management..." found that successful weight losers had to rely on more extreme weight control measures to manage their weight over holidays. They planned more for staying in control of their eating and exercising, worked harder at avoiding temptations, and they needed to show more restraint with their eating. After all of this, successful weight losers were still more vulnerable to weight gain over holidays than were normal weight individuals.

Bummer! There must be an easier way.

What happens to the successful development of new eating habits and new eating attitudes? Shouldn't they become an automatic part of you? You always hear how hard your old habits are to break because they are so automatic, so much a part of you. Why don't your new habits, once they're in place, just become a natural part of you?

For the most part, these new habits have become an integral part of you. But when you face the challenging demands of holidays, even your solidly built-in forms of self-regulation are put to the test.

Overeating Makes Me Too Dissatisfied

by Maria's Last Diet

Dear Maria...

Before this I took it for granted that I loved to eat with purple passion. Clearly it was my favorite thing to do, right?

No. I’m beginning to see that there is so much wrong with my eating. There is so much about it I hate.