Maria's Last Diet

Feeling Deprived, But Why?

by Maria's Last Diet

Dear Maria...

No one talks about how deprived you feel when you try to diet. All around you are rich, glorious foods, every one of them a no-no. That's what I zoom in on the minute I start a diet - everything I can't have.

Now that I write this it seems ridiculous. All the times I'm not dieting, I eat whatever I want. So what's with this "poor me" stance I immediately assume?

Maybe "poor me" doesn't have to do with not being able to eat brownies or pizza at all. Maybe the "poor me" feeling is lurking there all the time, and when I attempt to restrict my eating, it pops out. In fact, maybe my usual crazy eating is a way to feel the opposite of "poor me". It hides that feeling of deprivation by making me over-gratified, over-fed.

Is this the kind of food/feelings mix-up you always talk about?

    - Millie

Self Control When it Comes to Weight Loss for Women

by Maria's Last Diet

When you want to lose weight, you might think of ways you can exert more self-control. But there is something to beware of in the realm of trying to have self-control - it's over-control.

Over-control means that a person may make a very stiff, tight, absolute commitment to change her eating. She may vow to adhere to very strict limits when it comes to food consumption. In this case, she may demand of herself a flawless performance on her chosen weight-loss plan. She expects to be totally free from error.

This is, to say the least, an all-or-none approach. It may lead a woman to expend a great amount of energy trying to restrain herself from falling back into old eating habits. She needs to monitor herself constantly. It is like having to keep the dangerous part of herself locked up in a box - the part of her that might give in to the bad eating habits. It puts her against herself.

This is not a good way to go about changing anything about yourself. A moderate approach is much better. With moderation, you can accept the bad eating habits as part of yourself not as the enemy that needs to be banished.

As a matter of fact, you can actually become friends with the part of you that engages in those less than helpful eating patterns. See if you can understand the way it works with you. Accept it for what it is - part of you. That's the way to begin to change those habits.

If you try to exert an inordinate amount of control over yourself, it is likely to backfire - one transgression will often lead to a big swing over to total loss of control. A more moderate approach that allows for learning and errors ultimately gives you much more true control.

Thinking Outside the Box Will Help you Lose Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

Can't lose the weight?
Can't stick to a diet?
Frustrated?
Disappointed?
Desperate?

It's time to do something different.
It's time to think outside the box.

For years and years now, women have depended on "the diet". 

There have been hard diets, easy diets, strict diets, lenient diets, healthy diets, crash diets, celebrity diets, all-you-can-eat-of-one-thing diets, soup only diets, protein only diets, carb only diets, no-sugar diets, caveman diets, raw food diets, juicy diets, 4 day miracle diets, 20 lbs-in-two-weeks diets, prepared food diets, low calorie diets, liquid meal diets, one-meal-a-day diets, color-coded diets, mid-life diets, fasting diets, organic food diets. We could go on and on, couldn't we?

OK, so is it the diets themselves that fail so many women?

Or is there more to it?

Can you remember one diet you went on where you had very high hopes at the start, and then those hopes began to fade as the diet slipped away from you?

Now it's time to think outside the diet box.

Name 5 reasons why you couldn't make that diet work for you. The only guideline here is that none of these reasons can have anything to do with the actual food, the diet itself.

Go ahead. Give 5 non-food problems that interfered with your ability to lose weight on that diet.

This kind of thinking will free you up to solve the real obstacles that have been preventing you from losing the weight you want to lose.

Then you can go on a diet. There are certainly lots of good ones to choose from.

From your outside-the-box vision of the matter, you'll get a whole new take on losing weight. Then you can use a diet, but rely on your powers of problem solving to make it work.   

Hey! I can help with this.

How to Morph Low Self Esteem into Dieting Success

by Maria's Last Diet

What does it take to be mentally tough enough to stick to your diet?

Here are some of the personal attributes that have been discovered through psychological research. 

A mentally tough person has a strong sense of self-belief, is not stopped by adversity, perceives herself as being in charge of her own destiny, and sees herself as influencing rather than being influenced. She looks forward to the opportunities provided by challenges rather than seeing these challenges as potential for self-defeat. In fact, she involves herself fully in the challenge, and has faith that she will prevail and be successful.

As you can see, this is the antithesis of low self-confidence and low self-esteem.

So, how do you go from having low self-esteem to having mental toughness and confidence?

Well, what if your self-esteem and confidence have been damaged by repeated dieting failures. It’s clear not only from research, but also from personal experience that failure to achieve self-relevant goals decreases self-esteem. Even little failures like not achieving your weekly weight loss goal can, if it happens repeatedly, take its toll on the very personal strengths you need to stay the course—the ones described above.

The first order of business to jump-start you down that road toward mental toughness is to find ways to protect and restore your self-esteem and self-confidence. There are various strategies you can use. You can learn to attribute failure to external causes rather than to yourself. For example, you can think of your dieting difficulties as the result of too busy a schedule and not due to something permanently wrong with you. You can compare your failure with another time when you failed worse, and think; at least this time was better. You can also compare yourself with others who you know have done worse than you have. You can look to other areas of your life where you have been successful and think that you do indeed have the capacity to succeed.

These mental actions help to create mental toughness, which leads to better dieting skills and dieting success.

Weight Loss for Women - 20 Small Tweaks that Deliver Big

by Maria's Last Diet

Set a definite "start" date.

Get a support system in place.

Define specifically what the rewards will be to losing the weight.

Make your diet fit into your life. Don't try to make your life fit into your diet.

Plan a cheat here and there for better cheating control.

Whenever you diet, get right back on the diet next time you eat.

Ease up on rules in other areas of life while dieting.

Don't be in a rush to lose the weight.

Take advice from a woman you know who is successful at losing weight.

Don't criticize yourself for a dieting mistake - learn from it.

Ask yourself: what are the non-food issues I am confronting?

Acknowledge everything you do that is pro losing weight, big and small.

Consider the notion that successful dieting lies within you yourself, not with the diet.

Ask for help and encouragement from people close to you whenever you need it.

Try to anticipate upcoming situations that may trigger you to overeat.

Make a plan to deal with these situations before the occur.

Get enough rest.

Have some fun things to do besides everyday responsibilities.

When you fall off, blame it on the situation, not on a flaw in you.

Above all: don't give up.

Dieting Again. It's Monday Morning.

by Maria's Last Diet

Let's see. Diet calls for 3 meals, 2 snacks.
OK. Will do.

Also, I need to have 8 oz of protein, and at least 2 cups of veggies.
OK. Will do.

3 fruits, looks like, and 3 servings grains.
OK. Will do.

Weight and measure, to make sure.
OK. Will do.

Let's see...resist temptations.
Ummmm....

Also, it says don't get impatient.
Uh-0h.

Then, too, you've got to keep up motivation.
Sure...how?

Above all, take good care of yourself.
Now I'm in trouble.

Mothers and Daughters, Dieting Be Damned

by Maria's Last Diet

Diet or no diet, the minute I walk into my mother's house I open the refrigerator. I'll grab anything I can find, even the little cups of fruit only my mother likes. My husband watches me and asks, "aren't you too old to be doing that?"

Up Your Weight Loss Motivation by Making Your Diet Easy

by Maria's Last Diet

The harder a weight-loss plan is to stick to, the less likely you are to do it.

It stands to reason. A very rigid diet plan with a lot of rigid rules often requires so much effort to pull off that you can easily get discouraged, and fail altogether. But if you use an eating plan that is more generous, you won't feel so tied up, so locked in, so deprived. There won't be that feeling of "how in the world can I do this."

Here's a way. Check with your doctor about your personal health and nutritional needs. See if you can work out with her/him a food plan that's healthy and won't leave you in a bind, aching for more.

"I'm hungry." Are you right?

by Maria's Last Diet

Hunger can be a big obstacle to weight loss. Feeling hungry all the time creates a real problem because you do want to lose weight, but at the same time you may experience the need to eat a lot.

As always, though, it's never just about the food. Keeping this in mind, here are some ideas to consider:

• Fatigue is often mistaken for hunger
• Boredom is often mistaken for hunger
• Loneliness is often mistaken for hunger
• Disappointment is often mistaken for hunger
• Conflict is often mistaken for hunger
• Hurt is often mistaken for hunger
• Anger is often mistaken for hunger
• Stress is often mistaken for hunger
• Sadness is often mistaken for hunger
• Happiness is often mistaken for hunger

Do you think you may be mistakenly calling some of your feelings "hunger"?

Keeping Confidence When You Cheat on a Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

Dear Maria...

I keep cheating on my diet.

I know I'd do much better if I could just stick to it all the time.

   -Josie A.


Dear Josie

It might actually not be better for you to never cheat.

Dieting is a process of change, and in all real change new behavior begins to find its place while old behavior is still fading out. Some old behaviors will remain at the very same time that new behaviors are being learned.

Therefore, in the midst of learning a new way of eating, you will surely revert to your old way at times, just like you're doing. While this may trouble you, rather than just trying to get rid of that old behavior, you might do better to pay close attention to it.

If, say, you reverted back to overeating, what was it that made you overeat at that particular time? Look for clues in your feelings, thoughts, and anxieties, in current situations in your life, in your relationships.

Close observation at times like these will tell you what may be in need of attention in your life, so you won't need to use eating to handle life's problems.