Maria's Last Diet

Night Eating Syndrome

by Maria's Last Diet

Have you heard about night eating syndrome? Here are some signs, some facts, and some things you can do about it.

• Not feeling hungry in the morning
• Waking at night and eating
• Finding it hard to fall asleep
• Overeating in the evening

These are just some of the signs of a night eating syndrome.

Night eaters eat about 30% of their total daily calories after dinner compared to normal eaters who eat less than 10% of their calories after dinner.

Night Eaters don't have to be overweight. Their weight can be normal. But on average about a third of overweight people have night eating syndrome. You can become overweight when you establish a pattern of night eating.

Night eating can be a problem for men as well as women. Night eaters can suffer from excessive sleepiness during the day because of their disrupted nighttime sleep pattern.

OK. So how can you take the bull by the horns if you are a night eater? Here are some ways.

• See what makes you vulnerable to night eating. Is it boredom, loneliness, anxieties, worries about the night (e.g., not being able to sleep), bad mood, or something else? This is the first step that you can take: raise your awareness.
• See what changes you can make to your vulnerability. For instance, can you take steps to reduce those thoughts and feelings that are affecting you? Can you take steps that are more directly connected with these disruptive thoughts and feelings, and not use eating and food to correct them?
• See what changes you can make directly to your night eating behavior itself. Will it change, for example, if you begin to shift more calories to daytime eating? Can you try not to eat after a certain time in the evening and tough out the emotional and physical consequences? (You might even use a subjective rating scale from 0 to 10 to measure the amount of distress you are experiencing from going cold turkey.)

If you are and even if you aren't a night eater, what insight and what strategies would you recommend to help break the night eating syndrome?

Why Do People Make Mistakes?

by Maria's Last Diet

It’s very unusual for people to overcome a problem on the first try. Eighty percent of people need to try more than once before they can break a habit like smoking or overeating. So, if you’ve gone on a weight loss diet before and failed, maybe even several times, don’t give up. See what you can learn from the mistakes you made on previous dieting attempts. Then go ahead and try again

Breaking Bad Habits is the Way to Lose Weight. But It's So Hard to Do.

by Maria's Last Diet

Treatment adherence is a term used to refer to people's ability to comply with health care prescriptions and guidelines.

The most difficult area related to adherence has to do with making and maintaining changes in human behavior.

To put it more clearly, people who are trying to change a problem behavior like overeating, or develop new skills like controlling one's eating, must address adherence issues.

With regard to weight loss, the adherence issue usually centers around a weight loss diet plan. But diet adherence—sticking to it—is much more than the diet plan. There's the YOU part of the process, all the things you have to change about yourself so you can achieve weight loss success.

Here are some reasons why "THE YOU" may not stick to a diet, even when you know you should. 

• Self-defeat from past experiences trying to lose weight
• Embarrassment about being on another diet
• Pessimism about making the needed changes
• Letting too many competing demands in your life take precedence
• Fearing that losing weight will be too big a change when it comes to family relationships, emotional equilibrium, daily life patterns, or self-concept
• Too much riding on continuing to use overeating and being overweight to regulate your emotional life

According to Drs. Donald Meichenbaum and Dennis Turk in their book Facilitating Treatment Adherence, there is one thing that can be said with confidence about adherence. It is this: the more complex the demands of the treatment, the poorer the rates of adherence.

Losing the weight you've been wearing comfortably (and most likely uncomfortably too) close to you for however long, makes complex "treatment" necessary. Because it's not just the food, it's THE YOU too.

 

Withstanding the Pain of NOT Overeating and Being Overweight

by Maria's Last Diet

Do you think you could stand to live with yourself without overeating and being overweight? What would happen if you did this? Could you stand the pain? Not physical pain, although there might be some of that. But the emotional pain? 

Probably the first thing you would encounter if you try kicking the overeating/overweight thing would be your own resistance to doing it; maybe you’d even ignore the idea before it became fully formed.

But if you stayed with the thought of doing it, and then actually did it, what then? Could you bear what you’d have to deal with emotionally? That would probably be the major issue.

Here’s how you could start; it could be a way to get your big toe in the water, at least. Try sticking with the thoughts, “I’ll be living without overeating and being overweight”. Just have the thoughts; let whatever emotions are triggered by your thoughts come as well. This is the first step.

The second step is to be more specific about things. Think about how it would be if you didn’t have that late night snack, if you didn’t have seconds, if you gave up desserts, if you didn’t cheat on your diet, if…if…if. You know the specifics. Keep them rolling; keep thinking (and feeling) about each and every one.

So, have these thoughts, and have the feelings that go with your thoughts. These are the first and second steps. Thinking is certainly not doing, not in the strict sense anyway. But it is doing something. And you may find that you’ve done something about the pain.

One of pain’s most closely held secrets is that it is shaped and sharpened (or dulled) by how you think of it. That’s why it’s so important, if you want to be able to withstand the pain of not overeating and being overweight, to start the process by just thinking. Think and let the feelings that come with these thoughts, come as they may.

Emotional Eating Just Swallowed Me

by Maria's Last Diet

I usually can’t help eating while I cook. By the time dinner rolls around—meaning I think of what to make, make it, and serve it—I’ve nibbled my way through a pre-dinner meal. Then, of course, I sit down with my family and eat dinner. What a pattern! It’s me, though. I’ve been doing this for so long. It ruins diet after diet, to say the least. But it also makes me think that eating can take place any time I want it to.

Why do I eat this way? I’ve thought of lots of reasons, some good, some so silly I try not to think of them myself.  Of course, I feel lots of different ways after I do it and even while I do it, but not before I do it. When I feel truly guilty and repentant, I try to do something about it, but my efforts never come to anything. I not only am what I eat, I eat what I am.

Let me explain. I mean it seriously: I eat what I am. Instead of being me, I eat me up by eating instead. For instance, I’m sure you could hear my grumpiness about dinner (“I think of what to make, make it, and serve it”). That was me in modulation. If I wasn’t nibbling when I thought this, I don’t know what would have come out of me. Maybe rage instead of grumpiness. Maybe I’d just leave my family. Who knows? Least of all me.

I can’t go into all of this, but you get the idea.

Evaluating Your Dieting Efforts

by Maria's Last Diet

When it comes to dieting, how do you evaluate your efforts?

A.    by how well you are mastering various dieting skills
B.    according to how far you’ve moved toward your goal
C.    what mistakes you’ve avoided making

You probably use all three ways of evaluating your efforts. As you can see, each way of evaluating your dieting efforts orients you differently to the dieting process.

Let’s say you have a social occasion coming up, one with good friends where you will be spending a long weekend together at their house and they will have some of their friends over to meet you. Sounds like it will be quite an ordeal if you’re trying to lose weight, doesn’t it?

If you make an “A style” evaluation, you might key on such things as:

•    the plan I made ahead of time worked well
•    I was able to substitute non-food rewards (e.g., some private time) 
•    I couldn’t keep my long-term goals in mind as well as I had hoped
•    I ate like I eat when I’m at home
•    I enjoyed the dieting challenges of this weekend

The “B style” evaluation could go like this:

•    I didn’t gain any weight
•    When I get home, I’ll only have a pound or two to lose.
•    I’m proud that I’m doing as well as any other dieter in this situation
•    I can see that I’m doing better than the average dieter given the circumstances

The “C style” evaluation could sound something like:

•    I have avoided doing my worst
•    I haven’t let my diet go completely
•    I could have done a lot more wrong than I did
•    the fear of blowing it kept me on track

Keep in mind the dieting evaluation style you are using and switch it if you need to orient yourself differently to the dieting process.

Does Weight Loss Success Require Mental Toughness?

by Maria's Last Diet

Do you have to be mentally tough in order to lose those extra pounds? The answer is a rousing yes.

What exactly does it mean to be mentally tough? It means that you do whatever is necessary to get the job done. Doesn’t that just sound perfect for weight loss?

There are a lot of ingredients in this stew called mental toughness. Some of them are: belief in self, good work ethic, being self-motivated, high in self-regulation, good at handling pressure, good emotional control, able to monitor self, and being resilient. Collectively, these mental toughness ingredients are what get you through the pressures, the challenges, the adversities of the job that has to get done.

If you are not mentally tough enough to lose the weight you want to lose, can you learn how to be mentally tough? The answer, once again, is a rousing yes. But there’s a catch. You’ll have to give up the idea that dieting is all there is to it. Mental toughness can’t be found in a diet book or in a food plan, even a good diet food plan at that. It’s the “getting to it” and “sticking to it” that’s the mentally tough part.

To learn more about how to be mentally tough when it comes to dieting and losing the weight, look up the ingredients you’re after at one or all of these links:
Find your issue, Articles, Quizzes.

Does Weight Loss Success Mean Having to Accept What’s Unpleasant?

by Maria's Last Diet

Are you willing to do what it takes to lose the weight?

Are you willing to accept unpleasant experiences, such as feeling hungry and having to deny and control yourself?

If so, you are ready to do what it takes to lose the weight.

This is exactly why weight loss success is so hard to come by, and why so many people can’t stick with a weight-loss regimen. It’s simply the pits to put up with the oh-so unpleasant side effects of what you have to do to lose the weight.

Why not revolutionize “losing the weight” by making the whole process more comfortable for yourself. You can do this by listing 25 things that would make losing the weight comfortable.

Yes, you heard right, 25. Why so many? It will get you to stretch your thinking. And, when you stretch your thinking, you get to see what might be right there within your reach.
 
Let us know what you find.

Confidence Building Techniques for Weight Loss

by Maria's Last Diet

The success or failure of making any important change in your life is affected by the confidence you have in your ability to make the change

You won't get thinner, for example, if you don't see any possibility of it happening. If it seems beyond your reach, then what's the point of even thinking about it?

So, ask yourself: how confident am I that I can lose weight successfully? If you're very low in confidence, what might you do to gain confidence?

One thing you can do is think back over your last attempt to lose weight. See what obstacles popped up? What did you do about them? What could you do to deal better with these obstacles now?

Then concentrate on one goal in your life that you've reached. How did you do it? What personal skills or strengths did you use to get there? How did you overcome obstacles along the way?

The skills you used to reach that goal might very well be transferable. If so, borrow them. Bring them over and use them to lose weight. Build your confidence in your ability to lose weight on the strength of the confidence you have achieved in this other area of your life. No crime in that. All of us borrow.

More Tips for Losing Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

Here are some questions to ask yourself, as a way of getting more in touch with how your weight problem works.

    * How many diets have you been on?
    * How many times have you lost then gained it back?
    * How old were you the first time you thought you were fat?
    * How do you feel when you see pictures of yourself?
    * Can you recall the first time you ever gained weight?
    * Were you ever embarrassed by how you look?
    * Have you ever skipped an activity because of your weight?
    * Has anyone ever criticized you about your weight?
    * Have you ever fantasized about being thin?
    * Have you ever used desperate measures to lose weight?
    * Do you eat when no one is looking?

Questions like these bring back memories about you and your weight issue. As you answer, listen carefully. There's a lot to learn about yourself.