There’s that old joke about a person asking a passerby in New York City, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” And the passerby answers, “Practice, practice, practice”.
Well, the direction to take if you need help losing weight is monitor, monitor, monitor.
Why monitor? Because any form of self-regulation requires accurate monitoring to evaluate how you’re doing and to make decisions about how to get from where you are to where you want to be.
When you are trying to shed pounds, there is a lot to monitor. There’s pounds lost. There’s the food you eat—kind and quantity. There’s hunger. Is it for real? Can I wait until dinner? There’s your perseverance. Why can’t I keep this up? There’s willpower. Motivation. Feelings. Difficult daily situations. I’m too tired. The kids are really annoying me today.
Yes, there’s lots to monitor.
What if you wrote out a set of test questions having to do with your problems losing weight? Wouldn’t this be one way to monitor yourself?
Make up the test questions. “Why can’t I keep this up?”— your dieting motivation, for example.
Then put in the answer to the question: “When I have a bad day, I stop dieting and then can’t stop eating.
Next, put what the right answer should be. For example: “when I have a bad day and I want to stop dieting, I can ______________________ “(you fill in the blank).
Remember, evaluating how you’re doing and what you need to do in order to get there are the essentials for good self-monitoring. And good self-monitoring is the sine qua non for successful weight loss.
