Maria's Last Diet

Is There a Secret to Dieting Success?

by Maria's Last Diet

Did you know that successful dieters automatically respond to tempting food with thoughts of their goals (e.g., stay on a diet, lose weight and keep it off)? This is the way they ward off food temptation. Pretty neat, eh?

How do you get to be like this, you might ask?

Do you practice not being tempted? Yup.

Do you practice sticking to the diet? Yup.

Practice helps.

But what really helps, says psychological research, is how you think of your temptation. Is that lemon meringue pie “the delicious treat you’ve been craving” or is it “the diet buster you don’t want”?

All well and good. BUT…

How do you get yourself to think the diet buster way?

Again, psychological research says that those of you who think abstractly about such matters will have a better chance at avoiding the temptation and going for the long-term goal of reducing your weight. The idea here is that a long-term goal has more abstract properties to it than the short-term goal of giving in to more immediate qualities of the tempting food.

All well and good. BUT…

How do you get yourself to think more abstractly when it comes to fattening foods, to eating so much, to sticking to a diet, to rejecting the junk food snacks you have in the pantry for your kids (Yeah, right—for the kids)?

So is there some secret to losing weight? Yes, there is.

It’s a well-kept secret. And if you have been finding it difficult to lose weight, it's probably you who are keeping it. It has to do with your attachment—yes, attachment—to food. Your attempts to break this attachment (like dieting to lose some weight, or trying to lose weight without dieting) only lead to separation anxiety. It is this separation anxiety that you have to master.

Now everyone knows it’s best for a child to master her separation anxiety by having a good enough amount of mothering that she can carry with her to shape who she is becoming. 

If you’re attached to food and can’t separate from it, you probably have been packing it in with the idea (pretty abstract idea, too) that this whole process of eating like there’s no tomorrow will fill you up with the comfort and security you need. But no dice. It doesn’t work that way. Repeated fillings only serve to reinforce your belief that you can’t go off on your own and feel safe and secure without this pattern of eating.

The way to break your attachment is to begin to face your fear of separation anxiety. You can start by thinking about what it would be like to give up your attachment. Let yourself feel the feelings that occur when you think about doing without those foods that make you fat. Then try it. Try separating. Maybe do it just a little at first. Or, if you can stand it, separate more than just a little. Try it for a day, for instance.

Interestingly, trying out separation is like what mothers and children do, little by little, getting plenty of practice with it. The child becomes more abstract because she has learned she can carry the safety and security within herself. It’s not that the child does not need and want her mother from time to time, just like from time to time you will need and want the best comfort food you can get. The operative idea here is “from time to time”, and not all the time.

Check all this out, and let us know what you find.

Don’t Want to Feel Vulnerable, But Don’t Want to Continue Being Unable to Lose Weight Either

by Maria's Last Diet

You were clipping along, shedding those extra pounds, and then you stopped eating in moderation and went back to your old pattern of eating. What happened? Were you feeling too vulnerable and did this vulnerability of yours trip you up and make it impossible to lose weight?

If so, here’s one thing you can ask yourself. What made you feel so vulnerable that you had to revert to old eating patterns and give up your weight-loss dream? Another way of asking this same question is, “what vulnerability might you be keeping at bay by this old eating pattern of yours?”

If you say that your vulnerability is food or chocolate or that you love to eat, you are not looking in the right place. The vulnerability that makes it so difficult to lose weight is an emotional vulnerability. It can go like this: “When I eat, I feel so much better about myself. I don’t see all my flaws.”

Get it? It’s an emotional vulnerability. It’s yours. It may be impossibly hard for you to let yourself feel it and then deal with it. That’s understandable. But that’s exactly what you have to do in order not to trip up your efforts to lose unwanted weight. You’ll have to find it within yourself to identify this vulnerability and make plans to effectively deal with it; lay it to rest, that is. Get help if you need it, and tread lightly. Feeling too vulnerable is no picnic.

What’s Eating You Up So You Can’t Lose Weight Successfully

by Maria's Last Diet

Eating regulates emotions and emotions regulate eating. This reciprocal relationship is what all women who intend to lose unwanted weight will have to squarely face.

There are lots of emotions, and in one way or another, they all can have an impact on appetite and amount of food consumed. But people are different. Not everyone is affected the same way. As a result of their emotions, some people overeat while others under-eat. And people who overeat to deal with certain emotions do not overeat to deal with all their emotions.

When you set about to change your pattern of eating like you do when you are going on a diet, you automatically bring about a test for yourself of this reciprocal relationship between eating regulates emotion and emotion regulates eating. This is a test you have to pass if you want to lose weight successfully.

It helps to identify what the emotional pitfalls will be for you. In other words, study for the test. But don’t cram. Space out your studying over time. Give yourself lots of practice and practice tests before you take the real one. When the real test comes, you’ll be ready.

This is a very different view of a dieting plan. It explicitly states that you have to deal with those emotions that might make your objective difficult to achieve. But every woman already knows this, and has probably said this to herself a thousand times before, during, and after the weight-loss process. The goal of this blog post is to put this point in print in order to give support to what you already know you have to grapple with.

Women and Their Weight. What to Think? What to Do?

by Maria's Last Diet

The subject of weight for women is an easy thing to get mixed up about. How thin should you be? What should you weigh? How much should you eat? What should you eat? What kind of exercise? How much exercise? Is there a “best” diet? Is dieting altogether no good for a person? Should you measure and weigh every bite? Should you rediscover real hunger and go by that? Should you take away labels and decide there is no “bad” food? Or should you only eat all natural food? Is it any wonder many women are confused when it comes to this subject?

If you ask different experts, you will get very different answers. And that only adds to the confusion.

But there is a voice inside of each of us that speaks the truth, and tells us what is right for us. It’s just that sometimes it speaks in a whisper, and is awfully hard to hear. The hype out there about women and weight tends to drown it out. The advertising alone gets stuck in our minds—that is exactly what it is designed to do.

But there are some honest women, even celebrities, who will share their experiences publicly, and some will tell you that eating and food problems are closely related to emotions. And emotions are nothing if not interior. So that is where you need to do your listening. For that is where the answers lie, on very personal basis.

 

Emotional Overeating and Weight Loss Psychology Are the Real Deal

by Maria's Last Diet

This woman was eating herself up. She didn't think of it this way. She called it her up and down moods, her anxieties, her depression, her anxiety attacks, her binge eating. She was terribly overweight, and she felt embarrassed about her appearance. Yet she kept eating herself up.

Oh, she functioned and fit in well socially with friends and family--as if nothing was wrong. She worked, earned a living, was raising her son, and was in a committed relationship with her live-in boyfriend. Even she believed this side of her. But she knew the other sides of her as well.

She took medication for her depression and anxiety for years, but the up and down moods, etc. didn't remit. Of course not. She was still eating herself up alive.

The breakup with her boyfriend finally pushed her into psychotherapy where she began to learn that she was eating herself up by taking so much blame on herself. No matter what others did, there was always a lot of blame she could level at herself. Her therapist caught her doing this time after time after time, and  they talked about it together over and over in many different ways.

It took a long time for this woman to stop blaming herself completely. But along the way gradually, steadily, she stopped eating herself up as much, and lo and behold, she began losing some weight. She was not eating herself up like she had been, and there was now no reason for her to fill back up her half-eaten self by binging and overeating.

This beautiful, valuable, smart, funny, lovely, loving, caring, lovable woman has turned the corner on blaming herself, and she is now 75 pounds lighter.

 

Stop Emotional Eating. Please!

by Maria's Last Diet

Irritability, sadness, joy, excitement, loneliness, self-criticism, depression, moodiness, , self-loathing, anger, disappointment, frustration, boredom, restlessness, failure, humiliation, exuberance, anxiousness, envy, tenseness, stressed, defeat, hostility, suspiciousness, excessively active, listlessness, apathy, guilt, withdrawal, grandiosity, paranoia, aggression,  arrogance, overbearing, submissiveness, hypersensitivity, fatigue, jealousy, hopelessness, helplessness, happiness, disorganization, self-centeredness, fearfulness. 

FOOD — It isn’t the right answer.

What Weighs Heavily Can Be Weigh Too Much for You

by Maria's Last Diet

See ya later.

Where are you going, honey?

Out.

Who with?

Just Mia and some of the other kids.

What time will you be home?

Dunno.

It’s a school night, so make it by 10.

I always do.

Ellie, what’s going on with you?

Whatta you mean? You know practically my every move.

That’s not what I mean. I mean how are you, really?

Oh God, not that again.

Is it such an awful question?

I’m kind of sick of it, if you wanna know the truth. Gotta go.

Okay, I’ll see you when you get back.

Whatever.

One daughter, lost to me. Break out the Ben & Jerry’s.

Everyone says they come back to you one day. By that time, I’ll weigh three hundred pounds.

Emotional Eating and Coping

by Maria's Last Diet

Emotional eating is a problem for many women.

How do you combat it?

You need to have a repertoire of coping skills. Coping ability, like the emotions that trigger the eating, is an internal factor.

You can acquire new skills to cope with emotions like frustration, anger, loneliness, hopelessness, hurt, despair. These intense negative emotional states tend to lead you to food. The feelings need to be dealt with and eating is what you have learned to do to deal. Perhaps, rather than express your anger, or your hurt, or your desperation, you turn to food instead.

In this case, feeling negative emotions puts you at high risk for eating in a way that is probably not good for you. So, how do you cope? Why not identify the emotion or emotions you are having. That seems sensible, doesn't it?

It requires something simple - a time out.

Ask yourself: what am I feeling?

Then: why am I feeling this way now?

This is a wonderful start to coping.

Next, you can begin to think about what you might do to help with the feeling or feelings - what you can do that would be much more effective for dealing with your emotions than eating is.

For example, if the emotions come up in relation to an interpersonal situation, might you express the feelings more directly? Can you call on a friend if you're feeling lonely? Can you ask for help if you're feeling overwhelmed? If someone has hurt you, can you talk to him/her about it?

Maybe these seem like very elementary things to you, and they are - but they are also effective coping mechanisms. If you learn how to do them - get skilled at it - then you will be able to tame your emotional eating, no doubt about it.

Emotional Eating is Supposed to Ease the Pain

by Maria's Last Diet

Have you substituted one problem for another? Have you become overweight instead of feeling stressed out? Have you been overeating to conceal relationship difficulties? Are you suffering physically because you've become an overweight woman instead of having to suffer emotional pain?

If you've answered yes at all, what have you really done for yourself? Well, you've got one discomfort instead of another, right? Maybe this isn't the trade-off you really wanted. Maybe you just did it because it seemed like the easiest thing to do. Has it really put you at ease?

A Weight Loss Plan for Your Thoughts and Feelings

by Maria's Last Diet

Weight loss has more to do with what you think than with what you eat.

Your ability to diet and lose weight can be increased by looking closely at all aspects of your thoughts and feelings that have an effect on you losing weight.

By not avoiding even the tiniest details of these thoughts and feelings, by bringing them closer, and looking into them despite their difficult nature, you are increasing your capacity to tolerate what you find.

The benefit, of course, when you know your thoughts and feelings more fully, is that you can deal with them and not overeat to do it.

To be able to review your thoughts and feelings with this kind of acceptance gives you not only the means for getting to your weight loss goal, it is also an important goal in its own right.