Maria's Last Diet

Change Your Eating Behavior Through Awareness and Acceptance

by Maria's Last Diet

Learning to change your eating habits usually requires upping your awareness and acceptance of bodily sensations and adverse mood states. Being in touch and being accepting of what you go through sensation-wise and mood-wise will enable you to choose how you act rather than simply reacting in the same old eating ways.

Now that sounds like a wise approach, but it’s too abstract. Got to be able to apply it? Take bodily sensations, for instance. What if you’re feeling all jangly, like you can’t stay still? Consuming food soothes. You know it does, because when you feel jangly, you want to eat something.  What better than food to soothe you?

What if you feel saggy, soggy, down, blue? You name it. What do you do to chase this unwanted mood away? Rely on the old eating behavior? Comfort foods to the rescue.

Awareness is available. Yes, awareness, which means stopping to think about what you’re experiencing. Labeling it too, if you like: “I feel like crap.” “I’m so nervous I’m jumping out of my own skin.” Making yourself aware is alerting yourself, and giving yourself a chance to know what’s going on with you. This comes first.

Then acceptance. This comes on the heels of becoming aware. To accept is to let whatever is happening happen. It doesn’t mean you don’t feel it. Acceptance is your way of telling yourself that it’s all right that you’re feeling this way. You can withstand what’s happening to you. Got that?

But acceptance isn’t over yet. You don’t have to only passively accept. By being accepting you open up other possibilities. And you can take any of these other possibilities and use it. For example: You’re accepting your feeling. Probably telling yourself you can do it. Maybe it passes, and you learn that what you are feeling and how you are feeling have a beginning, middle, and end. You don’t have to end it simply by turning to food for relief. The mood or sensation ends itself. It runs its course. Or, you accept and you have a new respect for yourself; and you learn that respecting yourself breaks this feel, run to food, and lose respect pattern even more. So next time when you’ve got to accept, you don’t have so much to accept.

Give it a try. Awareness and acceptance, that is.

 

What Does Being an Entrepreneur Have To Do With Women’s Weight Loss?

by Maria's Last Diet

Are you an entrepreneur? Well, it’s best that you are when it comes to losing excess weight.

Entrepreneur? Isn’t she a person who assumes responsibility for the inherent risks and the outcome of an enterprise or venture? Another way of putting it: she is a person who is self-employed. The premise here is that when you want to lose some weight, it is like you are self-employed. You make the decisions, run the risks, and have to create. You alone are responsible for the venture.

It’s been said so many times by so many people, “I don’t have the right personality for this. I don’t like taking risks. I prefer to take orders. I am not an innovator.” Therefore, I couldn’t possibly be an entrepreneur. So now what? If entrepreneurship is so important for successful weight loss—and remember, that’s the premise here—how can you make yourself into a weight-loss entrepreneur?

If you don’t have the personality for it, why not go into personality training? Is there such a thing? Yes. People do it all the time. Feeling shy and socially anxious is something that people work on and conquer. Learning how to channel anger positively is another personality transformation that people make. Being more loving. Having more patience. Being more creative. Self-change is a big part of our lives.

So when you try to lose weight and you make plans to retrain yourself away from those bad eating habits of yours, why not train yourself to increase entrepreneurship personality characteristics too.

 

Are You Dying to Lose Some Weight? Here’s One Way You Can Do It.

by Maria's Last Diet

Here you are just dying to lose excess weight. You believe this time you’re really ready to do it. OK. Sounds like a plan. But it’s not a plan. It’s still—well, it’s still a wish. A big wish. A worthwhile wish, nonetheless. It may be the kind of desire that makes you motivated to lose weight, and it will take you through to your weight-loss goal.

Now don’t think this is crazy, but what about making sure? What about taking a trial run and see if you’re right that you do have what it takes this time? What’s a trial run? Silly. It’s when you try it out. You try it out as if you are really doing it. But you tell yourself, “this is just a trial run”. Duh.

But wait. What good is a trial run if you find out you don’t have what it takes. Ahhh. Now you’re talking. That’s the beauty of a trial run. You can find out that you don’t have what it takes—and then you can see what you need to do about it. Discovery learning. Learning from your mistakes. All good.

The most important thing you have to do on the trial run (and you don’t only have to have one trial run) is to keep your eyes open. See what there is for you to do to have successful weight loss. See what you’ll have to work on to make permanent weight loss a reality.

Now back to wishing and wanting and believing. The trial run is what puts “teeth” into your intention to lose unwanted weight this time around. And everyone knows that things that are hard to swallow are made much easier because you have teeth.

 

To Shed Extra Pounds You Have to Want a Learning Experience

by Maria's Last Diet

Is everything in life a learning experience? Well, maybe it should be.

Losing unwanted weight and keeping the excess weight off permanently should certainly be one big learning experience—made up of lots of little learning experiences. How to: kickstart a diet, not cheat on a diet, get back on your diet plan, control your weight, change your eating behavior, stop overeating, stop emotional eating, think before you act, have self-control, not be too strict, set smart goals and objectives, prevent relapse, how to say “no”, keep up your motivation, make good choices, plan for lots of good success along the way. If losing weight isn’t a learning experience, what is?

Now—and here’s the dilemma—most weight “losers” (“losers” because they are not able to lose weight and keep it off)—set a performance goal to shed such and such number of extra pounds, rather than setting learning goals and objectives to change the very personal issues that, in the first place, made them gain added weight and keep weight on. They don’t change, and they don’t learn. That’s what’s wrong. No learning, or too little learning, and successful weight loss stays a fervent wish; it does not become the reality it should be.

Are You A Weight Loss Failure? Do All Your Diets Fail You? Well, Listen Up.

by Maria's Last Diet

It is not that you are a failure when it comes to losing unwanted weight. It is that a diet food plan alone is not enough for you.

You can feel supported by your weight-loss diet food plan if you establish a framework so you can make meaning out of your problem with eating, and transform the nature of dieting from a food plan only into an emotional plan as well. This framework will help you break through your stalemate in weight loss. Dieting difficulties will no longer be seen in isolation but will be appreciated as well-learned emotional patterns that you can unlearn.

Making personal changes like this starts with the realization that changing yourself is not only important to you but it is possible as well. Mastering what is difficult for you about yourself is your personal goal. Discomfort with your current state is what drives you to make important changes. How far it is to your desired goal depends upon finding the resourcefulness to make the changes you need to make.

Successful weight loss is not only gauged by the dieter going on a diet or starting to lose some weight. Any step in the right direction is being successful, especially emotional change steps.

 

For Losing Unwanted Weight, What’s Your Tipping Point?

by Maria's Last Diet

What is your tipping point for losing unwanted weight? In other words, what is the thing that will put you over the edge, no longer willing and/or able to live with your added weight? What will tip the balance in favor of solving the weight-loss problem once and for all?

What causes a woman to reach that weight-loss tipping point is different for each individual. One woman may take a look in the mirror on a certain day and say to herself, enough.

Another woman may feel that her life isn’t as joyful she would like it to be,  and her own body weight is definitely one of the reasons.

A woman once told us that she was dressing for her niece’s wedding, and the struggle to zip up a dress she had bought for the occasion —only 4 weeks before—sent her into a rage at herself, and pushed her over the edge. She decided that whatever it was she had to do learn how to lose weight and keep it off, she would find it and do it.

Sometimes a divorce, or a big career change, or a child leaving the nest for the first time, or even a fight with a good friend will be the pivotal moment. Sometimes a woman will get disgusted with herself for being a pig. Some women get mighty sick of failing at something—like when they cannot lose weight.

Sometimes a woman may take a good, hard look at herself, and decide that personal changes are in order. Some women don’t want to feel like the fat old woman in the room any more.

Some women get tired of hearing themselves rationalize, giving excuses about why they can’t lose weight.

Some women come to the conclusion that they have to find ways to stop eating their lives away, and it’s worth doing, whatever it takes.

 

Here’s To the End of Overeating: Changing Yourself

by Maria's Last Diet

Making changes to your behavior, attitudes, beliefs, patterns of living, mood states, personality, thinking, perception of yourself and perceptions of others, all require you to go through a process.

Changing yourself starts with the realization that making a change is important. What could prompt you to think of making a needed change, one that you wish you’d made lots of times before? It is usually an increase in discomfort with yourself, as you are now, and as you have been. In other words, you experience a discrepancy between your current status and a desired goal for yourself. You somehow have come to this realization and, as a result, you have begun to monitor yourself more closely. 

So this is how it starts: you feel uncomfortable with something about yourself, which puts you in the position of having to decide, “Do I or don’t I want to make this change?” You want it, but you still have to decide to do it. Then there is the “Can I make this change?" The “Can I” usually is what helps you decide to do it. The “Can I” is such an important issue to resolve. It is tied up with your belief in yourself that you can master enough of the difficulties associated with making this change. This includes being convinced to some extent in this early going that you can maintain the change once you make it.

For the most part, you will probably find it hard to change what has been consistently hard for you to change. A weight problem is certainly a perennial example of this self-evident truth.

But you can get help. You must realize that people get help for making hard personal changes all the time. They work with a counselor or therapist especially when what they can’t change is affecting the quality of their lives. The turn to self-help—groups, organizations, books, videos; you name it.

Sound psychological principles can be applied to many different areas where personal change is desired (including weight issues):

• To break bad habits
• Gain control of behavior
• Apply yourself
• Relieve anxiety
• Stabilize mood
• Rework personality
• Alter beliefs
• Develop a new lifestyle
• Adhere to important routines

If you decide to seek professional help or self-help to lick your weight issue, remember that an important principle common to all psychological interventions is to make it easier for you to develop or find in yourself the resourcefulness to make the change you need to make.

 

What’s the Benefit of Putting Your Weight Issues into Words?

by Maria's Last Diet

Why is it good to put your weight-loss problems, your weight issues, into words, especially if you’ve never done this to the fullest?

When you put something fully into words, you get to know it much better. To use words is to formulate what you might have left more formless and unformulated previously. If this is the case, using words is an important step for you to take. It may presage other forms of changing yourself, including the kind of changes in outlook needed for losing excess weight.

At first, the words you use to describe your weight issues may seem only to lead to little changes. Deeper changes in yourself, which is what makes for successful weight loss, takes longer, of course. 

The benefit of developing these little changes in understanding is that you’ve already started to build a foundation for further change. Greater understanding familiarizes you with the process of change itself. This is a big step, because it’s the the process of changing yourself like this that opens up new possibilities for treating you and your eating behavior differently.

 

There is No Instant Fix, No Quick Weight Loss Plan…That You Can Count On

by Maria's Last Diet

There’s no instant fix.

There’s certainly no instant fix when it comes to successful weight loss.

Except Georianna (Georgie for short).

Georgie ate too much over the weekend. She didn’t like herself for it. But by Tuesday she was back down to her fighting weight, her own normal body weight. An instant fix, you think?

Not so.

Georgie had 25 lbs to lose, for years, and she couldn’t do it. She tried countless times, with many different diets, and even with no diet. Nothing worked for her. This was years of work wasted; or was it?

Georgie had lost weight on the different diets, but she didn’t know how to keep weight off. She had 5 lb losses, 10 lb losses, even an 18 lb loss one time. Each time, though, all the unwanted weight came back with a vengeance. Poor Georgie lost heart time after time. She stopped trying to diet and gave up on her weight-loss goal for long periods of time, all the while growing more upset with herself for not being an able-enough person to do this little thing of dealing successfully with her excessive weight gain.

After all this heartache, Georgie decided to put herself on a special diet plan, the same healthy weight-loss diet her husband was on. Her husband’s company was good for her; it helped. They cooked together. They kept to the same special diet plan, which at the time, they thought was the only way to really achieve successful weight loss. Georgie has since learned differently, since she no longer stays on her husband-induced diet. He does, but she doesn’t.

Why the quick fix works for Georgie? Well, she lost 25 lbs and reached her goal of normal body weight, or thereabouts. Now when she reverts to being an overeater like she did last weekend, she can shed the unwanted weight in a day or two of going back to her good eating habits.

In truth, what looks like an instant fix is anything but. It’s like those actors you see who become overnight sensations. They, just like Georgie, worked for years to become “overnight sensations”. Georgie worked for years, learned all about what worked for her, and just as importantly, what didn’t work for her. All of this “experience” went into her dieting with her husband.

It’s unclear to her and to her husband and friends what made her do it this last time; but she did it, and that’s what counts. Well, that’s not all.

So she lost her weight, and then she worked at keeping it off. It took about three years for her to prove to herself that she knew how to keep the weight off, before she dared deviate from her husband’s diet. She didn’t keep losing weight during these three years; she just developed the inner resources to compensate for any weight gain, like eating too much over the weekend.

Now the fix is in. It’s quick and rather painless (after all this time). Georgie earned it the hard way, as do all women who want to lose weight and keep it off permanently.

So you see, there is no instant fix…unless…

 

When it Comes to How to Lose Weight and Keep it Off, Believing is Everything.

by Maria's Last Diet

It is well known that one sought after benefit of eating is to keep you feeling good. This is not just feeling physically good. Eating also makes you feel good emotionally. Just think of all the emotional positives when it comes to eating. There’s excitement, satisfaction, pleasure. There’s feeling filled up and not empty, emotionally speaking. There’s the calming effect and the soothing effect. The list is endless.

We also rely on eating to keep unwanted feelings away. Everyone indulges in emotional eating to one degree or another. You could say it can’t be helped. But a more accurate characterization is that “it does help”.

Let’s ask the question, what reinforces your eating so you get positive feelings and get rid of negative feelings? The answer that most people will probably give is that eating satisfies them physically. The food they eat makes them feel good. But this explanation probably isn’t true to the extent that people think it is. The prime reinforcer is most likely not physical satisfaction. A less apparent, but more powerful reason you eat is your belief that eating (and food) makes you feel good and prevents you from feeling bad.

What’s the best of way of demonstrating belief is more powerful than physical satisfaction? A common experiment tried every day by at least 45% of women in the United States is dieting. When you are dieting, you may not be aware of it, but you are trying as hard as you can to set aside your strong belief in eating as an emotional solution. Just think about it. In addition to the food part of the diet, there’s your new goal—feeling better because you are thinner. See. You’ve changed your belief. The new goal is your new belief; you believe you will feel better because you’re lighter. It isn’t simply a fact that thinner and lighter is better for you. More importantly, it's a motivator, a reinforcer; it’s a belief.

What this means is that the change you are making when you want to lose weight and keep it off is a change in your belief. Recognizing that this is true will help you focus more on your belief and less on the physical nature of your undertaking. This will result in better understanding of your weight issues and more effective solutions for them.