Maria's Last Diet

Holiday Eating and Weight-Loss Maintenance. Here’s How.

by Maria's Last Diet

Have you reached your weight-loss goal and you are afraid you'll blow it?  Does the thought of Thanksgiving or Christmas strike terror in your heart?

Instead of concentrating on a plan for what you will eat, how about a plan for dealing with the situations that actually cause you to eat too much? As a first step, identify these situations.

• Do you get tired or overwhelmed?

• Do you get uncomfortable in the social situations you always find yourself in at holiday time?

• Are you overly anxious to please?

• Do you feel like you can't be yourself?

• Are certain people difficult for you to deal with?

• Do you get stressed out about the details?

• Are you worried about your primary relationships—partner, children, parents, siblings —and the holidays tend to put a spotlight on all that’s wrong?

Perhaps you can better prepare yourself for challenges like these. It takes some careful thought, some planning, specific strategizing to prepare for these things. If you are serious about keeping the weight off, this is every bit as important as preparing for the actual celebrations.

excerpt from     Psych Your Diet: A Daily Dose. Volume 3. Psych Yourself to Keep It Off. Symmetry Press.

 

A Good Body Image...At Last

by Maria's Last Diet

"That Saturday when she stepped out of the shower, Maria took the first good long look at herself since she started that very last diet of hers. Despite her remarkable achievements as editor, despite her depth of love and loyalty as a mother and a wife, despite her artistic touch in the garden, the image she saw reflected on that day was all lit up and shined brighter than anything else about her.

She clearly was halfway there. She could see herself not as still half fat, but as now half thin. Many small successes added up to faith, confidence, momentum—and as for hope, that door was wide open."

 

excerpt from Breaking Up With Food: Maria's Last Diet

Maintaining Lost Weight — What’s the Secret?

by Maria's Last Diet

There is no such thing as permanent weight loss for at least 80 percent of people who lose their unwanted weight. That is a terribly dismal statistic. But what this statistic clearly shows is that it isn’t over after you lose weight. In fact, the research findings are that many people not only gained back weight they lost, but also some people even gained more weight back than they lost.

Here’s the lowdown. Maintaining weight you lost is its own phase of the weight-loss process. It’s not governed by a dieting plan or a weight-loss regimen like you went on to lose weight. You’re more on your own, although you can find help and support for the maintenance phase within various weight-loss programs.

If you’ve reduced your weight over time, you probably got some practice at keeping off the pounds that you just lost. But then you had the diet or the weight-loss regimen to guide you. In the maintenance phase of weight loss you expect to maintain your weight without continuing to diet or use a weight-loss regimen. Where previously you were shooting for a goal that was some distance from where you actually were, now in the maintenance phase, your goal is to keep yourself right where you are.

How do you go about doing this? The goal is changed, the strict guidelines aren’t there anymore; nor do you want them there. You want to be able to do it on your own. This takes making the personal changes that you put into practice while dieting a more automatic, nonconscious part of your everyday life. Thinking differently, reacting differently, and of course eating differently all need to become second nature. Monitoring and correcting yourself need to become matters of habit as well.

For more information on how to maintain weight loss, you can read lots of blog posts at MariasLastDiet.com. There is also the self-help book, Psych Your Diet: A Daily Dose. Volume 3. Psych Yourself to Keep It Off, which is part of the Symmetry Press series Weight Loss Books for Women — Using Psychology to Lose Weight.

 

Maintaining Weight Loss is a Challenge for Me. Is It a Challenge for You too?

by Maria's Last Diet

Here's the true story. I've lost a lot of weight, and I've kept it off for a number of years now. However—and this is a big however—I still overeat from time to time, and then I have to work at losing the gained-back weight, just like I did when I was dieting.

I can't seem to change this eating pattern. I do it every so often, not all the time. That's what wrankles me about it. I'm in control most of the time.

I'll tell you what I think is the root of my eating problem. It's that I'm never satisfied. Well, I don't mean never ever satisfied. I am satisfied a lot, and I feel good about myself. I'm satisfied not only in the weight department but in other areas of my life as well. But what is true also is that there are times when I am not satisfied unless I have more. I know it sounds complicated, but hear me out, please.

I'm the kind of person who has to have more. I don't feel substantial as a person if I don't have more. And I think this is what I'm doing when I finish a lunch of a chicken thigh and drumstick, deliciously flavored, a good-size bowl of cabbage soup, fresh pineapple chunks for dessert, and then have to top this off with scads of candy from Reese's peanut butter cups to red and black licorice, and then to Sour Patch Kids, no less.

This having to have more thing is all through my life. Push the envelope. Go for more. When I was young, I was promiscuous, which was yet another way of me having to have more. I could go on and on about all the different ways I've found myself going for more.

I'm pleased, truly pleased that I lost all that weight. Losing so much weight and keeping it off indicates that I've done something about my lifelong problem of having to have more. Having to have more no longer governs my life the way it used to. But I want to get rid of having to have more altogether, so I don't gain back weight that I then have to lose all over again. I don't want it there in the rest of my life either, not just with this binge-like pattern of eating. But how? Stay tuned. I'll find a way.

 

What’s Involved in Maintaining Your Weight Once You’ve Lost A Lot of Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

The secret to permanent weight loss is wrapped up in the concept of maintaining. Maintaining is the end phase in dieting and weight loss, when a person has reached her goal weight and then maintains her goal weight.

At first, maintaining a weight loss is something the maintainer has to work at. The principles used for keeping weight off are different from those involved in dieting to lose weight. The new patterns of eating learned through dieting have to be used in the maintaining phase without the boundaries of the diet. This freedom in eating is a new challenge.

The goal is to make your new eating patterns so firmly established that they happen automatically, without you having to think to do them. Getting these new eating patterns to work more automatically for you makes it so you don’t have to feel challenged day in and day out. This doesn’t mean that you don’t now and then have to rise to the occasion, face feeling challenged once again, and have to work at maintaining your weight; that you will still have to do from time to time. But you should be able to say, I can now eat whatever I want and not gain weight—because, you’ve changed your eating pattern so what you want fits right in with good weight management and good weight control. 

 

I Can Eat Anything I want

by Maria's Last Diet

"I can eat anything I want."

That's the credo of a person who has lost weight and kept the weight off for good.

Not possible, you say. How wrong you are.

When you've lost weight and kept the weight off for good, things have changed. You've changed. You've changed what you want, how much you want, and how frequently and urgently you want it.

If you've kept weight off for a long time—say two years or more—you don't want what you used to want. You've learned to eat differently. No more overeating and stuffing, at least not on a regular basis or in a binge.

So what you want is different. Amounts and kinds are different. They are more in keeping with maintaining your hard-earned weight loss.

The food you eat doesn't have to be bird-like nor devoid of any fat content. Eating what you want means having that piece of key lime pie, having extra whipped cream with your hot chocolate, and not missing out on some delicious garlic mashed potatoes.

You can eat what you want because if you splurge (i.e., overdo it), you know how to do a little off-the-cuff dieting to compensate for eating what you want. You also have learned to handle your emotions differently, more straight up, and not by eating them away.

"I can eat anything I want" is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Go for it. In fact, why don't you make it one of your weight-loss goals, and design your weight-loss program with the weight-loss steps that'll get you there.

 

What is the Best Way to Lose Weight and Keep It Off for Good?

by Maria's Last Diet

How are you going to maintain the weight you lost if you don't start practicing ro go off your diet right from the start. Sound like bad weight-loss advice? I guess it could make it difficult to lose weight for a lot of you. With this kind of permissive  this kind of liberalism, diet cheats could go through the roof.

But that's not the idea.

You can build cheat on your diet right into even the best diet plan. But don't call them cheats. Think of them as experiments where you go off your diet momentarily for a meal or a snack or a special occasion, and practice going right back on your diet.

To eat off your diet in the weight-loss maintenance phase, you have to have the ability to make the adjustments needed to control your weight. Get it out of your mind right now. There is no way for you to stay at one particular weight. The weight-maintenance phase is more free form than dieting. Sometimes you'll weigh a little more; sometimes a little less.

If you've learned to  go off your diet and get back on again, you'll have this move down pat by the time you're ready for keeping weight off for good.

Who Do You Have to Be to Lose Weight and Keep It Off Permanently?

by Maria's Last Diet

Successful weight loss and then maintaining weight loss are such difficult goals for so many women.  Once you lose a lot of weight you still have the further task to maintain your weight.

What’s it take to maintain your goal weight?

Unfortunately, research shows that keeping weight off once you’ve lost it is closely tied to the following factors: “more initial weight loss, reaching a self-determined goal weight, having a physically active lifestyle, a regular meal rhythm including breakfast and healthier eating, control of over-eating and self-monitoring of behaviours.”

And that’s not all: “internal motivation to lose weight, social support, better coping strategies and ability to handle life stress, self-efficacy, autonomy, assuming responsibility in life, and overall more psychological strength and stability.”

Whew! Much too much, you say. True enough. But this is why how to keep weight off is such a daunting prospect.

Is there a shortcut? Probably not. But who’s to say that you have to have all these factors in place before you undertake losing unwanted weight. What if you had some but the rest you got along the way? Isn’t that how you did it when you ventured into all that uncharted territory throughout your life? All of the factors weren’t in place when you first learned to walk and talk, when you left your parents and went to school, when you studied algebra, when you got your first job, when you went to college, when you married, when you became a parent.   

Don’t let the long list of must-haves discourage you. Learning on the job is universal, and it works just as well when you want to lose weight and keep it off permanently.

 

Maintaining Your Weight Once You Have Lost Weight: One Woman’s Trials.

by Maria's Last Diet

Dear Maria —

Losing a lot of weight was no easy thing for me. But I did it over…I don’t know…I did it over some number of years. I did it. I really did it!

Now, weight maintenance is no easy thing either. I don’t mean it’s hard all the time. But I do have to watch it because I eat too much on the weekends. I don’t know what it is about weekends. It’s like I’m celebrating, celebrating that the workweek is over. At least, this is what I tell myself.

When I stop and think about it, really stop to think, I know it’s not a celebration. It’s anything but. It’s because I don’t feel big enough, feel accomplished enough, don’t feel good enough about myself. Now you’d never think this to look at me. To everyone looking in, I’ve made a success out of my life. I am raising my family well, have a terrific job that pays well—and so far the job has been economic-decline proof—a good stable marriage, and lots of other signs of solid accomplishment. I shouldn’t expect more; but I do. I still see what I’m not, just like I’ve done my whole life.

I can trace this “I’m not good enough” view of myself back to elementary school when, even though I was top—that’s top with a capital “t”—in my class, I still had to perform and show off. I had to have everyone admire me. My feats in high school were never good enough, despite the fact that they were damn good for anyone, even the best of students. For me, it was always what I wasn’t. Not smart enough, not good looking enough, not athletic enough, not musical enough, not socially acceptable enough, not right enough in any way. Looking in at me in elementary school and high school, you never would think this about me.

Here’s the punch line. You still can’t tell by looking in at me. If you take a good look, you see a woman who is at a damn good weight, slim and trim, thin enough—like this slim thin woman has no weight issues. If you’d known me when I was really heavy, you’d say, “wow, she did it, she lost a lot of weight and kept it off…for years. But, on the weekends, I can’t keep maintaining weight that I lost, even though it’s just a few pounds each weekend. I’m still fighting the good fight about not being big enough, good enough, and so I take more—more food to fill me out in the secret—from everyone else—place where I don’t feel filled out enough. I wonder how may women go through this. I can’t be the only one.

    — Cynthia