Maria's Last Diet

What Does Self-Observation Have to Do With Losing Your Unwanted Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

When it comes to the weight-loss process, what kind of observer of you are you?

Can you tell what it is about you that facilitates the process of weight loss?

Do you know what you do that impedes successful weight loss?

Do you see what is problematic about the way you go about losing excess weight?

How in touch are you with your feelings? Do you know what might cause you to eat off your diet? Can you spot troublesome emotional situations before they are upon you?

What about your beliefs? Do you know what your beliefs are when it comes to trying to lose a lot of weight? Is one of your beliefs that you have to lose a certain amount of weight right away? Do you believe that success only comes to those who work hard and that any slacking on your part is cause for concern?

When it comes to the weight-loss process, what kind of observer of you are you? It matters. Weight loss does not simply come about through dieting and exercise. Seeing yourself and knowing yourself psychologically is also key to weight loss.

 

Does Monitoring Yourself Protect You Against Weight-Loss Failure

by Maria's Last Diet

If you monitor closely what you are doing that causes you weight-loss failure, does that help you stop doing it?

In other words, does increasing your awareness of what you’re doing that you shouldn’t be doing, like repeated snacking on fattening food, get you to stop doing it?

One of the results of increasing your awareness of a weight-loss defeating behavior might be that your awareness will lead you to think more negatively of the behavior, or more negatively of yourself for indulging in the behavior.

Does this kind of self-monitoring, increased awareness, and self-evaluation make enough of a difference and get you to stop a weight-loss defeating behavior like eating calorie-rich snacks when you are trying to lose unwanted weight? Or do you, once you became aware and made your self-evaluation, still need to take additional steps to stop the behavior?

 

Pattern of Eating and Gaining Too Much Weight. What Leads to What?

by Maria's Last Diet

When it comes to the kind of eating that results in you gaining unwanted weight, what leads to what in the moment?

Is it the setting? Home, comfortably sitting at the kitchen table? Out at a restaurant with friends?

Is it the hour? It’s late in the day. Time for a large snack.

Is it you? I don’t want to feel bad. I’ll make sure I don’t. I’ll just take a little _______. That ought to hold me.

When it comes to the kind of eating that results in you gaining unwanted weight, what leads to what throughout your life?

What are the trends?

    Hurt feelings. Feel bad. Get some food.

    Hurt feelings. Don’t even feel them. Get some food.

    Anticipate hurt feelings. Get some food. Prevent feelings from getting hurt.

How well do you know yourself when it comes to what leads to what throughout your life?

For example, what are the trends for mood, self-esteem, anxiety, disappointment, sadness, anger, competitiveness, triumph, boredom, criticism, loss, rejection, procrastination, elation, passivity, dutifulness, guilt, shame, and apathy?

What leads to what?

 

Using Psychology to Lose Weight Means Using Multiple Ways of Weight Monitoring

by Maria's Last Diet

One thing all women do when they are trying to lose some weight is to monitor how they are doing. The most popular method to monitor weight-loss is to keep track of how many pounds you have lost.

Unfortunately, pounds-lost works only if pounds are actually lost. There will be times when you don’t lose any pounds. This happens to everyone during the weight-loss process. There are weight-loss plateaus, when your weight doesn’t budge. Let’s say you have lost 16 pounds in the weeks leading up to the plateau. For the past three weeks, though, you have not lost a single pound more. This can be terribly discouraging. It can even make you want to quit. “What’s the use,” you might say to yourself. “I’m not getting anywhere anyhow.”

No pounds lost is the time to turn to other measures of how you are doing.

Another customary way to gage weight-loss progress is to see how your clothes fit. Are they still tight? Are they as tight? They are a little loose on you now after a month of losing weight. Or, you now take one size smaller. Or, after a long time working away at losing weight: you can fit into an old pair of jeans.

There are other ways to monitor too. Lots of them. How many ways can you think of? Can you think of 5 more food-and-eating-connected ways of monitoring? Can you think of 5 nonfood ways of monitoring how you are doing at losing unwanted weight? Yes, you heard right—nonfood matters that have a bearing on you and weight loss. (Hint for one of these: 10 letters, starting with M and ending in N  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __  __ )

 

Women Dieting, Women Trying to Lose Weight, and the “Coulda”, “Woulda”, “Shoulda” Effect

by Maria's Last Diet

If only I…
I could’ve…
I should’ve…

How often have you said this when you ran up against some diet problem, some weight-loss difficulty?

And how often did you, as a result of saying this, or even thinking this to yourself, come up with a good prescription for what would actually help you next time to reach a better outcome or avoid an outcome that you didn’t want?

It should have. It could have. It would have. Only…

Thinking like this, saying this to yourself, doesn’t always work. It doesn’t work if you overestimate your competence and you’re simply explaining away your failure. If you are guilty of doing this, you might not take the opportunity to improve, to really do it better next time. You might also not attend to what you should be attending to in order to fix the problem and make your shoulda, coulda, woulda come true.

So watch out. Express your regrets, but make sure what you say to yourself about what might have been is an accurate prescription for the behavior and the mental resolve you will need the next time around.
 

What Will Help You Focus On Your Weight-Loss Effort Despite Competing Responsibilities

by Maria's Last Diet

Devoting time and energy to the process of weight loss is a must. There are weight-loss activities such as food monitoring. There are weight-loss steps just waiting to be taken, and you have to devote your time and energy to thinking about them, or else they won’t be set up and put into place.

But—and this is a big B-U-T for everyone—there are lots of other things in your daily life besides your attempt to lose weight. These other matters compete for your energy and time. How often have you said that you have too much to do to really concentrate on losing your unwanted weight? Life presses in on you, and before you know it you’ve let some weight-loss action you needed to take slip right by you.

What seems to make a big difference in being able to pay more single-minded attention to your weight-loss process is good feedback, and lots of it. Feedback gives you the knowledge you need to monitor progress so that you can make adjustments in your deployment of weight-loss strategies and use your time and energy wisely and accordingly. Timely and specific feedback also makes the energy you devote to losing your extra weight seem more worth the effort.

 

Monitoring Yourself is a Must When You Want to Lose Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

Monitoring yourself: how you’re doing, what you’re doing, what you are not doing, what you need to do. How important is monitoring when it comes to moving along the path from being heavy to being thin?

It’s very important, isn’t it? You probably do so much of it you hardly recognize that you’re doing it.

“That’s not quite right. Do it over. Ah, that’s the right way.” “I know I know that.”

You have a desired level of learning and performance in your mind, and you keep track of how you’re doing. Accurate monitoring is needed for making the right adjustments. “I rode out my old craving for something sweet at my coffee break this morning by realizing that my craving was coming on.

You can improve your monitoring accuracy by singling out specific cues that have an impact on your weight-loss progress. You can eliminate overconfidence so you can proceed with caution where caution is needed.

You’ll be pleased to know, if you don’t know it already, that monitoring yourself isn’t a fixed ability. You can improve your monitoring by—guess what—monitoring your monitoring. Sounds silly, but it woiks.

 

Self-Monitoring to Lose Weight Successfully

by Maria's Last Diet

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.

 

Monitoring Yourself When You Want to Lose Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

When you want to lose weight, of course you monitor yourself. You monitor what you eat, how much you eat, when you eat. You monitor the number of calories, or you do it by the point system. You might be the kind of person who carefully weighs portions—another form of monitoring. Because food monitoring is so popular, you might think this is how women lose weight.

Some women lose their unwanted weight by this form of monitoring, but many women are unable to lose weight this way. And most women who monitor their pattern of eating and the amount of food they consume do not maintain weight loss.

Instead of monitoring food, why not monitor what motivates you to eat the way you do so you can end overeating and stop gaining weight.

Let’s say that what’s causing your problem with eating is a bunch of powerful emotions that would send you over the edge unless you resort to overeating and stuffing, or lean on fattening foods for support. Feelings like jealousy, envy, and competitiveness could do this, especially if you’ve never been able to master them. You always ate over them. Now suppose these powerful feelings of jealousy, envy, and competitiveness were all rolled into one. They’d be pretty hard to dispel, and harder even to completely resolve.

Yet, if it’s your feelings that drive you to eat or be eaten up by them, it’s best to say to yourself, “I’ll monitor what’s eating me rather than what I’m eating.”