Maria's Last Diet

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.”