Maria's Last Diet

Have You Ever “Lost” Your Diet Motivation

by Maria's Last Diet

Janie: I was doing so well. I lost like 13 or 14 pounds already. You know that don’t you?

Theresa: Yes, you have been marvelous, steadfast to your weight-loss diet plan. You put us all to shame with your diligence.

Janie: I lost my motivation for staying on a diet.

Theresa: What happened?

Janie: I don’t know. I just lost it.

Theresa: When did you lose it?

Janie: It was over the weekend. My daughter and her family came over for a meal, and I blew my diet regimen right then and there. I not only ate rolls and dessert and everything else, I also put whipped cream on top of my dessert.

Theresa: Sounds like you didn’t lose your motivation. You switched it from ‘keep dieting’ to eating whatever you wanted.

 

Do You Know Your Motivation for Losing Weight?

by Maria's Last Diet

What made you want to lose weight? Do you know? Was it something clear and obvious like your doctor said you needed to lose weight and that got you thinking, and then you started? Was it a look in the mirror? Was it for health reasons? Do you keep some type of formal or informal schedule for trying to shed those extra pounds? In other words, do you try dieting once or twice each year, and you’ve made this part of who you are? You might even, and don’t say no to this idea before you think about it, always be dieting or on some weight-loss regimen. In other words, the norm for you is that you are continuously trying to reduce your weight. Thus, for you the question is not “What made you want to lose weight”. The question should be “What made you stop wanting to lose weight.”

There is still at least one more possible answer to “What made you want to lose weight”, and women seem to be more prone to it than men: It remains a mystery.

Everyone Needs Some Diet Motivation Sometime. But potato soup. Come on.

by Maria's Last Diet

I’ve been dying to have some potato soup now for a long time. I don’t know why I didn’t make it sooner. I had it yesterday, and it was simply delicious. It wasn’t the potato soup that I had every winter as a child. That was a lot coarser and tasted more potatoey.

I remember when I was a kid I put ketchup into the potato soup. We were always putting something into our soups. Ketchup in potato and split pea soup. Little marshmallows into a canned Campbell tomato soup.

No such garnishes or taste-changers for my grownup potato soup yesterday.

I bet you’re wondering why, when I am trying to lose the last fifteen or so pounds, I am eating potato soup. Isn’t that a fattening food no-no?

To tell the truth, I said to myself why should I deprive myself of something I really want, something I’ve been wanting for a long time. I earned it.

That got me worried, the “I earned it” part. That used to be my excuse for eating—overeating actually.

But I didn’t need to worry. Losing these last fifteen pounds is really important to me. And I’ve been pretty disciplined, sticking to my diet routine while dropping at least twenty-eight to thirty pounds so far.

So here was my final rationale for having my delicious, un-tampered-with potato soup yesterday. I had a cheese omelet (1 egg) with bacon, glass of orange juice for breakfast. I had a bowl of potato soup with two clementines and water for lunch. For dinner I had cottage cheese with sour cream. In fifteen pounds I’m going to have to know how to eat foods that I like and want and still keep my lost weight off. Call this potato soup foray practice for when I’m maintaining. Thinking of the potato soup this way became another incentive for losing these last fifteen pounds.

Potato Soup
2 potatoes, medium-sized
28 oz chicken broth
1 cup sour cream
½ cup cheddar cheese
¼ teaspoon tarragon
dash of cayenne pepper
2 scallions
2 slices of bacon

Bake potatoes and let them cool. Cut potatoes into ½ in. cubes, skins and all, and put half in a blender. Cook bacon so you can crumble it into bacon bits. Put half of all the ingredients and the cayenne and tarragon into a blender, chop and then puree until smooth. Pour into saucepan. Then put the rest of the potatoes and other ingredients into the blender, chop, and puree until smooth. Pour into saucepan and mix together with what is already in saucepan. Cook over low to medium heat until heated. Do not boil.   4 portions.

How to Get Motivated to Lose Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

Have you noticed that your motivation grows stronger the closer you are to your goal weight?

Successful weight loss can certainly make you feel better about yourself, and an increase in your self-esteem may be just the thing that ups your motivation. But perhaps being more motivated to lose weight the closer you are to your weight goal occurs not because of increased self-esteem, but because you are more focused on your weight goal and less focused on alternative or competing goals. The one goal is more in the spotlight the closer you get to it, and competing goals that were once disruptive are no longer in the spotlight. They have become fainter and inconsequential.

Since reaching goal weight is quite a ways off for most of the weight-loss process, getting closer to achieving lots of smaller, intermediate weight-loss goals that signify progress toward your end goal can serve the same function—to make your motivation stronger.

For more information about goals and goal setting, please go to the White Paper in the left-hand column of the mariaslastdiet.com blog.

 

Women and Their Weight. Always Complicated.

by Maria's Last Diet

Women who need to lose weight and people in general are complicated. We have reasons for and reasons against. Weighing too much doesn’t just happen because we don’t want it to. We might not want to be overweight, but we also want to overeat and we put up with suffering the consequences of being so heavy despite all the kicking and screaming about how we don’t want to be such a fatty. Exposure to what we don’t know about our motives and ourselves, the nonconscious parts that practically run themselves without our knowledge, is called consciousness-raising.

We raise our awareness of what we haven’t faced, what we are not able to face, what we don’t want to face within ourselves. We expose ourselves to and raise our awareness of what we find so we can look at these parts, realize they are there, examine them carefully, and in doing so, have a better chance of correcting them. We don’t just set up a behavioral routine of pushing ourselves away from the table as a way of sticking to a diet. We can also see what it is within us that makes sticking to a diet so difficult, and we can push ourselves toward that; expose, approach, become conscious of, and not avoid.

Here’s a Way to Check On Your Motivation for Losing A Lot of Weight and Your Motivation for Keeping the Weight Off

by Maria's Last Diet

Just how motivated are you to reduce your weight? And once at goal weight, how motivated are you to maintain lost weight?

You should know that your motivation doesn’t have to be fixed. It can change from week to week. Things like your emotional state, the method you’re using to lose weight, competing goals, life circumstances, and many other factors may affect your motivation.

When it comes to doing something about your weight, you may operate on the basis of positive motivation or the value and importance of controlling your weight. Expecting to feel better, look better, and be happier are examples of positive motivation. You could also operate on negative motivation or what you think the emotional costs will be for controlling your weight. Regretting the loss of pleasure and doubts about succeeding are examples of negative motivation.

In reality, you might have a mixture of positive and negative motivation when it comes to losing your unwanted weight and maintaining permanent weight loss. It’s best to check your motivation out over time: before you start, when you start, and from time to time during the weight-loss process, since motivation can fluctuate. You can use the Weight Control Motivation Scale below to do this.


                                  Weight Control Motivation Scale
                                                     by Stephen Stotland and colleagues

During the past week, how often did you think or feel each of the following:

Never      A few times      Every day      Several times a day
(1point)     (2 points)            (3 points)         (4 points)

1 Thought about the physical benefits (increased fitness, better health, more energy) of weight control.

2 Thought about the psychological benefits (increased self-esteem, look better, feel happier) of weight control.

3 Thought about the physical pain (illness, disability) or fear of pain associated with my current weight.

4 Thought about the psychological pain (guilt, depression, embarrassment) associated with my current weight.

5 Had feelings of resentment about weight control.

6 Felt regretful about all the things I must give up for weight control (e.g., foods I like, old and comfortable habits, favorite restaurants, parties, etc.).

7 Felt doubtful about succeeding in weight control.

8 Thought that trying to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight was too big of an effort.


Scoring:
Positive motivation=sum of items 1, 2, 3, 4.
Negative motivation=sum of items 5, 6, 7, 8.

Why Do Women Who Failed Time and Time Again Keep On Dieting And Trying to Lose Their Unwanted Weight?

by Maria's Last Diet

How many times have you tried to lose your excess weight? Do you know the average number of weight-loss attempts for women in the United States, as reported in the 2011 Gallup Poll, was seven? It is clear, though, that some women have started diets or some type of weight-loss attempt multiple times each year. And it’s not surprising to hear some women report that over their lifetime they have tried to lose weight twenty or thirty or more times.

You would think repeated failure at something you want to accomplish for yourself would get someone to just give up and quit. Not the case. What we are talking about here is the desire to do something about your weight. You may have some initial weight-loss success but then fail to achieve your goal time after time. Nevertheless, you continue to try, making attempt after attempt to lose your unwanted weight, and for each attempt you convince yourself that this time you will succeed.

Your initial success can raise your expectation for total success, which turns out to be an expectation you do not meet. One of the reasons you might not meet this expectation is that you hold some unrealistic expectations. Commonly held unrealistic expectations about losing weight have to do with how fast you will be able to shed those extra pounds, how much weight you can lose overall, the amount of effort you will have to put in, and various ways in which your life will change by losing weight.

You also might keep trying to lose weight time after time despite not reaching your goal because of the explanations you give yourself for failing: didn’t try hard enough, didn’t try long enough, didn’t use enough willpower, didn’t exercise enough, the diet was too difficult, it was a tough time in my life. You have a reason for failing, and the reason makes it easier to believe that you will do better next time.

More support for your let’s try again and again attitude can come too from your investment in losing weight. Looks, health, social and occupational success are powerful motivators. Even falling far short of your goal but having a little weight loss success might be enough encouragement to try again, especially where such powerful motivators are concerned.

Relief is another important source of motivation for trying over and over again. Just deciding to do something about your weight, or making an effort to start can bring great relief from many different kinds of unpleasant feelings. It can dispel feelings of desperation and hopelessness. It can alleviate self-loathing and get rid of terrible self-criticism. You won’t feel like a do-nothing or a procrastinator, and you can stop nagging yourself about your weight. Doing something about your weight problem, even if it is just a little thing, can make you feel more in control. It can renew your hope, and make you think you can do it.

These are all reasons that if you don’t succeed at first, you will try, try again. But if you are going to try again, and you most likely are, please try a new solution for the same old problem. 

 

What Kind of Support for Losing Weight Makes You Really Engage in Weight-Loss Activities

by Maria's Last Diet

Are you engaged or not engaged—when it comes to the process of weight loss?

Engaged is being actively involved, focused, trying hard, persisting when faced with challenges or difficulties, feeling positive about it, planning and monitoring well. Not engaged is being uninvolved, being distracted, passive, not trying hard, giving up easily, feeling negative about it, not planning well, and not monitoring well.

Here’s how you can get engaged and stay engaged.

• Be supportive of your interests, preferences, and personal goals when it comes to the weight-loss process
• Design your weight-loss steps with interesting and relevant weight-loss activities, optimal weight-loss challenges and meaningful personal goals to pursue

 

When Your Level of Motivation to Reduce Your Weight is Low, Then What?

by Maria's Last Diet

When it comes to losing unwanted weight, everyone knows how important it is to be highly motivated. But what if you’re not motivated? What if you can’t get motivated to lose weight, and you don’t know how to stay motivated to lose weight? Perhaps like so many women you’ve had a diet problem and weight-loss difficulties before, and you failed to lose weight. These negative prior experiences can seriously affect your motivation for losing weight. This, among other reasons, might be what’s making you think so negatively about your prospects for successful weight loss, and your negative outlook has lowered your motivation.

Instead of thinking of the positives of losing excess weight, you think of the “high cost” to you of putting yourself through a weight-loss regimen again. You think of the difficulty losing weight and all the ways you might suffer if you even try. You’re up against it all right.

With this attitude going in, and with this kind of negative outlook right in the middle of the weight-loss process, can you still make a go of it? The answer, surprisingly, is a resounding yes. You can do it despite the fact that your motivation is low and you’re seeing many more negatives than positives for putting yourself through the process of weight loss.

Just because you are feeling negative about what it will take to start losing weight or keep losing weight, and your motivation is low, doesn’t mean that once you start or if you keep at it, it will still feel so hard for you to do. What will make the difference is succeeding at losing the unwanted weight. Nothing succeeds like success. It’s so true. Successful weight loss is the breeding ground for increased motivation.

 

Where’s Your Motivation for Losing Weight? Is It Up or Down?

by Maria's Last Diet

Over the past couple of weeks, how often did you think or feel the following?

•    Trying to lose some weight was too big an effort
•    Felt guilty about weighing too much
•    Regretted having to give up calorie-rich food
•    Was doubtful about losing my unwanted weight
•    Will look better after shedding those extra pounds
•    Sticking to my weight-loss regimen will make me feel good about myself
•    Keeping up those weight-loss activities is too big an effort
•    Don’t want to give up a comfortable pattern of eating
•    Resented having to do something about being heavy
•    Looking forward to feeling fit
•    Felt depressed about being really heavy
•    Was fearful that I was unhealthy because I am so overweight
•    Excited about feeling more energetic once I’m able to lose weight
•    Thought about feeling happier when I get rid of my bad eating habits
•    Hated thinking about not going to restaurants
•    Didn’t want to be controlled by following a diet plan
•    Thought how getting thin will make me healthier

Everyone has positive and negative motivations when it comes to losing some weight.