Maria's Last Diet

If Necessary, Take a Drastic Step So You Don’t Give in to Temptation and Make It Impossible to Lose Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

Dear Maria

I have to get all the junk food out of the house. I can’t go to restaurants. I can’t go on vacation. I shouldn’t watch TV at night. I’ll make sure I skip coffee breaks at work. I won’t go grocery shopping for a good long while. I mustn’t visit my mother or my sister and brother.

I’ll keep avoiding all of these old places, people, and things that make me eat like there’s no tomorrow. If I can keep this up for a month, maybe two months even, I’ll have a leg up on this overeating and stuffing thing of mine. Once I separate myself from my favorite thing in the whole world, I’ll be able to do something I’ve wanted to do for a very long time—lose my additional weight.

I know this sounds drastic, but I’ve never been able to avoid being tempted when all that luscious food is within my reach.

    — Susannah

What Can You Do To Make Sure You Don’t Undermine Your Motivation to Reduce Your Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

Do you find that you sometimes make decisions and behave in ways that undermine your goals? For example, do you continue to eat fattening food when you would also like to lose weight now?

Well, if this is true for you, you can put this under the heading of a lack of self-control. You can also think of this as a conflict between giving in to being tempted and turning down the temptation in favor of your goal to lose unwanted weight.

Wouldn’t it be nice if when you were feeling tempted to overeat or eat some fattening food, just the very act of being tempted turned you away from the temptation and toward your goal? That would certainly simplify the weight-loss process for you, wouldn’t it?

There are a number of ways to go about accomplishing this. All the ways call for you to think yourself out of the “it is so tempting” predicament.

First: You can think of what the negatives are for you of giving in to being tempted. Line these negatives up and practice them before, during, and after a temptation. Make as long a list of negatives as you can. Be sure that enough of the negatives on the list are very powerful deterrents for you. What you want to accomplish here is having these negative associations firmly in mind so they occur to you each time you might give in to temptation.

Or: You can also think of the positives for you to stay on your diet or stick to the weight loss regimen you’ve chosen. Line these positives up as well, and practice them before, during, and after being tempted. Again, make as long a list of positives as you can, and be sure enough of them are powerfully attractive for you. You want your list of positives to pop right into your mind so you can’t be tempted to forget your dieting plan and your permanent weight loss goal.

Finally, it may be surprising to you that thinking more abstractly when it comes to what tempts you will keep you on your weight-loss path. Concrete thinking emphasizes the specifics and makes the temptation seem singular and not connected to all your other thoughts and feelings about wanting to reduce your weight. For instance, in seeing a box of chocolate candy, you can think of the taste, the smell, the texture, the way it will feel when you put it in your mouth. These are concrete features. A more abstract way of thinking would be to think of what eating the candy would do to your sense of self and to your goal to lose unwanted weight.

Now it may sound altogether too silly to you to practice thinking more abstractly when it comes to not being tempted and staying motivated to lose weight. But try it. It adds an important third dimension to your bank of weight-loss strategies: listing negatives, listing positives, and thinking more abstractly.

 

Food Temptation. It’s a Bitch. What to Do?

by Maria's Last Diet

Can all of the fast foods, delicious-looking food ads, large-size restaurant portions sneak up on you so you give in to temptation? Yes, they can, but only if you are already primed by your personal goals, your own needs, your motivations.

What about more subtle advertising like product placement in a movie? The answer again is yes, but only if you are already primed by your personal goals, your own needs, your motivations.

Yes, you can be tempted by the oh so fattening foods that are out there. But what makes for food temptation is not simply what’s out there. It’s what’s in there—in you—that makes the difference whether you will be tempted in the first place.

It’s a fact that there are some women who lost a lot of weight and kept it off. Their way of overcoming temptation was to work successfully on their personal goals, own needs, and motivations. So—take a page from their book.

“Should I” or “Shouldn’t I” When All I Want to Do Is Eat

by Maria's Last Diet

The tug of war between “should I” or “shouldn’t I” is a big part of the weight-loss process. It wreaks havoc with the formula: diet + exercise = weight loss.

This stands to reason, doesn’t it? You can’t learn restraint from a diet. The calories-in side of the equation is directly influenced only if you change your relationship with the act of eating and with your food choices.

At the start of a diet, it doesn’t take much to loosen your restraint. It is not as strong as it needs to be. The new pattern of eating isn’t established, and the old pattern of eating is still there, lurking, ready to exert its right to still exist, to rule, to satisfy, to make it all right.

There are lots of things that can easily rouse the old eating pattern. Alcohol is one of them. It loosens rather than tightens your restraint. Stress is another restraint ‘loosener’. To shed some pounds you’ve got to know what loosens your restraint and unleashes all the old forces in you. Why not make a list. The more personal, the better. Give yourself every advantage when it comes to winning the weight-loss tug of war.

Impulse Eating, Cannot Lose Weight, and What You Can Do About It

by Maria's Last Diet

Before I knew it, I ate the whole thing. What this all about? How could someone eat the whole thing without knowing she was doing it?

Was her impulse much stronger than her self-control? Guess so.

Did she have trouble inhibiting her impulse? Yes, indeed.

Was her willpower weak? It depends. Willpower was weak if her willpower was aimed at keeping her on a path to losing unwanted weight. Willpower was strong if her willpower was aimed at eating the whole thing. Willpower is tricky that way. It depends which way her motivation was blowing.

Did she give in too easily to being tempted? Yes, she did.

So—what to do?

One important complication for the woman who ate the whole thing is she had every intention of not doing it. She wanted to stick to the diet she was on. She wanted to do what it took to adhere to the weight-loss process that she started. Her intention and what she wanted didn’t count. She violated her intention, and this made her feel worse than ever about herself.

Good self-control was nowhere to be found. “Before I knew it, I ate the whole thing” says it all. In the moment, she had no self-control. If she were to do something about her impulsive overeating, she’d have to do it either before or after the moment. And it would be best if her self-control happened before she knew it just like when she ate the whole thing.

Self-control that operates like clockwork takes practice. This is one good reason for people to lose excess weight over a long period of time. It gives them a chance to practice and practice and practice their self-control, until it becomes as second nature as eating the whole thing used to be.

Being Impulsive, Giving in to Temptation, and Weight-Loss Difficulties

by Maria's Last Diet

How impulsively impulsive are you?

Being tempted by fattening food and giving in to your temptation when you are interested in losing some weight is the bane of every woman’s existence. Can you resist the impulse? Can you not give in to temptation?  

Yes, you have to be able to withstand the temptation and not give in to your impulses if you want to make the weight-loss process work.

It’s easy to think, when you give in to temptation, that you were being impulsively impulsive. You just acted on impulse, and that’s hard to do something about. Well, for your information even impulses are not as impulsive as they seem. They don’t just come out of the blue.

Eating impulsively is the result of a number of factors: what captures your attention, previous influences, and your need for gratification. These are all matters of self-regulation that you can do something about so they won’t interfere with your goal of losing excess weight. Of course, it’s not a simple undertaking. There’s nothing impulsive about eating impulsively. It’s a well-learned mindset, and that’s the point of this blog post.

Why Am I Always Hungry and Unable to Lose Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

Are you inclined to eat when you are not hungry just because you’ve read something about food, seen a picture of food, or even been in the presence of actual food?

There may be a lot more truth to this phenomenon if you are an overweight woman.

What to do?

Well, it’s just like the answer to the question: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall.”

You can practice, practice, practice—dislodging these food cues from their home in your brain.

You can do this by exposing yourself to the food cue and practicing not responding to its usual appeal. Start off slowly. Use the sight and smells of foods that are not high on your “I crave that” list. Practice first on food that does not tempt you so much, by keeping them in front of you for about thirty seconds, while you write down the thoughts and feelings you’re having.

After some practice sessions with the easy ones, increase the level of difficulty by upping the “being tempted” quotient. Then practice dissociating the triggering effect from your brain’s old reaction of desiring, craving, being tempted—when you are not hungry.

 

If Forbidden Food is Bigger Than Either Your Eyes or Your Stomach, Will Your Diet Fail?

by Maria's Last Diet

Being tempted to eat fattening foods while you are trying to stay on a diet is a conflict everyone is familiar with. It’s a competition, isn’t it? You want to lose unwanted weight, yet the forbidden food tantalizes you into not sticking to your weight-loss goal. Successful weight loss means that your dieting motivation wins out so much of the time, and you keep losing weight.

What makes the difference between winning and losing this battle? Interestingly, weight-loss research shows us that good dieting doesn’t require you to give up your food temptation. Sticking to your diet can be achieved despite being tempted. Believe it or not, successful dieters use being so tempted by high calorie food to rely even more on their long-term weight-loss goals.

These more successful dieters also perceive good diet food as actually being larger and therefore more prominent in their lives than do dieters who too easily give in to temptation.

 

Being Tempted by High Calorie Food: What’s It Take To Brake It?

by Maria's Last Diet

Check yourself out. Do you resist being tempted by high calorie food by inhibiting your temptation? Or, can you not be tempted because your long-term goal overrides the impact of the food situations? Either way, or by using both ways, these are certainly good weight-loss strategies. In fact, if you were a reductionist, you could say that these are the only possible weight-loss strategies—resist the impulse or not even feel the impulse.

Weight-loss advice is plentiful. Free weight-loss help abounds. Online weight-loss support is available. There is a weight-loss book or a new diet book just for you. There are healthy diets to lose weight. Plenty of dieting support and tips on dieting, even specific dieting tips for women. Inspirational weight-loss stories are always the rage. There is a weight-loss program for you just around the corner. All of this and more.

So with all of this (and more), why is it that you cannot lose weight? For the answer, let’s go back to the basics—resist being tempted and not even feel tempted. How in H_ _ _’s name do you get there? The missing ingredient, the one that makes all personal changes hard to accomplish is getting yourself to. Getting yourself to start, stick to it, and then, in the case where you try to lose weight, getting yourself to keep it off. It's the getting yourself to part that is the key here.

 

One Cause of Women’s Weight Loss Failure. If It’s So Tempting, Are You So Tempted?

by Maria's Last Diet

When you are trying to diet, and the objective is to stay on a diet, it isn’t good enough to simply find a diet.  One of the best weight-loss tips for women is how to stop cheating on a diet. Perhaps we can take a page from the retailers’ book on this.

Retailers are getting smart. They’ve always been smart, but recession-affected times call for even more brilliant strategies.

So, what they are doing is to stuff stores with lots and lots of items, to the point of looking a bit chaotic. It seems that when people see a store arranged like this—with piles of things everywhere—they think they are getting deals, real savings.

And what is the most strategic move of all? It’s this: Putting oh so tempting things right in front of you at the checkout, provoking impulse buying.

The result is that when you have the temptations there, it leads to more sales, no question.

Human nature is human nature. When you ask yourself —how can I stop eating so much—one part of the answer is to keep immediate temptations to a minimum, especially in the beginning of your weight-loss process, before you are fully engaged in it.

Your weight-loss journey will no doubt involve many strategies, but this should definitely be one of them.