Maria's Last Diet

The intermediate goals you set for yourself really matter.

• Thinking of the steps to your goal as tests of your capability impedes goal attainment. Think of these steps as learning opportunities instead.
• Being specific is better than being vague. The more specific you can be, the better you can monitor your performance and the results from your performance. Vague is "I'll do my best to lose weight". Specific is "The first step will be to clear away these (name them) distractions".
• Don't concentrate on what to avoid and how to resist. Instead, think about what to accomplish.
• Be proactive with conflicting goals like staying on a diet and going out to a restaurant. Go with a friend who is also dieting.
• Plan for distractions and temptations.

Set as many intermediate goals as possible ahead of time. Goals that are already set can be initiated immediately just when you need them. Being prepared makes you more efficient in the moment. You don't have to equivocate. You don't have to stop yourself to prevent a negative outcome. You can be ready with something you want to accomplish.

It is by investigating, finding out what's going on in and around your troubles with dieting, that change takes place. It is your own insight that will make all the difference.

In order to gain insight and broaden your understanding, you must ask the right questions. When you feel yourself slipping off your diet, instead of asking what should I do about this, try asking what do I know about this, what is happening to me right now?

In a crucial moment, when you might think or feel or say something like, I can't stay motivated, I'll never be thin enough, I don't get any help, what are you really saying? To find out what's behind each of these not-as-simple-as-they-look negative thoughts, open them up to greater inspection and find out what you mean.

Le's say, for example, I don't get any help means to you that you've lived a lifetime of feeling like you have to do everything yourself. If so, then you're carrying the weight of this right into your attempts to diet. Becoming aware of this enables you to make a workable plan for this feeling. That way it won't have to keep interfering with your diet.

How can you say no to yourself about eating when everything in you is saying yes?

You want a sweet. You want seconds. You want to stop at the bakery. You want the kids' candy.

In the moment, the passion and impulse may be too strong to fight. The work has to be done before this moment.

You can prime yourself to deal with the temptations by working on fulfilling yourself in other ways. That's a tall order, but it's essential.

Is your work life fulfilling enough? Is your love life fulfilling enough? Are your friendships fulfilling enough? Is your fun life fulfilling enough?

Work, love, friendship and play need to be satisfying to you. They are the sustenance of your life - very big subjects, but vital to fulfillment.

Food can never make up for a lack in these areas.

When women list all the good and bad things that could happen if they lose weight, a lot of negatives pop up. You wouldn't think so. Losing weight and being thin in this thin-is-beautiful world seems like it would be a dream come true.

Anticipating the bad parts, not the good parts, can keep a woman from achieving her weight loss goal. She might think she'd be too vulnerable to sexual advances, for example. Or, she could see herself as small and unimportant without the extra weight and believe that if she were not large anymore, she'd lose a certain distinction.

A woman might feel if she got thin, she'd have to compete with other women, and maybe she wouldn't measure up. Or, she might even think that if she got down to her goal weight she'd risk making her good friends jealous, envious, maybe even angry at her.

To successfully lose weight, women have to deal with the negatives as well as the positives.

There is no sense in repeating failed solutions. Unfortunately in trying to lose weight, the tendency is to rely on just what didn't work in the past. Another food plan. Another diet. Another weight loss failure.

Previously unsuccessful attempts mean that you have to be more creative. Don't even try to put a square peg in a round hole again.

Use your creativity to ask yourself some essential questions.

Am I ready to get on a food plan right now? Do I have the skills it takes to work my food plan and stay on it? Do I have the emotional wherewithal to diet? Do I have the right social support? Can I monitor myself well enough? Can I prevent myself from jumping to premature conclusions? Can I adjust my thinking and my efforts to fit what I'm discovering about myself as I diet?

Then, be guided by your answers and formulate the best plan for weight loss that you can. The creativity is in making a plan that really fits you.

Make as many mistakes as you can, all different kinds of mistakes. Consider this your training period.

Error management research shows that people perform better later when they make mistakes during training. The trainees not only learn from their mistakes. They become better able to deal with the consequences of mistakes, consequences like frustration and other negative emotions, loss of focus, unsystematic trial and error, and giving up.

Mistakes are always an important means of learning. So think of your mistakes in the early phase, the training portion of your diet, as positive and useful. Put aside what you learned in school, that mistakes are no good. With mistake training under your belt, you'll have less room for food and much more success dieting.

A woman goes to her doctor's office for a physical. She's been dreading this moment all week knowing the first thing the doctor will do is put her on the scale.

The scale, the thing she dreads most, the thing she avoids no matter what, like the full-length mirror.

She put this day off for two whole years, telling herself "I'll lose ten pounds and then I'll go." She thinks, "The doctor will tell me I've gained. She'll say it's no good for my heart. She'll say it's time to lose the baby weight. She'll think I'm out of control. She'll put me on cottage cheese and carrot sticks. She'll think I'm a failure. Maybe she'll give me diet pills."

It takes all the woman's got to go in and face the music.