Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

Everyone has to pay attention to many, competing goals each day. How you allocate your time and attention to a particular goal like losing the weight may depend on how much progress you're making toward achieving the goal. In other words, if you're closer to meeting your weight-loss goal, you put it higher up on your daily list of goals, focus on it more, and give yourself a better chance of reaching it.

But there are some mitigating circumstances.Your reasons for allocating time and attention might in some circumstances be influenced not by progress but by losing the weight as a challenge. You want to find ways of mastering this weight-loss challenge, and so you stick with it above all else, even though your progress isn't very good.

Then, too, you may be faced with daily circumstances for which you have no clue how to respond successfully--like a relationship. In this case, you try to rectify this by setting your goal at solving the relationship because it needs solving the most. Your goal to lose the weight takes a back seat.

So here's some advice if you want to make the most headway toward your goal of losing the weight without being taken up with competing goals.

• Make sure you are making the most progress possible toward your weight-loss goal
• Make the tasks involved in losing the weight the kind of challenge you want to master
• See if you can solve what's hard for you in other areas of your daily life before you commit to losing the weight

by Maria's Last Diet

Weight-loss goals come in different packages. There's a mastery orientation, which is made up of your desire to develop knowledge, skills, and become proficient at what it takes to lose the weight. There's a performance orientation, which consists of your desire to demonstrate competence relative to others. There is also a performance-avoidance orientation, which indicates your desire to avoid appearing incompetent relative to others.

Losing the weight is always a matter of self-improvement--emphasis on self. If you master the process for yourself and lose the weight by developing the knowledge and the skills it takes, you will also be showing your competence relative to others. 

When the dieting and weight-loss demands on you are high, it's best to get out the mastery package. Think of your goal then as mastering rather than performing. This will get you further. You'll be able to pull back from disappointment and failure caused by thinking you're not performing up to some set level. Once you master, your performance will improve.

by Maria's Last Diet

Losing the weight is all about making what you intend…be what you get?

If you are to pull this off, you have to make some hard choices. What is dominant for you—overeating, eating junk, popping down those calories—probably requires little mental effort at this point. It just “comes naturally” to you. You eat like this and ignore your desire to lose the weight.

Making the hard choices means upping your mental effort and getting away from having it easy.

Why is getting yourself to do this and to stop doing that so hard? One reason may be that you don’t think you have real options. You’re stuck in the familiar, in the mentally easy, and the only way out, you think, is too hard for you.  

How can you give yourself the real option of getting what you intend? You could make a list of options, go over them, choose which one you want to focus on. Then pay careful attention to the option you select. Keep it in mind as much as possible. Don’t let it get lost or bedraggled or muted by anything else in your life. It should be that important. If it is "always" on your mind, then you will think of it as a real option.

Having options, knowing them, selecting them, keeping them in mind. This is what makes the options real, and having real options means making the hard choices will be more comfortable for you.

by Maria's Last Diet

Do you know what skill(s) you need in order to keep to your dieting regimen? Yes, skill. For that's what it takes to override your impulse to violate your dieting regimen. That's what it takes to regulate the emotions that turn you toward food. That's what it takes to build up your tolerance so you can endure the distresses of dieting. Skill is what it takes to not do what a friend does when she eats too much, too often, or eats all the wrong foods. It also may take developing new skills to handle the stress and strain of your everyday life.

Get the point?

So what skills should you have to keep you on your dieting regimen?

You'll have to make an analysis of the skills you have and those that you don't have (or don't have the way you really need them to be). Once you make the analysis of what's there and what's missing, go over the two lists and rank the items in each list. In the "what's there" list, rank what has been serving you the best as #1, and so on. In the "what's missing" list, rank what you think is the most important thing you're missing as #1, and so on.

Next, take a look at what you've ranked in the "what's missing" list and see where you can get started developing that skill. You don't have to start with the most important skill you're missing. That might be too hard. Start where you're comfortable, even if it's the last item on the list.

And there you have it--your own skills lists, in your own words.

by Maria's Last Diet

Can you listen to yourself and understand where you're at without judging, criticizing or blaming? 

Can you see the discrepancy between your goal and your present behavior?

Can you accept your ambivalence about changing?

Can you think of your own good reasons for changing without just knuckling under to social pressures?

Can you tolerate and work with yourself rather than argue with yourself each time you resist making a change? 

Can you get yourself to problem solve and generate solutions instead of negating solutions?

Can you support your efforts by believing in yourself so you know that change from where you are to where you want to be is not only possible, but likely?

                          If you can do all of this, then you are going to get there.

This is the psychological side...and it is a must for DIETING, LOSING THE WEIGHT, and KEEPING THE WEIGHT OFF FOR GOOD.

by Maria's Last Diet

When you are "blocked" from getting to your goal of losing the weight, what do you do? Do you find ways to overcome what's obstructing you?

Do you confront this adversity actively? If you do, you may be the kind of person who can be called an optimist. Optimists see even blocked goals as something they can reach. Their optimism leads them to actively search for solutions. This results in an increase in persistence, which, in turn, leads to greater opportunity to achieve the goal of losing the weight.

In comparison, if you respond to being blocked by throwing in the towel or quitting the weight-loss scene entirely, you may be someone who has little optimism. You might actually be a pessimist, especially about losing the weight you want to lose. Of course, if you disengage from pursuing your goal, you have no chance to develop the solutions and persistence that are necessary for achieving any goal, especially losing the weight.

One more good reason to shoot for being an optimist when it comes to losing weight: an optimist's expectation of success leads her to take on goals that maximize positive outcomes and avoid negative ones.

by Maria's Last Diet

When you are dieting, you'll find that self-control is a limited resource. So use it wisely and sparingly.

You, of course, rely on this limited resource when you want to regulate your emotions, delay gratification, and resist temptation. Can you replace this limited resource and save your self-control only for times when you really might need it?

There is a way. It's self-affirmation. Self-affirmation research shows that affirming yourself can help you override your impulses and control your behavior. An added benefit of self-affirmation is that people who affirm their core values have fewer defensive responses to ego threats. Looks perfect for dieting and losing the weight, doesn't it?

Here's what you do. Think about why your core values are important to you. This will give you a broader-minded, bigger picture view of you. Affirming yourself through examination of your core values will give you more focus on long-term goals and greater flexibility in the interpretation of your immediate behaviors. Self-affirmation also limits negative feedback and other threats to how you think about yourself.

To start, it could help to write down 10 of your values and 10 of your positive personal characteristics. Then rank what you've written in the order of how important each one is to you.

Keep these self-affirming thoughts firmly in mind when dieting and trying to lose the weight. Put the willpower-depleting acts of self-control away for a rainy day.