Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

An article in the New York Times (April 22, 2010) is very interesting. It talks about how these days, politicians who are on the campaign trail are becoming more and more weight conscious. The feeling is, someone running for office doesn’t want to appear too greedy and piggy, too much a part of the excesses of the establishment.

Most striking was a remark by one woman, a state senator, who was quoted as saying that since she hit puberty, there hadn’t been even one week in her life when she wasn’t on a diet. She stated that it was an ever-present condition of her life.

Politician or not, so many women find themselves in the same boat.

But, is this really a good way to live? Is there not a better way? Isn’t there some way to settle the weight issue for a woman, once and for all, so that her life can be lived free of a constant, painful struggle with eating and weight?

Yes, there is a way. What it takes is paying a good deal of attention to the psychological side of dieting and weight problems.  The issues to be found there fuel a weight problem, keep it going, for a whole lifetime sometimes.

You don’t have to live that way if you don’t want to. Tackle the real, personal matters, and you won’t need to be on a diet every day of your life for the rest of your life.

by Maria's Last Diet

When you set clear and specific small goals for losing the weight, does this help you lose the weight?

Setting explicit goals, despite the fact they are small, helps you focus your actions to what's relevant and away from actions that take you away from all your goals, big and small. Good goal setting helps with self-regulation, motivation, specific use of your energy, persistence, and choice of strategies with which to achieve the goals themselves.

If the ways in which you set small goals for yourself actually help you to achieve these goals, then you will feel encouraged to set even more goals. And, your expectation of success will increase, thereby preventing lots of negative feelings about the journey.

But weight-loss success doesn't come without a price. In this case, the price is good goal setting: small specific goals and lots of them.

by Maria's Last Diet

If you are attempting to lose weight, but you are not really there yet, what kinds of things can help you persist on your weight-loss path?  In other words, how do you keep yourself going so that you will, eventually, get to where you want to be with your weight?

One important factor to help you persist in your effort to lose the weight is to have feedback on your progress. OK, so you are not at your goal weight yet; it stands to reason that if you can take note of your PROGRESS toward that goal, you will be a lot more motivated to keep it up. If you set up a system of effective feedback so you can track your performance in relation to your goal, it gives you a motivational advantage. And the daily or weekly number on the scale is not always a reliable marker of progress. It is good to keep track of your weight, but sometimes the number doesn’t change even though you are doing very powerful things that will ultimately get you there.

Along with weighing yourself, you can pay close attention to your behavior—what are you doing day to day, week to week, that is perhaps changing your relationship to food? We know that changing how you deal with food will surely pay off in pounds lost at some point. You can keep a record of how you are changing in this way, and you may be very surprised to see what tremendous strides you are taking.

 An added benefit to keeping track of all you are doing to lose the weight actually helps to keep you focused on goal relevant activities. This cuts down on distractions.

It’s kind of like having a map, showing you the way to get to your weight-loss goal. If you keep looking at the map to see if you are doing what you need to do to get there, you can then shape your actions accordingly. If you are on a road that is getting you closer to your destination, that’s encouraging, and it lets you know you are going in the right direction. If you have taken a road that isn’t getting you closer, and is maybe getting you a little lost, you can alter your route.

It will help you tremendously if you can devise your own methods of evaluating your progress.  It is bound to add to your ability to persist, even when the weight-loss goal you set is still in the future.