Maria's Last Diet:

Here’s something interesting—and powerful—for all you women interested in losing a lot of weight.

Take your choice. Do you want to learn how to lose a lot of weight? —or—Do you want to lose a lot of weight, with six months as your weight-loss goal?

Which one did you pick? Most people make the second choice. Research, however, shows that making the first choice is the one that is more likely to get you to your goal of losing a lot of weight.

Why?

It’s a learning goal, which means it’s a goal you set, consciously or unconsciously or both, to acquire new knowledge and skill, and to increase your competence.

Learning goals have the following benefits:

Help you to persist

Make you want to master it

Increase your effort

Maintain your motivation

More easily accept challenges

Get you to be enthusiastic

Make you believe that through working harder you will master it

Make you believe that through finding new strategies you will master it

When faced with difficulty, you continue to expect the outcome you want

When faced with frustration and defeat, you increase or change your effort

They are intrinsically motivating— you want to do it for the sake of doing it

Your greater enjoyment of learning how leads to doing it in your spare time

Your greater enjoyment of learning how leads to doing better at it in the future

Wow! What a list.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Tuesday, May 31, 2011 in Goals/Planning/Intentions/Expectations | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

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.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Monday, May 30, 2011 in Temptation | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

The Opposite of What You Want to Happen is Not the Way to Weight Loss

by Maria's Last Diet

Beware of trying to suppress a thought or a command to yourself like "you shouldn’t eat" that, because it could backfire on you and actually make the thought more pronounced.

Let’s say you were clipping along on your weight-loss program. Your diet motivation had been excellent, and you didn’t have one diet cheat yet. You were four weeks into your diet plan. Four weeks, did you hear that? You were ecstatic. But—and there always is a “but”, isn’t there—thoughts of having some lemon meringue pie have been sneaking into your mind. So you tell yourself, “I shouldn’t eat any lemon meringue pie”.

Here’s what the research shows. It will be harder for you to resist eating some preferred piece of pie if eating pie has been a strong habit of yours in the past. Nevertheless, if you tell yourself “no pie, no matter what pie has meant to you in the past, whether it’s been a strong habit of yours or not, you are likely to violate your good diet plan and go for a piece of lemon meringue pie.

The solution: Don’t tell yourself no. Instead, when pie cravings rear their pretty little heads, have a plan to counteract them that takes the positive high road. For example, “When I feel like having some pie, I will _____________ instead.” Do a substitution if you can. “I will double up on some good diet food.” Or, you could plan to double your reward for sticking to a diet. There are lots of ways to go about saving your good weight-loss progress. Trying to control the urge by telling yourself no or not to, is not one of them.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Sunday, May 29, 2011 in Cheat on Diet | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Wedding Weight Loss—How to Keep Frantic from Taking Over

by Maria's Last Diet

Okay, so it’s almost June, and I have three weddings to go to. Three! And some of the same people will be at all of them, so that means I need three—count ‘em, three— dresses. Yikes. The thought of finding one can throw me into a fit. It’s triple jeopardy.

I have been having what I not so affectionately call a “Dresscapade”. I have ordered 12 dresses online so far, and each one has been returned. I say to myself, “What have they done with styles lately? Who would possibly look good in this?” Or, an all-time favorite, “They certainly have changed sizes these days, because I used to fit into a 12 just fine.”

I am coming to grips. I have gained 30 pounds over the last couple of years, and I hate to even say that. Nothing looks good on me, of course. And nothing I have in my wardrobe even zips up. It’s a catastrophe of large proportions—just like me.

I picture the women who will be at the wedding— some are close friends and relatives, some I don’t see very often. “Oh, just look at her,” they’ll be thinking. “How could she let herself gain so much weight?”

How, indeed. If I knew that, maybe I’d be able to do something about it.

Okay, so really, how? How did it happen? This is not a bad question to ask. This is not a bad place to start.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Friday, May 27, 2011 in Holidays | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Being Tempted by a Piece of Cake Does Not a Long-Term Weight Loss Solution Make

by Maria's Last Diet

Hey, it’s not easy to lose a lot of weight. In fact, almost everyone—practically 99.999 percent—finds it difficult to lose weight. So much conscious control is required to shed those extra pounds, and this makes it hard. BUT—what makes it even harder is what you can’t control because you’re not aware of it. Call this your unconscious, or call it your nonconscious (or call it whistling in the wind, or any other crazy name you like). It still works the same.

Let’s say you have conflicting goals: 1. to eat some fattening food like that luscious piece of cake on the menu, and 2. stay on a diet and lose unwanted weight because you’ve wanted to for a long time, and you’d be proud of yourself. There they are, these competing goals, of which you’re not aware. How can you not be aware of wanting a piece of cake? OK, maybe you had a fleeting awareness. You saw it on the menu. You might have noticed it subliminally as you skimmed down to the fruit, your stick to a diet choice. No difficulty, or so you thought.

Here’s where the unconscious conflict comes in. Part of the old you—that’s still lurking, because old habits die hard—wants that piece of cake. The new you—not the one that your conscious of, but the one that is still percolating inside your head, not yet fully out there—loses the battle, and cake it is.

It’s what you don’t know about that’s going on inside that head of yours that you have to do something about. Otherwise, you’ll be unable to lose weight, or at least have lots of difficulty losing weight.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Wednesday, May 11, 2011 in Confidence/Self-Esteem, Goals/Planning/Intentions/Expectations | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Are You Influenced by the Eating Behavior of Others? The Answer is Yes.

by Maria's Last Diet

Dinner party. Going to the restaurant with family or friends. A workplace picnic. Eating at home with family. Eating by yourself.

What’s the deal with your eating behavior being influenced by the people eating with you? Have you noticed this? If so, do you decrease the quantity of food you normally eat, and eat less fattening food when you’re around other people? Do you eat like they do? If they eat so much more than you usually eat, do you eat that much too? Or, are you not influenced at all by the eating behavior of others?

Social influences on behavior are such a big factor that just knowing what others ate, without even being with them to see what they are eating, can influence your eating behavior.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Tuesday, May 10, 2011 in Influence | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

How Confident Are You In Your Ability to Do What It Takes to Reduce Your Weight?

by Maria's Last Diet

One thing that helps you overcome weight-loss difficulties is feeling confident you can do it; that you are “able to” vs. feeling not able to lose weight.

Strong conviction is so important to have when it comes to making changes in your eating behavior.

People with good confidence in themselves—that they can do what is necessary to produce the desired outcome—set high goals, stay committed to these high weight-loss goals, are optimistic, and try harder when they are faced with any difficulties losing weight.

People who aren’t sure they can do what it takes to successfully work through their weight-loss difficulties, of course have a much harder time of it. Without the self-confidence and conviction that they can do what it takes they may just avoid difficult weight-loss steps, give up in the face of obstacles, feel more stressed by any difficulty losing weight, set lower weight-loss goals, and not stay committed to these goals.

If you’ve been in the position where you were not able to lose weight and experienced confidence-shaking weight-loss failure, how can you pick yourself up from this state and gain more self-confidence and the conviction you need for the process of weight loss?

To get to the point where you are confident about being able to do what it takes to lose excess weight, here is the formula.

You need to rely on your experiences of mastering difficult tasks, and if necessary begin building your experience mastering things. In other words, a history of mastering things in your life builds confidence in mastering what makes it difficult to lose weight.

Another is to seek and receive encouragement for your hard work, for your weight-loss progress, for surmounting the difficulties losing weight. Everyone, even you will need help to lose weight. Ask for it, for sure. Surround yourself with people who will give it, for sure.

Having one or more good role models is another way of building self-confidence. Along these lines weight-loss research shows that women losing weight are helped by having a weight-loss buddy who is also losing added weight—a good role model.

You need to be ready for the feelings you will feel when you are on your weight-loss journey. You will feel physical as well as emotional feelings. Successful weight loss is hard, and so you probably will feel tense, anxious, tired, weak, without hope, and lots of other feelings that you’ll have to endure and come to terms with. If you keep uppermost in your mind that on your weight-loss journey it is only natural for you to feel such feelings, and you are ready to feel these feelings, you should be able to more positively appraise your effort rather than think of these feelings as signs that you don’t have what it takes.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Monday, May 09, 2011 in Confidence/Self-Esteem | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Weighing Yourself Can Make You Unable to Lose Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

Weight monitoring is such a common occurrence, especially among women who are trying to lose unwanted weight. One reason women step on a scale is to have greater control with their weight.

Research on this topic showed that daily weigh ins resulted in increased weight, while weekly weigh ins led to decreased weight. This was true for chronic dieters. For occasional dieters or non-dieters, the frequency with which they weighed themselves did not affect their ability to have greater control with their weight.

A possible cause for putting weight on among more chronic dieters: “…daily weight reminders might lead to dissatisfaction with one’s progress, which may prompt overeating…”

What have you found to be the optimal frequency of weighing yourself—so you can comfortably control your weight?

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Sunday, May 08, 2011 in The Scale | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Got a Diet Problem? Need Dieting Help? Having Weight Loss Difficulties? Well—Hear This.

by Maria's Last Diet

Hold on to your hat. Here’s what it takes. Call it what you’d like. Self-control, or…

Self-regulation
Self-discipline,
Willpower
Effortful control
Ego strength
Inhibitory control
Impulse control
Gratification delay
Temptation resistance
Perseverance
Suppression (of habitual or automatic reactions)
Conscientiousness

Whatever—it’s a mouthful. (Mouthful, get it? Eating reference.)

The definition of self-control is using your capacity for altering your behavior.

If you need help losing weight, what you’re up against is probably in the self-control department.

There’s an urgency that you can’t resist. Or, you act without fully thinking it through. Or, you’re seeking the stimulation, or the sensation, or the satisfaction. Or, you give up easily.

These are examples of lack of self-control. They are examples of what not to do—because you cannot lose weight if you do them.

It sounds like acting with self-control has to be arduous in order for it to work. If it’s not arduous, is it still self-control? It would be oh so much easier not to have to exercise self-control—like you’re running on a treadmill?

Well, what about a different way to get greater control over your eating behavior? Something easier.

Finding a temptation unattractive
Long-term goal beats short-term goal every time
Making self-control a habit

You have to have good self-control if you want to lose excess weight, so why not make it as easy on yourself as you can.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Saturday, May 07, 2011 in Self-Control/Lack of Control | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

If You Keep on Exercising, Chances are This Will Motivate You to Keep On Losing Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

Exercise alone might not do the trick when it comes to losing unwanted weight, but exercise alone can help you feel more satisfied with your body—that is, if you keep to the exercise regimen. These are the results of a research study in the journal Body Image.

The importance of this research is that when women were helped a lot to stick with a good exercise routine, they stuck. How important is that, all you women who find it hard to exercise?

Conclusions: Feeling you are competent. Seeing yourself rise to the challenge—and conquer it. Knowing you have the ability. Overcoming barriers. All of these psychological motivating factors led to greater body satisfaction, even more so than any change in physiological factors like body weight and body composition.

Now, take these findings and apply them to the weight-loss process. Need help losing weight? Get lots of it. Use weight-loss psychology to help you stick to a diet slash plan for losing excess weight. Would the same conclusions hold? Feeling you are competent. See yourself as rising to the challenge and conquering it. Knowing you have the ability. Overcoming barriers. Would all of these psychological motivating factors lead to you having much less difficulty losing weight?

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Friday, May 06, 2011 in Exercise Advice, Motivation | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Maria's Last Diet

Search

White Paper

Categories

About

Email Us

Links

Become a Fan

Beating Weight Loss Difficulties is All About Making the Right Choice

Why Am I Always Hungry and Unable to Lose Weight

The Opposite of What You Want to Happen is Not the Way to Weight Loss

Wedding Weight Loss—How to Keep Frantic from Taking Over

Being Tempted by a Piece of Cake Does Not a Long-Term Weight Loss Solution Make

Are You Influenced by the Eating Behavior of Others? The Answer is Yes.

How Confident Are You In Your Ability to Do What It Takes to Reduce Your Weight?

Weighing Yourself Can Make You Unable to Lose Weight

Got a Diet Problem? Need Dieting Help? Having Weight Loss Difficulties? Well—Hear This.

If You Keep on Exercising, Chances are This Will Motivate You to Keep On Losing Weight

Books

Symmetry Press