Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

If you know you have to shed those extra pounds, what are you doing about it?

• Are you stuck in ambivalence? The “do I”, “don’t I” routine?
• Do you predictably procrastinate? “I’ll do it tomorrow”…and tomorrow never comes.   
  
• Are you held back by hopelessness. “I’ve tried and tried, but alas nothing has worked. So why try?
• Are you in danger of denial? “I really don’t think I need to lose a lot of weight.”
• Do you conveniently compartmentalize? “That’s my weight. There are lots of other aspects to my life.”

What will move you to take action to get into some weight-loss regimen? And…are you ready to take action?  Weight-loss action, that is? Probably not. If you are emotionally not ready, then your actions need to be directed to doing something about your emotional state, whether it’s ambivalence, procrastination, hopelessness, denial, compartmentalization or anything else that’s stopping you.

by Maria's Last Diet

When mood leads the way, all your goals and strategies fall into perfect alignment, and they just follow from the mood. In this way, your mood (read: emotional state) organizes your thinking and determines the actions you will take. It’s the old idea that mood determines your mindset.

So what’s this mean for a woman who wants to lose some weight? Does she have to be in the right mood? You bet she does. And what is the right mood? Well, let’s see how you would answer this.

What’s the right mood for you? 

Is it a state of blissful ignorance? Probably not.
Is it wide-eyed wishfulness? Probably not.
Is it being unrealistically optimistic? Probably not.
What about going to the opposite end of the spectrum to deadly serious? Probably not.

So what’s the right mood for you to be in to align your weight-loss stars?

by Maria's Last Diet

Incredible claims require incredible evidence, don’t you think?

The diet industry doesn’t really go by that, although at times it looks like it does: This woman lost 40 pounds in 4 weeks just by taking this little pill!”  All you need is this (or that) supplement and the unwanted weight will fall off, guaranteed!” Simply use this exercise machine for a mere 30 minutes 3 times a week and eat a balanced diet and there you have it! You, too, can be thin for life.

Well, here’s an incredible claim. If you stop looking outside yourself for answers to your weight issue, you will reduce your weight. If you trust yourself, finally, above all the noise—if you go by your intuition, your self-knowledge, your common sense, your understanding of your own personal history, your real desires and ambitions—if you look yourself squarely in the eye and decide to tell the truth— then you have the best and probably only chance to lose weight and keep it off.

There are women who were able to do all that, and lose their unwanted extra pounds after all the years of surplus weight sticking to them like glue. And that is incredible evidence if ever there was any.

by Maria's Last Diet

So you’re ready to have at it. Successful weight loss here you come. You have a lot invested in losing some weight. You want to do it well. You pride yourself on being able to do lots of things well. Losing unwanted weight, though, has always thrown you. But this time you’re ready, readier than you’ve ever been.

The scene is set, and you go ahead. You make a great start by choosing good diet food. You’ve gone a day, two days, a week, two weeks; you’re sticking to your great dieting plan. You’re proud of yourself, and pleased with how well you are dieting. Yes, you’ve definitely lost some weight, about four pounds. Not bad.

BUT… (You knew there was going to be a “but”. There always is when it comes to losing unwanted weight). Keeping up your momentum is becoming more of a chore. You know this is so because of how you feel, and by what you forget to do. You are not eagerly preparing your food like you did over the first two weeks. You forgot to buy the yogurt you’ve been using to replace your snack-on-any-available junk-food behavior. You don’t realize it but you’ve been snapping at your children and your husband. They’ve been noticing it and complaining about you being too touchy.

What happened to you that made you lose all that steam you had when you started your dieting plan, and kept it up for the last two weeks.

Here’s what probably happened, as it happens to so many women going through the weight-loss process. The process gets harder. It’s difficult to keep up your good performance. Old ways creep back in and threaten to derail your weight-loss efforts. Feelings of deprivation may increase. You find that you’re losing confidence. You’ve invested a lot in doing what you set out to do, and when you run up against weight-loss steps that throw you, you begin to doubt your ability to do what it takes. You also begin to lose some of your commitment to stay on your diet.

What’s the antidote? Don’t overinvest yourself in how you are doing. Difficult weight-loss steps are going to come up. They are inevitable. See, whenever you’re faced with weight-loss difficulties, if you can take more of a learning-how-to attitude. “I am really up against it when it comes to keeping motivated to lose weight.” Here’s the learning-how-to attitude. “What can I do to teach myself how to maintain my dieting motivation?”

Forget how you’re doing (well, not entirely). More to the point, don’t dwell on how you’re doing. Think of it like this. In any life task that is difficult enough to throw you, you absolutely must take a “I will learn how to do this” point of view. The same is true for the weight-loss process. Successful weight loss belongs to the woman who strives to learn how to.