Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

Did you know that successful dieters automatically respond to tempting food with thoughts of their goals (e.g., stay on a diet, lose weight and keep it off)? This is the way they ward off food temptation. Pretty neat, eh?

How do you get to be like this, you might ask?

Do you practice not being tempted? Yup.

Do you practice sticking to the diet? Yup.

Practice helps.

But what really helps, says psychological research, is how you think of your temptation. Is that lemon meringue pie “the delicious treat you’ve been craving” or is it “the diet buster you don’t want”?

All well and good. BUT…

How do you get yourself to think the diet buster way?

Again, psychological research says that those of you who think abstractly about such matters will have a better chance at avoiding the temptation and going for the long-term goal of reducing your weight. The idea here is that a long-term goal has more abstract properties to it than the short-term goal of giving in to more immediate qualities of the tempting food.

All well and good. BUT…

How do you get yourself to think more abstractly when it comes to fattening foods, to eating so much, to sticking to a diet, to rejecting the junk food snacks you have in the pantry for your kids (Yeah, right—for the kids)?

So is there some secret to losing weight? Yes, there is.

It’s a well-kept secret. And if you have been finding it difficult to lose weight, it's probably you who are keeping it. It has to do with your attachment—yes, attachment—to food. Your attempts to break this attachment (like dieting to lose some weight, or trying to lose weight without dieting) only lead to separation anxiety. It is this separation anxiety that you have to master.

Now everyone knows it’s best for a child to master her separation anxiety by having a good enough amount of mothering that she can carry with her to shape who she is becoming. 

If you’re attached to food and can’t separate from it, you probably have been packing it in with the idea (pretty abstract idea, too) that this whole process of eating like there’s no tomorrow will fill you up with the comfort and security you need. But no dice. It doesn’t work that way. Repeated fillings only serve to reinforce your belief that you can’t go off on your own and feel safe and secure without this pattern of eating.

The way to break your attachment is to begin to face your fear of separation anxiety. You can start by thinking about what it would be like to give up your attachment. Let yourself feel the feelings that occur when you think about doing without those foods that make you fat. Then try it. Try separating. Maybe do it just a little at first. Or, if you can stand it, separate more than just a little. Try it for a day, for instance.

Interestingly, trying out separation is like what mothers and children do, little by little, getting plenty of practice with it. The child becomes more abstract because she has learned she can carry the safety and security within herself. It’s not that the child does not need and want her mother from time to time, just like from time to time you will need and want the best comfort food you can get. The operative idea here is “from time to time”, and not all the time.

Check all this out, and let us know what you find.