Maria's Last Diet:

Has your partner undermined or even totally sabotaged your weight-loss effort?

If so, there's still time to participate in an honest-to-goodness, groundbreaking, weight-blasting research project.

A doctoral student at Clark Universiity, Amanda Harp (see MLD blogpost Nov 29, 2011), has already done the first round of data collection. In this second round, she is looking for 35 people to take the survey at http://tinyurl.com/PUBS-WL. To sweeten the pot (dietetically speaking), Ms Harp is offering a chance to win a gift card worth at least $25.

If you can answer yes to all four of the following inclusion criteria questions, then consider taking her survey so she can complete her dissertation. We can help Amanda become Dr. Amanda Harp!

1) Are you at least 18 years of age?
2) Have you been participating in a weight loss program for the past consecutive 5 weeks?
3) Have you been in a committed, cohabitating relationship for the past two years?
4) Do you ever feel like your partner/spouse gets in the way of your weight loss?

If so, you're invited to participate in an anonymous, online survey:

This survey should take approximately 30-45 minutes to complete. Responses cannot be traced back to participants. Any question may be left unanswered. Participation is voluntary and may be withdrawn at any time. Upon survey completion, you will be provided with an email address and subject line to enter a drawing for 1 of 10 gift cards (one $100 card and nine $25 cards).

Please direct questions about this study to Ms Harp ([email protected]) or Dr. Cordova ([email protected])"

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Tuesday, January 31, 2012 in Influence | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Self-Monitoring to Lose Weight Successfully

by Maria's Last Diet

There’s that old joke about a person asking a passerby in New York City, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” And the passerby answers, “Practice, practice, practice”.

Well, the direction to take if you need help losing weight is monitor, monitor, monitor.

Why monitor? Because any form of self-regulation requires accurate monitoring to evaluate how you’re doing and to make decisions about how to get from where you are to where you want to be.

When you are trying to shed pounds, there is a lot to monitor. There’s pounds lost. There’s the food you eat—kind and quantity. There’s hunger. Is it for real? Can I wait until dinner? There’s your perseverance. Why can’t I keep this up? There’s willpower. Motivation. Feelings. Difficult daily situations. I’m too tired. The kids are really annoying me today.

Yes, there’s lots to monitor.

What if you wrote out a set of test questions having to do with your problems losing weight? Wouldn’t this be one way to monitor yourself?

Make up the test questions. “Why can’t I keep this up?”— your dieting motivation, for example.

Then put in the answer to the question: “When I have a bad day, I stop dieting and then can’t stop eating.

Next, put what the right answer should be. For example: “when I have a bad day and I want to stop dieting, I can ______________________ “(you fill in the blank).

Remember, evaluating how you’re doing and what you need to do in order to get there are the essentials for good self-monitoring. And good self-monitoring is the sine qua non for successful weight loss.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Monday, January 30, 2012 in Monitoring/Feedback | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Gained Back Weight. Lost Heart.

by Maria's Last Diet

All is lost!

This is the painful cry of the woman who, after all she lost (pounds, that is), found herself back in the old condition of gaining back weight—and she just lost it (hope, that is).

Oh, she might, as time goes by, go on another diet, and another, and another. But for the time being, now that all is lost (hope, that is), she says to herself, “what’s the difference. I have nothing more to lose” (hope, that is), and she eats up a storm, putting on even more of what she lost (pounds, that is).

If this is you, please don’t believe all is lost (hope, that is). When all that was lost (pounds, that is) comes back, all is not lost (hope, that is)—or at least it doesn’t have to be. It depends on what you believe.

Reminder: it’s only a setback, and if you can think of it this way, then you haven’t really lost it all (hope, that is).

So, see if you can set your mind—not to mind setbacks—at least not to the point of crying “all is lost”. Use what you've gained (hope, that is), and put it toward all you have left to lose (pounds, that is).

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Saturday, January 28, 2012 in Motivation | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Weight-Loss Guidelines—For When You Need Help Losing Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

Would it help you to have a set of guidelines for losing some weight?

If so, try these on for size.

Specify realistic weight-loss goals — not just number of pounds to lose, but also the changes you will have to make in the way you eat, think, plan, react, keep motivated, etc

List the possible positive outcomes and use these as motivation

Identify what will get in your way of achieving your goals, and think of ways to overcome them

Plan out the actions you will take to avoid the old triggers

Practice your new behaviors (attitude, thinking, feeling, ways of coping) each day

Monitor your practices and keep a diary of how you did

After a week, review how you did and revise your plans and practices accordingly, making sure you note and work on anything that is still getting in the way

Review all of this openly and honestly with a trusted confidant

Keep this up, week after week until you’ve reached your goals

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Friday, January 27, 2012 in How to Get There | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Helping a Friend With Unwanted Weight Gain

by Maria's Last Diet

Maria remembered the time when her good friend Wendy dispensed with all the small talk. She was calling Maria back then to talk about her weight. So there was none of the usual chitchat about the mundane and the politically mundane, Wendy got straight to the point. She was alarmed because she had started to gain some of her old weight back. Maria picked right up on this and asked if there was something eating at her. Get that? Eating at her. Wendy said that’s why she was calling Maria. She learned from her struggles with weight, from knowing Maria, and from reading Escape to Thin that emotions and emotional patterns were heavily involved in weight control. So Wendy and Maria made a date to talk more about this.

When they met a week or so later at Wendy’s house, Wendy took Maria into the den, where the two women settled themselves, Wendy on the couch and Maria in an overstuffed rocker close to Wendy. At first, Wendy rooted around for an answer to her weight gain. Maria asked her friend, “Has there been anything different going on in her life?”

“No,” Wendy said. “Not that I can think of.”

Maria followed up by asking Wendy to “Try to name, guess at if you need to, any changes in your life since you started putting on weight.”

Wendy couldn’t think of any changes, and Maria encouraged her to work at it some more. “Try,” Maria exhorted her friend.

Wendy ran through all the usual things in her life. Her children were fine, her marriage was okay, work was work, her parents were healthy. “No,” she said. “Nothing out of the ordinary.”

Maria took a chance at being a pain and tried to get Wendy to narrow down her observations, to think more specifically. Maria knew there had to be something that happened. But Wendy couldn’t get to anything else. She said to Maria that she was back on her old diet, the one that worked so well for her before. So, for the time being, Maria knew that she had to leave it like that. She had learned that people can’t be pushed. Pushing at them wasn’t a form of help. And it spoiled the possibility of helping at a future time.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 in Maintain Weight Loss | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Weight-Loss Failure—What to Do About It

by Maria's Last Diet

Once, OK. Twice, understandable. Three times, six times—getting pretty frustrated. More than this—you have a chronic problem. Whatever you do, you just can’t lose unwanted weight.

Diagnosis: Treatment refractory weight loss

In other words, you failed to respond to the usual forms of treatment—dieting, cutting portion size, practice not eating so much, using more willpower, following doctor’s orders, being part of a support group.

Looks like nothing can be done about it, because of all that you tried, and all the times you failed.

Helping someone in your shoes to have successful weight loss is going to require a transformation—from someone who can’t to someone who can take charge of her eating and weight.

This will call for careful attention to what’s been going wrong psychologically for you. Repeated failure is an indication that something needs to be brought to your attention, so you can see it for what it is and then learn to work on it so it’s not in the way.

Try doing it this way and see what you come up with. If you would like professional help, set up an appointment with a mental health professional.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Monday, January 23, 2012 in Failure | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Are Your Good Intentions Powerful Enough To Defeat Your Bad Eating Habits

by Maria's Last Diet

If you decide to eat less because you would like to lose weight, can your decision take precedence over your old habit of eating too much food?

What’s been your experience?

Most people would say that changing their daily habits is in no way easy, and deciding doesn’t add up to doing it. A habit is a habit, and it’s hard to break.

Then, does what you want to do, what you intend to do not matter? Are your intentions not strong enough to override your old weight-gaining behaviors?

A psychological research study on just this issue, of whether it’s possible to shield your intentions against habit interference, showed that a person’s intentions can indeed inhibit the strength of old habits.

So take heart from that. Intentions do count. But they don’t do the whole job.

The inhibiting power of your intention can be strengthened, though. They can be strengthened by the ways you choose to implement your intention. In other words, your intention can be fully supported by the plans you make to carry out your intention: the more specific the plan the better. For example: When (this happens), I will (do that).

Implementing your intention through smart planning is one way of shoring up your intention. Another way is to practice what you plan. You can do this through visualizing or mental rehearsal. You can also practice what you plan to do by actually doing it here and there.

With planning and practice, your intention is being implemented as thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that will, in themselves, become habitual. In other words, you are making some new habits. And remember, there’s only so much room inside you. So some of these new habits of yours are going to be taking up some of the space you had reserved for your old habits.

Get the idea? It all starts with your intentions, and it doesn’t have to end there.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Saturday, January 07, 2012 in Habit | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Turn Body Dissatisfaction into Body Satisfaction. Give Yourself a Second Chance.

by Maria's Last Diet

How you view your own body affects not only your self-esteem but also your eating habits.

What if you wrote about your body for 15 or 20 minutes for the next 3 to 5 days? What if you picked one or more stressful body issues or experiences to write about, and expressed your deepest emotions and thoughts about them? What do you think would happen?

Body image research reported in the British Journal of Health Psychology says that this kind of self-disclosure can make a big difference in how you then think of yourself and your body.

Writing and getting it out there right in front of you helps you not be so automatic in your judgments about your body. You can get to see when, where, and why you might have developed a lesser image of your body. If the body image experiences you write about were traumatic, writing about them gives you a second chance to reduce the effects of the trauma.

Try writing and see what you find.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Wednesday, January 04, 2012 in Body Image/Self-Image | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Your Level of Self-Esteem —An Important Key to Weight Loss Success

by Maria's Last Diet

It is impossible to get through life without failure, just as it is impossible trying to diet and trying for permanent weight loss without failure. So what does that tell you if you want to lose weight and keep it off?

You’re going to have to be ready to endure such failures—and if possible, make the best of them.

And that’s one of the biggest secrets to losing weight.

Psychological research on just this issue shows that people who have low self-esteem tend to over-generalize their failure experiences and think negatively about themselves. For instance, ‘When I failed to stick to my dieting plan today, I found myself thinking that I can’t do anything well.” While people with good, solid self-esteem who experience failure, focus on their strengths, and still come away from the failure experience with some positive feelings about themselves

How do you look at a weight-loss failure? Do you see your inadequacies or do you hold on to your good feelings about yourself and maybe even chalk up your failure to a learning experience?

Having good self-esteem matters when it comes to navigating the treacherous waters of your own personal weight-loss journey. So be on the lookout for signs of low self-esteem, and do what you can to raise your self-esteem to a level where “failure is only a temporary change in direction…”

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Tuesday, January 03, 2012 in Confidence/Self-Esteem | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

How to Stay Motivated to Lose Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

Trying to change your weight is a losing proposition if you don’t get the value of all the little changes you’re making.

The weight-loss process is a grueling test of your endurance. You’ve got to stick to it all the way to the end. And because the route to your goal weight is so long, you need lots of encouragement, lots of buoying up along the way. The motivation to keep going and to keep doing what you’re doing comes from seeing the little changes you’re making and realizing their value.

One of the best ways to make sure you see and appreciate these changes is to think multi-dimensionally. Don’t just think in terms of pounds or pant size. Think about change in all its dimensions. What about how you feel? Were you able to turn away from being tempted? How did it feel to say “no”, and what did saying no do for you? Could you have been more determined when you made last night’s dinner for your family, and everyone ate the good diet food? Notice how you’re thinking more before you do something foolish like eating the kids’ leftovers.

There are lots of changes that you can identify and savor. It's these little changes and your capacity to see and use them that’s the real saver—of your motivation for losing weight.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Monday, January 02, 2012 in Motivation | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

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Partner Problems Making It Difficult to Lose Weight

Self-Monitoring to Lose Weight Successfully

Gained Back Weight. Lost Heart.

Weight-Loss Guidelines—For When You Need Help Losing Weight

Helping a Friend With Unwanted Weight Gain

Weight-Loss Failure—What to Do About It

Are Your Good Intentions Powerful Enough To Defeat Your Bad Eating Habits

Turn Body Dissatisfaction into Body Satisfaction. Give Yourself a Second Chance.

Your Level of Self-Esteem —An Important Key to Weight Loss Success

How to Stay Motivated to Lose Weight

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