Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

“I was such a dope today at work. I didn’t get anything right. That meeting with my supervisor started the day off on the wrong foot. Speaking of feet, I stuck both of mine in my mouth. I didn’t have any answers when it came to the Belvey project, and only half-hearted ideas for what to do about Ainsworth. I left the meeting feeling really down and couldn’t concentrate very well on what I had to do the rest of the morning. I took too many breaks trying to revive myself. I ate too much for lunch. Miriam and Jordan took me out. They said I needed a pick-me-up, and they were right. But a pick-me-up isn’t eating the whole thing. And I ate everything in sight. I knew I was doing it, but I couldn’t stop myself. No self-control whatsoever.

The aftermath is no better. I regret everything about this morning, including overeating at lunch. I’m just a never satisfied fatty. This is the aftermath, and I still can’t get it together. What’s wrong with me? I’m just a lazy slob. I don’t even have the talent I need to do my job. I have to pull it together before I go home today. I suck.”

Here’s a woman who is highly critical of herself. She can’t place a limit on her feelings and her actions. She isn’t able to find it within herself to sustain her self-esteem. She is having trouble soothing herself out of the emotional rut she is in. She is many pounds overweight, and she has been this way for quite a long time. What this woman doesn’t realize is that being so critical of herself was one of the main causes for her to turn to food and gain all that weight in the first place. Now she is critical of herself as well for gaining all that weight. There is no end in sight to her self-criticism.

Have you ever felt like this? What did you do?

by Maria's Last Diet

Have you ever had to feel some feeling that was too frightening for you to feel?

What was it? What feeling made you feel so utterly vulnerable?

Was it terrific sadness? Was it feeling helpless? How about hopelessness? What about feeling too anxious? Or maybe it was feeling unlovable or unfeminine. Ironically, it might have been feeling too strong that was so upsetting. Whatever the feeling was, do you remember what you did about it?

You won’t be surprised to hear that feelings that frighten you, feelings that you don’t want to have under any circumstances can send you into a self-destructive pattern of eating. Why eating becomes your way out only you know. The first order of business, though, is to identify the frightening feeling you ward off by eating too much food or eating too many fattening foods.

Curiously, you might not know what the feeling is because you’ve successfully cut yourself off from it by eating it away. If this is true, you may not even be able to name the feeling that’s frightening you.

So see if you can identify and name the feeling that’s so frightening it makes you eat and gain weight. Naming the feeling may be enough for the time being. But if you can go further, try to understand in terms of your life experiences why the particular feeling is so frightening for you.

It is through identifying and naming the feelings that frighten you that you will start to tear down the foundation for becoming overweight.

by Maria's Last Diet

Are you making your weight-loss effort in the safest of safe ways?

If important feelings of yours are going to be part of the weight-loss process, you will need to feel safe enough to feel them and express them.

For successful weight loss, you must be able to experience feelings that for so long you’ve kept under the thumb of your eating problem.

To experience these feelings, you have to feel safe, or at least safe enough.

Everyone knows about the kind of weight-loss safety that involves not overdoing it where dieting and exercise is concerned, but little forethought is usually given to shoring up the safety net for the feelings you will feel as you go through the process of weight loss.

If, for example, you’ve been eating too much food to stave off bad moods, then when you are no longer overeating and stuffing, guess what? You will most likely be experiencing some bad moods.

If you’ve been using calorie-rich food to compensate yourself for feeling too much like a failure, when you are on that special diet that does not include calorie-rich food, guess what? You will probably have to deal more directly with your feelings of failure.

This is why you need to feel as safe as you can when you’re trying to lose your unwanted weight.

What will make you feel as safe as you can be? Once you identify all the things that will make you feel safe, put them at the top of your list of weight-loss activities.