Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

What personal changes will you make in order to lose your unwanted weight?

Try putting together a list of personal changes that you know will enable you to reduce your weight. See if you can come up with at least 10 items.

Then rate these personal changes on a subjective rating scale from 0 to 10, where 0 = none and 10 = the most, for each of the categories below.

Take the example of “stop emotional eating”. It certainly looks like it will be challenging and stressful, but it will also have very high value. Doing it will not be enjoyable and there is some belief but not a lot that it can be done. Perhaps what should be worked on in this case is to find ways of making this personal change more enjoyable and increasing confidence in being able to do it.

What did you find out about yourself by doing this exercise?

by Maria's Last Diet

Let’s for a moment think of the weight-loss process as a set of skills, a different set of skills from what you’ve been using to eat too much food or eating too many calorie-rich foods, which made you gain weight. Now you want to lose this unwanted weight, and you have to learn a new set of skills to help you accomplish your new goal.

Whether you realize it or not, to reach this new goal of yours to lose your excess weight, you will have to undertake a major reorganization of your skills. Such reorganization requires long-term, repeated activities. At first, you will find the going slow and hard, as you re-teach yourself what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. You will also be trying to give up old ways while you are trying to establish new ways.

You can expect there to be considerable fluctuation in your ability to pull off this reorganization. Sometimes you’ll get it and sometimes you won’t. Don’t get discouraged, though. That’s the nature of the process. Greater stability will come when you’ve practiced and developed a sufficient skill base. The process won’t be a gradual, steady, upward sloping line from start to finish. Old skills, those weight-gaining ones, will be in the mix until your reorganization is complete. They and the variability in new skill learning will make it so that your reorganization will have an up-and-down feel to it. As you grow more skilled, though, you will reach a satisfying, more sustainable stability.

See if it helps you to think of the process of weight loss as a set of skills to be learned, a reorganization of your thinking, feeling, believing, and behaving, as each of these domains pertains to eating and weight control.

by Maria's Last Diet

Can you go with the flow? Yesterday was a great dieting day. Everything went right. Breakfast was a breeze. Lunch was over before you knew it. Dinner, well dinner, was the capstone of the day. No hunger pangs after eating a diet meal. This weight-loss process is in the bag. Easy, peasy.

Can you go with the flow? Today was a lot harder than yesterday. Nothing went right. I got hungry right after breakfast. I know I didn’t eat enough; or at least I think I didn’t eat enough. I’m just not sure. I couldn’t wait for lunch. I was all ready to make up for breakfast. I squeaked through. Had to have a snack mid-afternoon, though. Then dinner, and another snack while watching TV. Yes, it was celery with some cream cheese on it. That was the best I could do to maintain my diet.

Can you go with the flow? I didn’t feel like dieting at all. So I didn’t.

You’ve got to remember there are going to be days like these. So give yourself a break and go with the flow. Losing your unwanted weight doesn’t have to be a smooth, steady, ever upward and onward process. You can expect lots of variations. Variations in motivation, perseverance, skillfulness, willingness, dutifulness, and even-handedness are a natural part of human learning and performance. They are part of the weight-loss process as well.