Maria's Last Diet:

There is certainly a consensus that in order to lose your unwanted weight you have to have willpower and lots of it. What if you discovered that instead of willpower what you really use to lose weight is psychological detachment?

Think of it this way. When you switch off from work, from family responsibilities, from all those things that distract you from focusing on yourself and your weight issues, this is psychological detachment.

Now you don’t have to be totally detached from all these matters, which take you away from yourself. You just have to be psychologically detached enough to give yourself the time and attention you need for the weight loss you so desperately want.

Despite the consensus that willpower is what does it, take a hard look at your willingness to psychologically detach and see what role it’s playing in your difficulty losing weight.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Tuesday, December 31, 2013 in Willpower | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Your Female Body Image and What You Do to Make It Just So

by Maria's Last Diet

Appearance management. What is it? Do you do it? Do you need to worry about it?

Every day of your life you primp and prep for the day. Wash, brush, hair, makeup, clothes, shoes. It’s important to you how you look. This is appearance management.

How you look is wrapped up with how you feel about yourself as well. It is important to feel good about yourself, so each day you are involved in appearance enhancing activities. One of these activities has to do with the clothes you choose to wear. Certainly the clothes you choose are meant to keep you covered and either warm or cool depending on the weather. But you also choose clothes that conceal and clothes that enhance the way you look.

Take a look and see what appearance management activities you are involved with and how much these activities have to do with your weight. It’s no secret that weight is a big determiner of what kinds of clothing you wear and how satisfied you are with the look you tried to achieve.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Monday, December 30, 2013 in Body Image/Self-Image | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

When a Relationship Problem is Eating You Up, What Do You Do?

by Maria's Last Diet

Do you know that a problem you might be having with another person can cause weight gain? Here is how it can happen. Rather than think of your problem with this other person as simply a problem you are having, you think the problem is something that defines you.

For example, you may be in a relationship where the other person is primarily a taker. The taker is not only a taker, but he often tells you that you do not satisfy him. He tells you this with words and with frequent nonverbal expressions of his dissatisfaction. You love this person and believe he loves you too, yet you feel like you don’t do enough for him. If you did, you think, he wouldn’t be so dissatisfied with you.

Now it may sound simple-minded, but you turn to eating too much food and snacking on calorie-rich food for relief. By doing this you are getting some satisfaction. You are also being a taker and not just a giver. Then too, you are making yourself terribly unhappy by gaining weight you don’t want to gain. You look awful to yourself, and you feel awful in a number of ways. You get out of breath too easily for your liking. You suffer from indigestion. You feel too full. You can’t stand yourself for not standing up for what you really want, and that’s not to overeat and snack in this weight gaining way.

As you can see, you’re in the position of only having yourself to blame—and it’s about your pattern of eating and not your acquiescent relationship to the taker. You’ve taken yourself way off course like this. You’ve preserved your relationship with the taker because you love him and you’ve directed your anger and hatred toward yourself for being such a wimp about not being able to stop something you do not like yourself for doing—eating too much food and snacking on fattening food.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Sunday, December 29, 2013 in Emotions and Eating | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Losing Excess Weight: Do You Have Habits That Help?

by Maria's Last Diet

Habits are defined as behavior that has been learned through repetition and reward in similar circumstances and at some point are automatically generated by a person just being in those similar circumstances again. You act habitually to achieve a goal of yours. The goal may be an old goal, such as eating too much food or eating too many fattening foods. In the case of your goal to lose excess weight, you most likely have habits that help you with this important goal.

What are some possible helping habits? Think of what comes so automatically to you that you do not think you are working at it? Here are some general examples of helping habits. You are not a nighttime snacker. You have a habit of feeling sufficiently satisfied by eating dinner. Then too, you love fresh veggies and find it easy to habitually eat them for an afternoon snack when you get hungry. Another helping habit: when the going gets tough, you already are the kind of person who will ramp up your motivation (aka the tough get going). You carry this steadfast habit with you when you are facing a tough emotional issue, and you almost always choose to tackle the issue pretty directly rather than turning to a substitute like food.

What helping habits of yours can you count on in your quest to reduce your weight? Make a list of at least 5 habits of yours that aid in and promote weight loss.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Saturday, December 28, 2013 in Habit | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Holiday Habits—What Are Yours?

by Maria's Last Diet

You might think it’s all the good food, the tastes, the smells, or just the sight of. Or perhaps you’re a devotee of the hunger theory. You were hungry and so you ate and ate. No ma’am it’s none of the above. Holiday eating too much food and too many fattening foods is a habit, one that you formed over many holidays. It is the holiday situation itself that cues you to eat in weight-gaining, weight-maintaining ways. When you associate this holiday with frequent past consumption on other holidays, it is most likely your strong habit means you will consume as you always have on this holiday too.

To break a strong habit pattern like this, you should do all you can to disrupt the usual holiday cues. Change what you can about the situation so there will no longer be those old familiar cues that get your holiday eating habits up and running before you know what hit you.

Do you know what your holiday habits are and which holiday cues bring these habits right to the fore once again?

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Thursday, December 26, 2013 in Habit, Holidays | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Changing Bad Eating Habits Into Good Eating Habits

by Maria's Last Diet

When your behavior is habitual, you do not rely on information or your good intentions or your deliberation or your ability to do it. You just do it.

Fifty-five percent of behavior tends to be repeated in the same location every day. Eating is a behavior that tends to be repeated in the same location and at approximately the same times every day.

If you think you can change your eating by learning about the disadvantages of eating too much food or eating too many calorie-rich foods, you are mistaken. A weight-gaining and weight-maintaining pattern of eating by its very nature is a set of habits that has become an integral part of your life. To change your eating behavior you must take the habitual nature of your eating behavior into consideration.

For more on how to change your eating habits, please go to The Reading Room, which is in the left-hand column of this blog at MariasLastDiet.com. Or, if you want to have an actual book or an e-book to read through and refer to, check out the weight loss books for women section on the right-hand side of this blog.

If you need more specific help, email us at and we will point you in the right direction.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Tuesday, December 24, 2013 in Habit | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

A Let’s Make Mistakes Attitude Gives Emotional Safety to Women’s Weight Loss

by Maria's Last Diet

There are a number of emotional benefits to taking on the attitude that during the weight loss process mistakes are inevitable but good and you can learn from them.

A big emotional benefit is having a positive rather than negative perspective when you fail to do something right. Reacting negatively with frustration, annoyance, and self-criticism to a mistake can take your attention away from the task at hand and narrowly refocus attention on yourself and your feelings. Mistake acceptance and even failure acceptance can reduce or eliminate these kinds of negative emotional reactions.

Besides being able to maintain a positive rather than a negative attitude, with mistakes being okay to make, you will not have to experience performance anxiety and worry. If mistakes are not only okay to make, but you also can capitalize on your mistakes by learning from them, there will be no need for worry and anxiety about how you will do. In fact, as you let your mistakes come as they may, you will find that you do not have to be afraid of any of your emotions. How you are feeling with a mistakes-are-good mindset will not interfere with what you are trying to do to lose weight. Your emotions, since they are for the most part positive, will be an aid and not a hindrance, and you will be able to use them to facilitate weight loss.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Sunday, December 22, 2013 in Making Mistakes | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Here’s Some Weight Loss Advice—Don’t Stop Making Mistakes

by Maria's Last Diet

What if you are told that during the process of losing excess weight, making mistakes is a good thing? Would you pooh pooh this because this is one too many times you heard you can learn from your mistakes? Well, it’s true, you can learn from your mistakes.

Don’t be put off by all your old experiences with mistakes where you were punished for making them. It’s a new era. During the weight loss process mistakes are good. In fact, make as many of them as you can. Embrace them. Love them. Feel good about making them. Turn the old advice that you shouldn’t make mistakes on its ear. No more getting disheartened by your mistakes. Make no mistake about this.

Why go on so about the goodness and rightness of making mistakes? Said once more with particular emphasis so there is no way to miss the point, you can learn from your mistakes. If you allow yourself to make mistakes, you will put yourself in an entirely different mindset. You won’t feel you can’t proceed without an instruction manual to take you the “right way” step by step. When you know mistakes are okay, you can repeat anything you flub up on. And flub up you will. You can do over anything you get wrong. You can do it more than once; do it over and over until you get it the way you want it. It will be like you are in a department of research and development where you explore and experiment with no one telling you how to do it or how not to do it. Can you imagine that?

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Saturday, December 21, 2013 in Making Mistakes | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Weight Psychology: It’s How You Think Before You Act—and After You Act

by Maria's Last Diet

Molly and Sondra were both going along on their weight loss routines. Their weight loss progress was slow at first, but then both picked up. They had been friends for years, and as was their custom, they dieted together. They always chose the same diet to be on together. Throughout their friendship they went on many different diets together, and they lost some and gained some together. What they didn’t do together was think the same way about their weight loss difficulties.

Molly always, that’s always with a capital “A”, thought to herself when she was unable to lose weight for one reason or another, “I could have done better.” Sondra, on the other hand, when she was in the exact same predicament as Molly—cannot lose weight, thought to herself, “It could have been worse.” Sondra, at these times, was not at all like her friend. She was a lot happier.

Isn’t it incongruous how different two people who are so alike can be?

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Thursday, December 19, 2013 in Thinking/Wishful Thinking | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Reduce Your Weight With the Aid of Your Feedback Loop

by Maria's Last Diet

If you are going to reduce your weight, do you have the kind of feedback loop you need? If you’re wondering what your own personal feedback loop is anyway, it is the impact of monitoring the effects of what you are doing to reduce your weight on whether you will modify what you are doing or leave it as it is.

Your feedback loop, which of course is yourself, is in tune with your monitoring device, which again is you. Your monitoring device (you) may be set to detect and feed back to you how technically right on the mark your weight loss activities are, like when you deal with particular emotional issues directly rather than resorting to emotional eating. Or your device might be set to receive more self-evaluative feedback signals, such as “you did fantastically well last night when you were being tempted by all that calorie-rich food.” Some people get both kinds of feedback in their loops.

What kind of feedback loop do you have, and how is it working for you?

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Wednesday, December 18, 2013 in Monitoring/Feedback | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

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Weight loss Willpower May Not Be All It’s Cracked Up to Be

Your Female Body Image and What You Do to Make It Just So

When a Relationship Problem is Eating You Up, What Do You Do?

Losing Excess Weight: Do You Have Habits That Help?

Holiday Habits—What Are Yours?

Changing Bad Eating Habits Into Good Eating Habits

A Let’s Make Mistakes Attitude Gives Emotional Safety to Women’s Weight Loss

Here’s Some Weight Loss Advice—Don’t Stop Making Mistakes

Weight Psychology: It’s How You Think Before You Act—and After You Act

Reduce Your Weight With the Aid of Your Feedback Loop

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