Maria's Last Diet:

What’s the deal? You were not hungry, but you ate nonetheless. You snacked, and it was pretty soon after dinner. You definitely weren’t hungry. What do you call this kind of eating? Well, you might say it’s a habit. You’re used to having a little something more, even after you’ve eaten a good dinner. Okay, a habit it may be. Habits take a while to get established. So you’ve probably been snacking like this after a good dinner for a while. One thing about a habit is that it has gotten to be fairly automatic. In other words, you don’t have to think about doing it, you just do it. You reach for some candy or another dessert or something salty. You feed your habit.

But what is your habit feeding. Have you ever asked yourself this? Strange talk this, “what is your habit feeding.” It’s the truth, though. Once upon a time, before your habit became a habit, you felt some things or thought some things that got you to head for the snack rack. These thoughts or feelings are what your habit is feeding.

The thoughts and feelings are probably long gone. Your habit has seen to that. Come after-dinnertime and you no longer have to have any disquieting thoughts or feelings you have to feed. You are only feeding your habit.

Pretty neat the way this works, ay?

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Monday, March 31, 2014 in Habit | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Alas! The Loss of Pleasure From Losing Excess Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

When cutting back in some way in order to lose your unwanted weight, you are cutting back as well on the pleasure associated with your old eating pattern. Incumbent on you as a woman who wants to lose excess weight, therefore, is finding substitutes that will make up for the missing pleasure. These substitutes could be food-free pleasures of any kind. For example, a pleasurable substitute might be more attention from someone you care about. Or it could be more me-time, or any number of possibilities. Substitute pleasure can also come from food that was not an integral part of your old eating behavior. These could be weight loss-related foods, such as fruit and vegetables or more protein instead of starches. You can even make sure these weight loss-related foods are especially pleasurable.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Sunday, March 30, 2014 in Emotions and Eating | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

How to Stay On Your Weight Loss Regimen

by Maria's Last Diet

How can you adhere when things interfere? Isn’t this the hallmark of the weight loss process as you know it? You try and try to stick to it—the weight loss regimen, the exercise routine, the best diet for you. Try as you may, try as you might, you simply get to a point where you can’t do what’s right.

It is these interfering “things” that you need to tend to if you want to stay on your weight loss routine to the very end. Some women identify their “things” as obstacles outside of their control. “Life is just too busy.” “I can’t get family support.” “It’s too much to care for the kids and myself too.” Do you do this? Or do you, like many women, attribute your not sticking to a diet to more personal characteristics, such as frustrates easily, am not committed, have poor willpower, or don’t want to feel deprived?

A lot of the time taking a deeper look at the “things” interfering with you losing unwanted weight can bring to mind many different avenues of exploration that give you a broader focus on your weight loss problem. This broader focus is more psychological and it explains why you keep getting too busy and what is making the family support issues so upsetting and why you can’t care for yourself when you are caring for your kids.

Consequently, if you want to adhere you have to understand, really understand, things that interfere.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Saturday, March 29, 2014 in Psychology, Sticking with it | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

When Being Optimistic Can Make Weight Loss Problems

by Maria's Last Diet

Have you gotten sorely discouraged when you didn’t lose any weight one week? Have you experienced a desire to quit your weight loss diet when you had a diet cheat? Have you failed at dieting for the umpteenth time because each time you thought the outcome would be different?

If you can say yes to any of these things, perhaps you ought to check out your optimism and see if your optimism is unrealistic. Unrealistic optimism might be what is causing it to be difficult to lose weight.

If your optimism is realistic, you won’t get so discouraged when you don’t lose any weight one week. You will know that weight loss doesn’t go week by week. With realistic optimism cheating on your diet is not a cause to quit your diet goals. If you are realistically optimistic, you take into account lapses here and there in your weight loss routine. And too many dieting failures may be a sign that you have to make changes that you are not making when you unrealistically go on diet after diet with the result being repeated failure.

Remember, being optimistic can make a significant difference in shedding those extra pounds. But keep a keen eye on how realistic your optimism is.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Thursday, March 27, 2014 in Optimism/Pessimism | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

A Big Weight Loss Behavior—Do You Know When You Are Full?

by Maria's Last Diet

When you eat, how responsive are you to internal cues of fullness? Take the following quick measure and see.

Rate each item using this scale*: 1-disagree 2-somewhat disagree 3. Neither agree or diagree 4. Somewhat agree 5. agree

1. I know how much food I should eat until full. __________

2. I stop eating when I am full. __________

3. I know when I should stop eating. ________

4. If I am full, I will not eat snacks. _________

5. I eat even when I am not hungry. _________

6. If I am full, I will not get more food. ________

7. I know when I am full. _________

8. I eat even when I am already full. ________

What did you find out about yourself? Is it easy or is it hard for you to tell when you are full?

*taken from Stress and emotional eating: The mediating role of eating dysregulation.Personality and Individual Differences. 2014. Vol 66, pages 1-4.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Wednesday, March 26, 2014 in Hungry Feelings | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Comparing Yourself With Other Women and Losing Excess Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

Like all of us, from time to time, or maybe even more frequently than this, you probably compare yourself with other women. How do you look compared to so and so? How well off are you compared to this friend or that woman? Are you as smart as? Do you get as much done as.

When you compared yourself like this, what did you find was the result? Did you feel good about yourself? Perhaps you got down on yourself.

What do these social comparisons and appearance comparisons have to do with losing your unwanted weight? Well, we’re asking. Do you know what effect comparing yourself with other women has on your efforts to lose your unwanted weight?

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Thursday, March 20, 2014 in Body Image/Self-Image | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Looks Like Exercising Self-Control Is Bad for Losing Your Unwanted Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

It is a sad fact that when you attempt to lose unwanted weight you have to employ a massive amount of self-control to make the necessary changes to your pattern of eating. Most women are not up to this kind of arduous control and redirection of their behavior. This is evident from their repeated failures to stick to a diet or weight loss regimen with the consequence being no permanent weight loss.

So what’s the answer? How can you lose your unwanted weight if using lots of conscious control is not a viable technique?

One of the best ways to sidestep the dilemma of self-control is to aim for as little control as possible. While this may sound counterintuitive, keep in mind that once behaving in a certain way is habitual, there is little need for conscious control over the behavior. It is as if the behavior runs itself. The same is true for your eating pattern. Once your pattern of eating is set in as a habit, you don’t have to consciously do much about it. The good eating habit is there ready to do its thing without you having to lift a finger.

Therefore, your goal when it comes to losing a lot of weight or even a moderate amount of weight, is to get your eating behavior as habitual as possible as quickly as you can, and bypass the need for resorting to such effortful control.

For more on how to pull off this end-run on the need for greater and greater control, please go to The Reading Room and the White Paper, both of which are 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’ll point you in the right direction.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Wednesday, March 19, 2014 | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Do You Understand Your Emotions and Eating?

by Maria's Last Diet

It's not the external food cue that is the real problem—the French fries that everyone else is having, the double chocolate cake on the restaurant menu, the cookies in the pantry. It's the inner response to such cues that causes the real problem.

What does that delectable call forth in you? Is it a feeling of deprivation? Is it a longing for something you've always wanted but never gotten? Does it represent nurturing, care, love? Does it provoke in you a habit response?

It is the secondary, inside jolt that has all the meaning, and holds all the answers.

excerpt from Psych Your Diet: A Daily Dose. Volume 3. Psych Yourself to Keep It Off. by Kenneth Schwarz PhD and Julie North Schwarz. Symmetry Press.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Tuesday, March 18, 2014 in Emotions and Eating | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Measuring Weight Loss Progress

by Maria's Last Diet

Measuring weight loss progress doesn't only mean counting how many pounds you've lost.

Yes, the goal is to lose the weight. But if you focus only on the scale, you may miss some valid signs that you are really getting there.

The things to measure and concentrate on are your behavior, your old habits, if and how both are changing. Because once old eating habits begin to change, once that usual eating behavior of yours goes into transition, weight loss is bound to follow.

Keep a chart. Begin by identifying ways you act that you think most contribute to your being overweight.

Make a good plan for changing every one of those behaviors.

Take note of how well you are sticking to the plans.

This will tell you whether or not you are really on your way to goal.

excerpt from Psych Your Diet: A Daily Dose. Volume 2. Psych Yourself to Stick to It. by Kenneth Schwarz PhD and Julie North Schwarz. Symmetry Press.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Monday, March 17, 2014 in Sticking with it, Weight Loss Advice/information | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Cannot Diet, Cannot Lose Weight, Too Many Issues on My Plate

by Maria's Last Diet

Here’s how NOT to solve the world’s problems (or yours).

Dear Cookies

If ever there was a time I needed you, it's now. The world's economies are crumbling, people are losing jobs, being put out of their homes.

Dear Chips

If ever there was a time I needed you, it's now. The earth's climate is changing for the worse, and the very air we breathe is threatened. Ice caps are melting. Things are heating up.

Dear Ice Cream
If ever there was a time I needed you, it's now. I'm worried about health care, having to pay more and more for it, afraid the money will run out.

Dear Cheese Cake

If ever there was a time I needed you, it's now. The countries of the world are at odds with one another. We are at war. What's coming next?

Dear Great Big Morning Muffin

If ever there was a time I needed you, it's now. The stores that were a big part of my life are closing. Soon there may not even be Chevys any more.

Dear Double Cheeseburger with Extra Large Fries

If ever there was a time I needed you, it's now. There's an overriding uneasy feeling in the land, in the world. It's like constant doom and gloom. How much more bad news can we take?

Dear Eating Session

If ever there was a time I needed you, it's now. After all, you are the answer to everything. Hurry up. Make me feel better. And fix the world too.

excerpt from Psych Your Diet: A Daily Dose. Volume 1. Psych Yourself to Start. by Kenneth Schwarz PhD and Julie North Schwarz. Symmetry Press.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Sunday, March 16, 2014 in Difficult to Lose Weight/Easier Weight Loss | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

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Excess Weight to Lose—but by Force of Habit Calorie-Rich Snacks Get in the Way

Alas! The Loss of Pleasure From Losing Excess Weight

How to Stay On Your Weight Loss Regimen

When Being Optimistic Can Make Weight Loss Problems

A Big Weight Loss Behavior—Do You Know When You Are Full?

Comparing Yourself With Other Women and Losing Excess Weight

Looks Like Exercising Self-Control Is Bad for Losing Your Unwanted Weight

Do You Understand Your Emotions and Eating?

Measuring Weight Loss Progress

Cannot Diet, Cannot Lose Weight, Too Many Issues on My Plate

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Symmetry Press