Maria's Last Diet:

What are some things you might not think of that could make it difficult to lose weight?

     a less than positive sense of self

     thinking others don’t care about you

     being unable to deal with the mental states underlying your behavior

     oversensitivity to your emotions and the emotions of others

     reacting impulsively

     fearing any form of deprivation

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Thursday, June 26, 2014 in Difficult to Lose Weight/Easier Weight Loss | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Using Psychology to Lose Weight—The Case of No One to Blame But Myself

by Maria's Last Diet

This is for those of you who feel you have no one to blame but yourself.

It goes like this: “I have no one to blame but myself for…”

being an angry woman

the trouble I caused my parents

always settling for less than I can be

the ways I treat my husband

my lack of success at work

not taking better care of my children

being a fat woman

my difficulty losing weight

If you feel you have no one to blame but yourself, yes, you have a problem with blaming yourself. But you also have a problem with not being able to blame others. In fact, you might be blaming yourself because you can’t blame others.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Wednesday, June 25, 2014 in Guilt Feelings, Psychology | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Setting Your Weight Loss Goal—What Works and What Doesn’t Work

by Maria's Last Diet

How often have you heard that setting unrealistic weight loss goals will lead to frustration and disappointment, and worse still, quitting your weight loss regimen altogether? Well, you might think then that having weight loss goals that are smaller and within reach would be the thing to do. Not true. There is a twenty-five-year-old research study that says a lower weight loss goal is not the answer either.

What do women who have successful permanent weight loss do to break this goal-setting conundrum? They certainly have weight loss goals. But they have other goals as well that take into account the personal, emotional reasons they gained weight and are maintaining the weight. This is the way around the setting weight loss goals conundrum. Don’t rely solely on the goal of how many pounds you want to shed. Put your goal-setting ability to work on the critical issues that keep your weight right where it is and are the real cause of your difficulty losing weight.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Tuesday, June 24, 2014 in Emotions and Eating, Goals/Planning/Intentions/Expectations | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Do You Not Get Far on Your Weight Loss Journey

by Maria's Last Diet

Therein lies a tale.

Brianna has been overweight most of her life. She is now 34, married, the mother of two young children, and holds the record among her friends of having dieted off and on the longest of anyone.

Grace has kept her baby weight on and then some since her second child was born four years ago. She is at least 50 or 60 pounds overweight. She used to be such a skinny thing before her second child. She was an athlete all through high school and even as a young adult. For the past four years she hasn’t even been trying to lose weight.

Taylor always felt she was the fattest girl in her class and in her ballet group. Looking back, she could see she wasn’t fat when she was a kid or even when she was a teenager. She sees herself as fat now and she picks herself apart for various body features she considers too this or too that. Taylor torments herself with thinking she is fat, even though looking back some years from now she may see once again that she isn’t fat. She does have some weight to lose, but she finds it nearly impossible to lose it.

What each of these women have in common is they have a tale to tell. The tale to be told has to do with why they are overweight. It is not a simple tale like they ate too much. Eating too much or eating fattening food is merely the device through which they are saying without using words that they have something important to say about themselves and what has affected their lives to the point where they are unhappily overweight.

See if what we are saying applies to you as well. If you are unhappily overweight and you aren’t able to lose this weight, does your weight stay on you because you too have a tale to tell?

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Sunday, June 22, 2014 in It's Not Just About Food | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Taking Weight Off By Being Optimistic

by Maria's Last Diet

How helpful is being optimistic? Can it help you lose your unwanted weight? If so, how do you become optimistic about something you’ve failed at forever and ever?

If you are optimistic rather than pessimistic, you expect positive outcomes, and you probably make these positive outcomes a reality because your expectation of a positive outcome increases your motivation. When you are more motivated, you exert more effort. This is how being optimistic works.

Now for the issue of how do you become optimistic about losing your unwanted weight? Perhaps you have to take an indirect approach, especially if losing weight has been a losing proposition for you. You could, for instance, work on being optimistic in other areas of your life that might have some bearing on your weight. How about your relationships? Do they have any bearing on your weight? Think carefully here, and remember optimism is expecting positive outcomes, which in turn makes you more motivated, which in turn leads to you exerting more effort.

See if you can devise an optimism recipe for dealing with something in your life related to your unwanted weight and your inability so far to lose it.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Wednesday, June 18, 2014 in Optimism/Pessimism | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Emotions and Eating Make Quite a Pair

by Maria's Last Diet

If you’re overweight and finding it difficult to lose your unwanted weight, try going back in time to see where eating too much food or eating fattening foods fit into your life. Did you make food and eating your salvation, your way out of tight spots, your way to get some enjoyment or nurture and love, your way to feel more substantial as a person? What purpose did weight-gaining foods serve when you were growing up?

There are many ways in which different people have used food to make their life more tolerable? Do you know what you used food for, and are you still using food this way?

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Friday, June 13, 2014 in Emotions and Eating | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

One of the Biggest Weight Loss Facts is People Procrastinate

by Maria's Last Diet

A major obstacle in trying to lose some weight is putting off what you should do. Avoidance and procrastination are common methods for dealing with weight issues.

If you think about it, your weight gaining behavior was filled with avoiding, procrastinating, and putting off. So when you go to reduce your weight, guess what? You’re going to be faced with a lot of experience in putting matters off or avoiding them entirely. This is a weight-maintaining pattern you will have to address if you are to have successful weight loss.

How in the world can you get rid of behaviors that may have become second nature to you? One way is to identify the issue(s) you are trying to deal with by procrastinating and avoiding. For example, do you think you will feel too deprived if you take the next weight loss step? Perhaps you aren’t ready to make such an all-out commitment, and it would be a lot easier to just dip your toe in the water. Or could it be that it just isn’t the right time in your life to do something about your weight because there is too much else of importance going on?

Rather than push through procrastinating, see if you can understand the reason for your procrastination and tackle the reason and not the procrastination.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Thursday, June 12, 2014 in Procrastinating | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Are You Disappointed in Your Weight Loss Progress? Then Check This Out.

by Maria's Last Diet

Have you noticed that when things don’t go as you thought they would, you feel let down?

Now this might seem like commonsense—to feel let down when you are not working your weight loss routine as you planned. Nevertheless, there is something more than commonsense to your disappointment.

If you look closely, you will see that you have a script for how your weight loss routine should go. You have expectations and goals that figure into every little weight loss step. If you miss a beat here and there, then you are not following the script and you feel you let yourself down.

While you can’t help setting goals and having expectations, perhaps you can tinker with the script you wrote for yourself. Knowing you have such a script opens up the possibility of seeing if your weight loss script is working for you, or if you are trying to work for a script that is asking too much of you.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Wednesday, June 11, 2014 in Goals/Planning/Intentions/Expectations | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Becoming Overweight and Staying Overweight. What Are Your Risk Factors?

by Maria's Last Diet

Do you know your personal risk factors for being overweight and for not losing your unwanted weight? What’s the good of knowing, you might ask? Think about it. These risk factors, if they increase the likelihood of you staying overweight, are something you ought to know. Consider as a risk factor any attribute, characteristic, or exposure that heightens the probability of you being overweight and not being able to do what you want to do about it.

Don’t try to limit your list of risk factors to just categories of food and eating. Include such things as your personal characteristics, your relationships, family influences, and any other non-food, non-eating category that fits.

Once you know your risk factors, you can then focus in pretty specifically about what to do about each of them.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Tuesday, June 10, 2014 in Eating/Weight/Diet Problems | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Making Mistakes is a Weight Loss Reality

by Maria's Last Diet

It is impossible to do everything right when you are trying to lose some weight. There is a lot that can go wrong. You can be sure you will make mistakes, big ones and little ones, mistakes that really hurt and those that you can skate by on easily. Mistakes are the name of the game if you are trying to make any kind of personal change, especially a big change like weight loss.

If you can, even before you start the process of weight loss, build in right along with your dieting and exercise different ways you can effectively deal with your mistakes. For example, you could forgive yourself for your mistakes, that’s if the mistakes you make don’t send you into a self-critical, self-bashing state. You could, of course, learn from your mistakes. Everyone says to do this, but will you listen to this age-old advice?

Being prepared for mistakes before you even start the weight loss process should help you not have such big emotional reactions when you do make mistakes. If you can take your mistakes in stride, forgive yourself for making them, learn from them, and not lose your weight loss motivation because of them, your weight loss course will be a whole lot easier and more enjoyable.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Monday, June 09, 2014 in Making Mistakes | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

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When You Are Trying to Lose Some Weight, What Can Go Wrong?

Using Psychology to Lose Weight—The Case of No One to Blame But Myself

Setting Your Weight Loss Goal—What Works and What Doesn’t Work

Do You Not Get Far on Your Weight Loss Journey

Taking Weight Off By Being Optimistic

Emotions and Eating Make Quite a Pair

One of the Biggest Weight Loss Facts is People Procrastinate

Are You Disappointed in Your Weight Loss Progress? Then Check This Out.

Becoming Overweight and Staying Overweight. What Are Your Risk Factors?

Making Mistakes is a Weight Loss Reality

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