Maria's Last Diet:

If…just if, mind you, you took a careful look at your relationships over the years, would you get to know why you developed a pattern of eating that was weight gaining and weight maintaining?

Start anywhere. Start with whatever relationship you think of first. Examine it and your other relationships closely. Ask yourself all kinds of questions about each relationship. You can begin with a general question such as “what was the relationship like” or “how was the relationship for you.” But don’t stop at general questions. Get to the particulars of the relationship. And if you find yourself characterizing these relationships in generalities, like “happy childhood,” “good marriage,” and “satisfying friendship,” ask yourself why, for this relationship, might you be avoiding the particulars, the details, the nitty-gritty of the relationship.

Try to see how the impact of your relationships led to an eating pattern, which is weight gaining and weight maintaining. Having this kind of self-knowledge is a solid weight loss step, very different from dieting and exercise, but quite essential to the process of weight loss.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Wednesday, July 30, 2014 in It's Not Just About Food | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Do Overeating and Weight Gain Protect You?

by Maria's Last Diet

What would you say if you found out that weight-gaining and weight-maintaining eating are ways to keep what distresses you out of your awareness? Would you say, “poppycock,” this can’t be so?

Try an experiment. The next time you go to eat too much food or head for fattening foods when you are trying to lose unwanted weight, stop. Don’t do it. Practice abstinence for thirty seconds or a minute. Let your mind go in any direction. Notice what you are thinking. Notice how you are feeling.

Take a good look at what you are thinking and feeling to see what issue(s) your thoughts and feelings represent. What did you discover? Keep the issue(s) in mind and see if the issue(s) is in any way distressing to you.

Here’s all it takes to see if your weight-gaining and weight-maintaining pattern of eating is a way to keep what distresses you out of your awareness. Stop and don’t eat away your thoughts and feelings for thirty seconds or even a minute. Let your thoughts and feelings come as they may, and then see what issue(s) your feelings and thoughts stand for. Finally, determine if the issue is cause for you to be distressed or uncomfortable.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Tuesday, July 29, 2014 in Emotions and Eating | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Why You Are Overweight

by Maria's Last Diet

Did you ever hear someone say that being overweight for her was because of genetics or the result of a chemical imbalance in her brain? While this could be true in some instances, there are too many women who think this and say this in order to avoid examining more likely personal truths about their motivations and their behavior.

What about you? Is this the way you think about being overweight? If this is you, please consider the possibility that you don’t want to look up close and personal for the reasons you’re overweight.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Monday, July 28, 2014 in Self Awareness | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Women and Their Weight and Keeping Themselves in the Dark

by Maria's Last Diet

What do you not want to know about yourself and your eating and weight? Seriously, behind every person who eats like there’s no tomorrow and puts on weight beyond her normal weight range there is always something, perhaps even many things, you do not want to know about yourself and your eating and weight. When there is something you do not want to know about yourself, how do you keep from knowing it?

To tell the truth, there are lots of ways to avoid knowing what you don’t want to know about yourself and your eating and weight. You can, of course, distract yourself, not think about whatever it is, and not notice it. You can deny, minimize, dismiss, and disparage. You can rationalize. You can also resort to generalities and superficialities or even vagueness. You probably at one time or another turned what disturbed you into its opposite, something you were proud of. There is also keeping yourself confused, angry, depressed, and anxious. Then, too, you could be terribly logical and rational as ways of avoiding what you don’t want to know about yourself and your eating and weight.

And what is the number-one method of helping you avoid what you don’t want to know about yourself when it comes to your eating and weight? Unquestionably, it is your eating and your weight themselves. This is what makes it so hard to lose your unwanted weight. Eating in weight-gaining and weight-maintaining ways serves as the number-one method of avoiding what you don't want to know about yourself and your eating and weight.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Sunday, July 27, 2014 in Emotions and Eating, Self Awareness | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Weight Psychology and What Does Homeostasis Have to Do with It?

by Maria's Last Diet

Homeostasis, what is it? It is a relative state of equilibrium. Medically, homeostasis is a relatively stable internal state of such physiological conditions as body temperature or the pH of blood. Psychologically speaking, homeostasis is a stable psychological state you try to maintain under various psychological pressures.

It is no secret that eating too much food and eating too many fattening foods is a way to establish this all-too-needed psychological homeostasis. Weight-gaining eating is a way to create the equilibrium you need to feel okay, calm, confident, in stable mood, and emotionally satisfied. The disturbances to your psychological equilibrium disappear or at least appear less important when you use food and eating and weight to rid yourself of these disturbances and to maintain a stable state.

The only hitch to this weight-gaining, weight-maintaining way of achieving psychological homeostasis is the backlash that comes from how upset you get with yourself for using this method to feel stable. Yes, you regain your stable state from the rush of too many calories, but you lose your stability soon after to disappointment and self-criticism, maybe even self-loathing, for choosing this particular method of homeostatic regulation.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Friday, July 25, 2014 in Weight Loss Advice/information | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Weight Loss Psychology for Successful Weight Loss. Check It Out.

by Maria's Last Diet

All right, so you overeat and you carry too much weight as a result. What is your overeating an answer to? What purpose does it serve? Yes, of course, it makes you feel good and it makes you feel full. Yes, of course, you don’t like yourself for doing it and because you keep doing it. But what is your overeating an answer to?

Is it a matter of safety? Is it a hedge against the feeling of not being loved or of being deprived of love? Does it have anything to do with your upbringing this overeating of yours? What is it an answer to? Do you know?

If you want to lose weight, it helps, really, honestly and truly helps to know what your overeating is an answer to.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Wednesday, July 23, 2014 in Psychology | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Easier Weight Loss With the Proper Tools

by Maria's Last Diet

You may not think about it this way, but having the right tools and knowing how to use them is everything in life. A camera is called for when you want to take photos. A hammer is necessary when you want to sink a nail into a piece of wood. A swivel-up tube is what makes you able to apply lipstick easily. Get the idea?

What tools are you using to lose excess weight? A weight loss diet would probably be the most well known tool. Second to the diet would be things like treadmills, elliptical machines, stair steppers, rowing machines, stationary bikes, and even walking shoes. Put all these tools under the heading of exercise.

If exercise and dieting tools are all you are using to lose your unwanted weight, you don’t have the proper tools to get the job done. What else do you need? Well, if most of successful weight loss is getting yourself to start and then stick at dieting and exercise, you are going to need “getting yourself to” tools. This is where psychological ‘tools’ like informed monitoring, motivational skill building, self-awareness, and proper goal-setting come in.

For more on using psychology to lose weight, 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 Tuesday, July 22, 2014 in Difficult to Lose Weight/Easier Weight Loss, Psychology | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Your Body, Yourself, and Using Psychology to Lose Weight

by Maria's Last Diet

First thing, when you get up each morning you probably notice how your body is feeling that day. You may even check your body while you are showering and while you are getting dressed. You dress for the day, making sure your body and you look all right. As the day proceeds, chances are you notice your body here and there, as you walk, work and shift positions, meet other people (with their bodies), etc. Since you, right along with so many other women, place this much emphasis on your body, have you asked yourself why is it you are overweight to the point where you don’t like it.

If your body defines you, if it is your representative of yourself to the world, if it is one of the most important aspects of yourself, why do you find it so difficult to lose weight? Have you asked yourself, really asked yourself about this? And if you asked yourself why you are having such great difficulty losing weight, did you come up with an answer that enables you to do something about it?

It is all well and good to go right to exercise and dieting as a solution for this predicament. Unfortunately, as most always happens, dieting and exercise is no match for the psychology behind the predicament of your body being so important to you and being unable to lose your unwanted weight. To do something about this predicament you really should turn to the very psychology that’s causing the predicament in the first place.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Thursday, July 17, 2014 in Body Image/Self-Image, Psychology | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Weight Loss Psychology Weighs In

by Maria's Last Diet

Various psychological factors, such as mood, anxiety, stress, emotional eating, and impulsivity have been linked to the origin and development of being overweight. On the treatment side, these pathogenic factors must also be dealt with psychologically. They cannot simply be treated with dieting and exercise. Dieting and exercise, as you probably learned, only go so far.

Just how much of your psychology is involved in the weight loss process is still a well-kept secret, and weight loss secrets like this are what make it difficult to lose weight. The move to transparency that you hear so much about these days needs to be applied to the process of weight loss as well. If transparency is a euphemism for “telling it like it is” and for “seeing what’s behind the screen,” then so be it for what it really takes to lose your unwanted weight.

For more on using psychology to lose weight, 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 Tuesday, July 15, 2014 in Psychology | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

How Are You Going to Avoid Junk Food Snacks When You Go Grocery Shopping?

by Maria's Last Diet

Simple but effective. Imagine going to the grocery store and picking up one of the store’s recipe flyers. You look through it and then go shopping.

On the recipe flyer are some interesting recipes. They sound delicious and they are right on your diet.

Shopping goes smoothly, and it is not until you get home that you realize you didn’t pick up any of the usual fattening snack food. You wonder why, can’t figure it out, but you are overjoyed. Skipping fattening food is something you usually find too hard to do.

What you were unaware of was just how influential the store’s recipe flyer was. Not only did the flyer have delicious diet-acceptable recipes, it also had some key words that had an impact on your grocery buying habits. Tucked alongside the different recipes were persuasive words and phrases like “good for your figure”, “eating right”, “healthy”, “slimming”, etc.

Wouldn’t this be an easy way to avoid buying those diet-dangerous snack foods and keep to your weight loss regimen? Is there a way you can think of to really make this happen the next time you go grocery shopping?

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Monday, July 14, 2014 in Junk Food | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

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What Causes Overweight? Would You Think Your Relationships Could?

Do Overeating and Weight Gain Protect You?

Why You Are Overweight

Women and Their Weight and Keeping Themselves in the Dark

Weight Psychology and What Does Homeostasis Have to Do with It?

Weight Loss Psychology for Successful Weight Loss. Check It Out.

Easier Weight Loss With the Proper Tools

Your Body, Yourself, and Using Psychology to Lose Weight

Weight Loss Psychology Weighs In

How Are You Going to Avoid Junk Food Snacks When You Go Grocery Shopping?

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