Maria's Last Diet:

Here’s some stuff about reducing your weight that is off the beaten track. How are you with such things as withstanding difficult conditions? Do you recover quickly from them? Can you adapt and make the most of a bad situation? How’s your bounce back quotient from experiences that disturb you? What about your flexibility? How flexible are you in dealing with changing demands? Yellow:yoga

Watch out. You may be concentrating too heavily on shedding pounds and staying on a diet as your primary weight loss methods. Opportunities for successful weight loss may pass you by unless you go off the beaten track and work on adapting and recovering, two high-ranking skills for weight loss.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Thursday, January 29, 2015 in How to Get There | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

A Crime Against Women When They Weigh Too Much

by Maria's Last Diet

Before you know it you become the victim. The attack is amazingly quick and sure, indisputable. You don’t see your attacker until it’s too late. There is not even a stealthy approach to alert you. Your assailant is so adept that you have virtually no protection against the crime.

Detective copy When you are selected as the target, your attacker has already figured out just how vulnerable you will be. Good targets don’t put up a fight; they don’t throw together much resistance. Easy marks just go along. So too will you.

Beware of the attacker who presents as if the approach is normal and non-threatening. In a flash the trap will be sprung and you will be put in the position of having to succumb. You may be threatened with bodily harm if you don’t instantly submit. When you see what looks like a gun pointed at you and you are being told to do it or else, you have no other choice but to go into full capitulation.

Is any of this familiar to you? Have you been in this kind of situation? Don’t be too quick to say no. Think about it. What happens when you don’t sustain your weight loss effort, when, before you know it, you are breaking your diet? How often during the weight loss process did you have to fight off a snack attack or some other crime against your diet goal or weight loss routine?

Make no mistake about it. The criminal you will be battling is not just some dummy who stumbled into a life of crime. You’re up against a highly skilled foe with plenty of practice over lots of time. Going straight is not in the cards for such a relentless adversary. If you want to get out from under this constant threat, you are going to have to stop being such a wuss and ruthlessly take down this offender.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Wednesday, January 28, 2015 in Conflict | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

The Gift of Successful Weight Loss—Do Some Women Have It and Some Don’t?

by Maria's Last Diet

Are you one of the special ones, blessed with the ability to lose weight? If you are not, you might know someone who is.

Superheroine Let’s take a look and see what makes some women special like this. There is the belief that these specials were born with more willpower or more potential for doing what is hard. They came into the world with a certain exceptional gift that enables them to achieve permanent weight loss.

If you believe this, then you should have no doubt that a fish can climb a tree. So how does one come by this gift of losing weight if it’s not somehow in you from birth? The answer is in the old joke about an out-of-towner walking along in New York City who stops to ask a New Yorker for directions to get to Carnegie Hall. “How do you get to Carnegie Hall,” the stranger asks. The New Yorker answers, “Practice, practice, practice.

Supposing that it is practice, practice, practice that gets you to permanent weight loss. What then do you practice? Here you might say, one woman’s meat is another woman’s poison. You have what you need to practice and some other woman has what she needs to practice. And there are so many possibilities. Without talking about eating and food at all, there’s patience, endurance, self-respect, kindness, forgiveness, thoughtfulness, emotional wherewithal, commitment, motivation, mental toughness, and so much more. See what it is that you need to practice in order to make you special too.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Tuesday, January 27, 2015 in Practice | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Going from Body Dissatisfaction to Body Satisfaction—Check it Out

by Maria's Last Diet

As you lose weight and move closer and closer to your weight loss goal, check out whether you have turned the tide from body dissatisfaction to body appreciation. Silhouette:body image

Use the following questionnaire* at a number of different times during the weight loss process to see if you appreciate your body more and more.

Please indicate whether the question is true about you

1. Never 2. Seldom 3. Sometimes 4. Often 5. Always.

1. I respect my body. _____________

2. I feel good about my body. _____________

3. I feel that my body has at least some good qualities. ________________

4. I take a positive attitude towards my body. _______________

5. I am attentive to my body’s needs. ______________

6. I feel love for my body. ______________

7. I appreciate the different and unique characteristics of my body. ____________

8. My behavior reveals my positive attitude toward my body; for example, I hold my head high and smile. ____________

9. I am comfortable in my body. ___________

10. I feel like I am beautiful even if I am different from media images of attractive people (e.g., models, actresses/actors). ____________

Add up how often these questions are true for you. Then see to what degree you appreciate your body: never, seldom, sometimes, often, always.

*Body Appreciation Scale-2 by Tracy Tylka and Nichole Wood-Barcalow

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Monday, January 26, 2015 in Body Image/Self-Image | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

I Hate My Body. So What Can I Do About It?

by Maria's Last Diet

What do you think of your body? Yes, you heard right. Despite being overweight are you satisfied with your body? Not many women who are overweight can say they have a good body image. Being overweight makes it difficult to love your body and think of it as beautiful, satisfying, strong, and fitting.

Cellulite_Fat-Women-in-Swimsuit-Beach__IMG_8890-150x150 Dissatisfaction with your body leads to a variety of consequences. Body dissatisfaction affects your self-esteem, optimism, compassion for yourself, interest in being proactive, the likelihood of having positive feelings, and satisfaction with life in general. It interferes with paying attention to hunger and satiation signals. Your bad body image may also deprive you of sexual satisfaction and motivation to engage in physical activity. On top of all this, body dissatisfaction can result in anxiety and shame about your physique, repeated body checking, over-scrutinizing your body, and weaker defenses against general appearance ideals.

So what can you do if you’re overweight and the deck of cards your dealing with is stacked against you? You can go ahead and lose your unwanted weight. For sure this is a flippant answer. Nevertheless, losing your unwanted weight is the right answer. And it’s a dependable answer too for establishing a more positive body image.

If you need help to lose your unwanted 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 Sunday, January 25, 2015 in Body Image/Self-Image | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Fat Talk Is Not a Good Weight Loss Strategy

by Maria's Last Diet

“I’m so fat.” “No, you’re not.” “I, not you, am really the fat one here. Just look at all of this arm flab.”

Fat talk. Back and forth it goes between you and a friend or between you and a family member. You make disparaging comments about your weight and your body and the other person refutes your self-criticism. Or the other person may respond to you bad- mouthing your body by disparaging her own body.

What’s the sense of fat talking? It looks like disparaging your body and your weight facilitates your interaction with another woman in a self-humbling way. But at the same time you're using your self-consciousness and concern about your weight and body in this socially acceptable manner to feel less vulnerable to shame and other weight loss motivators. Does this mean that fat talk removes the incentive to reduce your weight? Yes, it does.  

Take this short quiz and see how much fat talk you engage in.

A lot To a great extent Somewhat Very little Not at all

When I am with friends or family I complain that…

I am fat
I am not in shape
my arms are too flabby
I eat too much
I have fat rolls
my clothes are too tight
I eat fattening foods
I have a big butt
my jeans make me look fat
I wish I had your thighs
I feel too big all over
my stomach sticks out too much

What are your favorite fat talk lines? And please don’t say you have none.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Saturday, January 24, 2015 in Body Image/Self-Image | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

What’s the Weight Loss Psychology Behind Weight Loss Behavior?

by Maria's Last Diet

When you go to lose weight, what you will be doing won’t be fully formed. Don’t be fooled into thinking that just because you’re on a weight loss diet plan what you have to do to lose weight is already spelled out. The weight loss behavior you will be using to accomplish eating on the diet is anything but certain, especially at the outset and when you're faced with challenges.

Your weight loss behavior, weight loss thinking, weight loss emotion, and weight loss motivation will be new and different from your old weight gaining behavior where you ate too much food or too many fattening foods. You will have to take these unformed weight loss thoughts and actions of yours and form them into the kind of weight loss behavior that makes it possible for you to eat in compliance with your weight loss diet plan. Then and only then can you lose the unwanted weight you want to lose.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Tuesday, January 13, 2015 | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Is the Key to Weight Loss Sticking to It?

by Maria's Last Diet

When you try to stick to your weight loss plan, you will see just how much mental and emotional “getting yourself to do it” is involved. Adhering to your weight loss plan requires setting goals, constructing sub-goals, and having success in reaching these goals. You will be working your plans, adjusting sub-goals, monitoring your thoughts and behaviors day in and day out.

You’ll be facing barriers to sticking to it, and you’ll need good ways to get around these barriers or solutions to dismantle them. You will run up against many things that test your resolve. Your moods, emotions, beliefs, thoughts, and behavior will all be tests of “getting yourself to do it.”

Sticking to it is such an important factor that weight loss research has found it doesn’t matter what diet you go on. You can probably lose weight on any one of the diets available on the market. What matters is whether or not you adhere to the particular diet or weight loss method you choose.

To “get yourself to do it,” you will have to get a handle on such things as personal balance, the impact of your beliefs on persistence, situation-specific reactions, preparing counterarguments, developing mental toughness, the value of self-awareness, and the need to sometimes disengage. This list of potential to-do’s goes on: dealing with regrets and self-criticism, eliminating out-of-control eating, doing something about cravings, making weight loss into a learning experience, getting rid of emotional eating, keeping up your motivation, and learning from diet cheats.

It’s no wonder that it’s so hard to achieve weight loss. But if you can get yourself to stick to it, you can.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Friday, January 09, 2015 in Sticking with it | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Food and Feelings—Seeing Food Through Your Feelings

by Maria's Last Diet

How true is it for you that what you see right before your very own eyes is determined in large part by your emotions and motivations? As you probably know, upsetting mood states and relationship problems can make comfort foods look much more appealing to you than the diet food you’ve been eating. Your emotion and motivation can also affect the way you perceive your weight loss diet. Take note that on some days your diet seems so hard, like a steep hill that will take too much energy to climb. And on other days your weight loss diet appears to be a piece of cake.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Wednesday, January 07, 2015 in Emotions and Eating | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

Women’s Weight Loss Essential

by Maria's Last Diet

What above all else will make it possible for you to lose weight?

It’s “getting yourself to do it.” That’s what.

“Getting yourself to do it” is primarily a psychological course of action.

The very first psychological step you have to take to lose weight is to “get yourself to” START. A good start comes from being able to support your well-meaning intentions.

When you try to STICK TO IT, you will be replacing old behaviors with new behaviors.The psychology in this phase of weight loss is built into a series of actions and steps for you to take.

In the KEEP IT OFF phase you will no longer be losing weight. Gone will be the safety net of a weight loss diet and the motivational satisfaction of losing weight. More than ever, keeping your lost weight off is the time to have all your psychology working for you.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Monday, January 05, 2015 in How to Get There | Permalink | TrackBack (0)

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Weight Loss Methods Off the Beaten Track

A Crime Against Women When They Weigh Too Much

The Gift of Successful Weight Loss—Do Some Women Have It and Some Don’t?

Going from Body Dissatisfaction to Body Satisfaction—Check it Out

I Hate My Body. So What Can I Do About It?

Fat Talk Is Not a Good Weight Loss Strategy

What’s the Weight Loss Psychology Behind Weight Loss Behavior?

Is the Key to Weight Loss Sticking to It?

Food and Feelings—Seeing Food Through Your Feelings

Women’s Weight Loss Essential

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