Maria's Last Diet:

This may seem like a brash statement: all dieters have failed at dieting. But just think about it. Haven’t you failed at dieting, at least once, but probably much more than just once?

What do you say to yourself when you fail? What do you say to yourself when you end your diet prematurely?

This was the subject of research not too long ago. The main questions asked of the research participants were the following.

1. Can you tell me about your dieting history?

2. When would you consider a diet to have failed/when would you consider you were no longer trying to a diet? Could you give an example/ describe a time when this happened?

3. What’s it like when a diet fails/you end a diet?

4. Why do you think diets have failed/ended for you in the past?

5. How do you feel about dieting now?

6. How do you feel about your eating?

How would you answer these questions? Give them a try and see if you find out anything that will help you end diet failure.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Tuesday, September 29, 2015 in Diet psychology, Failure | Permalink

Weight Loss Psychology—Personality Traits That Keep You Stuck

by Maria's Last Diet

Have you ever thought about your personality traits and how they contribute to or cause your weight-gaining and weight-maintaining style of eating? Why don’t you take some time and jot down a few of these traits.

Here are some examples.

You might be fearful. Or you could be indecisive. You may be the kind of person who gives up easily. Perhaps you do mostly what is convenient. Then too you could be an impractical person. Or you might have a personality trait that everyone associates with being overweight; you are greedy and never have enough.

The list of personality traits that you might bring to the table is exhaustive. To name a few more. There’s vanity, narrow-mindedness, immaturity, dishonesty, selfishness, unwilling, undisciplined, unreliable, lazy, resentful, and so on and so forth.

So go ahead and jot down some of your personality traits that contribute to or cause you to be overweight. It’s a good exercise for ferreting out the non-food factors that are always involved when you are overweight and find it difficult to lose weight.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Friday, September 25, 2015 in Personality, Weight loss psychology | Permalink

Weight Loss Rewards—What Are They?

by Maria's Last Diet

What’s the biggest and best reward you’ll get if you lose weight and keep it off for good?
Here are some of the answers that women give.

   Look better
   Feel better
   Be fitter
   Healthier
   Increased energy
   Better self-image
   Lift my self-esteem
   Getting rid of a bad habit
   The change becomes a habit
   No need to work hard at weight control
   Have control over eating and weight
   Extending control to other parts of life

So these are just some of the answers. What would you say is the biggest and best reward you’ll get if you lose weight and keep it off for good?

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Wednesday, September 23, 2015 in Sticking with it | Permalink

Do You Know Your Weight Loss Psychology?

by Maria's Last Diet

If you think losing weight has to do mostly with what you do or don’t put in your mouth, you’d be wrong. Very wrong. Losing weight has mostly to do with your weight loss psychology.

What the heck is weight loss psychology anyway, you might very well ask?

A good way to get acquainted with your weight loss psychology is to write a history of you and food, eating, and weight, and non-food experiences that might very well have contributed to weight gain and to making it difficult for you to lose weight.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Monday, September 21, 2015 in Weight loss psychology | Permalink

Diet Psychology—Did You Ever Think of This?

by Maria's Last Diet

After all your hard work to get started and then to keep at it, what would be the best thing to happen? Lose weight, of course. But there is something else that is equally mind-blowing. Wouldn’t it be when you routinely eat on your new diet? In other words, when eating diet food, actually coming to like it, and you stop needing the old weight-gaining standbys, perhaps even losing the taste for them. In short, what is also a wonderful reward is when all that you’re doing becomes a habit.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Sunday, September 20, 2015 in Diet psychology | Permalink

One of the Steps to Losing Weight is…

by Maria's Last Diet

Mental preparation, of course.

What mental preparation do you make for getting ready to lose weight?

Do you review different methods for losing weight, such as a particular diet, smaller portions, restriction of certain fattening foods, skipping meals, meal replacement products, and only eating at mealtimes with no snacking in between meals?

Do you consider what it will take for you to change your eating habits? Not eat so much. Eat differently. Eat only when hungry. Are you going to rely on willpower? If so, will you have enough when you need it? Will you be good at using your willpower to stick to a weight loss method?

What about your motivation, your commitment, your dedication? How much do you have, and is it enough to make a solid start?

There are other mental preparations you should consider making to get yourself ready for a weight loss routine. They are thoughts and plans for implementing your intentions, knowing what will prove to be an obstacle and deciding what you can do about it, and checking to see if you have the emotional wherewithal your weight loss regimen will require.

It helps to make a list of all the different kinds of mental preparation you will need. Be sure to highlight those mental preparations that are going to be sticking points for you. You’ll have to work exceptionally hard on these.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Friday, September 18, 2015 in Getting Ready | Permalink

A Very, Very Personal Weight Loss Psychology

by Maria's Last Diet

When is “enough enough”?

When I went to the doctor and she said I’m borderline diabetic

When I couldn’t stand myself anymore

When I watched a TV program about how much oil was in a year’s worth of chips

When I passed a store window and saw the reflection of a heavyset woman—me

When I got so tired climbing those three flights of stairs

When I binged and scared myself by feeling too full

When is enough enough?

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Wednesday, September 16, 2015 in Weight loss psychology | Permalink

Weight Cycling and the Diet Psychology Behind It

by Maria's Last Diet

What's the deal? You did a great job losing weight for the first couple of weeks. And now look at what’s happening? You’re back to your old eating habits and you’re gaining the weight back. What’s up with you?

Are you coasting? Putting your attention to other pressing matters? Resting on your laurels? Rewarding yourself for all the hard work you did over the past couple of weeks? Had to spend so much willpower that you have none left?

Weight cycling. Yo-yo dieting. That’s where you are.

Is there a fix for weight cycling? Recent psychological research says there is something you can do about yo-yoing. If you pay more attention to the process of dieting (e.g., what weight loss strategies to use) than to the outcome (e.g., lose such and such number of pounds), you can prevent weight cycling.

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Tuesday, September 15, 2015 in Diet psychology, Weight cycling | Permalink

What’s the Diet Psychology Behind Diet Dabbling?

by Maria's Last Diet

Do you dabble in dieting but still expect to lose all the weight you need to lose? In other words, you’re on a diet here and there, for a brief time last week and again for a few days this week? Or is your dabbling of a different order, like being on a diet all the time? Only the lifelong diet you’re on doesn’t ever get you to where you want to be, weightwise.

What’s the diet psychology for dabblers? Is it paying lip service to losing weight, with the attitude, that’ll do just fine, thank you very much? Could it be a self-sabotaging never being in control of yourself kind of thing? Perhaps the motivation for diet dabbling is a way not to change your eating habits because the way you eat gives you too much of what you really want. In this case, diet dabbling is just a big cover up.

What do you think? Do you dabble in dieting? Does any of this apply to you?

Posted by Maria's Last Diet on Monday, September 14, 2015 in Diet psychology | Permalink

Diet Psychology—What You Should and Shouldn’t Concentrate On

by Maria's Last Diet

You have every intention of not doing it—eating off your diet. You know all to well where your dieting is concerned that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. So you don’t rely entirely on your good intentions. You implement your intentions with plans. You say to yourself, if I am watching TV after dinner tonight and feel like snacking on fattening foods, I will get an apple instead. That’s the plan.

Okay. You’re through with dinner. Dishes are washed and put away and the kids are snuggly tucked in for the night. Time for yourself. It’s Tuesday and your favorite shows are on tonight. You sit down with whatchamacallit and he has prepared for this luxurious break from the day’s events by getting out the usual heavy-duty snack food.

Remember, you have good intentions and plans to implement your good intentions. But when the guy you love and the snacks you love are there just waiting, what’s to get you to actually do what you planned? Isn’t that the million dollar question?

So it’s not good intentions and it’s not the well-designed plan that enable you to eat the apple instead of the cookies or the chips or the ice cream or the candy or a helping of macaroni and cheese left over from the kids’ dinner. What is it exactly that empowers you to switch from fattening snack to diet snack?

Willpower, of course, is one possibility. Another option might be habit. You developed the habit of substituting a diet snack for a fattening snack. But let’s say you didn’t develop such a habit yet. Then what? Are you left with willpower as your only course of action? If so, you and I both know that all too often you don’t have the willpower you need to steer clear of the _________ (you fill in the blank).

What we’re talking about here is the dieter’s big dilemma—how to change her eating (in this case snacking) habits and stay away from the now forbidden old weight-gaining food. Unfortunately, there is no simple solution like good intentions and well laid-out plans. The issue always is how in the world do you get yourself to act on your good intentions and use those plans you made.

If truth be told, and it should be told to dieters all over the world, what you have to do in order to stick to your weight loss plan, snacking and all, is to grow your goal. Your goal, obviously, is to lose weight. To get there you have to have many sub-goals, all eventually adding up to you losing weight. The sub-goals and your final goal need to be fully developed and grown enough to give you the oomph you need when it comes to changing your after-dinner, TV-watching snacking behavior.

The work in dieting, dear dieters everywhere, is not with your intentions and plans, it’s with your goals. And there’s lots of work to be done. There are goals that interfere so you can’t focus on just your goal to lose weight. There are weaknesses in your goal to lose weight that you should identify and work on. There are goals seemingly unrelated to your goal to lose weight that might need to be worked out first. There are also goals you are unaware of that are challenging what you are trying to do consciously.

It’s goals, goals, goals, and not so much intentions and plans to carry out your intentions.

If you want to learn more about goals, 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, September 13, 2015 | Permalink

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Diet Psychology and Repeated Diet Failure

Weight Loss Psychology—Personality Traits That Keep You Stuck

Weight Loss Rewards—What Are They?

Do You Know Your Weight Loss Psychology?

Diet Psychology—Did You Ever Think of This?

One of the Steps to Losing Weight is…

A Very, Very Personal Weight Loss Psychology

Weight Cycling and the Diet Psychology Behind It

What’s the Diet Psychology Behind Diet Dabbling?

Diet Psychology—What You Should and Shouldn’t Concentrate On

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