Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

All right. So you were not entirely rational when you picked a diet to go on. You went with your gut feeling that this diet or that diet was the right one for you. Or, you were thinking about losing your unwanted weight for a long time, and just last week you decided to do something about it. It felt right to you. Now is the time, you said, and you went ahead and started.

What is with this intuitive decision-making? Is it right for you to simply go with it without knowing how you made the decision, when it was based on intuition only?

Knowing without being able to explain how and why you know is a tricky business. It means that you are able to rely on certain information that you are not aware of knowing. This is like being fluent in a language. You know the language and you respond right away without taking any time to analyze. At least, it doesn’t seem like analyzing because it’s so instantaneous. You’ve been there before, lots of times. You’ve heard the words, the phrasing, the intonation. You know it, and you jump right to the conclusion, and respond in kind: “Sure, I’ll go to the dance with you.”

Just like the conclusion you jump to when it comes to your native language, you jump to the conclusion about which diet to choose and when to start a weight loss routine. You don’t know why you chose what you chose or started when you started. But you’ve been there many times before, in all types of situations. You’ve started many things in your life and you’ve made lots of different choices. When it came to the diet or to a starting date, it just felt right to you, and you knew there was a lot of truth to it. You couldn’t explain it more than that; and it felt great to be able to trust your intuition.

by Maria's Last Diet

Do you think watching how someone else goes about losing her unwanted weight would help you? What about visualizing yourself doing what it takes to lose unwanted weight? Would that help you?

Both observational learning and visual imaging can help you anticipate what you have to do in your weight-loss regimen. Most importantly, they can give you the feel for the types of “moves” and effort you will have to make. The help comes from the fact that observation and imagery use similar brain networks to those you would use to do the weight-loss activity yourself.

Watching others and “watching” yourself through visualization are good ways to keep the rhythms of the weight-loss process right at your fingertips. The more automatic your weight-loss process, the less slogging your way through it you’ll have to do.

by Maria's Last Diet

What does it take to get through the moments, the everyday moment-by-moment moving along of the process of weight loss?

You get through each moment if you are in tune and know what to do. Your attunement, if you have it, happens fairly automatically because it has to be right there in the moment. You may not even be aware of what you are doing. You just do it before you know it. So readiness is the key, and readiness implies preparation.

Often a goal you have will prepare you just fine, because you’ve applied this goal in the preceding moments of the preceding days and weeks, perhaps even months, right up to the present moment. Your goal is there ready to guide your behavior in the current moment. But goals will get tested by some moments, like moments of feeling tempted, being moody, getting distracted, having little motivation, and your goal will fail the test.

What is another way that prepares you for that moment in the weight-loss process where you will be tested? Curiously enough it is probably your experience with important other people in your life. Take for example your family. What happened between you and your father or mother or sibling when you came up against a hard-to-get-through moment? Did someone step up to help? Did you get criticized? Were you given the impression that it was too hard, when it might not have been too hard? Was someone in tune enough with you to help you in just the way you needed to be helped? Did a family member give you a new way to get over the hurdle?

There have been, of course, people other than your family who have influenced you, been there with you, interacted with you, and from whom you took part of who you are when it comes to getting through the moment-to-moment process of weight loss. An “I can do” attitude is part of who you are because a friend was there for you when you needed her. Doing all the things you did together with your husband a hundred times in a hundred different ways helped you when it came to the ingenuity it took to bypass the impulse to cheat and instead stick to the weight-loss routine.

It’s your goals and your experience with others that can make the moment-to-moment difference in what you bring to the weight-loss process: an even mood, a feeling that you can do it, ingenuity, patience, and all the other personal characteristics of yours that you use to move along from moment-to-moment on your weight-loss journey.

by Maria's Last Diet

In the moment.

This is where everything takes place.

Being tempted. Feeling out of it. Too tired to make breakfast. Just got upset. Rushing to get there. Worried. Feeling too relaxed. Harried. No time for yourself. Heated argument. No wilpower. Insulted. Carry on half-heartedly. Expecting too much of yourself. Reacted badly. Let yourself off the hook. Empty. Desperate. Lazy. Submissive. Too eager. Under the weather. Unwilling to try again. Can’t think of what to do. Too frustrated. Lack energy. Insincere. Crabby. Feeling forced. Moody. Envious. Irate.

Weight loss is a process and each moment is what determines whether you’ll start the process of weight loss, stick to it, and then maintain weight loss.

by Maria's Last Diet

The split-second world of trying to lose some weight: What’s it like for you?

Here’s where you are up to your ears in the details of your interaction with the weight-loss process. Thinking. Feeling. Doing. Resisting, Moving ahead. Falling back a step. This is where the real weight-loss process takes place—in the moment-to-moment interaction you have with yourself and your efforts to reduce your weight.

A lot of this moment-to-moment stuff goes unnoticed by you. It just happens before you know it, and sometimes you find yourself on a course that you hadn’t bargained for. You right yourself and get back on the weight-loss track. But old habits die hard, and new habits are hard to come by. You work and work at doing what you set out to do—lose that unwanted weight.

What makes the difference in these moment-to-moment interactions you’re having with the process of weight loss? Can you answer this question for yourself? If you know the answer or if you find the answer, then go ahead and bottle it, and use it all you want.

by Maria's Last Diet

Yes, you have intentions and you have goals and you have your commitment, and you even have plans; they all guide you in your weight-loss endeavor. But you can't really predict, especially at the outset, that any of these things will get you to where you want to go.

It is only when you actually experience your moment to moment weight-loss efforts as enjoyable and you are head-over-heels engaged in what you're doing that you become more certain that you will keep your weight-loss process going. The quality of your weight-loss experience makes all the difference in the world to whether you will make a go of it.

by Maria's Last Diet

How do you feel when you're involved in the process of weight loss? What's it like for you to take a weight-loss step like planning your meals for the day, or making sure you're in the right frame of mind to stick to your plan this week, or starting to think about how you will handle the dinner party that's coming up Saturday?

Are you absorbed? Does it feel good? Do you find what you're doing enjoyable and intrinsically rewarding? Do you want to do what you're doing well?

If you're having this kind of positive experience with the process of weight loss, then it is likely that you perceive your skills and your ability to lose unwanted weight as a good match for the weight-loss challenges you're facing.