by Maria's Last Diet
Just because you have a weight loss diet plan, don’t be fooled into thinking you’re home free. Far from it. With a weight loss diet plan you will know what food to eat and what food not to eat. But you won’t know how to do it.
After all, it’s your behavior you will be using to go on and stay on the diet. Think of it as your weight loss behavior. Weight loss behavior includes weight loss thinking, weight loss motivation, all the feelings you have during the weight loss process, and the action you take. You can have a well-defined diet, but if your weight loss behavior is undecided and as yet unformulated, what then?
Going on a diet will require new and different behavior than what you are used to. On the diet, you won’t be using your familiar weight-gaining behavior. It’s weight-losing behavior you want to apply.
Weight losing behavior, though, is not laid out clearly and specifically in front of you like a weight loss diet. You will find yourself in uncharted territory with behavior that is unknown and unformulated. A perfect illustration of this circumstance is when you say in connection with a diet, “I have to start thinking differently?” Then what do you do about thinking differently? Don’t you have to formulate how you are going to think differently; and eventually how to get yourself to follow through and actually think differently?
Beware! The diet being so carefully formulated and already laid out can easily mislead you into believing the diet should tell you just what to do. Those of you who have dieted before know differently. You must develop the weight loss behaviors that will make this perfectly laid out diet work. Weight loss behaviors are never an inherent part of a diet. You must invent the weight loss behaviors that will power your diet. You will have to work them out step by step from the very way you think to how you will act. You will have to formulate these behaviors and shape them to fit the occasions when you need them. You’ll do this without the benefit of an explicit guide.
Let’s take a look at a universal weight loss behavior you will be dealing with—“doing without?” “Doing without” is unquestioningly an essential weight loss behavior for staying on a diet. “Doing without” stands in direct contrast to your old weight-gaining method of “not doing without.” Your job now is to change your thinking and behaving from “not doing without” to “doing without".
A weight loss diet is all about “doing without,” even if it’s a diet that is not restrictive. Dieting in moderation requires you to abstain from overeating, give up bingeing, and forgo comfort foods and snacks that are fattening. This is the food part of “doing without.” Then there is nonfood “doing without,” like doing without the reward that comfort food used to give you for doing a hard day’s work or relinquishing a chance to kick up your heels and eat off your diet at the 4th of July block party.
How will you handle “doing without?” What will you do when it comes time for your daily reward? How will you go about formulating the weight loss behaviors that will help you “do without” your old weight-gaining eating and weight-gaining thinking and feeling? Perhaps you’ll try something and see if it works. If it works, great! If it doesn’t work, you’ll look for some good feedback and it’s back to the drawing board for you.
Having to formulate the unformulated and make what you devise be a good fit is what causes losing weight to be such a hard task. If only you could use a template for weight loss behavior like you do for diet food. Wouldn’t weight loss be a lot simpler?
Symmetry Press, the publisher of Maria’s Last Diet Blog, is giving away a copy of 99 Essential Weight Loss Blogposts before it’s released.
To enter: Like Symmetry Press' Facebook page and then tell your biggest struggle while dieting. After you've commented, share this post to your own wall.
A random winner will be chosen on June 1st. Must be 18 years or older and living in the continental U.S. to win.
The link to the giveaway is: https://www.facebook.com/SymmetryPress