Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

The research: Learning improves when you learn something with the intention of teaching what you learn to others, even fictitious others (in the professional journal, Contemporary Educational Psychology 2016 in press).

The rationale: If you expect to teach what you learn, you might very well monitor the quality of your understanding more, think more deeply about what you’re learning, process what you’re learning more actively, fill in gaps in your knowledge, and develop corollaries.

The application: What would happen do you think if you tried to teach others how to get themselves to do what it takes to lose weight? As a result of intending to teach what you learn, would you be more aware of, perhaps even more able to do what it takes to get yourself to lose weight?

The invitation: Why don’t you try this and find out.

by Maria's Last Diet

No matter how much you want to lose weight, ask yourself how much you value the status quo. What would you do without the snacks, the extra helpings, the eating late at night, the sweets, the salty stuff, the binging, secret eating, eating out four or five times a week?

So don’t expect that you’ll have sufficient motivation to change all this. You may rush into a diet and hop up on the treadmill, but, in the face of how much you value your current pattern of eating, the treadmill and the diet won’t do it for you.

The main issue here is how will you get yourself to want to change where you currently are with your eating to the kind of eating that promotes weight loss. “Getting yourself to want to change” is a function of your personal psychology’s effect on how to get motivated to lose weight.

If you want to know more about the psychology of weight loss, 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.

by Maria's Last Diet

Where are you in your concern for losing weight? Are you not even concerned about losing weight, and at a point where you don’t give a thought about changing your ways in regard to eating and weight loss? Or are you thinking about losing weight, mulling over the possibility, yet not ready to do anything more at this time than consider the possibility. Nevertheless, if this is where your concern is, your concern has been aroused. Now where to go from here?

If you get even more concerned about losing weight, perhaps you begin next to plan what you will do about losing weight? You may find yourself thinking about leaving the past behind and focusing more on the future and what it will take to accomplish the future? If you’re in the throes of doing all this, your concern about losing weight has taken you to preparing to go ahead see what it will take for you to lose weight.

So you prepare, and preparing helps you find ways, which will enable you to do something about losing weight. More than ever now, you are concerned about actually making the changes necessary for you to lose weight. Since you already prepared by visualizing the future you and planning what you have to do to make the future you a reality, all that’s left is for you to go ahead and make the changes.

Where are you in your concern to lose weight?

by Maria's Last Diet

Either you got it or you don’t.

How true is this when you are trying to lose weight?

“I’m going to lose 5 lbs in the next two weeks.”

But then you don’t live up to your expectation.

Or do you say to yourself that this time you will stay on a diet and reach your weight loss goal.

But then you don’t.

What do you think to yourself about these personal failures? Do you end up thinking you don’t have what it takes to lose weight?

One big cause of weight loss failure is thinking, “If I don’t get it, I won’t get it.”

What about a line of thought that goes like this: “If I didn’t get it, I think I can learn to get it.” Have you tried this? You can let yourself off the “I don’t have what it takes” hook. If you do succeed in unhooking yourself from this kind of thinking, you will probably incur benefits like easing off on yourself, not holding your feet to the fire, and feeling a lot freer to explore and learn.

by Maria's Last Diet

Hooray for small changes! Aiming for small changes when you are trying to lose weight is the way to go. Of course, you probably think that big changes will get you there faster. Changes like reducing your calorie intake by 500 to 1000 calories per day, skipping meals, and going on a cleansing fast for a number of days can make you feel like your going great guns on losing your unwanted weight.

Small changes, however, are less taxing, make it more likely you will accomplish them, and offer many more chances for success. What are some of these small changes you might aim for? You probably already know some small changes you can make. Here, though, is a brief list: smaller portions, smaller plates, exchange regular soda for diet soda, and other similar foodie tricks of the trade. Then there are the small personal changes having to do with who you are and why you’ve been eating in weight gaining ways. Here’s a small list of some personal changes that can have an impact on your weight: make little improvements to your self-esteem, make minor changes in troubling relationships, and give some nonfood method of comforting yourself a try.

So bow gracefully out of having to make those big changes. Do yourself a favor and try some small changes, and I bet you’ll be singing their praises.

by Maria's Last Diet

Did you ever think of the psychological factor of “willingness to change” as a key determinant of dieting success? How willing are you to change? Change your eating habits. Change the kind of thinking that leads to overeating or snacking on fattening foods.

What is willingness to change, anyway? It’s probably a state of mind, don’t you think? But what’s it made up of? How do you come by it? Can you summon it up or do you have to already have it as some form of readiness? Everyone wishes they had willingness to change when they need it.

Here’s how some women came by their “willingness to change.”

Woman #1. She began sticking to her diet in a consistent way when she began standing up for herself with her husband. She practiced standing up to many people outside of her home, but her husband had been the last barrier to full-fledged self-assertiveness.

Woman #2 was surprised and pleased with the fact that she was losing weight despite not being over her junk food addiction. She attributed her weight loss to vigorous workouts. But there were factors other than physical exercise that were psychologically closer to “willingness to change”. She had become far less self-critical and therefore less in need of healing by soothing herself with food.

Woman #3 was able to be more vulnerable, far less guarded, and she no longer had to chew her husband’s head off or even feel like trading insults with him. She, too, like woman #2 didn’t attribute her rather substantial weight loss and diet adherence to anything psychological. As far as she was concerned, her loss of weight was due to exercise and diet.

What these three women had in common was they established a “willingness to change.” In their cases, they each had to successfully address a psychological issue that stood in the way of being willing to change in order to diet well and lose weight.

by Maria's Last Diet

Do you expect that when you put in a certain amount of time and effort to lose weight the results will be proportional? But what if change doesn’t take place in a linear fashion? What if loss of weight and changes in eating habits are nonlinear? In other words, a little effort might result in a big change and a big effort might generate only a small change.

Keep these thoughts in mind. They should help you from becoming disappointed when nothing or just a little is happening.