Maria's Last Diet

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.

by Maria's Last Diet

The very first thing you have to do to make your weight loss plan work, of course, is to start. This might sound pretty simple-minded to you. Everyone knows that to lose weight you have to start, right? But starting a weight loss routine, while you might know that you have to do it, can be awfully hard to do. Your intention isn’t something you always follow. Starting the weight loss process is not only hard to get yourself to do, it is also hard to get it right. It is not uncommon when you do it and get it right, to hear yourself think, “this is a good start,” with a congratulatory tone to your thought.

What goes into a good start in order to honor your intention to lose weight? How many starting features can you think of? Here are a few. There is being committed, which is always a good way to start. Then there is your motivation. Knowing you are motivated gives you confidence. That’s right, you need confidence. Motivation, though, does more than inspire confidence; it is what powers your behavior. Then there is skill. You will need skill in selecting the best weight loss plan, one you can imagine yourself starting and sticking with. There is also skill involved in breaking any old pattern of eating that may threaten your start.

Of course, you will have to address emotional issues that can keep you from starting like how you’ll deal with feeling deprived or feeling scared or feeling worried. There are plenty of emotional issues that can pop up at the starting stage. If they’re going to pop up, let them. It’s better to know them beforehand then to have them work behind the scenes to derail your start.

It’s always important to ask yourself if you have enough of what it takes to start. Or do you have some more work to do on your commitment, your motivation, your skill, and your emotions? As you can see there is a lot more to starting than meets the eye. Just going ahead and starting may not be the best idea, unless you’re really ready to do so.

    — an excerpt from  99 Essential Weight Loss Blogposts

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

by Maria's Last Diet

What would you do if you wanted to run a 5K race? That’s 3.1 miles. So what would you do? And don’t use the old line, “you’d lie down until the urge goes away.” Well, first off you’d probably prepare—mentally as well as physically. You’d train, wouldn’t you? You’d train real hard and as smart as you can, making sure you didn’t put too much pressure on yourself to do things you weren’t ready for.   

If you have weight to lose, this is how to diet too. Don’t be so desperate to lose weight that you plunge right into a diet without a period of preparation first. Training for weight loss can be just like you’d train for a 5K race. Not only will you need to build up your stamina and endurance, you will also be working on how to stay motivated to lose weight.

To make sure you have the weight loss success you want, bear in mind that it’s best to put in the time and effort and prepare for how to diet just like you would if you were running a long distance race. 

by Maria's Last Diet

You might want to shed those extra pounds, some from your stomach, some from your thighs, and some from your backside. But you may not be ready to diet. To determine if indeed you are not ready to diet, try rating yourself on the following fifteen statements using the rating scale below.

4 – very much like me
3 – like me
2 – unlike me
1 – very much unlike me


1. Maybe I am a little too heavy, but I don’t mind.
2. Everyone is a little too heavy these days. So what’s the big deal?
3. When you get older, it’s not unusual to love life with a few extra pounds.
4. There are people who are much heavier than I am, so why fret?
5. I really like my food and the way I eat.
6. It would change my personality for the worse.
7. There are much worse things in the world than being fat.
8. I change the channel when I see a program about health and weight.
9. Dieting is boring. I need something more stimulating.
10. I don’t know any good diets.
11. The effort it takes me to lose weight makes me think it’s genetic.
12. Everyone has at least one bad habit that she has to keep. Why not this one.
13. It’s too late for me to stop the way I eat. I’ve been eating this way for years.
14. I can’t possibly lose weight right after I’ve had such a difficult time.
15. Who wants to deprive herself in order to lose weight?

What did you find out? How closely do these statements describe you? If the majority of these statements were more like you than not, it means you still have a way to go to get yourself ready to diet.

by Maria's Last Diet

I know I have to lose some weight. That’s for sure. I’ve known this for a long time. I’m embarrassed to say, though, I’m not ready yet.

You may not understand but I’ve been thinking about doing something about my weight off and on for quite a long time, over a year, or maybe it’s been two years already.

I use all the ways in which I’m suffering from carrying around this much weight to tell myself I should get going. But I’m not ready yet.

Just yesterday, a good friend who knows what I’ve been going through suggested I start the process of weight loss by trying to keep my weight right where it is. In other words, she thinks if you can control your weight, this is a legitimate way to begin the weight loss process.

She’s certainly got me thinking. This is a much easier way in. I can feel how right this is for me because I no longer feel so blocked, so stymied. Thanks, Vanessa.

You can’t just wing it and expect good results. Very seldom does something like this happen. Preparation is the key. Having what it takes is mandatory.

Weight loss is one of those things like anything else in life that you have to prepare for. No way can you wing it. But that’s just what so many people do. They get a hold of a diet plan and an exercise regimen and they jump in without the necessary personal skills to make a go of it.

Losing your unwanted weight requires a change in your behavior, and changing your weight-gaining and weight-maintaining behavior can’t be done without using psychology to lose weight. The psychology we are talking about here refers to lots of different actions you will be taking to make weight loss possible. For example, you will have to have what it takes to face and fix your resistance and ambivalence to changing your eating behavior. Having what it takes in this case may mean closer, more careful monitoring, developing sub-goals rather than trying to go for the whole ball of wax, making sure you have lots of success so you don’t get too frustrated or filled with failure that you give up, and many other good psychological weight loss strategies.

The next time you try to lose some weight be sure you prepare. If you’re in the midst of a weight loss routine as we speak, there is still time to prepare. Remember, preparation for behavior change requires using psychology to lose weight.

For more on using psychology to lose 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 will point you in the right direction.

by Maria's Last Diet

Do you rush to start dieting once you made up your mind to do something about your unwanted weight? If so, perhaps you should take a page from the corporate manual, which explicitly states that any new job or task requires a period of training.

Have you ever thought about training yourself for the weight loss process? What would you do first? You’d decide, of course. But after that? What would come next in your weight loss training routine? You would want to include some training sessions on planning, some on practice, and you would probably be guided by some sort of training syllabus, which would be an inclusive listing of all that losing weight entails.

Now the most important use of this pre-weight loss training would be to take what you learned, developed, and incorporated into your weight loss repertoire and have it be useful for the actual process of weight loss. Do you think you can do this? And, would it be helpful to you?