Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

What else can you do toward helping yourself to lose weight besides diet and exercise?

Have you ever said to yourself, “ I have to have a good day?” In other words, to do what you have to do in order to lose weight, you must have a day that does not interfere with sticking to your weight loss routine. The day must go well. And it’s not only the “sticking to it” part that counts. High on your list of what constitutes a good day might be what it takes for you to stick to your weight loss routine comfortably, competently, and with a great deal of motivation.

What is a good day for you? Does it involve relationships, frustration level, family matters, mood, motivation, happiness, and lots of other kinds of “good day” experiences? For most people, it does. So please keep in mind that having a day in which you feel psychologically fit should be an absolutely necessary part of your weight loss plan.

by Maria's Last Diet

Janie couldn’t get herself to do much of anything. She hadn’t made anything to eat, nor straightened up her apartment. She knew she should go food shopping, but she didn’t feel like it. She had gotten out of bed as usual but then just sat in her favorite chair all morning daydreaming and running some things over and over in her mind.

This was one of those days, she said to herself. She knew such days all too well, having had a lot of them, especially over the past four or five years. These were the times when her life ground to a halt. While in the midst of this step-back from life, Janie worried terribly that the state she was in would never go away. She would be like this for the rest of her life. At least this is what it felt like to her.

The times when Janie let herself go weren’t only when she did virtually nothing for the day. She also had let herself go in regard to her weight, which she increased by at least seventy pounds. Letting herself go looked like it was Janie’s way of living out the fact that there was something very wrong for her. From an outsider’s point of view, letting herself go pointed to Janie’s inability to care for herself consistently and well enough. What do you think Janie is trying to express by letting herself go?

by Maria's Last Diet

Do you routinely scan your surroundings for food opportunities? Do you know just where to look? Are you well attuned by now to the various food cues in your environment? Do the food cues stand out more boldly than other aspects of your surroundings? Will you look long before you leap, paving the way for the food foray to come later on? And when later on does come and you go for those goodies, you might be aware of just the few thoughts that preceded your actions. You won’t realize all the prep work you did to keep yourself trained and ready for the auspicious food-in-your-mouth moment that is upon you.

by Maria's Last Diet

What does your lifestyle have to do with it? If lifestyle is the way you live, what effect does the way you live your life have on losing excess weight and keeping weight off? Have you thought about it this way?

There are lots of lifestyle factors that can determine whether you will have successful weight loss. One of the biggest is the amount of daily stress. This includes little stresses as well as big stresses because little stresses or hassles surely add up. You can get so used to the stresses and strains in your life that you don’t even see them as something that wears on you. Another lifestyle influence on weight is the amount of pleasure you get from engaging in your daily activities.

See what lifestyle factors are having an effect on your ability to lose your unwanted weight. Get to know what’s helpful about your lifestyle and also what harmful lifestyle factors are making it difficult to lose weight.

Do you know you are part of an omnivorous, generalist species? Omnivorous because you, as a rule, feed on food from both plants and animals. Generalist because you consume such a wide range of food. Furthermore, your bias is most likely for sweet tastes rather than bitter tastes. You almost certainly eat foods that you like and do not eat food you do not like. In these ways you are very much like everyone else when it comes to eating.

Unfortunately, you are very much like everyone else too if you are an overweight person. Approximately two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese and almost half the world’s population is overweight or obese.

In some ways it’s okay to be like everyone else, and in some ways it’s not.

by Maria's Last Diet

Here we go again. Change your lifestyle. Yeh, right.

Take the case of a woman in her late thirties, divorced with a teenage son. She works hard, but doesn’t earn a lot of money. There is no man currently in her life, but she does have lots of women friends. She needs to lose about eighty pounds. That’s a lot of weight, but she’d like to lose all of it.

Here’s the problem. Her lifestyle is governed by her fluctuating moods. Sometimes she is laid low by a cycle of depression. She keeps a good face on for friends and co-workers. They can’t tell she is feeling depressed. Only she can tell. Inside she is dragging. It’s a struggle for her to get going in the morning, even on a work morning. On the weekend, she sleeps in, and feels guilty that she isn’t getting up for her son. She feels better if she eats. Not just eat, eat, but binge eat.

Depression isn’t the only thing messing with this woman’s lifestyle. There are her anxieties as well. She keeps a good face on about her anxieties just like she does with her depression. No one is the wiser. She suffers terribly from worry and fears getting into her old panic attack mode again. To feel less anxious, she eats and drinks (alcohol) way too much.

She feels bad about herself as a person. She feels like a mess. She is terribly self-critical, a habit that has been ingrained since she was a child. Often, she doesn’t even realize just how self-critical she is being. She tears herself down until—guess what—she makes herself cycle through anxiety and depression all over again.

So what do you say to this woman who wants to lose a lot of weight? Change your lifestyle. Yeh, right.

by Maria's Last Diet

Not able to lose weight? Change your lifestyle. Yeh, right. How?

Dieting and exercise regularly, and live a reasonable life. Yeh, right. How?

Easier said than done.

What if you’re used to going out to dinner three or four nights each week? You go out with your boyfriend and have drinks and dinner. That’s part of your weekly routine. Although you and your boyfriend worry about drinking too much and eating too much, and you talk about staying home, cooking and eating at home, and not eating and drinking so much, you don’t put this into practice.

It’s hard to change your lifestyle. You may intend to change it, especially when the consequences of your lifestyle make you uncomfortable. For example: you and your boyfriend often argue when you get home from the restaurant and you’ve had too much to drink. The arguments are awful and they make you fall out of love with your boyfriend.

You’ve gained so much weight over the years— fifty-plus pounds, and eleven or twelve of these pounds in the past year. But still you go out to dinner too often, drink too much, argue terribly, feel unloved and un-loving, feel bloated, and have a food and drink hangover the next morning.

Start living a healthy lifestyle. Good recommendation. But, how?