Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

When you reach goal weight, will you be able to counteract any gain in weight by reducing the amount of food you eat?

Will you be satisfied with a substantially lower weight, even though you didn’t reach your actual weight loss goal?

When faced with stressful situations, will you be able to sustain a weight-maintaining pattern of eating?

Will you be able to cope with your moods and emotions without turning to food?

If you thought carefully about each of these questions before you answered them and then answered with a “yes,” you will be one of the lucky ones—less likely to gain back the weight you lost.

by Maria's Last Diet

Can you say this? “I am staying at my goal weight and I can eat anything I want.”

How is this possible? Really? Is it possible once you maintain the weight you lost to eat anything you want? Is this a trick question? If not, what’s the secret?

There’s no secret. You can eat anything you want if, as a result of the way you went about losing weight, what you want has changed. This is the case, for example, if you had practice at cheating on your diet. Yes, you heard right—practice cheating on your diet. Of course, you had to use your diet cheat as a learning experience. Meaning, you learned to cheat and then you learned to go right back on your diet, maybe you even did a little extra dieting to make up for the cheat. Practice with diet cheats is very much like what you will go through when you’re no longer on a diet, and you are at the weight loss maintenance stage.

A diet cheat is an opportunity to change what you want. You may want a special fattening food. Okay, go for it. But then back to the diet, maybe even dieting a little harder to make up for the cheat.

Being able to maintain weight loss depends on these early maintenance practices. It depends on your ability to eat a little more and then a little less, very roughly keeping your weight in balance.

During weight loss maintenance, you may still refer to eating a little more of something as a cheat. But in weight loss maintenance reality you don’t have to call eating too much or eating some fattening food a cheat. It’s just what it is, eating too much or eating something pretty fattening. You have to know how to compensate for going overboard, so you can maintain your lost weight. Planned and practiced diet cheats are what help you develop this skill.

And remember, it’s going to be impossible to keep your weight right at goal weight. No one can keep her weight at the exact number of pounds. There will always be some deviation from goal weight, sometimes more, sometimes less. Being able to keep the little more and little less in balance is when you can say, “I can eat anything I want.”

by Maria's Last Diet

When you lose all the weight you want to lose, what’s next? Well, you have to maintain your weight loss.

During the weight loss phase, you most likely worked hard to replace your old weight-gaining eating with the new weight-losing form of eating. If you reached your goal weight, you must have successfully changed your eating habits? Or so you think.

During the time you were losing weight, you might have had help from a diet, which gave you a structured food plan for what to eat and how much to eat. You might also have been motivated by number of pounds lost. And then there was that goal weight you aspired to that you were bringing closer and closer to reality.

Weight loss maintenance gives you none of these aids. There is no weight loss diet to follow because you don’t want to lose any more weight. You’re freer as far as what foods and what amounts to eat. You’re no longer motivated by number of pounds lost. Your motivation changes from pounds lost to keeping your weight right where it is. There is no goal weight that you’re reaching for. The goal is to keep the status quo.

It's no wonder that weight loss maintenance is the challenge it is.

by Maria's Last Diet

You might as well say that regaining lost weight is a recurring consequence of losing weight. Weight regain doesn’t just happen once or twice. It’s a persistent problem. Only twenty percent of people who lose weight keep it off permanently. And they do it usually after multiple tries.

If weight loss with weight regain was a disease, it would be a relapsing disease with repeated relapses over the course of time. There would be no remission and no recovery for eighty percent of the cases, just the prospect of relapse. This high relapse rate would certainly qualify weight loss with weight regain as a chronic disease.

Knowing that weight regain will be the most likely result from weight loss, what can you do to change this? You could, of course, not lose weight. This option is a way to avoid the problem altogether. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you’ll definitely have to solve the problem of weight loss maintenance.

For a more in-depth look at how to maintain 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

For women who “recover” from being overweight is there an increased risk of becoming overweight again?

It is an established fact that people who recover from depression have an increased risk of becoming depressed again. For people who had one episode of depression the risk of becoming depressed again can be as high as 50%, 70% for those who had two previous episodes, and 90% in those who had three previous episodes.

That’s depression. But what about being overweight? The research clearly shows that approximately 80% of people who lose weight regain the weight they lost. Some regain even more weight than they lost. The risk is there the first time out. No need to wait for the second and third episodes. It’s back to being overweight if you can’t maintain good weight control after losing weight.

For help with weight loss maintenance, please go to “maintain weight loss” in The Reading Room and “going back to old ways” in 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, especially 99 Essential Weight Loss Blogposts and Psych Your Diet: A Daily Dose. Volume 3. Psych Yourself to Keep It Off.

If you need more specific help, email us at and we’ll point you in the right direction.

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

A weight-gaining eating pattern that leads to becoming overweight or even obese is a terribly prevalent pattern of eating in the United States and worldwide. Despite the proliferation of dieting and exercise opportunities, there is frequent return to weight-gaining eating behavior leading to overweight or obesity once again. So it is a must when you are engaged in any weight loss regimen to do what you can to prevent a return to a pattern of eating you just gave up.

Laying an old pattern of eating to rest requires lots of hard work, plenty of perseverance, and a good deal of the right kind of thinking. You put it all out there in order to lose weight, but you also have to keep at it if you want to maintain weight loss. Various stresses in your daily life act as triggers to set your old eating pattern in motion. It is necessary therefore not only to develop good ways to cope with such stresses, it is also imperative that you recover from these stresses when you don’t adequately cope with them.

by Maria's Last Diet

Most people who want to lose weight are able to lose at least some of their unwanted weight. They work hard at staying on their weight loss routine and perhaps even add in regular periods of exercise. Then there are some people who can adhere to their weight loss regimen long enough to reach goal weight. These people lose the amount of weight they set out to lose. Few people, however, are able to sustain their weight loss without regaining weight even after they work hard and reach their goal weight.  

The statistics show only 20 percent of people who lose weight are able to keep off permanently the weight they lose. Twenty percent means that only 1 out of 5 achieve permanent weight loss maintenance. Now you can imagine if you were having some type of heart procedure and the doctor told you that your chance of success was only 20 percent, what you would do?

So why are you, along with everyone else, so willing to engage in a procedure where you can expect only a 20 percent success rate? For long-term weight loss maintenance it has become obvious that there needs to be a new, more effective procedure, a procedure that gets results. Dieting and exercise just aren’t cutting the mustard. This is not surprising, since the single biggest factor involved in long-term, permanent weight loss is being capable of sustaining the changes in behavior needed to prevent regaining lost weight.

For more on maintaining lost 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’ll point you in the right direction.

by Maria's Last Diet

It was a case of robbery, and this time she vowed to solve the mystery. It was a repeat offense, and enough was enough.

What had been robbed? The excellent way she had been feeling because of her weight loss. It had been stolen from her, just as though a thief had come in the night. She woke up one morning, and 15 pounds were back. She was angry, scared, frustrated, and bewildered. How could this have happened to her? Who did this to her—and why?

Well, she thought, why don’t I proceed like they do on TV, call in the cops to track down the perpetrator! I mean, who are the likely suspects? Have they committed such crimes before? Have they left clues? Fingerprints? Maybe they left telltale signs of their M O? Are they hiding out? Are they lurking about?  

Mia imagined calling in two detectives, Lopez and Brown—female cops—to investigate the crime. One was tall, the other short. They meant business.

The detectives started by questioning the victim—her.  Lopez, the tall cop, went first.  

“I know this might be unpleasant for you, but it’s necessary, I assure you. We’re going to ask you some questions, and at some point they may get personal. But we need you to answer as truthfully as you can.”

“I understand Detective, I’ll do my best.”

With that, the inquiry began.

Mia didn’t feel so calm with these two putting her on the spot like that. But she knew she had to find it in her to let them do their jobs. She wasn’t sure she could stand up to their scrutiny.

The first question seemed routine. Brown, the short one asked it.

“When did this robbery occur?”

“Well, I guess sometime between October first, when I reached my goal weight, and yesterday, when I got on the scale and noticed that my goal weight had been stolen.”

Brown raised her eyebrows. “That’s quite a time frame— let’s see, maybe eight or nine weeks. Can you be more specific? I mean, can you pinpoint just a bit more when this happened?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Well then, did you notice anything suspicious in the weeks before it actually happened?”

“Come to think of it yes, I guess I did. There were these unsettling feelings hanging around, and even though they weren’t in plain view, I sensed they were there, ready to jump me at any moment. I guess that’s not much to go on, is it?”

Neither detective was put off by the paucity of clues thus far. Most every case started like this. The clues were always few, and the questions many. They had learned through persistence, by following their guts, because of all the cases they had dealt with and the skill they had developed, that there would be a breakthrough at some point. They knew it would come.

Lopez took over now. Tall as she was, there was a nice gentleness about her.

“Did anything like this ever happen to you before?”

“The truth? Yes, it happened every other time I lost weight. So I guess I should be used to it—but I’m not. It feels like a real violation.”

“We must consider the most important element of a crime such as this, which is motivation. Who would want to hurt you? Do you have any enemies who would want to do this to you—steal something from you that’s so valuable?”

“Not that I’m aware of, but I’ll think about it.”

Lopez nodded, showing her appreciation of Mia’s willingness.

“Yes, do think about it, and we’ll continue the questioning tomorrow down at the station.

“I’ll be there, Detective.”

Lopez and Brown left. Mia was happy to be off the hook for the time being, but still, she liked the idea that she was getting help.

The next morning found Mia back in the hot seat, this time in the interrogation room, which was not the most comfortable place to be.

Brown went right to it.

“Any more thoughts about who might be the primary suspect in this robbery?”

“Yes. I think the most likely one is my past.”

“Well then, if the past is the prime suspect, let’s bring it in and make it talk.”

Lopez put on her jacket, and left. She was back about fifteen minutes later, with a clipboard.

“Ready?”

Mia nodded, but her heart skipped.

Lopez began to read questions from the sheet on her clipboard.

“OK, what would you say is the thing that stands out the most about your past?”

“I guess I’d have to say…mmm, let’s see, I think…believe it or not, feeling small.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You know, small and inconsequential, like I don’t count.”

“When did you start to feel that way?”

“I have no idea. It’s been forever.”

“Ah. Can you describe the feeling of “small” in more detail?”

“Umm… I can try…let’s see…small, little, not being noticed…like I’m not there.”

Brown walked over, put her hand on Mia’s shoulder.

“That’s rough.”

Mia burst into tears.

“It hurts more than anything. I want to matter. I want to be noticed. I want to be appreciated. I want to be big.”

Lopez put down her clipboard down on the table, took a deep breath, looked Mia in the eye.

“I think we have our prime suspect here. Wanting to feel big, substantial, worthwhile.”

“And I’ve translated it into being body-big.”

“No wonder you’ve always returned to it.”

No wonder.

     exerpt from  Psych Your Diet: A Daily Dose. Volume 3. Psych Yourself to Keep It Off. by Kenneth Schwarz PhD and Julie North Schwarz. Symmetry Press.

by Maria's Last Diet

Are you startled to find out that maintaining your lost weight is a learning process? You do not just arrive after losing weight ready to maintain the weight you lost. You still have lots to learn, lots to figure out, lots to try and get wrong until you do it over and over and in various configurations, and then it is yours to keep.

This working through of your old behavior so you see it and know it from all angles is something you start to do during the weight loss process itself and then keep it up in the weight loss maintenance phase as well. You have to work through what you were living out, those patterns of behavior and thought you set in motion a long time ago that are still with you, interfering with weight loss maintenance.

Do you know what you are living out? Is it resentment or rebellion or rash indifference? Is what you are living out the kinds of anxiety and worry you started having when you were a child or teenager? What is it you are living out that prevents you from losing your unwanted weight? Do you know? Once you know it, you have to fix it.