Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

Dieting is an arduous endeavor. It is tricky. It tests you in all kinds of ways, and you are bound to make mistakes. See if you make one of these mistakes.

1. Jump right in before you’re ready.
Just like anything else you do that is not second nature, preparation is so necessary. For more on getting ready go to the Reading Room on the left-hand side of this blog.

2. Counting on your diet to do what you should be doing.
Your diet is merely a food plan detailing what to eat and how much to eat. Someone has to work this food plan. That someone is you. So don’t count on your diet to do the heavy lifting. This is your job. For more about your job when it comes to dieting, go to the Reading Room on the left-hand side of this blog and check out the relevant categories

3. Not learning from your mistakes.
How many times have you heard “you learn from your mistakes.” Well, it’s true. And it’s certainly the case when your trying to lose weight. If you are dieting, you probably make a very predictable mistake. It’s called a diet cheat. Everyone, but everyone cheats on their diet. But not every dieter learns from her cheats. Learning from your cheats separates the successful from the not successful dieter. If you want to know more about how to profit from cheating on your diet, go to “Cheat on diet” in the Reading Room of this blog.

4.  Thinking it’s just about food and eating.
Successful dieting and weight loss, believe it or not, have little to do with eating and food. Women who want to lose weight know that it takes some important changes to their behavior and their thinking, and these changes supersede all else. These changes determine the food you put in your mouth and what and how much you eat. If you concentrate all your energy on food and eating, that will be the tail wagging the dog.

by Maria's Last Diet

You’re definitely going to make mistakes when you’re trying to lose weight. A good way of handling a mistake is to learn from it. Can you convert insight you glean from a mistake into plans for corrective action the next time around? Using mistakes as correctives for future outcomes is an essential part of weight loss for women.

Your thinking is certainly a big part of learning from your mistakes. You have to be able to think of some new action you could take or think of a different outcome that would be better than the outcome you got as result of your mistake.

It’s best if your thinking is more detailed, even to the point of outlining some of the steps you might take to change from mistake to weight loss success. Then too, you are more likely to succeed in correcting your mistake if you think concretely rather than generally. For instance, setting the time and place for taking the new action rather than simply saying to yourself that you have to work harder gives the kind of definition to your intention that makes your intention stronger.

Seeing mistakes as opportunities to learn how to think your way to alternative actions and outcomes is something every woman who is trying to lose weight will have to be able to do.

by Maria's Last Diet

It is impossible to do everything right when you are trying to lose some weight. There is a lot that can go wrong. You can be sure you will make mistakes, big ones and little ones, mistakes that really hurt and those that you can skate by on easily. Mistakes are the name of the game if you are trying to make any kind of personal change, especially a big change like weight loss.

If you can, even before you start the process of weight loss, build in right along with your dieting and exercise different ways you can effectively deal with your mistakes. For example, you could forgive yourself for your mistakes, that’s if the mistakes you make don’t send you into a self-critical, self-bashing state. You could, of course, learn from your mistakes. Everyone says to do this, but will you listen to this age-old advice?

Being prepared for mistakes before you even start the weight loss process should help you not have such big emotional reactions when you do make mistakes. If you can take your mistakes in stride, forgive yourself for making them, learn from them, and not lose your weight loss motivation because of them, your weight loss course will be a whole lot easier and more enjoyable.

by Maria's Last Diet

What happens when you do something wrong? Do you react pretty badly or can you take it in stride? Doing something wrong is a natural part of the weight loss process. In fact, doing something wrong is part of any attempt at personal change. You can expect to do something wrong lots of times before you are able to do it right some of the time.

by Maria's Last Diet

There are a number of emotional benefits to taking on the attitude that during the weight loss process mistakes are inevitable but good and you can learn from them.

A big emotional benefit is having a positive rather than negative perspective when you fail to do something right. Reacting negatively with frustration, annoyance, and self-criticism to a mistake can take your attention away from the task at hand and narrowly refocus attention on yourself and your feelings. Mistake acceptance and even failure acceptance can reduce or eliminate these kinds of negative emotional reactions.

Besides being able to maintain a positive rather than a negative attitude, with mistakes being okay to make, you will not have to experience performance anxiety and worry. If mistakes are not only okay to make, but you also can capitalize on your mistakes by learning from them, there will be no need for worry and anxiety about how you will do. In fact, as you let your mistakes come as they may, you will find that you do not have to be afraid of any of your emotions. How you are feeling with a mistakes-are-good mindset will not interfere with what you are trying to do to lose weight. Your emotions, since they are for the most part positive, will be an aid and not a hindrance, and you will be able to use them to facilitate weight loss.

by Maria's Last Diet

What if you are told that during the process of losing excess weight, making mistakes is a good thing? Would you pooh pooh this because this is one too many times you heard you can learn from your mistakes? Well, it’s true, you can learn from your mistakes.

Don’t be put off by all your old experiences with mistakes where you were punished for making them. It’s a new era. During the weight loss process mistakes are good. In fact, make as many of them as you can. Embrace them. Love them. Feel good about making them. Turn the old advice that you shouldn’t make mistakes on its ear. No more getting disheartened by your mistakes. Make no mistake about this.

Why go on so about the goodness and rightness of making mistakes? Said once more with particular emphasis so there is no way to miss the point, you can learn from your mistakes. If you allow yourself to make mistakes, you will put yourself in an entirely different mindset. You won’t feel you can’t proceed without an instruction manual to take you the “right way” step by step. When you know mistakes are okay, you can repeat anything you flub up on. And flub up you will. You can do over anything you get wrong. You can do it more than once; do it over and over until you get it the way you want it. It will be like you are in a department of research and development where you explore and experiment with no one telling you how to do it or how not to do it. Can you imagine that? 

Don’t penalize yourself for making mistakes, especially not in the early going with your weight loss routine. Being tolerant and accepting of your mistakes, as it turns out, will serve you well in the long run.

Research comparing working to avoid mistakes versus working to accept and learn from your mistakes showed that a training period of working to accept and learn from your mistakes yielded far superior results than working to avoid mistakes when it came to applying what you learned to more challenging tasks.

Accepting mistakes and learning from your mistakes made the participants more active learners who were able to find their way when they became stuck and needed to keep at it. In addition, mistake training led to less emotional interference, such as the embarrassment and frustration that usually accompany a mistake.

by Maria's Last Diet

Have you set up an emotionally safe environment in which you can reduce your weight?

In order to do what it takes to achieve successful weight loss, you will make a countless number of errors. You will have errors of judgment, decision errors, falling short of the goal errors, errors where you’ve been too rigid, emotional errors, motivational errors, little errors, big errors, and on and on and on. You get the idea.

You won’t be helping your cause if you do not reward yourself for detecting errors. If you follow the usual course of events for errors, which is some form of criticism, censure, or an outright punishing attitude, you will be missing the point.

Errors are good. They indicate the things you need to change and correct. Errors can be used to make better plans that are not cookbook but are more tailored to the real you.

Errors are a necessary part of the process of weight loss, and you need to create an emotionally safe environment so you can make lots of them.

by Maria's Last Diet

How you view what you do and do not do in the process of weight loss makes all the difference in the world.

When you eat off your diet, do you call what you did a diet cheat? If so, how do you feel about cheating on your diet, and what do you think of yourself? Is a diet cheat cause for feeling terribly guilty or angry at yourself? Does cheating on your diet lead to terrible self-criticism? There are lots of possible reactions you can have if you cheat on your diet or do anything else to derail your weight loss routine.

Can you see a break like this in your weight loss routine as a simple mistake? If you can see a diet cheat or a temporary weight gain as just a mistake, you get the benefit of a more helpful approach to the process of weight loss. Like anything else in life, you will have your ups and downs with your weight loss regimen. In fact, if you think of it, all regimens are like that. You can’t stick to them day in and day out without having ups and downs. Thinking of breaking your weight loss routine as a simple mistake affords you the opportunity to go ahead and correct it.

Correcting mistakes is a part of any process, even the weight loss process. It is especially a part of any learning process, and weight loss for someone who has been eating too much food or eating too many fattening foods is definitely a learning process.