Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

Do you repeatedly think over and analyze your problems, concerns, feelings, moods, and actions? Do you do this especially when you see there is a discrepancy between where you are now and where you want to be? Such repetitive overthinking and over-analyzing can be the kind of self-focus that can cause you not to lose weight. Rather than moving on and progressing, such habitual self-assessment can lead to perceiving your weight loss goals as more out of reach than they really are.

by Maria's Last Diet

If you took apart a typical eating day for you and broke the day literally into moment upon moment, what do you think you would find? What would such a careful analysis tell you? It probably would tell you what led up to the afternoon binge or to the nighttime snack that you said you weren’t going to have because you want to lose weight. Just think what you would discover about yourself if you videotaped your day and then went frame by frame over exactly what happened.

Looking at your day frame by frame like this is a way to know what influences you have to beware of and do something about when you’re trying to lose weight. See how even the littlest things mount up and become the biggest influences. Often what you mistake for waning diet motivation is just such an assemblage of micro-moments, too much for you during any one day.

by Maria's Last Diet

One thing you will definitely be involved with when you are hard at work trying to reduce your weight is checking to see how you’re progressing. Assessing the effects of your hard work can take, and should take, a number of different forms. There is, of course, the traditional, “how many pounds have I lost.” What else do you use as a measurement of how you’re doing? You probably use clothing. “I’m down one size.” Or, “ My jeans don’t feel so tight anymore.” Another method of self-evaluation may be how closely you are sticking to your diet.

Here are some other indices of how you are doing that you can also put to use. Take your thinking, for example. How are your thoughts now that you are well into the weight loss process? Do you think less about missing your old fattening food favorites? What are some of the new thoughts that have taken the place of these old thoughts? What about those circumstances that used to send you right to food? Are they still as prevalent? Are you handling them more directly without resorting to eating them away?

There are lots of ways to evaluate how you are doing on your weight loss regimen? In fact, using multiple ways of assessing your weight loss progress is a more certain sign that you are doing all you can to assure eventual permanent weight loss.

by Maria's Last Diet

There’s the diet. There’s exercise. There are motivation and commitment and perseverance. And then there’s action replay. You are probably familiar with all of these components of your weight loss regimen, except for action replay.

What is action replay? Well, it’s when you replay the action, of course. And why is action replay integral to the process of weight loss? It just is, and in fact it is as vital as a diet and exercise and motivation and commitment and perseverance.

Take any of the familiar pitfalls of the weight loss process, such as a diet cheat, disinterest in exercising, loss of motivation, a wavering commitment, and difficulty persevering. Here’s where action replay comes in. Replay the action, which is simply a way of saying rewind your thinking and review what happened to make you susceptible to the particular weight loss pitfall. Action replay affords you the opportunity to search for which issues to review, understand, and see what you can do about them. Action replay raises your awareness and helps you focus on an issue that was too difficult to recognize and confront during the weight loss activity itself. Action replay is your way to analyze the problem so you can come up with an appropriate solution.

So remember, when you gather what you will need with you for successful weight loss, make sure you include action replay right along with dieting and exercise, motivation, commitment, and perseverance.

by Maria's Last Diet

To change your pattern of eating so you can lose your unwanted weight usually requires a considerable amount of effort over a long period of time. Your motivation for sticking to such an arduous weight loss routine is critical. Feedback on how you are progressing certainly plays its part in motivating you to keep at it. So right along with a food plan and perhaps an exercise routine as well, your weight loss activities should include feedback for motivation and for guidance.

Here are some feedback tips. Does the feedback give you a very good idea of the motivators and reinforcers that are personally relevant for you?  What about self-evaluation that is unique to your personal weight issues? Does the feedback method you use give you the self-evaluation you personally need? There is also feedback that gets you and keeps you actively involved in the weight loss process. Do you collect feedback that helps you do this?

by Maria's Last Diet

As you go through the process of weight loss, there will be many opportunities for self-evaluation. It will be only natural for you at times to protect yourself against viewing yourself negatively and at other times to find ways to promote more positive views of yourself. How do these kinds of self-evaluation help you lose your unwanted weight? Evaluating yourself negatively may lead to greater vigilance of your weight loss efforts. Promoting positive evaluations may be your way of increasing your enthusiasm for doing what it takes to lose weight.

Check this out for yourself. See how you evaluate yourself and your efforts as you go through the weight loss process.

by Maria's Last Diet

If you are going to reduce your weight, do you have the kind of feedback loop you need? If you’re wondering what your own personal feedback loop is anyway, it is the impact of monitoring the effects of what you are doing to reduce your weight on whether you will modify what you are doing or leave it as it is.

Your feedback loop, which of course is yourself, is in tune with your monitoring device, which again is you. Your monitoring device (you) may be set to detect and feed back to you how technically right on the mark your weight loss activities are, like when you deal with particular emotional issues directly rather than resorting to emotional eating. Or your device might be set to receive more self-evaluative feedback signals, such as “you did fantastically well last night when you were being tempted by all that calorie-rich food.” Some people get both kinds of feedback in their loops.

What kind of feedback loop do you have, and how is it working for you?

by Maria's Last Diet

There will be lots of times during the process of weight loss when you will say something or other to yourself about how you are doing. Being on a weight loss routine, therefore, is not just about losing weight, it is also about losing face, saving face, and, to stretch this expression some, about gaining face as well.

Self-evaluation is a crucial aspect of weight loss and fully as vital as what you put in your mouth. How goes your self-evaluation, so goes your motivation for losing weight.