Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

Who put the done do it in the diet plan?
Who put the go to it so the exercise ran?
Who put the lid on the out of control eating?
Who put her whole heart into this weight loss proceeding?

Who did all of this? By all means let’s take her by the hand.
She is on her way to a weight loss grand slam.

Maria's Last Diet

If you think of being overweight as an eating disorder right along with anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating, when can you say the disorder is cured?

With anorexia, the cure doesn’t only mean that a person regains weight to a normal level. Other criteria for cure in anorexia have to do with the person’s thinking and body image being restored to a normal level as well.

The same is true for being overweight. Cure isn’t only when your weight is in the normal range. Cure is when you keep the weight off permanently and not just for a period of time. What you’re curing with being overweight just like with anorexia is an underlying condition that involves more than just pounds lost or pounds gained. Cure of the underlying condition of being overweight involves changes in the person’s thinking, in the ways she copes with life, in how she deals with relationships, and without question in the ways she handles her feelings.

by Maria's Last Diet

When the going gets tough, and believe me it will, do the tough get going?

Toughness, whether you call it mental toughness or emotional toughness or just plain toughness, is always called for somewhere along the line when you are trying to lose weight.

Do you have what it takes to push through failure and keep at it? This is toughness. Can you let go of what isn’t working and try something else? This is toughness. Working a weight loss routine day after day. This is toughness. Do you get right back on when you fall off? This is toughness. If you make sure you don’t get sidetracked, this is toughness too.

The challenges of trying to lose weight call for many different kinds of toughness.

What are your ways of toughing it out?

by Maria's Last Diet

As you well know, eating is influenced by much more than just hunger. Let’s for a moment look at your eating behavior in the broader context of who you are as a woman.

For instance, what do you wish for? What do you cherish? What makes you afraid? Do you know? All in all, how aware are you of these very personal dispositions of yours? And for that matter, how conflicting or how compatible are these motivations that define you?

What can you as a woman do when you are faced with a variety of demands, some external but some internal? This too puts your eating behavior in the broader context of who you are as a woman. Are you up to these demands? Do you have what it takes to cope with them?

Then there are always relationships that can fulfill, fall short, even terrify the more inclusive you. There are all kinds of relationships from pretty casual to very intimate. How are these going, you might ask yourself. What’s your answer? How do you experience your relationships? Is the relationship going well, going poorly, or just going? What do other people seem like to you? Are they worthwhile, worthless, or worth more than you’re giving them credit for? And there’s yourself. What do you think about yourself?

It’s obvious, isn’t it, that who you are as a woman has everything to do with who you are as an eater. But you knew this, didn’t you?

by Maria's Last Diet

Does your diet bring about change in your weight? In a manner of speaking, it does. You eat less and/or eat differently and you lose weight. But in order for your diet to work this way for you it needs lots of support. The support, of course, comes from you. How you think, your motivation, preparation and planning, monitoring, caring for yourself, and many other personal steps you take are all involved in you being able to adhere to your diet. Without these very personal steps, diets, your diet included, won’t work. So you might say that weight loss is determined in large measure by these very personal steps.   

by Maria's Last Diet

If you were told that being overweight is the solution and not the problem, what would you say the problem is? You could, of course, say the problem is you eat too much or eat too many fattening foods. But this would be stating the obvious. The same would be true if you said you can’t stop eating like you have been. Obvious, obvious, obvious.

Try once again and don’t go for such a superficial answer. If overweight is the solution, so what’s the problem?

by Maria's Last Diet

Weight loss for women, if it is nothing else, is a bunch of problems to be solved. What happened to make me go off my diet yesterday? Will I be okay at the company picnic tomorrow? Why when I’m frustrated and angry do I turn to food? How is it that I haven’t lost weight in about three weeks now? What about my personality makes it so difficult to lose weight?

In order to solve weight loss problems, there’s no doubt that you have to understand the problem. You also have to make a plan to solve the problem, which will include selecting action steps that fit the problem. Then there’s the energy you will need to work your plan and implement the action steps. And don’t forget, you will have to monitor the effectiveness of your problem solving so you can use the feedback to see how you’re doing and to come up with an even better solution to the problem if necessary.

As you can see, there is much more to losing weight than simply diet and exercise. The hidden aspect of weight loss, which is right out in plain sight if you just stop and think about it, is what is called for from you. It’s what is called for from you to problem solve so you can start to diet and exercise, keep it going until you reach goal weight, and then somehow find in yourself a solution, the energy, and the means to keeping lost weight off permanently.

If you need help with the YOU and the problem solving parts of 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

She wanted to know what to do about her out of control eating. Lately, she can’t go a day without cookies or doughnuts or an assortment of other fattening foods, which she eats in between her regular meals or instead of eating breakfast or lunch. She’s done this before. This isn’t the first fat time for her. Ever since she was a teenager, she dieted and gained back, dieted and gained back. Right now at age 32 she is in the gaining back phase and she is disgusted with herself for not being in control.

Her focus for the most part is on not eating like this. But the longevity of her eating and weight problem suggests taking a broader look at what’s going on. By the time she was a teenager she developed a pattern of particularly harsh self-criticism, which led to self-doubt and dislike of many aspects of herself. Rather than see what she was missing from a mother too self-centered to give her the mothering she needed, she felt unworthy of such comfort and approval from anyone. The amount of food and the kinds of food she ate were what held her together when she was feeling at her lowest.

Going on a diet, like she did so many times before, would definitely be a waste of time. More to the point is how she is going to address the emotional circumstances that lead to a repeated pattern of emotional eating to feel better.

by Maria's Last Diet

Once you are safely on your weight loss diet are there any other weight loss steps you have to take? You are on your diet. You go to work. You take care of your family. You live your life. What other weight loss steps can there be?

Being on a weight loss diet isn’t as safe as you may think it is? There are all sorts of perils and pitfalls. Beware of the dinner party or the birthday party or the upcoming holiday. Watch out for the danger of moodiness, of difficult relationships, of the variety of life’s ups and downs.

A weight loss step that you’re always taking despite being on a weight loss diet is making adjustments to yourself. Being on any kind of weight loss regimen is not a static process, as you well know. There is always a self-adjustment here and there (and everywhere). Such timely modifications to your thinking, your feelings, and your behavior are what keep you on your weight loss diet. They are also what enable you to deal with the weight loss dangers, as well as go to work, care for your family, and live your life.

Make no mistake. There is no such thing as being safely on a weight loss diet without the additional weight loss step of making the necessary self-adjustments.

by Maria's Last Diet

Things aren’t going well for Holly. They haven’t for a long, long time. Yet Holly goes along as if things aren’t as bad as they are.

Holly is 40 to 50 pounds overweight. She has been on many diets, but none of them got her the result she was looking for. Her fervent wish is to be slim and beautiful. She was once slim. When she was a young teenager, Holly had the world in the palm of her hand. She was slim, fit, and pretty; very pretty. Everyone said so.

Slowly over the years Holly began putting on weight. She knew she ate too much and she hated the way she binged. She tried to change, but it never worked. She couldn’t do it. The pounds stayed on and the periods of dieting grew shorter and less effective.

Holly’s situation looks to all the world like Holly has a problem with her weight, which she does. She also has problems with her marriage, with a career that is dissatisfying, is not talking to two of her siblings, and she is constantly getting calls about two of her three children’s behavior and learning problems in school. Yet Holly goes along as if things aren’t as bad as they are.