Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

Are you one of the special ones, blessed with the ability to lose weight? If you are not, you might know someone who is.

Let’s take a look and see what makes some women special like this. There is the belief that these specials were born with more willpower or more potential for doing what is hard. They came into the world with a certain exceptional gift that enables them to achieve permanent weight loss.

If you believe this, then you should have no doubt that a fish can climb a tree. So how does one come by this gift of losing weight if it’s not somehow in you from birth? The answer is in the old joke about an out-of-towner walking along in New York City who stops to ask a New Yorker for directions to get to Carnegie Hall. “How do you get to Carnegie Hall,” the stranger asks. The New Yorker answers, “Practice, practice, practice.

Supposing that it is practice, practice, practice that gets you to permanent weight loss. What then do you practice? Here you might say, one woman’s meat is another woman’s poison. You have what you need to practice and some other woman has what she needs to practice. And there are so many possibilities. Without talking about eating and food at all, there’s patience, endurance, self-respect, kindness, forgiveness, thoughtfulness, emotional wherewithal, commitment, motivation, mental toughness, and so much more. See what it is that you need to practice in order to make you special too.

by Maria's Last Diet

Practice what you preach. Practice makes perfect. Practice is everything. Practice as if you’re the worst; act as if you’re the best.

Where is practice when it comes to losing your unwanted weight? Practice is involved in almost all your other endeavors, why not include a period of practice and training when you plan to lose excess weight.

What could you practice that would be useful for you later in the weight loss process itself? Well, you could practice any number of things. What about practicing getting used to not eating too much food or eating too many fattening foods? You could certainly set up some type of practice regimen for doing that. After you get some practice with this change of eating pattern under your belt, you could easily transfer what you learned right into dieting or some other structured weight loss method.

In practice sessions, you don’t only have to work on food and eating. You could also work on dealing more effectively with the triggers for your weight-gaining and weight-maintaining pattern of eating. This could mean practice with alternatives to emotional eating.

The benefits of practice for weight loss far outweigh the benefits of no practice for weight loss.

The faster your new desired eating pattern becomes automatic the less arduous your weight loss struggle will be.

This is where expertise comes in. Experts require fewer extraneous moves of all kinds. Because of their expertise, they, in effect, go right to where they need to be to make the right move. Experts have at their ready options for various situations. They developed these options as the result of lots of experience and stored these options in their memory. When a situation arises, the expert generates the better move first.

A major factor in establishing such expertise is practice. Deliberately practicing over time is what the expert has done to grow her skills and make them as automatic as possible. You can do the same for the process of weight loss. Become expert through lots of beneficial practice before and during your weight loss journey. Think of sports where the athletes not only practice before their season begins, they also practice between sporting events during the regular season. You can do the same before and during the weight loss process.

Remember, practice makes experts and expertise takes your new pattern of eating beyond the point where you will have to struggle.

by Maria's Last Diet

If you think of being able to lose weight and keep the weight off permanently as a set of skills, then in order to develop your skills, like in any other endeavor, you need to practice.

Deliberate practice, as the research studies call it, is something all people do when they are trying to learn and develop a set of skills, any set of skills. You did it when you learned to read and write. You even did it as an infant and toddler when you learned to walk and talk. You practiced over and over again. Experts in all walks of life practice and practice long and hard and that’s what makes them experts.

With weight loss, you don’t have to be an expert, but you do have to be good enough. Even ‘good enough’ requires practice. Think about it: cooking, planting, talking to your kids. It takes practice and lots of it if you want to be good enough. What makes you think losing your unwanted weight is any different? How do you become able to lose weight and keep the weight off permanently? Just like you get to Carnegie Hall. Practice, practice, practice.

by Maria's Last Diet

Can you practice and learn so you can do better? Of course you’ll say yes if you were answering in principle whether you can practice and learn so you can do better. But what if you were asked, “can you practice and learn so you can do better at losing excess weight?

What if you practiced just what those weight-loss activities you’ll have to do later today or tomorrow or next week?

How about if you over-practiced what you need to do to stick to a diet or how you’ll go about changing your pattern of eating?

Could you practice the exact procedure you’ll be using to get back on your dieting plan if and when you fall off of it?

What if you could practice and prepare for the unexpected, those obstacles that you didn’t foresee, the ones that pop up and ruin your weight-loss effort?

Could getting a good grasp beforehand on the underlying principles and concepts involved in self-change make a difference later on when you’re trying to do something to stop your emotional eating and change your eating habits?

Have you tried practicing and learning beforehand so you can do better later on when you’re deep within the weight-loss process and in need of skills and strategies and self-confidence to get you successfully through to losing more weight? If not, try it and see what you think.