Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

There’s a whole lot of weight loss psychology you can use when you are trying to lose some weight. There are things you can do to increase your motivation, solidify your commitment, plan and prepare for all types of contingencies, and prevent slips and cheats. Eating out defeats even the best weight loss psychology.

When you eat out, there is little or nothing you can do about the average meal being over one-half your daily calorie requirements. And try as you might, your consumption of sodium for one meal will most likely exceed your sodium requirement for the day. If this doesn’t beat all, you probably will also get from that one meal out almost ninety percent of the recommended fat intake, over eighty percent of the daily saturated and trans fat you need, and sixty percent of the daily cholesterol limit.

For more on the perils and predicaments of eating out, see the research reported in the July 22, 2013 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

by Maria's Last Diet

A problem is a problem, no doubt. It blocks the way. It frustrates. It foils. It makes you feel hopeless and helpless.

But a problem also makes you think. It is something to be solved and resolved. A problem is an opportunity to get at the heart of something so you can move forward.

When you are in the throes of losing your unwanted weight, problems can be showstoppers and cause for quitting, They can also be opportunities for resolution and moving forward.

What makes a problem just a problem for you? And what makes a problem an opportunity for solution and progress? Do you know?

by Maria's Last Diet

Everyone knows and expects there will be obstacles, lots of them, on the way to a weight-loss goal. The obstacles are there and you have to find a way over them or around them. That’s what everyone who has ever tried to lose her unwanted weight knows.

Here’s something you might not have thought about, though. An obstacle becomes an obstacle when you imbue it with “obstacleness”. Huh? You might wonder how it's in your power to make an obstacle be an obstacle.

Take for instance some Saturday when a group of your friends are going out for drinks and dinner, and they invite you to go. Here is a potential obstacle because you are dieting and trying to lose some weight. What do you do? Do you join them for drinks and dinner on Saturday and let it become an obstacle to your good dieting, or do you stay home and stick to your diet?

Well, it depends. What it depends on, as psychological research shows, is your expectation for success. If you feel strongly that by sticking to your diet you will lose the weight you want to lose, it is likely you may turn your friends down in the interest of sticking closely to your diet. If, however, you have low expectations for successful weight loss, you may chuck your diet and go with your friends on Saturday.

So you see an obstacle is not an obstacle unless you make it an obstacle.

by Maria's Last Diet

Losing weight is not a stationary process. You are not today who you were yesterday. What worked for you yesterday doesn’t work for you today, and what didn’t work for you yesterday works for you today. Such heterogeneity of performance is to be expected during the process of weight loss.

What accounts for a large percentage of such day-to-day dissimilarities or heterogeneity are fluctuations in you and fluctuations in your environment.

Your mental and physical functioning fluctuate from day-to-day. For example, you aren’t as resilient today as you were yesterday. Tomorrow you will be more organized than you were today. No patience yesterday. Patience galore today.

You also develop and learn. You thought about asserting yourself for the thousandth time, for instance, and today you finally did it. No compensatory eating late at night for you. You didn’t need to eat those regrets away.

Then too you might forget and return to old behavior. Like: you just violated your diet. It was not only a cheat. You couldn’t stop at just a cheat. You went on to binge, Sweets with a whole salty bag of _____ as a kicker. It was just like the old days all over again. Guilt and self-condemnation followed.

Not only you fluctuate but days do too. Days differ from one another in what they make you cope with. For instance, Sunday was so quiet it was boring. Monday brought the usual hustle and bustle of getting going for the week. This past Wednesday one of the kids had a temperature and someone had to stay home from work. Saturday, after gymnastics, is the get-together with another family.

Watch out for heterogeneity. It’s such a natural part of trying to reduce your weight.

by Maria's Last Diet

What happens when you run up against resistance, your own resistance to doing what you need to do to lose your unwanted weight?

Do you fight against it? Do you give in to it? What do you do?

What if you went with it, giving yourself free reign to think more fully about your unwillingness? Think of it this way. Resistance, when it occurs, is an opportunity for insight? When there is resistance, it means the causes of the resistance are close by. Anxieties. Bad moods. Or other feelings of unease. If you don’t fight against or give in to your resistance, and just reflect on your resistance, you can see what the causes of your resistance are.

Knowing what feeling or mood state is causing you to resist is a key step in resolving resistance. First, though, comes accepting the resistance itself, going with it to learn more about it. And finally, the last step is doing something about the causes of your resistance.

by Maria's Last Diet

Are you having trouble dieting and losing weight? If so, have you defined a particular problem that has been presenting a serious obstacle to successful weight loss? In other words, have you gotten clear and specific? When you are clear and specific about what’s been going wrong, you can be clear and specific about how to correct it.

By targeting the problem, you establish a new entry point into the weight-loss problem-solving path. This entry point focuses your attention and energy right away and it begins to propel you toward your goal. This is the oomph you need to come up with a new solution to that tough, persistent problem. 

After you come up with a solution, you still must have something definite to do to make the solution work: a plan. The plan is what takes you from what you intend to do to actually doing it. In order to determine if your plan works, you’ll have to test it to see if it’s a good plan. Any flaws you find, you'll need to correct so that your plan is the best you can make it.

If you don’t want to do this all yourself, try Diet Tuffy. It’s a workbook that takes you through 5 fun-filled steps from targeting your problem through revising your plan. Diet Tuffy: The Fun Way to Seriously Lose Weight is part of the Symmetry Press series, Weight-Loss Books for Women — Using Psychology to Lose Weight.