Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

There are lots of diets to choose from. Don’t fuss or fret about which diet is best or which diet fits you best. The weight loss research clearly shows that it is not the particular diet that causes you to shed those extra pounds. The cause of weight loss is adherence or sticking to whatever diet you chose. So if you want to lose weight, guess what? You must stick to your weight loss diet.

Easier said than done, as so many women can attest to.

In almost all cases, “sticking to it” requires the buildup of underdeveloped proficiencies in motivation, commitment, skillset, learning from mistakes, and much, much more. The development of such proficiencies is only one part of “sticking to it.” There is also maintaining proficiency day-in and day-out until the weight loss goal is reached.

Make no mistake about it, though. It’s not the diet. It’s "sticking to it" that counts.

by Maria's Last Diet

Did you ever quit your weight loss regimen because it was no good for you?

Here’s how such a thing can happen.

You could be on your weight loss routine using a specific diet when you begin to have what you believe are bad effects from the weight loss regimen. You have more headaches than usual, or so you think. Or you have trouble sleeping. Or you’re short-tempered with your family. Perhaps you think you even have more stomach trouble than you had in a long time.

What you’re suffering from gives you grounds to stop your weight loss routine. Are you sure that what you’re suffering from is caused by your weight loss effort? Be careful not to misattribute your physical and emotional symptoms to your weight loss routine. Just because you believe it’s so doesn’t make it so.

by Maria's Last Diet

What’s the biggest and best reward you’ll get if you lose weight and keep it off for good?
Here are some of the answers that women give.

   Look better
   Feel better
   Be fitter
   Healthier
   Increased energy
   Better self-image
   Lift my self-esteem
   Getting rid of a bad habit
   The change becomes a habit
   No need to work hard at weight control
   Have control over eating and weight   
   Extending control to other parts of life

So these are just some of the answers. What would you say is the biggest and best reward you’ll get if you lose weight and keep it off for good?

by Maria's Last Diet

How committed are you when it comes to losing a lot of weight?

Your sense of commitment, it seems, may very well depend on whether you key on what you did do or what you didn’t do. In other words, when you reflect on the weight loss steps you took today or yesterday or this past week and focus on what you accomplished, you perceive your commitment as greater. When you think of all the weight loss activities you didn’t accomplish or failed at, you experience yourself as having made less of a commitment.

This phenomenon is not simply a case of positive or negative thinking. Far from it. Positive thinking is putting a favorable spin on things and negative thinking is putting an unfavorable spin on things. The impression of your commitment being adequate or inadequate is the result of your reaction to focusing on what you did or didn’t accomplish. By concluding you didn’t accomplish what you wanted to accomplish, you label yourself as not being committed. If you did accomplish what you set out to do, then by all means, no doubt about it, you are committed.

So be careful. Don’t fool yourself into believing you do not have a strong commitment to weight loss just because you didn’t accomplish something or because you didn’t accomplish all you set out to do.

     from 99 Essential Weight Loss Blogposts. Symmetry Press, 2015

by Maria's Last Diet

You’d think if you’re trying to lose weight you’d really be interested in doing just that. Well, think again. As it turns out, even though you’re trying to lose weight, you may not be all that interested.

It may seem odd that interest would play such a leading role in weight loss. Yet your interest is a determining factor in everything you do, weight loss included. So let’s take a closer look at interest in the matter of weight loss.

When it’s a given that you are interested in losing weight, there is always the measure of how interested in losing weight you really are. Is it half-hearted interest or full-blown interest, for example? Are you interested only to a point? As you can see, there are different levels of interest and the different levels undoubtedly affect your weight loss experience and the outcome.

Here are some ways by which you can increase, perhaps even solidify your interest to make it higher and more durable. You can, as part of your weight loss plan, infuse various weight loss activities and weight loss situations with different kinds of interest enhancers. You might, for instance, introduce greater novelty and relieve the humdrum of “I’ve done this over and over so many times.” You could also think of ways to spark your curiosity? Being curious is being interested, don’t you think? Then, too, you could seek out information about such matters as diet and nutrition or the psychology inherent in losing weight. The process of information gathering can be a good interest brightener and it can certainly increase the extent of your engagement as well.

by Maria's Last Diet

Q: What makes losing weight so hard?

A: Diets.

Q: What makes weight loss impossible to achieve?

A: Exercise.

How can it be that the two mainstays of every weight loss program under the sun, diet and exercise, are the cause of weight loss being such a futile endeavor?

The weight loss research shows that on any given day approximately 45% of women in the U.S. are trying to lose weight. Along with this impressive number of women who are aspiring to shed their unwanted pounds, 80% of people who do lose weight don’t keep their lost weight off. In fact, many who lose weight regain the weight they lost and then some.

The primary methods of weight loss subscribed to in this dismal weight loss climate are diet or exercise or both. Weight loss diets by themselves don’t work so say the experts because to lose weight you have to exercise as well. The exercise research on the other hand shows that exercise by itself is no match for the food intake side of things. The average 300-calorie doughnut, for instance, would take exercising for at least an hour or more (at the average energy expenditure of 200 to 300 calories per hour) to neutralize the calories-in. 

Where are we? Diet by itself makes weight loss harder. Exercise by itself makes weight loss impossible. But what about the combined effect of exercise and diet; does this work? Dieting and exercise has been the usual prescription. If you want to lose weight, you have to diet and exercise. Well you usual prescribers, what do we do about the 60% of women from age 20 to 74 who are overweight or obese, many of whom are either on diets, have gone on diets, or exercised right along with their diet? 

As every woman who has ever dieted, exercised, or done both can tell you, it ain’t easy. “Getting yourself to do it” no matter how fancy or fitting the food plan takes something that isn’t in the food plan (read: diet). Exercising is no different. “Getting yourself to do it” requires more than just the exercise regimen or a personal trainer. Many a piece of exercise equipment has ended up on the expendable list, easily set aside gathering dust or else used as a clothes rack.

There must be something missing from that elegant equation, diet + exercise = weight loss. The factor that is missing is ‘you’.  You are, and you know it, the power behind losing your own unwanted weight. It’s you after all who is the only one who can to do the single most important thing to lose unwanted weight, which is adhere. Adhere to a diet. Adhere to an exercise routine. Adhere to both diet and exercise regimens until you achieve your goal.

The weight loss research clearly shows that adherence is the sine qua non of weight loss. It’s not the particular diet or a combination of diet and exercise that makes for successful weight loss. It is your adherence to the diet first and foremost that makes weight loss possible and permanent weight loss an aspiration that can be realized.

Now the only problem left to solve is getting yourself to do it—adhere, that is. How are you going to get yourself to stick to it for as intensely and enduringly as you need to? Here is where you will have to turn away from: thinking about food, calories, carbs, low fat, aerobics, steppers, and free weights. Focus your mind instead in the direction of what it will take to develop your adherence skills.

In this regard, ask yourself what personal resources can you bring to the weight loss table? Can you “do without,” for instance? “Doing without” may not sound like a skill, but in connection with adhering to a weight loss routine it certainly is an important skill. Take a hard look to see if there is anything that will prevent you from “doing without?” If there is, you’d better do something about it. Eating less, not snacking on fattening food, going without “rewards” and “treats,” these are examples of “doing without.”

Can you think of some other personal resources that would promote adherence? How about things like turning the weight loss process into a more interesting endeavor or having better emotional and motivational balance?

Do you get the idea now? In order to lose weight and successfully keep the weight off, there’s the all-important ‘you’ factor, which, if you concentrate your efforts on it, will enable you to adhere. You will at the same time be saving diet and exercise from the bad reputations they’ve acquired. After all, diet and exercise were never meant to do it by themselves—without ‘you’. 

Symmetry Press, the publisher of Maria’s Last Diet Blog, is giving away a copy of 99 Essential Weight Loss Blogposts before it’s released.

To enter: Like Symmetry Press' Facebook page and then tell your biggest struggle while dieting. After you've commented, share this post to your own wall.

A random winner will be chosen on June 1st. Must be 18 years or older and living in the continental U.S. to win.

The link to the giveaway is: https://www.facebook.com/SymmetryPress

by Maria's Last Diet

When you try to stick to your weight loss plan, you will see just how much mental and emotional “getting yourself to do it” is involved. Adhering to your weight loss plan requires setting goals, constructing sub-goals, and having success in reaching these goals. You will be working your plans, adjusting sub-goals, monitoring your thoughts and behaviors day in and day out.

You’ll be facing barriers to sticking to it, and you’ll need good ways to get around these barriers or solutions to dismantle them. You will run up against many things that test your resolve. Your moods, emotions, beliefs, thoughts, and behavior will all be tests of “getting yourself to do it.”

Sticking to it is such an important factor that weight loss research has found it doesn’t matter what diet you go on. You can probably lose weight on any one of the diets available on the market. What matters is whether or not you adhere to the particular diet or weight loss method you choose.

To “get yourself to do it,” you will have to get a handle on such things as personal balance, the impact of your beliefs on persistence, situation-specific reactions, preparing counterarguments, developing mental toughness, the value of self-awareness, and the need to sometimes disengage. This list of potential to-do’s goes on: dealing with regrets and self-criticism, eliminating out-of-control eating, doing something about cravings, making weight loss into a learning experience, getting rid of emotional eating, keeping up your motivation, and learning from diet cheats. 

It’s no wonder that it’s so hard to achieve weight loss. But if you can get yourself to stick to it, you can.

by Maria's Last Diet

I hate to break it to you, but the process of weight loss calls for a tremendous amount of diligence on your part. Losing your unwanted weight means working assiduously at weight loss activities that will be beneficial in the long run but probably trying in the moment. You will have to persevere, exert effort, and sustain interest for days, months, maybe even a year. This is certainly a tall order. The diligence, which is called for in weight loss, is difficult to keep at for any length of time. Yet keeping up your diligence day after day is just what you have to do if you hope to significantly reduce your weight.

What helps you maintain diligence? Have you found ways to infuse the weight loss process with experiences that make being diligent easier and more pleasurable rather than tedious and unappealing? If not, go to it.