Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

Don’t turn away before you hear the whole story. Hang in there and all will be made clear.

You’ve heard of making a list of pro’s and con’s, haven’t you? That’s what this unbeatable weight loss strategy is all about. But there’s a twist. The usual pro’s and con’s are two lists, one for the benefits of doing something and the other for the disadvantages if you were to do that same something. Now the twist. For weight loss, not only make a list of the pro’s and con’s for losing weight, but also make a list of the pro’s and con’s for not losing weight. Got it?

Let me draw it out for you.

                        Losing weight

        Pro’s                                    Con’s
XXXXXXXXXX                            XXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXX                            XXXXXXXXXXX
         etc.                                    etc.

                       Not Losing Weight

        Pro’s                                    Con’s
XXXXXXXXXX                            XXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXX                            XXXXXXXXXXX
         etc,                                    etc,

After you make these pro’s and con’s lists, focus your attention on the pro’s for not losing weight. This is where you’ll have to place your weight loss effort if you want to really lose weight. You’ll have to clear the way for losing weight by clearing up what will stand in your way. The obstacles you’ll have to conquer are those advantages that will accrue to you if you don’t lose weight.

Got it? Now try it and see what you come up with.

If you need more help in identifying and conquering the pro’s for not losing weight, 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 [email protected] and we’ll point you in the right direction.

by Maria's Last Diet

How do you feel about all you are doing to lose weight? Are you pleased with the decisions you made? How happy are you with the action-steps you took? Did the outcome meet your high expectations?

You may be surprised to learn that how you go about decision-making, taking action, and setting expectations are the real causes for your disappointment and regret and not the number of pounds lost. This will more than likely be the case if your goal is to reach what decisions, actions, and expectations are “the best.” If you are satisfied with “good enough” and don’t have to go for “the best,” you are more likely to feel good about what you are doing to lose weight.

by Maria's Last Diet

Can you eat candy? What happens when you try to lose some weight or keep off the weight you lost? Can you have some candy then or would eating candy ruin things? Would it be possible for you to eat just one or two pieces of candy and do no harm to your weight loss routine, or can’t you stop there?

What’s the deal with being unable to eat only one or two pieces of candy? Do the floodgates have to open so you can’t stop at only a couple of pieces? So many women say that having a little leads to losing control. Is this true for you?   

Where eating is concerned, and perhaps where other things are concerned too, there is something terribly unsettling about the prospect of not being able to stop once you start. If asked about this phenomenon, women say they don’t know why they do it. They guess they’re greedy, or feel deprived, or need to believe they are worthwhile, or any of a hundred other reasons.

It is difficult to know for sure why you can’t put the brakes on after a piece or two of candy and go on your merry way losing your unwanted weight or maintaining lost weight. It should be possible, shouldn’t it?

by Maria's Last Diet

There are a lot of slips between the cup and the lip if you are trying to lose some weight. This can lead to frustration, discouragement, and worse. The mistakes you make and the failures you experience can cause you to make some pretty harsh self-evaluations.

Into the fray comes compassion. This is where you find a way to accept your experiences no matter how difficult or troublesome they may be. You are kind to yourself rather than critical. You treat yourself with warmth and understanding and thereby promote the psychological strength, which you need to go on losing unwanted weight.

by Maria's Last Diet

Among the weight loss strategies you are using, how often do you find yourself resorting to avoidance strategies? You probably will be shocked to find out that some of your most popular weight loss strategies are really ways to avoid losing your unwanted weight.

Take exercise for example. Everyone says that exercise will bring you weight loss. Your doctor says it. Your friends are doing it. The government broadcasts this belief loud and clear. Guess what? If you want to lose weight, really and truly want to lose weight, exercise is an avoidance strategy.

Here are the facts about exercise. Research shows that exercise will not help you lose weight. It will, however, help you maintain the weight you lost. The average calorie burn for an hour of exercise is somewhere between 200 to 300 calories. If you continue eating the way you have been, knocking just two to three hundred calories off will not make you shed your extra pounds. Just a doughnut here and there will be an additional 300 calories that you will have to exercise for an hour to burn off.

Next up is a focus on food. If you, as so many woman do, make losing excess weight all about the food you eat, you will once again be using an avoidance strategy. Why is this so? It’s so because losing a lot of weight and keeping the weight off permanently is about changing your behavior and not simply about food. A good saying to help you keep this in mind is “it’s not just about food.”

One other influential weight loss strategy is in fact another avoidance strategy. The diet. Now diets are something every woman has tried as her weight loss strategy. In truth, diets can be a good strategy for reducing your weight. But when the diet is thought of and used as the single-best method of losing your unwanted weight, then dieting is an avoidance strategy. A diet at best is a guide to what foods to eat and how much to eat of these foods. If you had a pattern of eating that was weight gaining and weight maintaining, you will most likely be making a big, big change if you diet. This big change is a personal matter, and you will probably find yourself struggling to make this change. It’s this struggle that is at the heart of the weight loss process and not the diet.

You may not want to hear that some of your most prized weight loss strategies are merely avoidance strategies. If, however, you dig into your inner self and dig in deeply enough, you will see just how right this idea is.

by Maria's Last Diet

How would it be if you took a learning history about your weight-gaining and weight-maintaining pattern of eating? In other words, how was it that you learned to use an eating pattern that would make you become overweight? Now be careful. You might just say that eating the way you have been just happened. There was no learning involved. If this is your thinking, you’ve got it wrong. There was learning involved and that’s what a learning history is all about.

It’s like a drinking history or a smoking history. Everyone knows when they took their first alcoholic drink and if they smoke, when they had their first cigarette. Then they can take it from there and see how they learned to keep their drinking or smoking behavior going.  Eating too much food and eating too many fattening foods starts somewhere and at some time just like drinking or smoking. Was your first time when you were a kid and snuck those extra snacks? Was it when you had those unlimited lunches at your friend’s house because you felt free of your family’s restrictions? When was the first time and what happened after that and after that and after that?

Taking a learning history like this can provide you with a weight loss strategy that is broader and more to the point than dieting and exercise. What you learned you will have to unlearn, that is if you want the most reliable way to lose your unwanted weight.

by Maria's Last Diet

How much of an impact does thinking you will regret it have on you if you do not take a weight loss step you’ve been meaning to take? For example, let’s say you want to try to stay on your diet all weekend. You’ve been able to stick to a diet on weekdays, but on weekends you haven’t. If you were to focus on how regretful you would be for not following through and sticking to your diet over the weekend, would your anticipation of feeling regretful help you achieve your goal? There is psychological research that says yes this is the case. Knowing you will regret not doing what you set out to do can indeed strengthen your intention to do it.

If you could set up an ideal weight loss milieu for yourself, what would it be like? Would it have to be some place far away from your daily life, or could you design a milieu for where you live and work now? Why not do both. You might find that designing your ideal weight loss in a far-away place would give you some fresh ideas for what you might do where you now live and work.

What is a weight loss milieu? It’s a controlled environment set up to foster weight loss practices that will prove successful for you. It’s the kind of setting that will enable you to lose all the weight you want to lose and then keep that weight off permanently. The milieu you design should take you from start to finish of the weight loss process, from the point at which you are maintaining all the weight you don’t want to have to the point at which you are comfortably maintaining all the weight you lost.

Even if you don’t go ahead and actually set up such an ideal weight loss milieu, thinking about all that would go into such a milieu might be an important weight loss step in itself.

Try it and see.