Maria's Last Diet

by Maria's Last Diet

What stresses are you under? Can you identify 5 major stresses that are currently a part of your life? If you can, then rank them according to their impact on you, 1 through 5, with 1 having the biggest impact and 5 having the least impact.

Next, list the ways in which you deal with each of these 5 stresses.

Once you identify the stresses in your life and list how you cope with them, then see which of these stresses causes you to eat too much food and/or eat fattening foods.

What did you discover?

Of course, you want to do something about using eating as a way to cope with stress. So take the 5 stresses and your current methods of dealing with them and see what you need to change in order to reduce the stress without resorting to food as the fix. Then go ahead and work on making the change.

Easier said than done, you're probably thinking. And you're right. But you can get help.

For help, 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 a 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

Would you consider yourself a stress eater? This is when you’re under stress and you get relief by eating?

What kind of stress are you usually under that sends you to food? Is it acute stress where a circumscribed or time-limited circumstance is the culprit? Or is it chronic stress in which there is something you’ve been putting up with for a long time? In either case, acute or chronic, stress always calls for you to cope as effectively as you can with it.

If you think carefully about the different ways you cope with stress, you’ll most likely find that you cope in one of three ways. There is, of course, problem-focused coping where you use an active strategy to resolve the stressor. Then there is emotion-focused coping in which you process and express feelings that are brought on by the stressor. Thirdly, there is something you could call meaning-focused coping. This involves changing the meaning of the stressor and reinterpreting the meaning to be less stressful. Making a positive reinterpretation, thinking it’s less harmful, and viewing it as more in line with your goals and values are examples of changing the meaning of what is stressing you. 

Check out your ways of coping with stress. See if you have all three kinds of coping at your disposal. If you don’t, try developing whatever you’re missing and see if it keeps you from stress eating.

by Maria's Last Diet

Here’s a curious thing. Have you experienced what you do to lose excess weight as stressful? And have you also found that you can get pleasantly absorbed in what you do to lose excess weight?

In the first case, that of finding aspects of the weight loss process stressful, you are probably dealing with situations where the demands of the situations exceed your skills and coping resources. If, however, you find yourself pleasantly absorbed, your skills and coping resources are most likely up to the demands of the situations, and you find the situations challenging rather than stressful.

This is why skills and coping resources are so important for you to develop and practice and have at the ready when you are attempting to get rid of your unwanted weight. There is a big difference to the way the process of weight loss feels if you are stressed versus feeling pleasantly challenged.

If you would like to know more about weight loss skills and coping resources, 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

Here you are all ready to do something about your weight. Only what you do will not be just about dieting and exercise. You are going to have to change the way you eat, and this is certainly going to cause you some stress, and definitely some distress too.

In fact, a good part of your weight gain may very well be due to the kind of eating you used to relieve your stress. So not only will you be feel stressed from a change in eating behavior, you also will be stressed because you won’t have your ‘favorite’ stress beater to turn to.

So here you are all ready to do something about your weight and you no longer want to rely on the tried-and-true stress reliever. You now have to face directly what stresses you and find good ways to cope better with the problems in your life. This is the awful truth about losing your unwanted weight. No more escape and avoidance through food. No more passive reliance on eating too much food or eating too many fattening foods.

As you can see, the process of weight loss has the potential of making you a healthier person in other important matters besides your weight.

by Maria's Last Diet

The weight loss process—stress or challenge? Which is it for you? You most likely perceive the process of weight loss as stressful when the situations, circumstances, and weight loss task demands exceed your skills and coping resources. If, however, the weight loss process for you is filled with requirements that are sufficiently demanding and you can rise to these demands with the coping resources and skills you need, weight loss for you will be a challenge.  

by Maria's Last Diet

Stress is a natural occurrence in our daily lives. The stress may be small, such as the number of everyday annoyances and hassles we deal with. Nevertheless, it is stress and we react to it in various ways. One way people react to stress is to eat foods high in calories. Sweets and fast food are eaten more frequently under conditions of daily frustration, irritation, and annoyance. There is also more in-between meal snacking as a result of the stresses and strains in our everyday lives.

Does everyone react to her daily stresses by eating more calorie-rich food than usual? Of course not. What is your reaction to stress? If you want to get an accurate assessment of your reaction to stress, try keeping a daily diary where you note down the stress or hassle and your reaction to it. Keep track of your eating to see if it conforms to the stress-eating pattern of more high calorie-rich food and more in-between meal snacks.

by Maria's Last Diet

What kind of food do you eat when you are feeling stressed? You probably won’t be surprised to hear that when stressed people tend to consume snack foods high in fat content, a wide variety of comfort foods, and also to increase their overall food intake.

What’s the psychology for dealing with stress through food? No doubt it is to shift attention away from what is stressing you and to calm yourself with food. If, however, you would like to use weight loss psychology so the stresses and strains of everyday life won’t interfere with losing your unwanted weight, you will have to find other ways to cope with stress that don’t involve eating too much food or eating too many calorie-rich foods.

by Maria's Last Diet

What happens when you are clipping along on a favorite diet and suddenly up pops something that might spoil your diet? How do you react? Do you feel threatened? Do you get stressed? Does the something that could very well spoil your diet fill you with diet anxiety?

If this is the case for you, it would be good to develop some more stress resilience. You are going to need it if you intend to go all the way in the weight loss process. What is stress resilience anyway? You could say that it is seeing that very something that could spoil your diet as a weight loss challenge rather than a weight loss threat.

Now it’s easy to say see it as a challenge and not a threat. It is a lot harder to pull something like this off. But pull it off you can if you are willing to put time and effort into more accurately perceiving and expressing your emotions, understanding the causes and consequences of your emotions, making sure you integrate your emotions well with your thinking, and managing your emotions so they help you adjust to and ride out the stress.

by Maria's Last Diet

How stressful is trying to reduce your weight?

Can you tell that the weight-loss process you’ve undertaken is causing you stress? Do you experience the kinds of demands on you that you perceive as taxing or even exceeding your resources?

What do you rely on to let you know you are feeling stressed? Do you actually perceive the stress while it’s happening, or do you surmise later that it must have been stressful because you now feel tired and cranky and don’t feel good about yourself?

What about coping with the added stress of trying to shed those extra pounds? Are you too passive when faced with weight-loss stress? Do you feel you have to take it on the chin; that’s the only way? Or do you get yourself up for a more dynamic interplay between you and the stress?

If you’re finding the process of weight loss particularly stressful, tell yourself so. See why, and then see what you can do about it.

If you need help, 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.