Our guest blog this week comes from the husband and wife team behind Maria’s Last Diet. Dr. Kenneth Schwarz is a psychologist and psychoanalyst specializing in personal change and goal achievement. Julie North Schwarz writes about the non-food issues related to women’s weight loss. For more help with the psychological side of dieting, go to www.mariaslastdiet.com.
Beware of the Top 5 Diet Crushers and be a diet success.
1. A bad mood
You know the scenario. Things aren’t going right and your mood is sinking fast. Isn’t this a perfect recipe for wrecking your diet? Yes, but you don’t have to let it happen. There are many things to do to ease a bad mood besides eating. In fact, going back on your decision to stick to it may put you in a worse mood. Your best line of defense is to prepare beforehand, so when a mood hits, you can go into remedy mode. Plan to write a description of how you are feeling, and identify the reason for your feelings. Then think of a way to address that reason more directly.
2. Socializing
When you are on a diet, rely on knowledge about yourself in relation to other people. For example, if you usually go out on the weekends with certain friends and you always eat too much, avoid the situation. You might meet with your friends at times other than mealtimes, or you might tell them what you are trying to do and enlist their support. Don’t keep putting yourself in the middle of an environment where there is social pressure to eat.
3. Rebelliousness
- I’ve been good for a whole month, isn’t that enough?
- Why don’t I deserve what everyone else is having?
- I want to eat what I want to eat.
- No one can tell me what to do.
Fighting the rules can hijack your diet. In order to handle your rebelliousness, refresh your goals. Revisit those high hopes and good ideas you had at the beginning when you decided to take the significant step of going on a diet. Remind yourself about why you want to lose weight and how your life will change for the better, both short term and long term.
4. Temptation
To one person, it’s a party with lots of great food. To another, it’s a leftover piece of cake at the other end of the house. Temptation can be a very real obstacle for a dieter, causing her to lose self-control. The truth is, we only have so much self-control capability at one time, so ease up on yourself in other ways while you are dieting. Don’t use up all your self-control energy in other areas of life. Then you’ll have enough self-control to resist temptations and safeguard your diet.
5. A crisis
You don’t know when a crisis will occur or what it will be. The best thing to do is just let the diet go. Does that sound counterintuitive? It’s not. The good thing about a crisis is that it passes. Often it’s not possible to deal with a crisis and a diet together, and the crisis needs to take precedence. The trick is to get right back when the crisis passes so there is no real diet harm done.
Stay alert to these 5 danger zones and stay diet committed.
© Maria’s Last Diet
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