Halloween Survival Guide
Halloween is just around the corner! It’s important to start thinking about what plans and Response Cards you need to navigate it successfully!
Planning a Trip Overseas
Make a reasonable vacation plan and stay committed to being in control. You’ll feel successful throughout your trip and enjoy new, exciting foods.
Making a Plan
Creating a plan allows you to eat a reasonable amount, enjoyed the food you eat, and feel proud of yourself for making healthy decisions. Learn what Kate could have done before attending a potluck dinner to make a helpful plan for her eating.
Confessions of a Diet Coach
I use the skills in the Beck Diet Program for myself as well. After I graduated college I lost weight and more or less kept it off in the ensuing 12 years. On January 30th of this year, I had my daughter, Diana, and things changed. You might think that since this is what I do for a living I’d have an easy time returning to my healthy eating habits – and that’s what I thought, too. But, boy was I wrong!
Thoughts, Not Actions
Written by: Deborah Beck Busis, LCSW
Recently I had a session with my client, Jenny. Among others skills, Jenny and I are working on her not having dessert before dinner. In session, Jenny told me that she was distressed because although she was able to resist dessert before dinner, on many occasions she was really tempted earlier in the day and wanted to give in. “I shouldn’t be having these thoughts!” she said to me. In a previous session, Jenny had told me that she had committed to going on a run with a friend one day after work. Although she was really tempted to cancel, Jenny ended up going. I reminded Jenny of this during our session and I asked her, “Did you feel really bad about having thoughts about cancelling the run?” Jenny thought about it and said that, no, she didn’t feel bad about it. Read more
Getting Home from Work: A Tricky Time for Many Dieters
When we first start working with new clients, they often report that they have trouble staying on track when they get home from work, and that the hour or two between arriving home and eating dinner is often filled with unplanned eating. We think that there are several reasons why this is such a troublesome area: Read more
The Cycle of Maintenance
Not enough is written about maintaining a weight loss, and this is a problem because for most dieters, that’s where the real work begins. Losing weight is unquestionably difficult but it comes with enormous positive reinforcement – watching the scale go down, fitting into clothes, getting compliments, etc. Weight maintenance has many fewer new and motivating milestones and it becomes about getting ourselves to keep doing what we’re doing, even though most of the excitement has passed. Read more
Why We Eat Dessert – And You Should, Too!
We believe that eating dessert, and for many dieters (ourselves included) eating a reasonable portion of dessert every day, is an important part of lifetime weight loss and maintenance. When dieters first come to see us, we always ask them to describe a really good eating day and then a really bad eating day. The majority of them describe a good eating day as one that includes no desserts, and a bad eating day as one that includes way too many. The reason for this is because all-or-nothing (meaning, too much dessert or none at all) is really two 
sides of the same coin; cutting a food out entirely almost always leads to eventually eating way too much of it. While it’s true that eating no dessert, or being too restrictive in other ways, may help dieters lose weight, being overly restrictive just doesn’t work long term because it’s impossible to stick to forever. And once dieters start allowing themselves to eat the foods they were previously forbidding, they go overboard and gain weight.
How to Eat Dessert EVERY DAY
We hope you’re more open to the idea that eating dessert in reasonable portions is an essential component of lifetime weight loss and maintenance, but of course the question you’re probably asking is, “But how do I do it?” Learning to eat dessert in reasonable portions is a process and it takes time and practice – but it absolutely can be done.
Treats in the Office Kitchen – Update
Yesterday I had a session with Jennifer, whom you read about in our previous blog post. One of the main topics of our session this week was rehashing how it went in her first week of enforcing the “no treats from the office kitchen” guideline. In short: She was awesome! Jennifer was able to stick to the guideline the entire week and didn’t eat a bite of unplanned food while at the office. Jennifer also lost two pounds over the past week, although the primary goal was really for her to at least maintain her weight and feel more in control of her eating. The weight loss was a bonus but the real reward was how on track Jennifer felt all week.
Jennifer told me that she learned a few things last week that she now knows will be integral in continuing to stay on track with her eating this December. First, Jennifer has been bringing all the food she’s planning to eat each day to work with her, so that she doesn’t have the excuse of not having a prepared snack as a reason to go and get something from the office kitchen. While bringing all her food is not always 100% necessary most of the year, during December when the office treats are so much more abundant and tempting, it’s a requisite in helping Jennifer to stick to her plan.
Jennifer also found that reading her Response Cards made a huge difference in helping her resist office treats. Whenever the cravings hit (which usually for her was around 11:00am and 3:00pm) she would first go and read her Response Cards and remind herself, over and over again, why it was worth it to stand firm; how proud she would feel when she did; how eating the treat wouldn’t be as enjoyable as she was imagining it would be anyway because she would definitely feel guilty about it. Jennifer told me that some cravings were stronger than others, but generally they would last for about 15 minutes at most, and many of them lasted for a few minutes or less. Just knowing that she was going to have cravings, expecting it to happen, but also knowing that they would pass, helped Jennifer enormously in getting through them. She reminded herself, “I’m only 15 minutes away from success.” Meaning, in 15 minutes (or less!) Jennifer would be exactly where she wanted to be – on track and feeling great.
Jennifer and I also discussed that, while there were some hard moments every day in resisting the office treats, most of the time she felt relatively at peace in terms of her food cravings. This is very different from when we first started working together. When Jennifer first came to see me, she was in a self-described state of “mental anguish” most of the time. She was constantly fighting food cravings and feeling badly about what she was eating, feeling out of control, and very worried about her weight. The only periods of relief she had from this was when she was actually eating, but most of the time it was really hard. Now just the opposite is true. Most of the time Jennifer feels good about what she’s doing, punctuated by moments of its feeling really hard when her cravings hit, but the vast majority of hours are ones in which she feels at peace. Jennifer has gained an understanding that those hard moments are the price she pays for feeling calm most of the time, and it is a cost she is 100% willing to pay.
With one really strong week under her belt and additional knowledge and experience to apply to this week, Jennifer is feeling more armed and ready than ever before to take on the office kitchen.
The Beck Diet Program was developed by Dr. Judith S. Beck with Deborah Beck Busis, LCSW.
Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavior Therapy is a leading international source for training, therapy, and resources in CBT.