Vacation Plan – Part 2: A Realistic Strategy
A realistic strategy is the most important thing to bring on vacation. Eric lists the Sabotaging Thoughts and responses to help him stay on track.
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.
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.