If you’ve gotten off track with your New Year’s resolution, this is exactly what you need to do, too! Stop expecting yourself to do everything and instead figure out what feels completely doable this week. Recommit to it, do it (and give yourself so much credit for doing so!), and then add one or more things next week.
Sabotage: It’s okay to eat this because no one is watching.
Response: Although it may feel okay to eat extra because I’m alone, the reality is that my body doesn’t know if 100 people are watching me eat or if no one is watching me eat, it processes all calories the same. So it’s absolutely irrelevant whether or not I’m alone when I overeat – overeating is overeating.
Dieting is generally easy in the beginning because motivation is high but at some point (whether it’s in three weeks or three months) it gets harder. This is completely NORMAL and it happens to everyone. As long as you keep at it, it will get easier again.
If you feel alone in your struggles to limit your eating and lose weight, remember that so many other people are working at it, too. It’s a very, very small number of people who can eat whatever they want and be at a healthy weight. While it stinks that you have to work at it, you’re in VERY good company!
This weekend, if it seems unfair that you can’t eat something, remind yourself, “It’s true that it’s not fair. But I need to ask myself: which unfairness would I rather have – not being able to eat this or not losing weight?” Then work on accepting it and move on.
When dieters say, “I just can’t stick to a diet, I have no discipline,” we remind them that they actually DO have a lot of discipline because they are able to get up with their kids, get to work on time, pay bills, etc. While they may lack consistent dieting discipline, they are clearly capable of great feats of discipline in other areas, so this is not a valid reason to not try.
Sabotage: Losing weight is just so hard.
Response: Being overweight is HARD!! Physically, mentally, financially, it takes a big toll. Working on healthy eating and losing weight can be hard, too, but at least it comes with amazing outcomes.
It’s important to remember that you need to make eating decisions based on what works for you, not what everyone around you is doing. Remind yourself that what everyone around you is eating is irrelevant, and that if you eat extra, you’ll gain weight regardless of whether others are overeating, too.
If you’ve made a resolution to lose weight, remember that learning to diet is like learning to play the piano. You start out with easier skills/pieces, practice them, get better and better at them, and then move on to harder ones. If you were learning to play the piano, you would never think that hitting a wrong note was an indication that you couldn’t do it or that you should give up, you would simply accept it as part of the learning process. Dieting is no different!
It is so much easier to stay in control when you maintain some type of eating schedule, even during the weekend, so that you don’t wind up just grazing all day. This weekend, don’t let unstructured time become unstructured eating.
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.
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