For people who are trying to change a behavior, it almost never goes smoothly. There are bumps in the road, places where you may slip backward for the moment. Slipping back into old patterns while you are trying ever so hard to do things differently is to be expected and even welcomed. As human beings, we simply do not learn without trial and error, without making mistakes.
Cheating on your diet provides you with a chance for critical learning. A study reported in the Journal of Applied Psychology showed that when students were encouraged to make errors and then learn from those errors, they outperformed students who were simply taught how to do things the exact right way. The findings in this study show how making mistakes helps people learn to plan, monitor and revise their strategies for solving problems—a perfect recipe for success.
Slips are an integral part of the process of change. If you are dieting, a slip can teach you a great deal about how to change your eating patterns. You can use a cheat as a power tool, especially if you are willing to think about it and not just beat yourself up over it. You can carefully consider how it happened, why it happened, and you can use that knowledge to create a plan that will be better for you in the future.
Here's how.
Find a relaxed time after your cheat. Take a paper and pencil and write your answers to the following:
How was I feeling before I cheated on my diet?
Was I reacting to something?
Have I reacted that way before?
Do I react that way in other areas of my life?
Would I say this is a pattern with me?
Have I ever found a way to break this pattern?
How did I feel about breaking my diet?
Do I have confidence in my ability to do something different?
Is there a high-risk cheating situation coming up for me within the next week?
Write out five strategies that you can use to help you deal with the high-risk situation you anticipate.
These are steps in the right direction. By taking these steps, you will be learning new behavior. This is the way to break your habit of cheating on your diet. You will begin to achieve a number of small successes and this will build your confidence, even if you still have moments when you fail. Over time, you will have fewer and fewer slips.
Practice the 10 steps outlined above and you will be able to use cheating as a tool for permanent change. You will be taking hold of a cheat and using it to your advantage. This will give you invaluable emotional and thinking skills that will support you every step of the way to your weight loss goal.
Success in any endeavor does not depend on doing everything right. Success has much more to do with what happens when things don't go just right. Learning from your diet mistakes will sharpen your problem solving techniques.
Use the steps, and lose the weight you want to lose. Try it—it really works.
©2007 Maria's Last Diet. Maria’s Last Diet is an online weight loss support website for women. At Maria’s Last Diet, you’ll find the tools to fix the thoughts, feelings, and automatic habits that fight against you when you diet. Because it’s never just about the food. Visit www.mariaslastdiet.com for more diet tips and weight loss motivation.
Book Reviews
This book takes all the piece parts from all the diciplines-psychological, physical, and spiritual-and puts it together in a well organized program. Brooke doesn't just focus on diet, exercise, or emotional eating issues, but rather creates a integrated system, which can be applied to many life challenges. If you have finally come to realize that conquering a weight problem is not a simple or easy task, then this book will give you a concrete method to get your weight under control.
In The Thin Commandments Diet, Dr. Stephen Gullo lets you in on his unique weight-loss program that has a success rate that is many times higher than the national average and has helped patients lose more than 100 pounds -- and maintain that weight loss for more than 5 years. His two-part approach replaces willpower with strategy and deprivation dining with great-tasting gourmet fare.
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