Making the Commitment to your Diet Plan

[Cute'n'Quirky]

In order to be a success at any diet you need to make a commitment to your Plan, to get your mind in the right place for you to succeed.

Research has shown that change occurs through a process, through a series of stages.

There is a certain “readiness” to the change process.
Knowing what stage you are in is helpful to create success with any kind of change.

If you attempt to make a change you are not ready for, you are setting yourself up to fail.

If you think about the way you have accomplished change in the past, you don’t just go out and make it happen. You may not be aware of the process, but it is still there.

Here is a brief description of the stages of change (Prochaska, et.al.):

1. Precontemplation – You don’t see that you have a problem. You are in denial. People in this stage have no intention of changing themselves and usually only seek help with strong pressure from others. They resist change and are often demoralized as well because they view the situation as hopeless.

2. Contemplation – You acknowledge that you have a problem and begin to think about solving it, but you feel “stuck”. People with food and weight issues often hang out in this stage. You know you have a problem. You may even know what you need to do to change it, but you are not ready to commit to action.

It is not unusual for people to spend years telling themselves that “someday” they will lose weight.
Fear of failure (or focusing on past failures) can keep you stuck in this stage for a very long time. It can look like searching for the perfect solution and reading lots of diet books, but not actually doing anything about it.

3. Preparation – You are planning to take action within the next month. You start focusing more on the solution than on the problem. You also start thinking more about the future than the past.
You are committed to action, but haven’t necessarily resolved all of the mixed feelings you may have. For instance, losing weight requires letting go of some behaviours that may have provided temporary comfort in the past.

4. Action – You take visible action steps. You may purchase certain foods you plan to eat or remove foods from your home that you plan to avoid. You take the steps you have been preparing for. However, the change process does not end here.

5. Maintenance – You work to maintain the strides you have made in the previous stages. If you don’t have a strong commitment to maintenance and a support structure in place, you can relapse back to a previous stage.

Author: Carol Solomon, Ph.D.
Diet and Weight Loss - Are You Ready to Lose Weight

The most important point is making that commitment to your Plan.

Make a list of the reasons you want to lose weight. Look at it every day to remind yourself of why you are doing this.

Know that you are not 'depriving' yourself of anything. The thoughts of 'not being able to have x,y,z' is very often what will make people fall off the wagon. Instead, think of it as 'I am CHOOSING' not to have chocolate, beefburgers, biscuits, or whatever, so that I stick to my diet plan and achieve the results that you want.

Do some visualisation - see yourself in your mind's eye looking in a full length mirror as you really truly want to be - see yourself trying on different outfits, see yourself from all angles. This exercise of visualisation really does help with your motivation and your desire to succeed. Do this every day, twice a day preferably, once as soon as you awaken in the morning and again during the day if you feel your resolve is slipping. Look through the internet or catalogues and see an outfit you really like and see yourself in that outfit and looking spectacular.

Wishing you well on your journey