The best techniques of sticking to your new year diet
From The Times
January 3, 2009
Dr Judith Beck
Do you ever find yourself thinking, “I know I shouldn't eat this, but I don't care?” Or maybe, “I've had such a bad day, I deserve to eat this”. Or, “I've eaten something I shouldn't. I may as well blow my diet for the rest of the day”. Having worked as a cognitive therapist with dieters for the past 20 years, I know that these are some of the most common “sabotaging thoughts” that get in the way of successful weight loss. For many people the reason diets don't succeed is that they don't know how to diet, or to lose weight permanently. The good news is that by applying the principles of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to any healthy, well-balanced diet of your choosing, you can learn how to continually follow a diet, avoid cheating, resist tempting food and cope with hunger, cravings, stress and negative emotions. You'll do all this by changing the way you think.
CBT works by teaching people how to solve problems - and dieters have lots of practical problems to solve. First, you must learn the behaviours that you need, such as eating slowly and sitting down and enjoying every bite, and keeping to a certain number of snacks and meals a day. Then you must change your thinking so that you can make these changes in your behaviour permanent. Most dieters I see have one thing in common - they don't know how to think like a thin person.
They often have a mindset that sabotages their efforts. They have thoughts such as, “I know I shouldn't eat this, but ...”; or, “It's OK to eat this just this one time”; or, “This is too hard, I can't do it”. Critical to successful dieting is learning to respond to these sabotaging thoughts - “If I eat it, I'll get a few seconds of pleasure but then feel bad”; “I want to lose weight more than I want to eat this”, and so on. The truth is that any reasonable diet will work for you if you have the right mindset.
You are about to learn the thinking and behavioural skills that you need. That's how you'll lose weight and if these skills work now, they'll work for the rest of your life.
Respond to sabotaging thoughts
You may not be conscious of it, but you always have a thought before you eat. If you see an open box of biscuits in your cupboard, you don't automatically reach for one. You have a thought first, which may be something like, “I really want to eat that ... It won't matter if I take just one”. If you don't respond to that thought, you'll go ahead and eat the biscuit. If, however, you think, “I really want to eat that but I shouldn't because it's not on my diet ... I have to get better at sticking to it”, then you won't. When you feel tempted to eat something you're not supposed to, just stop and say, “What's going through my mind?”.
Sabotaging thoughts are thoughts that allow you to eat food that you hadn't planned to eat, so it's critical to recognise the ones that give you permission to eat and prepare responses. If you can learn to identify the triggers (someone offers you a piece of cake) that evoke the sabotaging thoughts, you can minimise your exposure to them or change your response to them.
Differentiate between hunger and not hunger
Naturally thin people are more easily able to differentiate between when they're truly hungry because their stomachs are empty, and when their stomachs aren't empty and they have a desire to eat. Thin people say, “I'd like that food, but I just ate a while ago, I'm not going to have it”. To think like a thin person, you must learn to tell the difference between hunger and the desire to eat. I ask people to practise “hunger tolerance” - go a few hours without eating (on one day skip lunch and wait till dinner to eat) to experience the physical sensations of hunger. As a general rule, if the feeling is in your stomach, you're probably hungry, if it's not, it's just a desire to eat.
Don't focus on unfairness
Most thin people restrict their eating to some degree. They might be trying to maintain their weight, or eat healthily, or both. They accept limitations without too much struggle. Dieters, however, focus on how unfair it is that others can eat what they want and start to feel very deprived. I recommend two things: one is to start comparing yourself with successful dieters because they are certainly eating with limits. People limit their food intake all the time, subconsciously maybe, but that's what they do. And the other thing to do about this feeling of unfairness and deprivation is to remind yourself, “Either I'm going to be deprived of this food right now or I'm going to be deprived of getting thinner ... I'm going to be deprived one way or the other so I've got to decide what deprivation I want”.
Write it down
Almost everybody has had the experience of losing at least some weight but most people have not had the experience of keeping it off. That's because you can make short-term changes in your behaviour but, unless you make changes in your thinking, you probably won't sustain the behavioural change. One way to change your thinking is to practise new ideas over and over again. And that's why I recommend that people make response cards. These are index cards that contain important written messages to help you to counter your sabotaging thoughts. They also help you to motivate yourself every day so that you can stick to your diet. Perhaps the most important is the “Advantage Response Card”.
On one card, list all the reasons you've decided to diet. Write down all the advantages of losing weight. If you read your response card several times a day, every day, these reasons will be firm in your mind when you're tempted to stray. You'll be able to remember why you want to lose weight at the very moment your sabotaging thoughts are desperately trying to convince you that it's OK to eat something you shouldn't. The card will help you to remember, “I can either eat what I want or I can be thinner, but I can't have it both ways”. All the advantages of being thinner need to be present in your mind.
Build up your resistance muscle
One really common sabotaging thought is, “It's only a few crumbs, it won't matter if I eat this”. And the truth of the matter is that it does matter. It's not just about the calories. It makes a difference every single time you give in to a desire to eat when you haven't planned to, because then it makes it more likely that next time you'll give in. And the time after that you'll give in. Conversely, every time you resist, it makes it more likely that the next time you'll resist and the time after that. If you want to lose weight and keep it off permanently, you need to take every opportunity to strengthen your resistance muscle and to weaken your giving-in muscle.
Alleviate tension
The decision whether or not to eat can lead to an inner argument, “I think I'll have it ... no I won't ... but I want it ... I really shouldn't ... it's not on my diet ... it looks so good ... I'm not supposed to ...”, etc. Depending on where this inner argument ends, you either make the decision to eat, or not to eat. This argument can make you feel tense, and once you decide “I'm going to eat it” the tension is alleviated. But notice that you get a sense of relief before you even put it in your mouth. You'll find that just as the decision to eat reduces tension, so does the decision not to eat. You can make these cravings go away by distracting yourself. Different people need different techniques, so try out a few and see what works for you: brushing teeth, polishing nails, calling a friend, going for a walk, surfing the net, are all effective.
Eat sitting down
When you're trying to lose weight you need to limit the food that you eat and it's therefore very important to get as much satisfaction as you can from the food that you do eat. To get maximum satisfaction, you really have to focus on the pleasure of eating. If you're standing up your attention is usually divided; you can't enjoy food to the maximum. Eating standing up is for many people linked to bingeing. If you're standing up food somehow doesn't count. Stop yourself whenever you're tempted to eat while standing.
The importance of planning
One of the hardest things for people is to give up the idea of spontaneous eating; of being able to eat when they want to. But then I usually say to them, “How well has this worked for you in the past?” And they get it. People have to learn the skills of eating according to schedule instead of eating every time they want to. I recommend writing a food plan that includes everything you are going to eat tomorrow. Tomorrow you will check off whatever you eat that is on the plan and write down any food you eat that isn't on the plan. You'll continue to plan for many weeks and months ahead, maybe even until you have lost all the weight. Even if you make good choices now, the time will come in a few days or weeks when allowing yourself to make spontaneous decisions will lead to gaining weight.
Eliminate emotional eating
Emotional eating is a huge problem; just about everyone with a weight problem eats for emotional reasons from time to time. Some people eat when they're anxious or sad; others when they feel overwhelmed; others when lonely or bored. Like many dieters you might soothe yourself with food. But eating doesn't solve the problem that led to your distress in the first place. In fact, it creates another problem - you feel guilty about straying from your diet. There is nothing wrong with having negative emotions. They're just nature's way of telling us there's a problem. But instead of turning to food, try these techniques. Label how you're feeling: “I'm feeling upset, not hungry.” Don't give yourself a choice; once you say to yourself with conviction, “No choice, I'm not going to eat,” you'll stop struggling. And imagine the aftermath of giving in. Visualise eating - how long does the pleasure really last? Remind yourself how many times you've promised yourself you wouldn't stray - see yourself getting more disappointed; see how bad you feel. Now ask yourself, which feels better, eating or not eating?
