Diet 1 Flashcards
Sabotaging thought: I don’t really have to plan my eating do I?
Helpful Response: If you don’t plan ahead, you put yourself in the tougher situation of solving problems in the moment. When you feel hungry and look in your refrigerator for something to eat, you might not come up with a diet-friendly solution.
Sabotaging thought: It’s so much trouble. I don’t want to do it. (diet activity and plan my eating).
Helpful Response: Spontaneous eating–the little nibbles of snacks, leftovers, and other food–is often what keeps dieters from losing weight.
Sabotaging thought: I can’t just eat whatever I feel like eating.
Helpful Response:Tolerate occasional hunger and cravings and you can learn to withstand them. Stick to your plan. You’ll feel happier in a few minutes.
Sabotaging thought: I don’t have time to plan and eat well.
Helpful Response: You have to plan and monitor your eating in writing every day. You have to rearrange your schedule so that you will do it!
Sabotaging thought: I don’t want to write anything down.
Helpful Response: Which is stronger: wanting to lose weight or not wanting to be inconvenienced? Since I do want to lose weight, I’m going to start writing. It’ll probably take only five minutes. I have a choice. I can listen to the resistant part of my mind, or I can firmly and decisively decide to do the writing, even though I feel resistant. It’s great practice to ignore my resistant feelings because they’ll come up again and again when I don’t feel like following my eating plan.
Sabotaging thought: I can follow a diet without having to do this.
Helpful Response: That might be true–at first–buy why not maximize my chances?
Sabotaging thought: Writing a food plan won’t make me lose weight.
Helpful Response: If the program only consisted of writing food plans, it wouldn’t work. In this program, however, writing a plan is just one strategy. In any case, I won’t know if I’ll be successful until I try it. I may as well do everything in my power that I can because I really want to lose weight.
Sabotaging thought: I’ll write it down later.
Helpful Response: I may not get to it later. I have to make this a priority right now.
Sabotaging thought: I don’t feel like planning and measuring my food. I know what and how much I’m going to eat. I don’t need to go to so much effort.
Helpful Response: If I do only these things I feel like doing, I won’t be able to lose weight and keep it off. Even if I don’t need to do these things to lose weight initially, I have to learn how to make myself implement these crucial skills for the future, when my motivation to stick to my diet isn’t as high as it is today.
Sabotaging thought: I don’t like what the scale says so I’m just going to eat whatever I want.
Helpful Response: I just started my new eating life. In the future, my weight will go down because I’m finally learning how to diet.
Tolerate it!
Hungers and cravings aren’t emergencies. I can tolerate them. They’re mild compared to the discomfort when Nick broke up with me.
No excuses!
Just because I want to eat, doesn’t mean I should.
When I want to eat something, I shouldn’t….
Check your distraction flashcards!
Resistance habit
EVERY TIME I eat something I’m not supposed to, I strengthen my giving-in habit. EVERY TIME I don’t give in, I strengthen my resistance habit.
Can’t have it both ways.
I can be loose with my eating OR I can be thinner. I can’t be both!
I’d rather be thinner!
Being thinner is SO much more important to me than eating this food!
It’s not okay.
It’s NOT OKAY to eat this. I’m going to be very sorry if I do.
NO CHOICE NO CHOICE NO CHOICE
NO CHOICE!
I’ll care later.
I may not care right now, but I will care a LOT when I get on the scale.
Sabotaging thought: It’s too much trouble to use the food plan chart. I don’t really need it.
Helpful Response: I may not need it today, but I definitely will need it in the future. If I don’t start learning this skill right now, chances are excellent that I’ll regain whatever weight I lose.
Sabotaging thought: I don’t feel like planning and measuring my food. I k now what and how much I’m going to eat. I don’t need to go to so much effort.
Helpful Response: I’m going to need it when my motivation goes down. I haven’t been able to stick to a diet without doing it. It’ll take only three min at most. I really want to lose weight because of all the advantages.
Sabotaging thought: I don’t need to write this down; i can remember what I ate.
Helpful Response: Not writing things down hasn’t helped me in the past. I undoubtedly forget about some of the food that I eat. I have to make myself conscious of what i’m eating.
Sabotaging thought: This is too much work.
Helpful Response: I won’t have to write things down for the rest of my life. Besides, it’ll probably be less burdensome than I’m predicting. Why not give the “best” option a try for a week and see how it goes?
Sabotaging thought: I’ll wait until I’ve lose some weight. Then I’ll feel more motivated to do this task.
Helpful Response: If I wait, chances are excellent that I’ll never do it.
Sabotaging thought: I really want to eat this, but I know I shouldn’t, but I really want this!
Helpful Response: You don’t have a choice. You made a plan, and you’ll follow that plan–no -ifs, ands, or buts!
Sabotaging thought: I deserve to be able to eat what I want.
Helpful Response: If I want all the benefits of being thinner, I just can’t eat whatever I want without planning. I have to make “I deserve to be thinner and feel good about myself” a much higher priority than “I deserve to make spontaneous choices about what I eat.”
Sabotaging thought: I don’t think that I can accept the fact that I can’t eat spontaneously.
Helpful Response: I’ve been giving myself choices about what, when, an dhow much to eat for along time, so it feels natural and right to do so. On the other hand, I have to face the fact that spontaneous eating doesn’t work for me. The more often I say, NO CHOICE, to myself, the less I’ll struggle.
Sabotaging thought: I want to be able to eat spontaneously sometimes.
Helpful Response: Then I have to accept the fact that I won’t be able to keep off whatever weight I lose. The price of becoming and staying thinner is to follow whatever plan I establish for myself.
Sabotaging thought: It’s a shame that I can’t eat this…It’s bad to waste food.
Helpful Response: Isn’t it great that I’m not eating this…This is getting me closer to my goal of losing weight… This is helping me to strengthen my resistance muscle.
Sabotaging thought: I just want to finish all of this food!
Helpful Response: Don’t you remember how happy you were when you didn’t finish it…10 minutes after you didn’t eat the last time. Let that be your motivation. :)
Sabotaging thought: There is too much anxiety when I have extra food on my plate!
Helpful Response: Even if I want to eat it, I can use my anti-craving techniques and look at my craving flashcards.
Sabotaging thought: I don’t need t do this, I’ll be able to stop eating without practicing this skill.
Helpful Response: This isn’t a big deal. I should try it anyway. The worst thing that could happen is that I didn’t need to do it. I might not learn from this, but I also might learn a lot.
Sabotaging thought: I hate to deliberately waste food.
Helpful Response: Which is better: deliberately wasing food or overeating and gaining weight? What would I tell my best friend if she had this problem? The truth is that extra food will go to waste in my body or go to waste in the garbage. Either way, it’ll go to waste. And no matter what I heard from my parents when I was growing up, overeating doesn’t help starving people any place in the world.
Sabotaging thought: I can’t waste food.
Helpful Response: Then I’ll always be in danger of gaining back whatever weight I lose. Throwing away food I’m not supposed to eat is an important skill. And I’ll either waste food in the trash or waste it in my body as fat. Either way it’s wasted.
How to figure out if you ate too much…
If you can’t easily take a moderate to brisk walk after a meal, it means you’ve eaten too much and you have an unrealistic definition of fullness.
Sabotaging thought: I feel disappointed that I can’t eat more.
Helpful Response: It’s okay, I’m going to have a snak in three hours- an apple and cheese stick–I can wait. Then read your ARC to remind yourself why it’s worth putting up with this momentary disappointment.
Sabotaging thought: Oh, I really want to eat more.
Helpful Response: No I’m normally full…I want to be thinner, so I’m going to stop eating now.
Sabotaging thought: I like feeling really, really full.
Helpful Response: I need to accept that this sensation is not what is considered normal. I’m really eating beyond fullness, which has contributed to my being overweight.
Sabotaging thought: My diet plan says I’m allowed to have unlimited amounts of certain foods. What’s the harm of eating lots of them?
Helpful Response: I’m going to have many, many experiences in which I don’t have access to these unlimited foods: at restaurants, buffets, and social gatherings. If I haven’t repeatedly practiced eating to normal fullness, I’m likely to eat too much of the foods I have to limit in those situations.
Sabotaging thought: What if I end up feeling hungry before it’s time to eat again?
Helpful Response: I learned on Day 12 that hunger is not an emergency, that I can tolerate the sensations of hunger, and that, if I don’t focus on it, the hunger WILL dissipate. If I still don’t feel confident in my abilities to tolerate hunger, I should repeat the Day 12 tasks in addition to completing today’s task.
