Product InfoThousands of people go on diets to lose weight, or change their eating patterns, or for health reasons, but the vast majority give up without achieving their long-term goals. Sticking to a diet needs more than an eating plan, and this book uses psychological techniques to help you achieve your aims.

The reason most diets fail is because you lose sight of your long-term goals, and let negative thinking overcome your good intentions. This book will help you get results from any diet, and give a lasting sense of success, using mental imagery, exercise and assertiveness to change your behaviour and gain control of your eating. It helps you identify and understand your personal danger points', where your willpower might weaken -parties, perhaps, or comfort eating - and strengthen your defences.

Use this book alongside any eating plan to add that vital extra ingredient for success.

Contents

Contents

Introduction

Think Positive - finding your 'self-talk'

• Self-defeating self-talk in four situations
• Finding your negative self-talk
• Turning your self-defeats into victories

Think positive - changing your self-talk

• Fifteen negative self-statements to correct

Change your behaviour and put yourself in control

• Twenty behavioural changes you can make now
• My personal 'change list'

Using Mental Imagery: Picture yourself in control

• Rational-emotive imagery: here's how it works
• Reinforcement and penalties
• More ways to use your imagery skills

Conquer your 'emotional eating'

• Keeping a food diar
• Fighting the irresistible urge

Talk yourself into - not out of - sticking to your diet plan

• Obstacles you put in your way
• Overcoming these obstacles

Eat less fat - it's more fattening than you think!

• How to reduce your fat intake
• Beware of losing weight too fast!

Exercise - make it part of every day!

• Regular exercise
• Plan your exercise periods
• Stay active!
• We recommend walking

Be Assertive - ask for the help you need!

• Be assertive: ask for what you want
• Make the best choice
• You can say no!
• Tell people what you like!
• Practice being assertive

Stick to your diet - you can do it this time!

• Some more helpful tips
• Some tips for when you eat out
• Some tips for parties
• Some tips for travellers
• What about motivation?
• Congratulations!

Case studies

• It's not what you eat, it's what's eating you
• Self-acceptance
• Secret meanings of food
• Getting started
• Low frustration tolerance
• Favourite group exercises

Further reading

Extra Info

Introduction

This is not a book that advocates a particular diet. We are not trying to sell you the Steinberg-Dryden diet plan. Nor are we necessarily recommending that you lose weight. If, however, you have decided to lose weight or have been advised to go on a particular diet (say, to reduce your blood cholesterol level if it is high), then this book will outline a number of ways that will help you to implement the programme you have selected. In particular, we will help you to identify and change self- defeating thinking that leads you to give in to the many temptations that you will face along the way. We will discuss a number of ways in which you can change your behaviour so that you can gain control of your eating. We will also discuss how you can use mental imagery, exercise and assertion to help you achieve your goals. In short, if you follow our advice, this book will help you to stick to your diet. Whatever the reason for you following a diet, what we have to say will help.

Why go on a diet? Why lose weight? The answers to these questions are much more complex than was once thought. You may be eating the wrong foods or wrong combinations of foods or be sufficiently overweight for this to be putting your health at risk. If this is the case, then it is important that you consult your doctor in the first instance. Your doctor may well suggest that you see a dietician or a nutritionist who will suggest a sensible diet or weight loss programme that will help you to develop healthy eating habits. Take this advice. Don't try to develop a diet or lose weight on your own, and please think twice before you go on any faddy diets — they may be number one in the bestseller list today, but be on the growing scrap heap of such books tomorrow. Also, we urge you not to go on any kind of unsupervised crash diet, as this will probably do you more harm than good in the long term.

You may also want to diet for aesthetic reasons (you think you will look better) or for fitness reasons (you think you will feel better physically). Both these reasons are fine as long as your weight goal is a healthy one. We say this because a number of people wish to achieve a weight that is too low for their body shape, so it is worth checking your plan with your doctor or a dietician before you start.

Many diets have been criticized for teaching people only how to lose weight. A popular saying sums it up ... 'Losing weight is easy, I've done it hundreds of times.' The key to any successful diet for weight loss is weight maintenance.

Perhaps you should stop for a moment and think about your reasons for wanting to lose weight. You may wish to go on a diet because you think that being thinner will raise your self esteem. In our opinion, this motive is an unhealthy one. It reflects an attitude that, in effect, says that your worth is dependent on your weight. If you think about it, this is nonsense. While being thinner may be advantageous in itself, it can never prove that you are a worthier person unless you define yourself as such. If you think in this way, you will soon find that even if you lose weight you will still suffer from low self-esteem. If this happens, you may well attempt to lose more weight and sow the seeds of an eating disorder. Alternatively, you may see that food does not solve your problems and so turn to food for comfort, putting on weight and feeling less worthy as a result. If you suffer from low self-esteem you will benefit more from counselling than dieting. See a reputable helping professional or ask your doctor to suggest someone. Food will not solve self-esteem and other emotional problems; its purpose is to keep us alive and give us energy.

Sound nutrition, exercise, and a rational state of mind are essential for long-term weight loss results.

The state of your mind is emphasized in this book by teaching useful thinking habits and positive behavioural changes related to food. Also included are methods to overcome emotional eating using rational thinking, imagery techniques and assertive training skills.

Equally important is a low-fat diet and adequate exercise. Experts even suggest that a sensible exercise programme can help stimulate clear, rational thinking.

You may be one of the growing number of people who are constantly dieting (between the times when you are overeating, that is). Research shows that 'yo-yo' dieting, as this phenomenon is called, is bad for your health in that it damages the skeleton. This is because when you lose weight, you also lose bone density, which isn't replaced when you regain weight. The result may be an increased risk of osteoporosis (brittle bone disease). If you are a 'yo-yo' dieter, please do see your doctor, who may investigate the reasons behind this. For example, you may be trying to lose too much weight, with the result that you put on weight once you have stopped dieting. Alternatively, you may give up on your weight-loss programme as soon as the going gets tough, only to return to it in the vain hope that this time it will work. Or your constant dieting may mask a psychological problem that you are trying unsuccessfully to solve by attempting to lose weight. Your doctor will point you in the right direction so that you can begin to discover the reasons for your 'yo-yo' behaviour.

Your desire to lose weight may also be due to an eating disorder. If you constantly 'feel fat' when others are telling you how thin and gaunt you look, if you are scared of putting on even the tiniest amount while, at the same time, you are always thinking of food, or if you compulsively exercise to lose weight when, again, people are showing concern that you are 'too thin', then these may well be signs that you have anorexia nervosa. If this applies to you, you need skilled professional help, although of course you are likely to be the last person to realize this. Please do see your doctor, though, if you see yourself in our description. Also, if you swing between bingeing and purging your food (for example, vomiting and/or using laxatives to get rid of the food that you have binged on), you may well be bulimic and, if so, again, you need professional help.

As you can see, deciding to go on a diet is not a simple business. While we cannot deal with your particular reason for wanting to follow a diet or lose weight, we do urge you to think long and hard about it before making the commitment. Consulting helpful professionals along the way is especially valuable. Once you and others are sure that following a particular diet or losing weight is in the best interests of your health, this is where we come in. Maybe you have just been told that you have diabetes or that you need to cut out fatty and other foods that are high in cholesterol. If so, you will have been given dietary advice, but not necessarily have the skills to comply with your new dietary programme. In this book we will suggest ways to help you stick to your diet and maintain a healthy you.

This book is based on an approach to counselling known as rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT), invented by Albert Ellis and developed by, among others, Maxie C. Maultsby Jr and Paul Hauck. We have drawn on their ideas in this book and wish to acknowledge their healthy influence on our thinking. As this book only explores the relevance of REBT to sticking to a diet, we recommend that the interested reader consult the works of Paul Hauck and Windy Dryden, whose self-help books on a wide variety of personal development issues are also published by Sheldon Press.

About the authors
Deborah Steinberg has worked as a qualified psychotherapist for over 20 years, and has specialised in weight and food issues since the 1970s.

During 1985 to 1995, she was staff psychotherapist at the Institute for Rational Emotive Therapy in New York where she ran most of the weight control groups.

She is the author of Stella Remembers (a personal account of Ms Steinberg's family history based on the memoirs of her grandmother, Stella K. Abraham).

Ms Steinberg obtained her Masters degree in Social Work (MSW) from Columbia University in 1973 and is currently in private practice. She is married with a young son, Daniel, and lives in Florida.

Windy Dryden was born in London in 1950. He has worked in psychotherapy and counselling for over twenty years, and is the author or editor of over one hundred books, including The Incredible Sulk (Sheldon Press, 1992) and Ten Steps to Positive Living (Sheldon Press, 1994). Dr Dryden is Professor of Counselling at Goldsmiths College, University of London.