Weight loss therapy. Can it help you prevent overeating?
Why is it so hard to drop some weight and keep it away? By now, the “how” is no mystery: everybody knows the drill, whether you want to lose 2 pounds or 200. Just decrease your calories and get more exercise. And huge numbers of people regularly set off with high hopes determined to do that. Nevertheless, study after study indicates that while many succeed in losing some weight, the long-term results are overwhelmingly poor. The unfortunate reality is the fact that if there is one thing as common in The United States as someone on a diet, it is a person who is fallen off a diet; who is slowly (or fast) recovered every ounce he or she fought to lose, frequently adding pounds along the way. Why is it so difficult to abide by a healthful eating plan as well as a realistic exercise regimen? Maybe, some kind of weight loss therapy will help?
Weight loss therapy

CBT as a weight loss therapy
From the perspective of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), the reason is not difficult to find. Understanding what to do and understanding how to get yourself to do it are completely different skills. When it comes to weight loss therapy and changing behavior, especially long-term, habitual patterns, getting yourself to do something different, even when you know it’s good for you, depends largely on what you tell yourself: that is, on your thinking.
As an example, let us say you are at a dessert party and see five truly yummy pastries. Are you going to find yourself eating too much? You almost certainly will if you believe, I do not care. I do not need to deprive myself. It’s not reasonable that everyone else gets to eat whatever they need, and I ‘ve to settle for one little bit. By comparison, if you say to yourself, “I am going to decide my favorite dessert. I will eat one little bit slowly and revel in every morsel. I am aware I will feel so proud of myself,” you stand a far greater opportunity of not overeating.
Dysfunctional thoughts
Like depressed customers – or those with stress, substance abuse, or eating disorders – individuals who repeatedly find themselves unable to control their weight usually can not get past their negative, dysfunctional thinking. After several years of training, it is evident to me that to reach their aims, unsuccessful dieters do not need to uncover hidden motivations or investigate the hypothesized youth sources of their difficulties. Instead, they should find out the best way to address the dysfunctional thinking that results in overeating.
How to stick to the diet?
There is a program for nonpsychiatric (and noneating-disordered) individuals that utilizes the basic principles of CBT to address overeating directly.
Possibly the most fundamental tool that helps customers learn the cognitive abilities they should stick to their diets is using index cards. On them, they compose messages they will read when they are tempted to overeat. They develop the practice of reading weight lose therapy “response cards” containing these helpful messages every morning and at least one more time; at their most vulnerable part of the day. Here are some instances of response card messages:
- I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want, or I can be thinner. I can not have it both ways.
- Hunger and craving consistently pass. I can get them go away quicker by focusing my attention on something different.
- My body does not understand it is a vacation. It will process food in the same fashion as on other days.
Reading these cards daily, even when motivation is high, allows dieters to immerse themselves in crucially important ideas that prepare them for the inevitable difficult times; especially the thoughts that lead to negative, motivation-sapping emotions. This is just too hard leads to discouragement. It is not reasonable leads to rage along with a feeling of deprivation. I need to eat this right now results in disappointment. Dieters can not prevent these sabotaging ideas from entering their heads; but if they have been practicing helpful answers and weight loss CBT therapy, they will be capable of coping with them and change their habitual eating behavior.
Successful weight reduction and care
The one most significant lesson I learned early in my work with dieters is the fact that it is a mistake to request them to acquire the cognitive and behavioral abilities they need to abide by a diet at precisely the same time they begin their diet strategy. It is too hard for most of us to modify their eating plan and concurrently learn the abilities which will make it possible for them to stick to it. Instead, there’s a 5-phase plan, in which dieters do not shift when they eat or what they eat until they have mastered essential abilities. It follows this sequence:
- Phase 1: Acquiring pre-dieting abilities; learning the best way to remain inspired, getting oneself to use great eating habits. Coping with hunger and cravings. Recuperating instantly from an eating error
- Phase 2: Regularizing eating (eating according to a schedule)
- Phase 3: Altering food varieties (making changes that you may continue to follow for life)
- Phase 4: Preparation for special occasions (making choices in advance that enable one to eat more flexible)
- Phase 5: Staying motivated for life – especially when the scale stops going down, or there’s a lapse or relapse’
There is no special “care period”. When dieters’ weight reaches a plateau, they keep on eating in the same way they did when they were actively losing weight. Whatever changes dieters make within their eating, they make forever.
Expect for the future
In the previous 30 years, CBT has been demonstrated to work for a host of psychiatric, emotional, and behavioral issues. It is great news a clear, organized, readily teachable clinical strategy for weight reduction as well as care is starting to emerge; and a scientific basis for this particular policy is being created. In the event the supporting studies on CBT, like those released in a previous couple of years, continue, we might be entering into a new age. One in which Americans turn away from fashionable, frequently dangerous diet fads and quit squandering billions and billions of dollars. After decades of depressing results for this particular public health disaster, a powerful, empirically supported method of assisting individuals safely and faithfully lose weight is finally on the horizon.