Week 27 of our Diet Group and our dieters are finally returning to a normal schedule and putting the holiday season firmly behind them. In our meeting on Monday we talked about the importance of preparing for the hard times. Most of the time dieting is pretty easy and doesn’t take much effort. But every once in a while it can get very difficult, due to a particularly strong craving (discussed in Day 13 of The Beck Diet Solution), a situation in which you can’t control the food, such as while traveling (Day 32), or being surrounded by tempting food, such as at a party or restaurant (Day 30). It is for such times we are trying to prepare our dieters, so that they can be in these situations and handle them with relative ease.
Maria had a very hard week. Her daughter was ill and so Maria has been up many nights tending to her. In addition to the stress of a sick child, Maria has also been very sleep-deprived. Consequently, she found herself again having cravings for foods like cheese (a problem food for her in the past), which she hasn’t craved in a quite a while (Day 33). “The cheese was literally calling out to me,” Maria says. But did she answer the calling? “No, I knew it was just a craving and that I didn’t have to give into it,” Maria answered. By labeling it a “craving” and differentiating it from actual hunger, Maria, even stressed and tired, was able to see that her desire wasn’t an emergency and she didn’t have to give into it (Day 11). Maria reports that she held firm and didn’t eat any cheese, and is so happy that she kept her eating under control even in these stressful circumstances. Maria lost 3 pounds this week.