Skip to main content

Day 37 - Beck Diet Solution, Reduce Stress


Improve the quality of your life by reducing stress.  If you try to live with unreasonable levels of stress for too long, things will come to a breaking point eventually and something will have to give.  We may be strong but we are only human.  If you reduce the stress now, chances are also lower you’ll try to take temporary refuge from that stress later on by eating to oblivion.

Now that we’re 37 days into the BDS training, we have more techniques at our disposal to confront stress:

1.    Solve the problem (either in whole or in part) using the Seven Question Technique discussed earlier.
2.    Relax.  Do yoga, meditate, take a hot bath, etc.
3.    Change your mindset.

What about your mindset might be causing you stress?  You might have rigid, unreasonable rules which often have the words “should” or absolutes like “always” or “never” in them:

“I should always do my best.”
“I should always prevent problems from happening.”
“I shouldn’t rely on others.”
“I shouldn’t let people down.”
“I shouldn’t make others unhappy.”

What do these self-imposed rules do?  They create stress by imposing unrealistic standards that are impossible to meet, they put precedence on the needs of others over your own, and they set you up for failure.  Try changing the rules thusly:

“I should try to do a reasonable job most of the time.”
“I should try to take reasonable precautions.”
“I should rely on others when it is reasonable to do so.”
“I should try to be a nice person if I reasonably can be.”

And just as you should remove these rigid, unreasonable rules you impose on yourself, remove them from your expectations of other people as well:

·       You don’t have much control, if any, over other people.  Try to change your own thinking and behavior instead of other peoples.’
·       Do you know someone who has a really great approach in their expectations of other people?  Try to model them.
·       Take the words “should,” “never” out of your expectations and change “should” or “shouldn’t” to “It’s reasonable to expect that..”
o   “It’s realistic to expect that other people will make mistakes.”
o   “It’s realistic to expect that people won’t know what I want or need unless I tell them.”
o   “It’s realistic to expect that not everyone will be as appreciative as I’d like them to be.”

When you have more realistic expectations for both yourself and other people, sticking to your weight loss plan and life in general will be easier.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Day 22 - Beck Diet Solution, Say “Oh Well” To Disappointment

Inigo Montoya: Who are you? Man in Black: No one of consequence. Inigo Montoya: I must know... Man in Black: Get used  to disappointment. Inigo Montoya: 'kay. The Princess Bride (20th Century Fox 1987) Just as Inigo shrugs off the disappointment of the Man in Black’s declining to reveal his identity and gets right back into the duel, so too must we shrug off those discouragements that go hand-in-hand with losing weight and keep truckin’ down the weight loss trail.   It’ll go easier for us if we do.  What if we just lay around bellyaching about how horrible it is that we can’t have that donut, can’t eat/drink exactly what everybody else does at parties, can’t just open the fridge and eat whenever we felt like it?  How much would we really accomplish that way?  Even if we do stick to our plans for a little while under that mindset, we’d be fighting an exhausting battle with ourselves every day and eventually give in.  Even the patience an...

Day 18 - Beck Diet Solution, Change Your Definition of Full

Sacha Chua via Flickr Naturally-thin people are usually good at the skill of eating to the point of normal fullness.  In general, this means being just as able to take a brisk walk after a meal as before the meal.  Eating past fullness doesn’t feel normal to thin people – it feels uncomfortable to them, says BDS.  But for people with weight problems, this overfull sensation may actually feel normal for a number of reasons – wanting to prolong the eating experience, taking advantage of food being around, wanting to load up to avoid being hungry between meals, and so on. If you’re worried about getting hungry before your next meal, just remember what we’ve learned about hunger – that it’s never an emergency and that we can withstand the sensations.  We have plenty of distractions and anti-craving techniques at our disposal to deal with cravings as well.  If you’re triggered to eat more because there’s food sitting around, like at a dinner or party, you c...

The Ogre

By Joseph Jacobs John Dickson Batten [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Shelley and I were friends almost immediately.  However her father did not like me.  The only reason I can imagine is that my family was too poor for him and that he did not consider me fit to be around his daughter.  Despite how her father felt about me, the moments when he was away at work as a lawyer, and when Shelley and I were together were the thrill of my life.  We did everything for fun, it seemed like there was nothing we couldn't do, no fun that we couldn't have.    Her house was an entire wonderland within itself.  An enormous granite-walled mansion, there were four floors of enchanting adventure for us.  The first floor held a kitchen where we made all kinds of goodies, an adjacent playroom where we played house, Barbie, watched "It's A Living," "Silver Spoons," "Small Wonder," "Dukes of Hazzard," "Laverne & Shirley," two mag...