The Beck DIET

Solution Newsletter
VOLUME 2, ISSUE 2 APRIL 2010

The Reality of Eating Out

Dear Friends,

I’ve gotten some emails lately, asking for additional tips when eating in restaurants. And I’ve
read a lot of online blogs and postings by community support groups about the difficulties people
have when they go out to dinner, especially when their friends and family members are big eaters.

Dieters and maintainers need to face the fact that they will probably never be able to have as much food and
drink as they would like. Restaurants serve abnormally large amounts of food, with abnormally high calorie counts.
Did you know that restaurants add extra butter or fat to almost every dish to make the food taste better?

We have become accustomed to large portions and we think they’re normal, but they’re not. If you’re trying
to lose weight or maintain a weight loss, you will never be able to have caloric drinks, appetizers, salad, a main
course, bread AND dessert—not unless you want tiny portions of each. If you want to have certain favorite foods,
you may have to consume much smaller portions than if you choose lower-calorie foods. You also need to be
aware that certain foods and beverages may lead to cravings.

It can be difficult for dieters and maintainers to curb their eating when they’re dining with people who do
not. They can experience a sense of unfairness or deprivation. They need to remind themselves before they go why
it’s worth it to them to stay on a lifetime course of healthy eating. They should recall the deprivations they
experience as a result of their heavier weight: health problems, difficulty climbing steps, self-consciousness, and so
on. Then they have to choose which deprivation they want: the deprivation of some food or the deprivation of all
the reasons they wanted to lose weight in the first place.

Finally, it’s helpful and instructive to observe or interview people who are on the slim slide, especially
women over the age of 45. Find out what they eat in restaurants. It’s highly likely to be much less than you
imagine.

Continue to remind yourself that if you stick to your plan— the rewards will be great!

Sincerely,
Judith Beck

Be sure to tell your friends and colleagues to subscribe to our newsletter—

Ask them to email us at dietprogram@beckinstitute.org

To remove your name from our mailing list, please email us at dietprogram@beckinstitute.org

1
 What Do You Wish You Would Remember?

I often get emails from people who haven’t read my books, asking, “How do I get myself to stay on my
diet?” There are so many skills people need to learn. Just a few of these include:

⇒ selecting a healthy diet they can stay on for life (which includes their favorite foods)
⇒ motivating themselves daily
⇒ having an action plan when they’re tempted to eat something they’re not supposed to
⇒ having an action plan when they deviate from their diet.

One of the most important skills people need is the ability to talk back to their sabotaging thoughts:

“It’s okay to eat this food I hadn’t planned to eat because . . . I’m happy/I’m sad/I’m tired/I’m celebrating/it’s a
special occasion/it’s healthy/I hardly ever get to have it/I exercised today/I’ll make up for it later/I’ll start dieting
again tomorrow/ it’s free/I can’t waste food/no one is watching.”

And on and on and on.

I teach dieters to anticipate their sabotaging thoughts and together we create forceful responses they write on
note cards. They read these cards every morning (because they never know how difficult it will be for them, on
any given day, to stick to their diet). They also pull them out just before their vulnerable times of day and when
they’re tempted to stray from their eating plan.

A question I often ask dieters is: “What do you wish you would remember when you have a strong temptation
or craving for unplanned food?” I include a variety of responses in my books, including:

1. I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want, in whatever quantity I want—OR I can be thinner. I can’t
have it both ways.

2. While it feels unfair that I can’t have this food now, I can always plan to have it tomorrow. The
greatest unfairness would be if I let my sense of unfairness prevent me from losing weight.

3. If I eat this food, I’ll get momentary satisfaction but I’ll feel terrible later. If I don’t eat it, I’ll feel
proud of myself and especially happy when I get on the scale.

4. Don’t fool myself into thinking it won’t matter if I eat this. Eating this unplanned food
strengthens my giving-in muscle and weakens my resistance muscle. Every time matters.

5. Hunger is never an emergency [unless one has a serious medical condition] and cravings always
go away.

What messages help you stick to your plan? Email: thebeckdiet@gmail.com

Your questions and comments are welcome!

Visit The Beck Diet Solution Blog: www.beckdietsolution.com

Follow Us on Twitter Today—
Today—@thebeckdiet: www.twitter.com/thebeckdiet
Visit us on Facebook. Become our Fan: www.facebook.com/beckdietsolution

2
 Bored with Dieting
I hadn’t been in contact with Maria for a long time. “I’m bored,” Maria said on the phone. “Just plain
bored.” Maria had lost 17 pounds and kept it off for a little over a year and a half. I asked her what was going on
and we had the following dialogue:

Maria: I usually have the same kinds of food, over and over, for my meals. I vary my night time snack some,
but. . .

Dr. Beck: Why do you eat the same foods over and over?

Maria: Well, like you describe in the book, I found what works for me.

Dr. Beck: For example?

Maria: I almost always have oatmeal for breakfast. It fills me up. For lunch I have a salad and fruit and a sand-
wich (one of 3 or 4 different kinds). I have some kind of protein with lots of vegetables for dinner, and
some starch.

Dr. Beck: If calories didn’t count, what would you have for breakfast?

Maria: I’m not sure. If I had a donut, for example, I’m sure I’d be starving before lunch.

Dr. Beck: Would you like to try something else? Like cold cereal? Or eggs? Or breakfast meat?

Maria: I guess that makes me nervous.

Dr. Beck: What went through your mind when I suggested it?

Maria: What if I get too hungry before lunch?

Dr. Beck: Well, what would happen?

Maria: Nothing, I guess. You taught me: Hunger isn’t an emergency.

Dr. Beck: But you don’t want to feel uncomfortable if you don’t have to?

Maria: Yes, that’s it.

Dr. Beck: How long would you feel hungry for?

Maria: I don’t know. Maybe two hours?

Dr. Beck: Continuously?

Maria: No, I know hunger comes and goes.

Dr. Beck: So how bad would it be if you tried some experiments to vary your breakfasts—and other meals?

Maria: It would be fine. I don’t know what I haven’t done that.

Dr. Beck: Do you think you were overly concerned with being hungry?

Maria: Yes, I think so.

Dr. Beck: How’s this for a plan? For the next couple of weeks, do some experimenting. Change
Continued on page 4

3
 Bored with Dieting —Continued from page 3
the kinds of foods you’re eating. Try to keep the calorie count about the same—and make sure your food
is reasonably nutritious. Keep track of your hunger. Then we’ll talk about how it went, see if you want to
do some more experiments, see what you can add to your usual eating plan. You might look at The Com-
plete Beck Diet for Life, for ideas of different foods—or any diet book or cookbook.

Maria: Okay.

Dr. Beck: I’d also like you to think about the following: Maybe it’s reasonable for you to add an extra couple of
hundred calories every day or a few days a week. Your weight will go up a little, but you’d be able to eat
in a more varied way.

Maria: I don’t know if I want to do that.

Dr. Beck: You don’t have to, but you might find that you don’t really look any different and you might enjoy your
food more and not feel so bored. It might really be worth it.

Maria: Okay, I’ll think about it.

Maria ultimately did add about 200 calories to her daily eating plan. She began to add reasonable portions of
new foods, such as omelets, pasta, pizza, potatoes, steak, and a variety of ethnic foods. Her weight stabilized at
about 3 pounds heavier but she found she didn’t care. She was just glad to expand her eating repertoire. She realized
she had been unnecessarily restrictive in her food choices.

Letters From You . . . Kudos for the 20 Craving Tracking

Dear Dr. Beck,

The idea for tracking 20 cravings on a card that was in the January newsletter has been an unexpectedly pow-
erful tool for me and I'm writing to say thanks for the idea! Somehow the psychology of "getting" something for each
craving (i.e. a mark off the card) makes the decision to fight the craving somehow easier. It also somehow simplifies
the decision making for me, I don't know quite why, but with this tool, all the skills I have been building for over a
year have come together. Somehow, I'm not struggling anymore, wow! Actually, as with most of your clients, my
weight issues have bothered me for 20+ years, off and on. When I had my first baby 7 years ago, I learned how to
successfully diet with weightwatchers and even through another pregnancy, got reasonably happy with my weight. I
learned to make major and permanent changes in my diet and improved my nutrition significantly. But, what I began
to realize, was that it was the binging behaviors I was engaging in that were causing me so much stress. I guess I had
been doing it so long, it took a long time to identify it as the real problem.

That all changed last year when I picked up your books and started learning the dieting skills. I quickly
learned many of the skills and lost more weight and got to a weight I was thrilled with. But, I slacked off with the
skills, the binging came back, and so did the weight.

I was frustrated with a few more false starts to get myself back on track, and desired to tackle the binging
once and for all. Since I started marking off the cravings on my card a few weeks ago, I haven't had a struggle. All
those years of building skills around making good food choices, planning meals, motivating myself with the cards are
now in sync with fighting off the cravings, and it feels like it’s all come together.

I'm three+ weeks into this new cycle and it feels very different this time. I'm in a great place now and so
happy to have shaken off the stress of binging. I know there will be bumps ahead, but I've been there and can better
deal with it. Wish me luck! Thanks for writing these excellent books!

Best regards,
Lori

Do you have an inspiring Beck Diet Solution weight loss story you would like to share with us? \We would
love to hear from you! Email us with your story — dietprogram@beckinstitute.org