Ask Dr. Schwarz

I’ve failed on diets so many times, how can I make sure I don’t fail on my diet again?

Memories of past failures often come into play when you start another diet. After all, no matter what diet you go on, you have to rely mostly on yourself to stick to it. If you don’t have a lot of experience with diet success, if you’ve lost weight only to gain it all back, you probably don’t have the feeling that you are capable of success.

Here’s a way to feel more capable and to have more belief in your abilities. Think of something in your life apart from dieting that you’ve accomplished. It can be a big thing or a small thing, but it should be something important to you. Try to remember the high points of that process of achieving a goal. How did you do it? What were the steps leading up to it? How did you stick to your resolve to accomplish it? How did you feel when you got there?

Reminding yourself of how you were able to succeed in whatever area of life it occurred is empowering. You can see how much strength you have within you to bring to a task. You can see that indeed you have creativity and problem solving abilities. Then you can go ahead and bring these strengths to bear on your problems with eating and weight.