I know what I will talk about now may be unpleasant and painful for many of you but without an appraisal of your current status you won’t be able to start your diet efficiently. No one else needs to see it – it is just for you to become aware of yourself!

First you should ask yourself what truly are the motivations for losing weight just now. Is it a dream that has built up over the past years that you now finally feel it is time to turn into reality or are you just tired of all the derogative comments about your weight from the colleagues at work. No matter what the reason for your wish to lose weight is it is important that you are honest to yourself and write them down.

Look at the reasons for dieting you have just written down.
How many of them are other-directed (My doctor says I should lose weight. I want to appeal to my boyfriend.) and how many are self-determined (I want to do something for my health. I want the best for my body)?

If more reasons for your weight loss efforts are other-directed this doesn’t mean that your diet won’t be successful, BUT be prepared that you will have a much harder time losing weight than people dieting for more self-determined reasons. Think about how important the opinion of other people really is to you – it is important for everyone, but it shouldn’t be the main driver for our decisions.

If your diet motivation is other-directed that means you have to feeling that you HAVE to be thin when it actually should be that you WANT to be thin. This feeling that you “have” to diet and lose weight will cost you lots of energy on your way to your new, healthy body and the risk that you break off the diet is much higher.

Get a new page of paper and write down your reasons for dieting once more but this time only write reasons that concern you personally.

Next you should try to assess your relationship with food. Your reasons for eating will largely determine how hard dieting will be for you and what you have to change in order to be successful.

Complete the following sentences:

Food is….
Food is….
Food is….
I love to….
I hate to….
I eat a lot when…..
I eat a lot when….
I eat a lot when….

My favourite dishes are:

I hate myself when…
I feel unhappy when….

Again, be honest when filling out this sheet of paper in front of you. Read it again and find out what your relationship to food is and under what circumstances you tend to eat too much.

Next you need to become clear about your attitude towards your body.
Write some sentences down for each of the following questions:

How do I feel about my body?
What do I think about my eating habits?

For sure you will now already have identified some areas that you need to improve in and that you need to target with your dieting plan.

Finally what really matters (and hurts most) are the hard facts.
Take a sheet and write down today’s date as well as:

Your weight
Circumference of your belly
Circumference of your waist
Circumference of your hips
Circumference of your upper arm
Circumference of your thighs
What sports you practice and for which amount of time per week
Blood pressure
Blood sugar level
Your biggest sins when it comes to eating

Once again I may remind you that this whole exercise only makes sense and will only pay off if you are honest. And being honest to yourself isn’t easy I have to mention here.

Take your time for doing this exercise. Write everything down and look at it again two days afterwards. I am sure you will find some things that you have made look better than they really are. Reading over it several times will enable you to find out in which areas you are really trying to cheat yourself and this is where you will have most problems during your diet.

All that you have written should also go into your diet success folder so that you can review it every once in a while and also see your progress.

         

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