DAY 41: To-do List, Redux

The penultimate step in the Beck Diet Solution is to create a new to-do list for the skills I'll be practicing every day and every week for pretty much the rest of my life.

Dr. Beck provides these lists of activities that will form the new to-do list:

Daily Activities:

• Eat a healthful diet with limited calories.
• Eat mindfully and slowly while sitting.
• Eat only to mild fullness.
• Keep a food diary.
• Give yourself credit.
• Spontaneously exercise.
• Respond to sabotaging thoughts.
  

Regular Activities (at least once a week):

• Weigh in.
• Exercise at least three times a week.
• Continue to make time and energy to diet.
• Read your ARC.
• Use the anti-craving techniques.
• Use the Seven Question Technique when you're upset.
• Prepare yourself for special-occasion eating.
• Do problem solving to reduce stress.
• Enrich your life.

As-needed Activities:

• Create food plans.
  
  Dr. Beck calls this the most important task to carry forward for the rest of your life. She does offer that writing down the food plan could be too much trouble, so doing it in your head is OK. At least until you find yourself over-eating. Then you should go back to writing down your food plan. As Dr. Beck instructs, "DON'T GIVE YOURSELF A CHOICE ABOUT THIS."
  
  
• Read your Response Cards.
  
  Reading your Response Cards can become an as-needed activity, instead of a daily activity, as long as that works. As soon as you start to struggle with those issues, though, you should start reading them daily. Again, "DON'T GIVE YOURSELF A CHOICE ABOUT THIS."

These are the activities I've been doing for the last 6 weeks, and as Dr. Beck predicts, most of them have become automatic. But a daily to-do list helps keep me on track, so I'm going to type mine up on a piece of transparency paper, post it on the bathroom mirror, then check off my activities with a dry-erase marker. That way I can keep track of my weekly progress and without wasting so much paper.

I'm still nervous about going this "alone", that is, without the daily advice and support of Dr. Beck through her book. But having a daily to-do list maintains my focus and motivation, so continuing that practice should help ease my anxiety.