I was reading the sentence:
Maria versucht, Thomas dazu zu überreden, abzunehmen.
which was translated as
Maria tries to convince Thomas to lose weight.
and I recently learnt about the dazu word - the fact that it can refer to a previous something without repeating it, irrespective of case.
But in this sentence, I was confused of the usage of "dazu"
Does the dazu refer to "versucht" or is the construct of the verb "versuchen zu" or otherwise?