Over the years I’ve worked with hundreds of clients exploring the underlying ‘drivers’ that are responsible for weight gain.
Excess weight can be complex because often there are deeper emotional factors at play. Being overweight can weigh just as heavily on the mind, doing untold damage to a person’s self-esteem.
Personally I think people are great just the way they are (I really mean that, if I look at a field of poppies I don’t think one poppy should look better, or different than another) but my work experience has shown me that people struggling with weight issues can be desperately unhappy, more because of the damage it does (or they do) to their self confidence. As I once said to a client, you wouldn’t dream of saying some of the unkind spiteful things to someone else that you say to yourself on a daily basis.
One thing I’ve found in common with these clients is a certain mind set.
For example they will be highly disciplined for a period of time, then (and perfectly naturally to my mind) will have a day where they give in to a desire for something they consider to be (bad) such as chocolate or chips.
Then they take a big metaphoric stick and beat themselves up telling themselves they’ve ruined everything, the whole diet’s gone out of the window, they are weak, useless, not worth it.
This is often followed by a beano where they eat a whole lot more of those types of food than they (or anyone else) would ever normally do, usually accompanied by large amounts of negative self talk!
It is essential to develop a healthy mind-set, to feel up-beat and positive about yourself in order to challenge any habit or addiction.
The first step toward this is to input something regularly that will help you to believe in yourself, a good confidence-building program such as Stress-Free with Confidence or Super Charge Your Confidence. This is a fundamental step in hypnotherapy training. If you are going to withdraw a psychological prop from someone, you MUST put something positive in that same space.
In my yoga teacher training I remember we explored a ‘square meal’ – a little of everything and balance. I still believe that balance is the key to healthy eating. I think it’s human nature that the minute we say we can’t have this or that, we want it more than ever. This is why most people will ‘fall’ off of a diet plan.
I don’t believe in diets and would never go on one.
I do have a few rules around eating though and I want to share a few of my top tips for maintaining control. (For more of this kind of advice, you can sign up to my Mindful Weightloss ecourse now.
