HEALTHY WEIGHT LOSS

My approach to healthy weight loss and healthy eating is science-based, collaborative, individualised, and gradual:

• Science-based. Much of what we know about healthy weight loss was only discovered in the past 30 years.

• Collaborative. This means we work together to solve your problem. You don’t just passively receive hypnosis. However, hypnotherapy does make it much easier for you.

• Individualised, because everyone is different. Even identical twins can vary greatly in how they gain weight. So healthy weight loss will be a different journey for everyone.

• Gradual. Anyone can lose a lot weight by crash dieting. But as soon as you return to normal eating you’ll put it all back on again. The body and the mind needs time to adjust. I focus on “healthy eating habits” that can last a lifetime. Not “dieting” which you can only keep up for a limited time.

We know that eating badly has three main causes.

1) PHYSICAL

A healthy diet needs a wide variety of ingredients, including plenty of fibre. Healthy foods also feed the “good bacteria” in your gut. These bacteria weigh about the same as a four pint bottle of milk. They are essential to our health. To nourish your friendly bacteria and yourself, you should aim to eat at least 30 types of plant food each week. This could be easier than you think. It includes herbs and spices, wholemeal bread, oats and pasta, as well as fruit and vegetables. You should also eat foods which actually contain plenty of live healthy bacteria, such as yoghurts and similar products.

The main thing to avoid is lots of sugar and artificial chemicals. Many processed foods contain a lot of sugar even if they don’t taste sweet.

There are no “superfoods.” A wide variety of plant-based foods is much better than putting faith in one allegedly wonderful (and probably expensive) ingredient.

WE ARE NOT ALL THE SAME.

Even among White European people about one in ten can’t easily digest cows’ milk. Among other races the number is much higher.

Different people (even identical twins) can have very different gut bacteria. Frequent use of antibiotics plays havoc with your gut bacteria by killing the good bacteria along with the bad ones.

Different people also have naturally different build. Some have heavier, thicker bones, some are naturally more muscular. Different people accumulate fat in different places. The worst fat is actually right inside, around the internal organs where we can’t see it!

Many people can lose excessive weight just be following the plan I’ve just given. They may not even need to cut their total intake of food energy (calories). But if you do need to eat less energy than you use up in daily living, there are ways to do this more easily. Often it’s better to cut right down on two days per week and eat normally the other five days. This is easier than reducing the same amount seven days a week. Extreme diets don’t work because the body adapts to continuous starvation, squeezing out every last calorie from the food we’re still eating. 

2) HABIT AND HISTORY

Besides processed and sugary foods, there’s another reason for the present epidemic of obesity. People are less physically active than at any other time in history. Millions of people sit tapping a keyboard for eight hours a day, and then drive home and sit down again to watch television till bedtime! But our bodies evolved for a much more active life. In the natural world only trees and plants and shellfish would be so inactive!

Millions of people were put off exercise in their school days by ignorant, bullying PE teachers. But a modern gym is a friendly adult environment, nothing like PE lessons. In any case, most people could benefit from small chnages in their daily lives. Like getting off the bus one stop earlier, or walking to the corner shop instead of driving, or just walking a bit faster. Even just standing up and walking round the room every hour or so makes a big difference to healthy life expectancy.

WASTE AND GUILT

Many people (myself included) hate to see food thrown away. Our parents told us to finish everything on our plates even if it took an hour! And of course it’s terrible that people throw away so much good food. Food is precious! But there are better ways to deal with this. When you eat up more food than your body needs, the body turns it into unwanted fat. So it’s still wasted! It hasn’t benefited you in any way!

The ideal solution is to only cook as much as you will eat. And you can store and re-use most leftovers (people used to do much more of this). Habits are another problem. For example, I’ve known middle-aged women whose children had left home who were still cooking for a whole family! If anyone randomly called round at meal times there would be enough for them to eat! But of course if no one came, then the food “had to be eaten!”

3) PSYCHOLOGICAL CAUSES

Therapy, including hypnotherapy, can have a powerful effect for building better habits. It can also help to break through the mental blocks which would sabotage your progress.

• Fear of hunger. Real hunger is a physical sensation in the stomach. It’s not painful except in extreme starvation, but some people feel it more because it frightens them. Past memories of a deprived or chaotic childhood can cause this, or deprivation of food as a punishment.

• Fear of being attractive. Many people overeat because they know it makes them unattractive. They don’t want to attract attention, especially sexual attention, due to past experiences.

• Comfort eating when sad or anxious. Eating sweet and fatty foods does make us happy in the short term. It triggers the release of endorphins (“happy chemicals”) from our brains. A massive binge can blot out painful memories and feelings.

• Pressure from other people. Some men are afraid of their partner losing weight and becoming more attractive to other men. Some overweight people feel threatened if their friend is losing weight, because they feel it “shows them up.”

• Self image. The best route to healthy weight loss is to see yourself as the kind of person who naturally eats healthy. Hypnosis is a powerful tool for changing our self-image.

WANT TO KNOW MORE? CLICK HERE TO CONTACT ME.