You know when you look back at your younger self and you marvel at how you thought "OH MY GOD I'M SO FAT, I must spare the world from the sight of my hideous body!" And now you look at photos of yourself back then and you'd give your left little finger to have that body again.
No? Just me?
My 'dieting days' started when I didn't even have anything to diet away.
As a teenager I'd pore over recipe books, plan out what I could eat and vow never to eat food that was on my current list of BAD FOOD.
My trip to the supermarket to buy paper towels but I ended up with this binge haul instead.
I'd weigh my food, count points, deprive myself, and end up miserable before I'd fall off the diet wagon with a hard thump, push the wagon off a cliff and embark on a junk food binge that would rival Elvis in his later years. My shopping would resemble a five-year-old let loose in the supermarket with $100 to spend on whatever they wanted.
Then I'd start my diet again in a few weeks - eating everything 'naughty' in the cupboards over the weekend before my diet started on Monday.
And I've tried every diet you could possibly think of.
My first experience was following in my Mum's footsteps with good ole Weight Watchers. For someone who's obsessed with their food intake, counting every morsel of food that goes into one's gob does not help this obsession.
I remember going to my local Chub Club each week and seeing the women who had been running the group for years and they were all overweight!
Before my weekly weigh in I'd take off my jewellery and wear as little as possible because that fricking number on the scales dictated how I'd feel for the entire week. Whether I was "good" or "bad" and if I was bad then I'd think fuck it and go binge on takeaways.
I've done diet pills. More than once. It's completely crazy to me now that young girls are prescribed AMPHETAMINES! I went to a Dr who was renowned for just writing you a script for Duromine. My heart would be racing, my hands would be shaking and my house was VERY clean. It's basically taking legal speed and I had to do something with all that excess energy and housework seemed a better choice than exercise. Of course, once I stopped taking the pills then the weight would pile back on.
I've tried Atkins, Keto, The Lemon Juice Detox, Paleo, fasting, juicing, shakes, low fat EVERYTHING Susan Powter styles, packaged diet meals (<ew) and I also took Alli diet pills.
Cute branding for a poop accident waiting to happen
This innocuous sounding pill with the cute name, Alli. How damaging could it be, right?
I could even get it over the counter in Boots Pharmacy in London. The premise of this pill is that you HAVE to eat low fat because if you eat too much fat then it goes right through you.
Sounds good in theory apart from the fact that eating fat doesn't actually make you fat.
Now imagine that you ate fat in a restaurant by mistake because you didn't realise how fatty boomsticks the Lebanese dips were and then you decided to walk home - only JUST avoiding a very public, humiliating, poop accident (<this may or may not have happened to me).
In the little medical insert sheet they give you with the pills they even inform you that 'anal leakage' is a known side effect AND I STILL HAPPILY BOUGHT THEM! Years later research shows that these pills cause liver and kidney damage and their actual weight loss effectiveness is debatable. And let's be honest any level of effectiveness is because of the constant threat of an "oops I ate fat" public poop-in-the-pants incident.
As stupid as using Alli for a short period was, it pales in comparison to my long-term weight maintenance while living in London. My weight management regime was to party my face off every weekend.
It's the longest period of time I was able to keep my weight stable, because as a result of my coke habit food was the furthest thing from my mind on the weekend.
I was intermittent fasting before it went mainstream ;-)
But, of course, the coke diet couldn't work long-term because it affected other parts of my life. And once I stopped taking coke and started feeling all the feels again I strapped myself back into the crazy weight loss rollercoaster to numb out my feelings with food and wine.
Compared to being a cokehead, being a foodie and a wino is socially acceptable - until you show the effects of your overindulgence on your body, and then it's an embarrassing telltale sign of weak character and gluttony. So as I felt like even more of a failure compared to current, unrealistic, airbrushed, and photoshopped standards I'd soothe myself by eating and drinking more.
The vicious cycle of feelings + food + feelings + food is familiar to many of you reading.
I'd have binge periods interspersed with small stretches where I'd muster up all my motivation and announce my new weight loss regime to anyone who would listen. I'd lose a few kilos before my willpower and motivation were seduced by chocolate, potato chips, sweets, and ice cream.
And then when I became an entrepreneur my weight gain sped up. I was stressed and overworked and took even greater comfort in food and alcohol.
Is any of this sounding familiar to you?
The insanity of it all?
Reaching for food to stuff down any emotions that dare to rise to the surface?
Hating yourself because you think that you just need some more willpower and if you weren't so weak then you wouldn't be in this position in the first place?
But the truth is that it's not about being weak. It's not about not having enough willpower and motivation. There are so many factors that contribute to the excess tissue we carry on our bodies. And these things aren't addressed by "diets."
The thing is that diets never work because you're not creating sustainable habits to last a lifetime and as soon as you stop whatever new thing you're trying out the weight returns - along with some extra fat cell friends to take up residence on your hips, butt and thighs in case you try this diet malarkey again.
And most importantly, if you're not addressing the underlying emotional void that you try and fill with food, ending up with a layer of excess tissue to serve as a safety barrier between you and the world, then your weight remains an ongoing issue.
So, if we flip both of these key points around - to get long-lasting change for your excess weight it's addressing the origin of the feelings that cause the weight gain in the first place.
And long term results only happen by implementing changes you can maintain with your lifestyle without the need for willpower or motivation because we now know that these only lead to another failed diet attempt.
There are two huge issues that no 'diet' ever addresses.
1) Disconnection - this is disconnection from the wisdom of our bodies, disconnection from our feelings, and disconnection from our food source.
2) Stories - excess tissue on our bodies tells a story depending on how it's distributed. It's primarily there to keep us safe from something (or usually some things) that happened to us and that we've attached meaning and a story to. It's only when we go back into the emotional cause of WHY we've created this safety barrier between us and the world that we can actually do something about it.
When I was little I wanted the superpower of invisibility. If only I'd known back then that all I needed to do was to get older and pile on some weight.
It wasn't until I got to the origin of WHY I wanted to fade into the background so men wouldn't find me desirable that I could actually do something about it.
You see, I'd been having an ongoing battle with my brain and my body. On one hand, I really wanted to release weight and be a body shape that I was proud of so I could live a complete life without weight being at the forefront of my mind. On the other hand, I didn't want to be seen by men, and carrying excess weight meant that I wasn't. So my brain was stuck in the middle and I was fighting a losing battle that just made me feel more and more worthless.
Until I stopped fighting.
I started looking at the emotional side of WHY I was carrying weight.
I stopped hating my body and blaming myself for being so weak-willed.
I EVEN STARTED TO LOVE MYSELF AND LOVE MY BODY!
And that's when my story took a radical turn for the better.
I was training in transformational hypnotherapy and doing weight release hypnotherapy on myself. I finally understood WHY I was self-medicating with food and why I used to numb out with wine, coke, shopping or TV...
I'm still on my weight release journey - nearly halfway to my goal woot woot! - and it's been the smoothest road to body love that I've ever experienced.
I don't feel deprived. I don't binge. I crave healthy foods. I'm completely indifferent to my old kryptonite foods of cookies, fries, potato chips and sweets. I can sit watching someone eating them and not feel a twinge of desire for it in my body. I no longer blaze a trail between the couch, pantry and fridge each night. And after my dinner I'm simply no longer interested in food until the following day.
It's like a weight release fairy godmother waved her wand and completely removed all my old programming (er, because that's exactly what happened!).
As lovely as it is to see the physical changes, with weight shedding quickly from my body, being able to fit back into smaller clothes and lapping up compliments at how great I'm looking, the best part for me is complete freedom from the food trap.
I have more energy as my body isn't constantly digesting food and my mind isn't preoccupied with what I'm going to eat next.
I'm also now programmed for self love instead of self loathing and this has changed every. single. part of my life. I KNOW, what a novel idea, right?
To release weight quickly, easily and permanently there are four stages that you can take to change your thoughts, habits, actions AND your body shape.
1) REALISE that you're not happy with your current situation and know deep down that you're really ready to change (for realsies this time!).
2) RESOLVE the root cause of your story so you know WHY you're carrying excess weight and then you can release it. Because permanent change doesn't happen when you lacquer a layer of positivity over a pile of old emotional poop. The aha moment you get from the 'THAT'S WHY!' link to your weight issue is your ticket to food freedom.
3) RELEASE all the attachment you have to your weight, to your stress, to your stories and to the prison of your past conditioning.
4) REPROGRAM your subconscious mind with more empowering thoughts that create more empowering beliefs, to support better feelings, actions, habits and ultimately permanent results and freedom from the food trap.
This is all possible with transformational hypnotherapy. When I saw how it well it worked for me I decided to dedicate myself to sharing the power of this work with the world.
Because I've been where you are, I've suffered through weight issues for the last 30 years and the craziest thing is that NO ONE HAS TO!
Freedom from the food trap is available to everyone - without diet pills, potions, shakes, meal plans, or even invasive surgery like lipo or gastric bands. They're ALL treating the symptoms, not the root cause.
So if you're ready to free yourself and love yourself AS you release excess weight from your body and instill powerful habits that keep the weight off for good, then here are some ways that I can help you.
BREAK UP WITH DIETS FOR GOOD WITH THIS FREE HYPNOSIS RECORDING.
Download this powerful 'Diet Brain Break Up' hypnosis recording to liberate yourself from the tyranny of diets AND release weight. Create change WHERE IT COUNTS - in the subconscious mind!