1 October 2024
The last few years have impacted all of us and the way we think. Problems, worries and world crises seem to bombard us left, right and centre. It’s normal to want to find ways to soothe and distract yourself in the face of all of this. Maybe you’ve found yourself turning to food as a way of dealing with stress, work-life pressures and increased uncertainty? Or you’ve developed unhelpful habits when working from home where your kitchen is your office. Suddenly, you’re noticing yourself raiding the fridge between Zoom meetings and emails.
Perhaps eating helps you to cope with the stresses of day to day life, relationship or family pressures, or your job.. Or, it may be, you’re feeling a bit lonely, and eating is a quick way to make yourself feel better. Or if you’re in a busy household, with a life that makes lots of demands of you, eating may be the only way you feel you can have a bit of space in your day.
Check out https://www.blossomhypnotherapy.com/worry-what-to-do-when-you-cant-stop-worrying/ for ways to manage worry.
You may enjoy sitting down and socialising over meals and realise how much you appreciate spending time eating together with friends and family, enjoying the food and conversation. As your clothes start feeling that little bit tighter, you may realise you’ve gradually been eating more than you used to.
Whatever the reason, you may be finding you’re are putting on weight right now. As you try to cope with all the competing demands in your life and the pressure to be performing from early to late, your brain tries to help by craving foods that comfort and soothe.
Stress and anxiety increases the release of addictive neurotransmitters in the brain. These stimulate cravings for sweet, salty and fatty feel good foods, which give instant relief from worrying.
Foods high in fat and sugar seem to reduce stress related responses and emotions. These foods provide comfort by neutralising stress. This, in turn creates a feedback loop, so when you experience more stress, it leads to more cravings for these foods.
On top of this, when the body’s under continual stress, the adrenal glands release a hormone called cortisol. Cortisol increases appetite and motivates us to eat more.
To find out more about how stress affects your body click herehttps://www.blossomhypnotherapy.com/fight-flight-understanding-body-responds-stress/
If you recognise this, you may be noticing your clothes feel a bit tighter. Or, maybe you want to improve your health and wellbeing by eating better and taking more exercise. It may be wanting more energy or to feel more confident.
Whatever the reason, in modern, busy, overloaded lives, weight is often the first casualty. Working long hours means there’s little time or energy to exercise or prepare healthy food. Even though, deep down, you’re aware it’ll make you feel better, it can be hard to find the motivation to take that first step. Or it may be that comfort eating has taken hold as a way to make up for not getting a break at work or not having enough time for the things you want to do.
Often, in this situation, the natural first step is to start a new diet. Unfortunately, they are rarely the answer. Crash diets only work in the short term and usually lead to more weight gain. Strict diets are difficult to stick to when you’ve got a busy life and need a steady release of energy to get through the day. Dieting often slows down the metabolic rate (the speed at which the body uses up the fuel from food). When you dramatically reduce what you eat, the body goes into “famine alert” and slows down to make the most of the food it is receiving. All of this can leave you heavier and unhappier than when you started.
Too often. dieting leads to self critical thoughts about not being able to stick to a diet and feeling your body just isn’t good enough. Then, without realising, you can end up caught in a vicious cycle of futile dieting, self criticism and comfort eating. For more on breaking this vicious cycle, have a look at https://www.blossomhypnotherapy.com/five-practical-ways-to-tackle-weight-anxiety-and-feel-better-in-your-body/
Hypnotherapy can help break this cycle. Studies have shown that combining hypnosis and cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) has helped clients lose more weight and keep it off for longer.
When I work with clients who want to lose weight, we look at your life as a whole to find what works for you. We look at your thoughts and feelings around food; your habits and motivation. Once we understand you and your patterns, we have the key to making lasting changes. Using hypnotherapy, CBT and mindfulness, we work together to put strategies in place to empower you to lose weight and create the mindset to keep it off.
I work in partnership with you to discover and treat the root causes of your eating patterns. Together we work out how to identify and change the things keeping you stuck. I find the right tools and techniques for you to learn ways to cope with the demands of life without turning to food.
For more, check out https://www.blossomhypnotherapy.com/how-can-hypnotherapy-help-me/
Lucy, (not her real name), a married 46 year old Marketing Director and mother of two, couldn’t remember a time when food wasn’t a problem. She’d struggled with food and her weight since she was a child. She’d been on and off diets since she was teenager. Over the years, she’d tried lots of ways to solve her problem, but nothing had helped. In fact, her weight was steadily increasing. She felt compelled to eat as a way to comfort herself.
When she was alone, Lucy would eat quickly and compulsively. Once she started eating, she couldn’t stop. Only when her stomach hurt and she felt numb would she stop.
This was affecting all areas of her life. Lucy was deeply unhappy with her body and felt self conscious and judged for her weight. She was trapped by her eating patterns. As a result, she blamed herself for letting her eating get so out of control and felt her life would never be any different.
We worked together to find ways for Lucy to manage whatever was making her anxious without turning to food. She developed coping strategies that worked to make her feel better in the short term and the long run.
We developed ways to help Lucy feel happier eating in public. Then, she was able to stop secret eating.
As she made changes, Lucy started to lose weight. It happened naturally and effortlessly, so, for the first time ever, Lucy kept the weight off. As she changed what caused her to overeat, she lost weight without even trying. As she felt better about herself and her body, Lucy started exercising and going out with friends and family.
Lucy stopped being consumed by thoughts about eating and her body. Instead, she focused her time and attention on other areas of her life. As she felt happier in herself, she noticed her relationships and confidence improving too.
This is what Lucy says about her experience.
I contacted Celia at Blossom Hypnotherapy because I was overweight and unhappy.I felt controlled by food and compulsive overeating. What gave me confidence in Celia right from the start (aside from her being really warm and friendly) was the time and attention she paid to properly understanding the underlying causes and patterns of my overeating before moving forward.
There have been loads of ‘aha’ moments for me along the way. By digging deep and identifying what was driving my behaviour, Celia tailored a combination of CBT and hypnotherapy specifically for me.
And it’s worked. As a result of my sessions with Celia, I’m no longer controlled by food, I’ve lost weight without dieting, and as an added bonus I’m more relaxed in other areas of life and work too.
The investment of time and money has been far outweighed by the benefit of having a ‘normal’ relationship with food for the first time in 25 years. And the amount of money I save on food now that secret snacks are a thing of the past has more than covered the cost of my sessions!!
I’m so glad I found Celia – a five star recommendation doesn’t begin to cover it.
For more have a look at https://www.blossomhypnotherapy.com/when-food-rules-your-life-disordered-eating-explained/ and https://www.blossomhypnotherapy.com/binge-eating-when-food-is-friend-and-foe/
If this sounds like you, just Lucy, you too are capable of change.Working on your mindset takes the pressure away from worrying about weight. It’s flexible and revolves around you because it’s focused on how you think. As a result, it’s something you can apply to everything you do.
Here are six strategies you can try to help you.
It is easier to achieve our goals when we can picture them clearly. Try to imagine all the details of your life once you have lost weight. This could include what you will look like, what you will be doing and how you will feel. It helps to list all the benefits of changing. Keep your list somewhere you can see it every day such as on your fridge, phone or computer screen. This will help remind you why you are making these changes. Frequent reminders will make your goal easier to achieve.
Keeping a food diary can be the first step to understanding and changing our eating habits. A food diary helps you to understand what you are eating and why. Keep your food diary for two weeks to get a full picture. Try and note everything you eat or drink, the time and what was happening. At the end of the fortnight you will have a picture of your diet, what triggers overeating and you will be able to see what progress you are making. This can help motivate you while you are trying to make difficult changes in your life.
Start each day with checking in and focusing your mind and actions around on one word you want to guide you throughout your day.
For example, you could use the word listen and apply it to how you eat and act.
Similarly, you can apply listen to other areas of your life as well. For instance, listening when others speak, listening to what is happening around you, etc.
Losing weight is about learning to trust your innate abilities. Think of it like learning to ride a bicycle. You may not remember how scary it was the first time you tried to cycle on two wheels. It was something you really wanted to achieve and so you kept on practicing until you could just do it, without thought or effort. Losing weight is the same. You may have lots of stops and starts, but once you get going it becomes second nature. It’s a matter of finding your balance.
Imagine eating healthily for a day helps you visualise the steps to becoming the person who eats healthily. Find a picture of yourself at a comfortable weight and remember what you were doing differently then. Now imagine rekindling those habits. Or you could imagine getting advice from a future older, wiser self who has managed to lose weight.
Often we eat when we are not hungry. Mindful eating is just paying attention when we are eating. Once a week try eating mindfully. Sit at a table, eating from a plate, with no distractions around you. Take your time to notice the food you’re eating and to slow down your eating speed. This gives your stomach time to send signals to your brain that you’re full. Notice all the sensations as you eat and pay particular attention to the feeling of fulness in your stomach.
To find out more about how eating mindfully can help check out https://www.blossomhypnotherapy.com/five-ways-mindful-eating-can-stop-you-overeating/
For more on how I can help you click here.
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