Becoming Slimmer Again
On the 21st June this year I wrote about my mission to drop 2 dress sizes by the summer. I cut out sugar and I lost half a stone in a month and then got stuck. I have recently taken a different tack and here is my progress to date.
I did a survey earlier this year to find out how we could support people on a gluten free diet and a lot of the respondents said they were having problems with their weight since being diagnosed with coeliac disease. I could identify that because having gone from being skinny most of my life (albeit with a bloated stomach which often resulted in people asking me if I was pregnant) I put on weight and got to the point where I weighed as much as I did when I was 9 months’ pregnant. Of course a lot of this is to do with the fact that previously I wasn’t absorbing many nutrients from my food but I used to think I was lucky because I could eat what I liked and stay slim!
When I started my business selling gluten free food I would get lots of samples to try and if stuff went out of date I would eat it because I felt guilty about throwing perfectly good food away so the weight piled on. Sell by dates were the bane of my life and one of the factors in closing down the business.
As a result of the survey I thought of possible partners I could work with for weight loss and the first person I thought of was Andrew Spence, a hypnotherapist I knew from networking events. I knew of his success in helping people lose weight and giving up smoking so we had a chat about how we could work together. It soon became apparent that if I was to talk about his work to other people I needed to try it for myself.
In the first session he told me to get rid of my scales because it’s not about how much you weigh, especially as muscle is heavier than fat! It’s about how you look and feel about yourself. So you should set positive goals like ‘I want to be slimmer’ ‘I want to be a size 12 again’ ‘ I want to be able to wear my favourite trousers’ etc.
I realised how true this is because when I looked at the Body Mass Index my weight said I was bordering on obese yet I knew although I could do with being slimmer looking around me there was no way I was obese! I put my scales on Freecycle immediately and every day I look at myself in the full length mirror. I realised that actually my curves are far sexier than my previous ‘stick’ look and what was needed was some toning up.
We also looked at what I ate so I kept a food diary for a week before our first session. My main weakness was crisps, especially the hand-cooked ones like Kettle Chips and they come in huge bags. So for the next session he asked me to bring along a bag – I was intrigued! He got me to smell the crisps and asked how I felt, I have to say they smelt delicious. I then ate one slowly and consciously and it wasn’t actually that nice. I did this a few times and then he asked me to smell the bag again and he noticed that I had to put my nose further into the bag and I could hardly smell them at all. We then did some work on the Emotional Freedom Technique and another exercise (not sure what it is called) which involved me moving my eyes around to shift the consciousness from one side of the brain to the other.
I took the bag of crisps home and I thought I would see if I would be tempted to eat the whole bag. So I took a handful and went to eat them in the bathroom. This was something Andrew had asked me to do in the first session so I was eating them more consciously rather than when I was on the computer or doing something else and in a place where I wouldn’t normally eat. I have to say it worked because if my kids were at home I wouldn’t take crisps of to the bathroom a) because I only allow them to eat in the kitchen and b) because I felt silly and they would ask me what I was doing! So when I got there with my handful of crisps I ate them consciously and didn’t really enjoy them. I repeated this exercise over the following few days until the bag was finished and now I can say I am not bothered by them. Got to work on the wine next! But that is what is good because I can now apply this technique in other areas.
Last session we did the hypnosis, Andrew said it would be fairly easy for me as I meditate every day. One of the problems I had was not planning meals properly so I would end up not having a proper meal. I also felt restricted (apart from being gluten free) because I would like to eat a lot of the things my kids wouldn’t. I decided I would plan with my kids what we are going to eat for the week and let them choose a couple of meals too and maybe even prepare them. Well onwards and upwards so will report back how that goes.
As a footnote – last Friday I managed to get into a pair of trousers I hadn’t worn for about 2 years and my tummy wasn’t hanging over the top – result!
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