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2nd Article: Retrain Your Brain for New Eating Habits
In my previous article I described the rationale behind my new workshop "Retrain Your Brain for New Eating Habits" which is on Saturday 25th February.
You may or may not have noticed that there was no mention of weight loss. This was deliberate. Nor was there any picture of me holding out the waist of my trousers to display where five stones used to be. If I had ever been five stones heavier and managed to lose it, it would have attracted the wrong kind of interest along the lines of "I want to find out how he did it so I can do it too." This would be a trap.
By focusing on weight loss and appearance, people get drawn into a vicious cycle of dieting and overeating. So the workshop is designed to change this behaviour and eat to be healthy. By doing that weight loss is likely to be a beneficial side effect, but that's not the main focus. When it is, it fails in the long term. What we are turning our attention to is adopting the healthiest possible eating regime that brings pleasure, choice and freedom from the tyranny of the media and diet industry.
This is a significant mental shift that people need to make, together with letting go of other patterns of belief and feeling that are attached to food. For example as long as people think that they are restricting themselves by going on a diet or counting calories, they will eventually rebel meaning that they relapse to where there were before, and feel bad about it.
Eating to be healthy and taking the attention off weight is quite a challenge to some people. It is often said that in western society we are overfed and under nourished. This is because eating low quality food displaces the consumption of nutritious food.
On the workshop you will become aware of the insidious impact that society has on us surrounding food and appearance. This can be transferred into our private thoughts, and how we speak to others without knowing it. For example many years ago I was trying to engage in a conversation with a group about weight when someone said to me in a somewhat dismissive voice "Well you don't have to worry about your weight because you are slim". I was taken aback by both the faulty thinking and the attempt to exclude me from the conversation, so they could share their woes and pet theories. Of course I should have said "I'm slim because I don't worry about my weight, not the other way around". This doesn't make sense to a lot of people, but it does to those who are in control of their eating.They still think about food and enjoy it, even more than those who overeat.
Another important factor in all this is self-esteem. We are encouraged to attach self esteem to our appearance and to believe that reducing weight is a means to increasing self-esteem. This is another trap that many people walk blindly into. Self-esteem does not come from appearance. It is rooted in deeper aspects of yourself. When you start to eat in order to be as healthy as possible, you are making a choice which is beyond superficial appearance. By adopting a different focus of health and self respect you start to regain control of your eating habits, and guess what, self-esteem goes up.
There are still places remaining on the workshop if you want to clear the negative programming and associations you have with food to be replaced by an approach that puts you in control of your eating habits.
If you any questions or comments about this subject or the workshop please email me and I can respond either individually or on my blog.
"Retrain Your Brain for New Eating Habits" is on Saturday 25th February. Early bird discount fee remains £60 if paid before Saturday after which it is £75.
Last updated: 03 February 2012