10 things you need to know about losing weight?

For years, mainstream doctors have been saying:

• To lose weight you just need to eat less and do more; if you get hungry, tough - you have to resist it;



• A calorie is a calorie is a calorie - it doesn't matter where it comes from;



• You must avoid fat at all costs if you want to lose weight;



• Exercise is good for you but it doesn't actually "burn" very many calories;



• Cereal and skimmed milk is a good breakfast (being low in calories and fat).

However, when I ask my clients to record what they eat and notice how it makes them feel afterwards (e.g. do they get hungry again very quickly or crave sweet foods later) and when I encourage them to eat what they really feel like, they notice that:

• Allowing themselves to get very hungry backfires because they can then no longer control what they eat;



• It makes a huge difference where their calories come from in terms of how the food makes them feel and how much they eat at the next meal;



• They seem to be able to eat full fat dairy and still lose weight;



• Exercise makes a big difference to the amount of weight they lose;



• If they eat a protein breakfast such as eggs (free range please!) they don't get hungry mid morning and don't crave chocolate;

Now, lo and behold, "scientists" have shown that my clients were right. In the programme "10 things you need to know about losing weight" on Wednesday, it was confirmed that:

• If you get too hungry, you can't control yourself - your unconscious mind takes over;



• If you eat protein, it does keep you going much longer;



• The calcium in dairy stops you absorbing as much fat;



• Exercise increases your metabolic rate for a long time after you finish exercising;



• It's good to eat eggs for breakfast.

The sad thing is that for years, doctors have been giving people bad advice. And yet, if people are encouraged to respect themselves and listen to their own bodies, they actually work these things out for themselves!

Find out more about losing weight without dieting

Feline assistance with the weight loss course

This is my cat helping me photograph the home study course to put on the website.

Those of you with cats will know that it's a fundamental law in the world of cat that documents must be sat on. My cat Alfie (a girl, but that's another story) went beyond the call of duty and rolled on it too. Sadly, my photo chops her head off but you get the general idea. She was obviously impressed.

Does the devil in your mind really doom you to diet failure?

One of my clients, Kate, called me the other day in a bit of a dither. She had just had a terrible binge, in which she felt completely out of control with her eating. She said she had been eating like her labrador and, having seen said labrador dining, I knew this was serious. Kate wanted to understand what had gone wrong, because before this incident she had been very successful with the enlighten programme weight loss course and had not binged for a long time.

We talked about what Kate had eaten that day (same as normal), whether she was upset or angry about anything (no), whether she had let herself get very hungry (no), whether she had stopped listening to the hypnotherapy CD (no). Nothing seemed to have changed and we were about to give up, when she said: "I did read this thing in the Daily Mail about dieting... I don't suppose that could have triggered anything..." Whilst I am not a great fan of the Daily Mail, I haven't previously held it responsible for eating binges.

Kate had read an article in the Daily Mail called: "How the devil in our mind dooms us to diet failure". The article said that there is a little "devil" inside us that wants to eat chips and chocolate and a little "angel" that fights with the devil to make us eat good stuff (all very Old Testament). Some of us have stronger angels than others and those people are better at choosing Celery Surprise in preference to steak and chips.

Kate had read this article and had jokingly told her husband about her "devil". Then suddenly, she got an irrestable urge to eat (and eat, and eat, at high speed).

After a bit more reflection and a conversation with her unconscious mind (using a technique which she learned on the Enlighten Programme home study course), it turned out that the part of Kate responsible for her eating didn't like being called a devil and had had a bit of a tantrum. Once she acknowledged that it was not a devil and was actually on her side, things went back to normal.

It's true that there are some areas in life where there is a conflict between the hedonistic part of you which would rather sit and watch "Britain's Got Talent" and the responsible part that knows you've got work to do. However, your relationship with food doesn't need to be like that.

When things are working well, you should feel the urge to eat healthy foods and enjoy just small quantities of things like chocolate or junk food. I think it goes wrong for so many people when they start eating foods full of sugar and chemicals (and this includes some "healthy" low fat breakfast cereals and snack bars) because our bodies and brains can't cope with the addictive nature of these foods. The other big problem is when we make certain foods "bad", causing them to take on a tantalising "forbidden fruit" quality.

It is possible to get to a point where food is a pleasure not a battle. Perhaps Kate's unconscious mind was reminding her that if you choose to go into battle with your body and your unconscious mind, you'll probably lose.

As I thought whilst trying to get my friend's very unwilling horse onto a horse box yesterday, if you're going to pick a fight, it's not a good idea to pick one with someone bigger and stronger than you!

The enlighten programme home study weight loss course

Tribal Wives

I have recently watched a few of these programs where a workaholic woman from London spends a month with a tribe in some remote jungle in Indonesia or Africa.

The woman gets a very different perspective on life, and the tribeswomen get to have a good laugh about the fact that she’s 38 and not married yet!

One thing that strikes (and bothers) me is the number of tribes in which women undergo some form of ritual mutilation such as teeth sharpening. In many cases, the mutilation must be extremely painful. In some cases, men are also mutilated but these mutilations tend to be of the “short sharp shock” type from which the men recover, whereas women often have things inflicted on them which will affect them for the rest of their lives.

For women, the mutilation is often about being “beautiful” and acceptable for marriage.

Of course such mutilation has happened in many societies over the years, from corsets in Victorian times to the horror of foot binding in China.

These “customs” often render women less strong and capable and more compliant and dependent on men than they would otherwise be, as explained with regard to foot binding:

“During the 1100s the governor Chu Hsi criticized the wornen of Fujian Province for being unchaste and enjoying too much freedom, and ordered them to bind their feet to the extreme. The tiny footed women would then no longer be free to leave the household as they pleased, or engage in the sexual freedoms enjoyed by men.”

One of the strangest aspects of these mutilations is the way the women accept and even embrace them because they are brought up to think of them as natural, normal and necessary. In fact older women often inflict these horrors upon their children and grandchildren.

Foot binding seems to us to be obviously horrific and abusive. But could something similar be going on in our culture?

How many women in our culture want to look like this?



How many girls starve themselves because they want to be “slim and beautiful”? How many women wake up thinking about what they are going to eat, obsess about food all day and go to bed vowing to be “good” the next day? What could they achieve if that energy was put into other endeavours?

The woman is this picture may be naturally this shape (although her breasts don’t look very natural!) or she may have an eating disorder. She’s almost certainly airbrushed. Is wanting to look like this really so different from wanting 3 inch long feet?

Will future cultures look back at our culture and its obsession with slimness and marvel at the insanity of it just as we do about foot binding?

http://www.enlightenprogramme.co.uk

Are weight problems psychological or physical?

There is a lot of debate at the moment about whether weight problems are psychological or physical.

I think weight gain is rarely just physical or just psychological. If someone is very big, it can also be hard to tell if any psychological problems are the cause of the weight gain or the effect. Do you worry that you have low self esteem? Well, who wouldn't find it hard to keep positive when being constantly judged on their size, discriminated against in workplace and told they have no willpower? I think this is enough to get anyone down!

Although there are always a mixture of things going on, it can help if you answer these simple questions:

Do you regularly eat when you are not hungry?

If so, there are psychological factors involved in your weight gain. Most people who consistently eat when not hungry will put on weight. This may seem obvious but there is no point just going on a calorie controlled diet if you are consistently using food for reasons other than hunger. The diet will just make things worse, because you are not addressing the cause of your problem. In fact the diet will probably make food even more emotionally significant than it was previously.

Do you mainly eat because you are hungry, but you just seem to be hungry all the time?

This may be more of a physical issue. If you are eating too many refined carbohydrates or processed "junk foods", your body's insulin cycle may be malfunctioning, causing you to get very hungry. Don't assume that you need to be eating sweets and chocolate to get this effect. A "healthy" breakfast of cereal with skimmed milk can be one of the worst offenders. Try having scrambled eggs instead. Each person's body is different so I can't tell you what foods will work for you, but be kind to yourself and experiment to see what makes you feel better.

Do you find that you can't tell when you're hungry and when you're not.

You may have got out of touch with your feelings of hunger through going on diets, or you may never have experienced these feelings clearly. Did you get hungry as a child? This may have psychological or physical reasons, but it is top priority to get back in touch with your hunger if you are to solve your weight problem.

Do you eat when hungry but have trouble stopping when you are satisfied? (You clean your plate)

This is probably just a habit, but it can be more deep rooted (if for example your parents praised you for finishing your food). Try eating very slowly, chewing your food thoroughly and putting your cutlery down between each mouthful. Keep checking whether or not you are still hungry. You will probably find that you eat a lot less!

To summarise, if you want to address your weight problems, you need to work out the cause of them. Going on a diet won't do that - it will probably make matters worse. Everyone is different and you need to work out what approach will help you as an individual.

Find out more about diet free weight loss

Beliefs and weight loss

Can our beliefs affect our weight? It would be strange if they couldn't given what else they can affect.

This week's New Scientist tells the story of a man who was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given just a few months to live. The man duly went downhill and died at his allotted time. What makes this story unusual is that when they did the post mortem, it turned out that the original diagnosis was wrong. The man's cancer was tiny and certainly could not have killed him.

So, what did kill him? It appeared that his belief that he would die was enough to finish him off - a modern version of the pointing bone. There are numerous examples of similar effects where beliefs affect health.

Given that beliefs can kill you, it would be strange if they couldn't make you put on or lose a few pounds, and from the work I do with people I know that they can. Unfortunately it may not be possible to live healthily on chocolate and crisps just because you have a firm belief that they constitute a fully balanced diet. However, constantly telling yourself that the food you eat will make you fat could be adding to your waistline.

What do you believe about food and your weight? Could these beliefs be self fulfilling?