Empowerment.ca

Weight Loss

When most people want to lose weight they run to the latest fad diet hoping to quickly get those extra pounds off.  At first their diet gives them a sense of control as they take conscious control of their eating patterns. They experience some initial success and the scale drops, but soon they find themselves fighting cravings for forbidden foods.

Just the thought of going on a “diet” is depressing to most people. They think of giving up foods that provide comfort or they think make them happy. Thoughts of sitting at a party with celery sticks while others are shoveling down delicious goodies even cause some people stop socializing because food is such a big part of social interaction. Now, they feel deprived, alienated and alone, which causes them to give up and return to the world of happy uncontrolled eating, carrying negative feelings toward healthy foods because they are “diet foods.”

If you are reading this page, you may have you been there.  You were on one of the many diets where you were not eating the way you will eat for the rest of your life.  You told yourself “this is just for the diet” and forced yourself to eat foods you didn’t like and didn’t find satisfying. Sure you did great for a while, but then you started to rebel against your diet and start “cheating”.  Yeah at first you may have been able to keep your cheating under control and still lost weight, but eventually you couldn’t take it any longer.  You rebelled and returned to your old eating habits.  Even if you did stick with it and attained your weight goal, you found yourself back at your old weight or even heavier in a few months once you returned to your old eating habits.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad mews, but the reality is that diets don’t work. Achieving a healthy weight on a permanent basis requires a change in lifestyle – it’s not an one-time event.  Unfortunately, dieting usually causes you to lose lean muscle mass as well as fat and water weight.  When you to lose muscle, your metabolism slows down and you have to eat even fewer calories per day just to continue to maintain your weight. That’s why your weight comes back with a vengeance, but as fat rather than as the muscle you lost and you end up looking even more fat and unhealthy.

Now the good news, believe it or not, your appetite can become your best friend! People who maintain a healthy weight may occasionally overindulge, but for the most part they have developed good habits and become very tuned in to their bodies.Their appetite allows the naturally slender person to eat guilt free and to enjoy every mouthful of food needed to satisfy the nutritional needs of their bodies. Eating properly is meant to be enjoyable because it is an essential part of a healthy life.

When you are tuned in to it, your appetite tells you when your desire for food is due to the nutritional and energy needs of your body rather than a response to emotional triggers.  You know when you don’t need nourishment and that food will only cause problems (like heart disease, diabetes and poor self-esteem).

For the chronic binge eater, eating is process that is often associated with guilt. The binger overeats to fill a need, a void, an emptiness deep inside; not to satisfy the body’s legitimate need for nourishment.  It is the underlying sense that something is missing, something is wrong with them, or with their world, that drives their behaviour. Food can’t possibly work because hunger is not the problem. This void must be addressed first to eliminate the feelings of being out of control, self-sabotage, and resulting loss of self-esteem that cause overeating.

Our early programming can also be responsible for those extra pounds as well.  Beliefs like “I’ve got to eat everything on my plate”, “If I don’t eat I’ll offend someone”, or “Food is a reward” are often responsible for the consumption of countless unneeded calories.  These types of beliefs often cause a person to add 2 or 3 pounds per year that eventually result in a serious weight problem.

Reaching your healthy weight permanently requires combating your overeating in response to emotional triggers such as stress, frustration, anxiety or poor self-esteem. It also requires proper beliefs about food that allow you remain in control and make food choices that don’t cause your body to crave unneeded or unhealthy foods.

NLP and hypnosis allow us to make changes to your thought patterns so your weight loss is achieved faster by helping you to reduce your portion sizes and encourage the desire to exercise.  When you deal with the root causes of why you were eating incorrectly in the first place and enlist the resources of your unconscious mind to work with you rather than against you, the struggle disappears. You easily turn down sweets and unhealthy junk foods as you begin to love eating nutritious foods and developing new behaviour patterns that create permanent weight loss in a cravings free manner.

By addressing the root causes and clearing them you regain control, and rather than gaining a few pounds each year like most of your friends, you create a new naturally slender strategy allows you to lose weight each month until you reach a healthy body weight. Your friends you haven’t seen in awhile will be impressed by the difference. You won’t need to shock your body and slow down your metabolism with a deprivation diet, but instead you will enjoy feeding yourself with appropriate amounts of good healthy food. You can increase your energy level and feelings of well being which naturally lead to increased activity levels and overall good health.