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How does The Food Philosophy work?
By showing women that the more they try to 'cut down' using outside advice about what and how much to eat, the more their survival drive to overeat will kick in and the more they will be driven to overeat. I tell them exactly how and why this happens (including how the human brain works). I tell them what psychological factors set them up to fail at taking control over food. They then use the tools and exercises, along with this new information, and they change their thinking. I teach them how to take responsibility for their own choices. The end result is that they have a control over food that they didn't have before.
escaping the diet bores!
Relentlessly Positive's POSITIVE weight loss Guru Sue Thomason is back again - and this week she is looking at the thorny issue of what to do when it seems like everyone else around you is obsessed with dieting..
Sue spent 20 years as a journalist on national newspapers and women’s magazines, such as Now, Woman, Cosmopolitan, Woman’s Own, Woman’s Realm, Mizz, Essentials, Bella, Best, Chat, The Daily Telegraph and more. She has been a scriptwriter, a film maker and a broadcaster for ITN. She is now a motivation coach and she spends her working day helping people to set themselves free from the overeating trap by teaching The Food Philosophy online.
She knows everything there is to know about the psychology of overeating and she can read your mind - so listen to her!
If you have a question you'd like to put to Sue, or a comment on her advice, e-mail Relentlessly Positive
This week, Sue looks at what to do if you just can't seem to get away from constant dieting talk....
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"I’ve always had a weight problem and I’ve always dieted. My weight just seemed to be going up and up. Then when I got pregnant I decided that I could eat whatever my body wanted and I even gave myself permission to binge. A funny thing happened – I stopped eating as much and lost weight. My baby was healthy and a good size but I lost a lot of body fat apart from the bump. It was amazing - I thought I had finally got it cracked (and I had!). However, I recently went back to work and my office has a real culture of competitive dieting and they talk about weight loss ALL the time.
I tried to ignore it and I hadn't realised it was affecting me until I found myself thinking "Hmm, maybe YOU should diet for a bit, just to get a few more pounds off," and then BAM! it was like the floodgates opening and I was right back to where I was before my pregnancy - bingeing like mad.
I did an experiment yesterday – to exorcise the diet demon. I said to myself: “Ok, you can start a diet tomorrow if you like.” As soon as I told myself this I went berserk, eating cheese and bread and butter. I carried on eating mindlessly until I was halfway through dinner and then all of a sudden I thought: “No - you are NEVER doing diet again!" and I knew that I wanted to stop eating. I did stop.
My experience is the most direct and obvious evidence that even THINKING about dieting messes me up. It has confirmed for me what I know already - dieting of ANY kind equals loss of control, misery and bingeing!
Dieting and any type of food restriction directly causes overeating and you can clearly see this after your pregnancy. This is quite a profound realisation that you’ve had and it’s one that all dieters will probably identify with in some way or another – even if they haven’t realised what they’re doing consciously. It sounds to me like you’re quite a good way along the journey out of disordered and compulsive eating, into normal eating and weight loss. You’re lucky because most people don’t recognise that they are compulsive eaters and they just spend their lives trying to control their compulsion by dieting, which they cling on to even when each diet ends in a binge, their weight is only going upwards and their own experience tells them that it’s never going to work. Some people continue banging their heads against the wall by trying to diet unsuccessfully for their whole lives!
Even those that do work out that they are compulsive eaters and who know dieting doesn’t work for them really don’t often believe that there is a solution or that they can ever be normal. There is a way out of compulsive overeating, as you have worked out for yourself. And once you’re out weight loss is inevitable. So the first thing I’d recommend for you is that you appreciate your thinking ability and celebrate your luck.
You must come to learn to trust your own inner voice again at work and strengthen your trust in your own judgement. If you give up now, you will not only sink back into the hell that is the life of the compulsive overeater, but you will also lower your self esteem and feel less in control of every area of your life. Take control of this situation and keep your individual way of thinking and your self worth will soar, you’ll be free from overeating and you can look forward to a future that is 100 per cent happier than if you let yourself be influenced.
