Weight Loss Coaching

I've written before about my weight issues. It seems so obvious - if you haven't got an eating disorder - that to lose weight you should just eat less bad stuff, eat more good stuff, and be more active. If if were that simple I would be a size 10. If it were that simple no one would be overweight.

Dawn Walton is a Cognitive Hypnotherapist. She is also my friend and wants to help me become as healthy as she has become. In the last year or so Dawn has gone from a size 24 couch potato to a size 12 marathon runner. She is an amazing person who has dropped her emotional baggage along with the weight. You can read Dawn's story in her book, Nothing Needs to be the Way it has Always Been.

Dawn has recently developed a Weight Loss Coaching Programme and asked me if I would like to review it, free of charge. Of course I asked myself the question What have I got to lose? The answer would seem to be only weight. So I agreed. I am writing about my experience of this programme now, at the beginning. I will also give you updates throughout the twelve weeks.

It sounds simple, but it is not easy. Change is hard. Dawn explains more about the programme on her personal blog The Moiderer. When she suggested the idea to me I knew that she could help me. She helped me before when I had pneumonia. [Edited to add: Dawn had also helped me lose some weight last year when she was training to be a Cognitive Hypnotherapist, she also got me to the point where I was ready to join Slimming World where I lost a load more]. Then I got nervous. What if it didn't work? The worst that could happen is that I'll just carry on going to Slimming World and lose ten minutes per day listening to a recording. Then I got even more nervous. What if it did work? Could I really change my relationship with food that fundamentally that food becomes a fuel and nothing more?

What if I really could be slim, fit and healthy?

I would love to be a normal size. I would like to eat like a normal person. I would like to wear normal clothes. I said this to Dawn at our first Weight Loss Coaching Skype session and she asked what I mean by normal.  I surprised myself with my answer. I want to be unremarkable (a strange admission for a blogger). I don't want people to look at me and feel sorry for my children as they clearly have a fat and unhealthy mum - the biggest mum at the school gate. I hate it.

I've been following Dawn's programme for nearly two weeks now. I listen daily to a personal download that Dawn has recorded for me. This is simple, it's ten minutes of relaxing with my headphones in. I also write down three positive changes that I have noticed each day. This is easy as I am noticing so many changes. I am walking quicker and doing more. I am choosing - mostly - to eat healthy foods. When I eat 'bad' foods I'm not enjoying them. CURSES!

The part of the programme that I am find really difficult is eating mindfully. I am used to doing six things at once. To stop everything, to close the laptop, to move anything with writing on, and just eat is torture for me.  I'm finding I am eating less because I want to get back to doing other things. I know I still have a long way to go as when I'm eating a 'bad' food I forget to eat it mindfully. That's just taking away all the fun of the binge. I'm sure Dawn will have something to say about this at our weekly catch up...

I'll keep you posted.


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Weight Loss Coaching

How to Gain Eleven Pounds in Seven Days

Want to know how to gain eleven pounds in seven days? The answer is to go on a diet.

There are not many things I really and truly hate, but I detest diets. I've either been on a diet or thinking I should be on a diet since I was nine years old. That's thirty four years of misery and guilt. Thirty four years of yo-yo dieting. Thirty four years of disappointment and self-loathing.

I was hoping to be able to write a ta daaaa! post, with before and after photographs, showing how much weight I had lost. But my latest attempt to become fitter, healthier - and smaller - has crashed and burned.

I'd spent a good few years saying that diets didn't work (if they did work, I'd be a size 10) and I was never going to diet again, but I was getting fatter and fatter. I had to do something. I'd tried Thinking Slimmer. Some of my behaviours surrounding food and exercise had changed, but I didn't lose any weight. I'd been seeing a Cognitive Hypnotherapist and she did help me to break through some of the mental barriers that I'd put up, the ones that I'd built up over the years, the ones that prevented me from losing weight. So then I was ready to lose weight. I joined Slimming World last October .

The first four months at Slimming World were great. I found that the eating plan suited me, as did the group support. As well as losing three stones, I lost the headaches and the heartburn of the binge eater.

Then I got ill with pneumonia, pleurisy and sepsis. After a few days of illness, a week in hospital, and a scary first few days at home, I'd lost another stone.

It was important to me to get back to Slimming World as quickly as I could, but more important to eat well after my health scare. I followed the plan, but my weight loss had stopped. I had reached the dreaded dieter's plateau. Despite eating healthily I stayed at the same weight for two months. I haven't been able to exercise at all, my recovery from serious illness is slow and I have to rest most of the time. Even so, I would have expected some small weight losses.

A few weeks ago I went for my weekly weigh-in to find that I had gained a pound and a half. I had followed the diet plan to the letter that week. The disappointment I felt prompted a week off the plan. Six months is a long time to stick to an eating plan, even one as simple as Slimming World. I didn't go crazy - we eat healthy, balanced meals as a family - although I did eat white toast with butter, chocolate and biscuits. I ate all the things I fancied, but hadn't really had for a while. Mmm, pizza.

I gained a whopping eleven pounds in that week off the plan.

I didn't think it was possible to gain that amount of weight in a week. I went straight back on the plan for five days but only lost a measly two pounds. Since then, for a week or so, I've been binge eating. Out of control. Eating everything in sight. I can't stop. I have continuous headaches and heartburn. I'm bloated. I haven't weighed myself. I daren't weigh myself. I hate myself.

Where do I go from here?

If I go back to Slimming World, I'll feel a big fat failure every week as I can't seem to control my eating right now.

If I stop dieting I'll end up bigger than I was before. I hate being the biggest mum at the school gates. I hate being an unhealthy, out of breath, lumbering, unfanciable lump. Fat cow. Lazy fat cow. Stupid fat cow.



As this was a rant of epic proportions, I've linked up with Mummy Barrow's Ranty Friday:




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How to Gain Eleven Pounds in Seven Days

The Banana Test

How do you feel when you see a fruit bowl?

Does it make you want to reach for an apple or would you rather have an apple pie?

I'd like to share with you my top tip for healthy eating.

In our house we use The Banana Test to determine how hungry we are. The basic theory behind the test is that if you are genuinely hungry, you'll happily eat a banana. If you're just peckish or you fancy a biscuit, you won't. If it's the latter, you don't need that unhealthy snack.

We use The Banana Test with the children all the time. They're pretty good at eating their 5-a-day at mealtimes, but they are young boys and they love biscuit based snacks. If it's close to a meal, or nearly bedtime and they ask for something to eat we offer them a banana. If they're really hungry, they'll eat the banana.

Andy and I use The Banana Test too. Rather than reaching for crisps or biscuits we head for the fruit bowl, and we're feeling much better for it.

In our house, as you can imagine, we get through a lot of bananas, apples, clementines, grapes....

I wonder whether we can keep this up over the festive season.

Have you tried The Banana Test?

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The Banana Test

The Little Girl and the Diet

This is the story of the Little Girl and the Diet.

When the Little Girl was nine years old her Mummy decided the Little Girl should go on her first diet.

The little girl wasn't obese, she wasn't having any medical problems, but she wasn't skinny either. The Little Girl heard 'puppy fat' being mentioned when her Mummy discussed her size with her friends. The Little Girl didn't want to be fat. Fat was bad. Fat was ugly. Boys didn't go out with fat girls. Fat people were lazy. The Little Girl hated the tent dresses that Mummy made her wear. Mummy said it was for the best, because they covered her up. She wanted to wear what the other girls were wearing, like t-shirts and skirts. A diet seemed like a good idea.

Mummy knew all about diets. Mummy was always on a diet. Mummy only ate lettuce and cottage cheese and Ryvitas. The Little Girl couldn't really understand why Mummy ate them. Mummy retched as she swallowed the cottage cheese she clearly detested. Mummy hated her thighs and her knees and her tummy. Mummy had nothing to wear. Mummy cleaned her teeth a lot to stop her wanting to eat.

Mummy made a chart for the back of the larder door. The Little Girl was allowed 1,000 calories per day. The Little Girl wasn't allowed to have 1,000 calories of chocolate as it would not fill her up. She was allowed 100 calories of milk per day (from the 1,000 calories). 100 calories of milk was about two inches in a cup. Every time the Little Girl had something to eat her Mummy consulted the Calorie Guide and wrote the food and the calories on the wall chart. At the end of the day the calories were added up to see if she had been a good girl.

The Little Girl was allowed to eat Ice Pops as these were only 10 calories. She was allowed to eat apples (40 calories for a small apple) and Weight Watchers bread (90 calories per slice). She drank tins of One-Cal lemonade. The Little Girl cleaned her teeth a lot. The Little Girl was always hungry. The Little Girl was hungry for weeks.

The year following the diet, Mummy out to work in the evenings. Daddy worked too, but at home. The Little Girl felt rather abandoned and she was bored. The Little Girl spent most evenings rummaging in the larder and the fridge. After her tea she would pilfer a chocolate biscuit or two, a Kit-Kat, a slice of cheese, a bowl of cornflakes, a jam sandwich, a spoonful of peanut butter, a spoonful of dry drinking chocolate powder and a 300 calorie drink of milk.

Very soon the Little Girl got fat. She became a yo-yo dieter. She followed a variety of diets. She lost weight each time, sometimes a lot of weight. Then she stopped following the diet and ate anything and everything again until she put the weight back on and a bit more on top. This pattern repeated for almost thirty years. At times of stress, loneliness or boredom she eats. It's her fall-back position. It's comfortable. It's what she does. For those few moments she stuffs her face, she doesn't think or feel. She goes into an emotional vacuum.

She hates herself for reaching for the biscuits every time an unwelcome emotion appears. She hates the way she looks. She hates all her clothes. She hides under tent dresses. She hates her thighs and her tummy. Her knees are okay though.

Now she knows why diets don't work. She has stopped dieting. She feels somewhat liberated. Now she eats normally and healthily, with her family. They usually have their five-a-day. No foods are forbidden or sinful, they eat everything in moderation.

She still binges, but never in front of her children. She is an expert in secret eating. She is trying to stop bingeing. She is a couple of stone below her top fighting weight. She weighs less than she did a year ago, without dieting.

She knows her mother was only doing her best. She also knows she will NOT pass her eating disorder onto her own children. She tries to look on the bright side.

The Little Girl and the Diet

A Weighty Issue

This is a difficult post to write.

I’ve been putting it off for a couple of weeks, but I’m ready now.

You see, I’m in this complicated relationship. I’ve been in this relationship for thirty years. This relationship is with food, and it’s not a healthy one.

If I had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol or drugs I could go cold turkey. It would be difficult (and I’m not making light of addictions here), but it’s possible. I used to smoke twenty cigarettes a day. On 6^th June 2003 I stopped smoking. I just stopped. It was hard, but I haven’t smoked since.

If your unhealthy relationship is with food, you can’t just stop eating. You have to eat every day, several times a day.

***

I wasn’t a skinny child, but looking back though the photo albums I now realise I wasn’t that big either. I certainly wouldn’t have been filmed from the neck down, eating chips, for an ITV news report on childhood obesity.

I was teased at primary school though. Some of the boys called me Big Bertha or Two Ton Tessie. My best friends Joanne and Wendy used to sit on me at lunchtime to make my tummy smaller.

When I was nine my mother put me on my first diet. I don’t blame her. Throughout the 1970s she only ate cottage cheese, Ryvitas or lettuce. She didn’t know any better. She used to make me wear huge ‘tent dresses’.

I was allowed to eat 1000 calories a day. Everything I ate was recorded on a chart stuck on the back of the larder door. I was only allowed about 100ml of milk per day.

I can’t remember whether I lost any weight, I suppose I must have done.

The following year, when I was ten, my mother started to work in the evenings. My father also worked in the evenings, but in his workshop at home. I remember night after night feeling bored, rifling through every cupboard in the kitchen looking for something to eat. In secret I would eat a couple of chocolate biscuits, a packet of crisps and a kitkat. I would then eat a bowl of cornflakes covered with sugar, then wash and dry the bowl and spoon and put them away.

***

I repeated the starve/binge cycle for years and years and years.

I was either on a diet, or not on a diet and binging.

I have tried most diets over the years. I’ve been to Weight Watchers, Slimming World, Rosemary Conley and my mum’s slimming/aerobics club. I’ve tried the Atkins Diet and the Low GI Diet. I’ve read slimming magazines. I know so much about dieting that I’ve made a up a few of my own. I can tell you how to lose weight by eating a low fat, low sugar diet. I’ve tried not eating after six o’clock and I’ve tried not eating before six o’clock.

The most weight I lost in one go was six and a half stone. Then I started eating ‘normally’ again and put all the weight back on again – and then some.

I’ve failed at every single diet I’ve been on. Do you know why?

DIETS DON’T WORK!

They don’t.

Diets set you up for failure because you can’t stay on them forever. You’ve been deprived of your favourite foods for however long you’ve been dieting and as soon as you stop, you eat and eat and eat and eat. Well, I do.

If diets worked I’d be a size ten and wouldn’t be writing this.

***

So where does that leave me?

I’m not the heaviest I’ve ever been, but I'm getting there, slowly but surely.

Around the time I met Andy, a few years ago, I lost weight. I lost it without trying. I ate what I wanted, including chocolate. We ate out in restaurants and we cooked for each other. I was so happy I didn’t think about food. After I had lost four stone I realised that I hadn’t binged or eaten in secret for months.

Then, when I was pregnant with Presley I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. I was put on a strict diet. I continued this diet for a few months after he was born too and lost even more weight. No wonder I had problems with my milk supply. The diet couldn’t last though. I was back on the diet/binge cycle once more. The Christmas after Presley was born I ate two large tins of chocolates before mid-December and had to buy more. I couldn’t stop eating.

Then I got pregnant with Cash. Again I had gestational diabetes. This time the diet wasn’t so strict, but I still had to follow a diet. I only put on ten pounds throughout the entire pregnancy. Once Cash was born I ate loads to help my milk supply. I haven’t stopped eating since. I’m pretty disgusted with myself.

So I’m overweight and rather unfit at the moment. I’d love to have more energy to play with the boys. I’d love to be able to shop for clothes anywhere but Evans. I don’t want the boys to be teased at school because they’ve got a fat mummy.

I want to lose weight, but I don’t want to go on a diet.

***

Thank Bob for the lovely Jo Beaufoix. We’d been emailing each other following a comment on a blog post. She asked me if I’d read the book ‘Beyond Chocolate: How To Stop Yo-Yo Dieting and Lose Weight For Good’ by Sophie and Audrey Boss. I hadn’t, so I bought it and read it.

What a revelation! Beyond Chocolate is not a diet. You can eat what you want when you want, so long as you tune in to what your body really needs. There are no ‘bad foods’ , no calorie counting, no points, no scales. You eat when you are hungry and stop when you are full. You move your body because you enjoy it.

Simple.

Yes, it is simple, but I wasn’t sure where to start. There was a lot to take in. We looked into the weekend courses that they run, but Jo and I live a fair distance from each other. There is an alternative...

A couple of weeks ago Jo and I started the twelve week Beyond Chocolate Ecourse.

The Ecourse breaks the book down into bite-sized pieces. Sorry, that joke was in poor taste. And so was that one.

There’s full email support and a website forum to join. Also, Jo and I are supporting each other too. It is nerve-racking, but exciting. I’ve got nothing to lose, apart from some weight. I hope to gain body confidence and to get back in touch with myself. Go back to basics.

I’ll let you know how I get on.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yukariryu/122530930/

A Weighty Issue