2019 – Why Diets May NEVER work if you have this….

So it’s THAT time of year when all the diet and fitness ads will be all over your newsfeed, on podcasts, on YouTube, in the shops and in all the media and the Gyms will be packed full of people working on their “new you” image. But BEFORE you go rushing in, joining gyms and spending more money and joining in with all the latest fads – here’s something that you may want to consider.

What if you suddenly found out that your current situation of being overweight (or underweight) may NEVER be fixed by dieting.

WHAAAAAT…..?

Okay let me clarify that a bit.

So firstly – yes of course if you eat 5,000 calories a day and do NO exercise then seriously – forgive me – but you are just somewhat ignorant of how to eat healthily and exercise, and so this article is NOT for you. (Sorry to be so blunt – but if you want to lose weight, then seriously you need to educate yourself and a simple Google search for “how to eat healthily” will give you the right start!)

BUT……

If you’ve tried numerous diets, you understand what you should be eating, you do exercise programs and yet you can still never seem to shed the excess weight….or if you do, you seem to put it all back on again, ……and more, then it’s possible that you’re looking in the wrong place for answers.

Here’s why.

Our “Primitive” Programming

So it is said that during our Evolution, our brains have only really adapted about 1% since our caveman days.  Which means that we are all hardwired with some primitive programming.

Let me explain.

When we’re born we are born with some primitive needs to “fit in” to stay with what’s familiar and there’s only two fears we are born with which are the fear of falling, and the fear of loud noises.  But here’s the good thing.  We are born with the absolute belief that everything is achievable and abundant for us.

Think about that for a moment – for most of us as a baby, when we cry, we get fed, when we look at ourselves in the mirror we smile at ourselves and believe we are perfect and when we fall over when learning to walk we never for one minute believe that we shouldn’t get up and try again.  We never look at our cute baby fat legs and think “oh my goodness, I should diet” – we are born with perfect confidence and perfect self esteem. And when we eat…..we eat when we’re hungry and we stop when we’re no longer hungry.

So what changes?

Well,  between the ages of 0 and 7 years old, our beliefs and emotions are shaped by what is going on around us.  Our friends, our parents, neighbours, aunties, uncles, school teachers, sports coaches, TV, social media will ALL have affected and changed your beliefs about food.

And the spanner in the works for anyone with a weight problem is that there is very likely to be an emotional connection between a feeling stored in your subconscious mind and food from way back when we were somewhere between the ages of 0 and 7 years old .

And because it is stored in your subconscious mind……you have no clue that you have this emotional connection.   So let’s talk about why your subconscious mind is so important when it comes to ANY decision we make about ourselves. (And this doesn’t just relate to food – think money and finances, your beliefs about yourself etc etc!)

The Mighty Power of Our Subconscious Mind

It is estimated that we have between 60-90 thousand thoughts a day.  And when you think about that….you can see that we could be quickly overwhelmed by this.  So our conscious mind (our “thinking” mind”) learns how to do something (like getting up, taking a shower, making a coffee) and then creates a little neural pathway in your brain and stores it in the subconscious mind, so that we don’t have to learn how to do it again every day.

Pretty smart.

The more we DO that same task then the little neurones that light up an electrical connection in our brains become more and more set – literally those neurones that “fire together, wire together” making the habit quite hard to break.  (But NOT impossible).

So that’s great for mundane daily tasks, but let’s say for example, at age 5 you fall over and hurt your knee and it’s painful.  The teacher or your Mum or someone else gives you some chocolate or sweets or cookies to distract you and make you calm down (and how many of us Mums have done that – oh boy!!).

But here’s what happens.  Our immature little minds make the connection that pain and discomfort can be fixed by something sweet and tasty to eat.

Now that one instance alone, would not be enough to create a lasting neurone pathway in your brain, but if it is repeated often enough, AND there is an emotion involved….then it does.  Think of a tiny little footpath, becoming a side road, a main road and eventually a motorway of neurones firing together every time you get stressed or in need of comfort.

Sadly we are also ‘hard wired’ to seek something sweet when we are hungry because our Mother’s milk is sweet.  So there’s a lot going against us.

Now…..it’s not all bad news because we CAN stop these neurones firing together if we consciously interrupt them.  Think about how long you believed in Father Christmas before you realised or were told that he wasn’t real.  Your immature mind stopped firing those neurones and created some new neural pathways with your new beliefs.

So if you have some bad habits that you don’t seem to be able to control – the good news is that you ARE fixable!!

But it does take some effort if you’re trying to do it on your own.

But here’s what to do.

Understanding How to Take Control of Our Minds

As with everything in our life – it is our our thoughts that trigger our emotions which then leads to our actions.

Thoughts ==>Emotions ==> Actions ==> Events of our life

So in order to fix the root cause of the weight issues – we need to address our thoughts FIRST…..but how can we do that when our thoughts are deep in our subconscious mind and are happening on autopilot???

We may decide to go on a diet and we use our conscious mind to make that decision and to have a healthy salad.  We then do some exercise too and we feel good.  We may continue that for a few days – consciously making those choices and starting to fire a little tiny path of neurones in our brain.  BUT…..the subconscious mind accounts for about 95% of our mind and it’s much quicker than our conscious mind.

The MINUTE that there is some stress or a moment of sub-conscious conflict, (i.e I’m tired, hungry and I REALLY want the pizza and garlic bread, but I know I should have the salad) then the subconscious mind will try and tempt you back to what it knows is familiar to you – it will tempt you with thoughts of “It doesn’t matter just this once, you can get back to the diet tomorrow …….(sound familiar?).

We are creatures of emotions and feelings and we have a bit of self sabotage in us all because emotion will beat logic EVERY time!!

So Here’s How to Kick It – For Good!

• Start off by being “consciously aware” of every time you seem to flick to “default”. So the minute you get the trigger that makes you want to go running to the cookie jar, or the pizza shop – STOP and analyse the thought that preceded it – make a note of it in a food journal or notebook.
• If you still eat the cookie – don’t beat yourself up! Be kind to yourself and understand that it is your thoughts that need looking at.  Without getting too deep – the intensity of the thought and the emotion attached to that thought is critical.
• Once you have identified the thought – i.e I’m stressed because…. Or I feel left out because….. someone said something horrible to me…. Then it is time to disassociate THAT feeling from food. Recognize and remind yourself that food is food – it has no emotions, it is for nutritional purpose only and your body would NEVER ask to be fed non nutritional food like sugar and pizza.  Recognize that you need “filling up” with something other than food right now.
• What else comforts you – the BEST thing to do when feeling in need of comfort is to go and hug someone or something that you love. Often it’s a pet, a spouse, a baby or child.  Just give love to something!  Yes really!  Our body’s energy frequency that we give off when we express love quite literally raises your vibration away from the negative vibration of upset, stress, hurt, anger etc  (Tip: – Try smiling broadly for 10 seconds when you feel angry about something and the anger, fear or negative vibration will subside!) and once again this interrupts the looping thought cycle that is firing the neurones in your brain.
• Drink water every 20 minutes – keep yourself hydrated because often feelings of hunger are actually feelings of thirst.
• So now you’ve changed the energy frequency of your thought by interrupting it and upleveling it – now you can make a sensible choice. And it IS a choice.  You are either choosing to stick to your healthy eating plan because looking and feeling like the picture of you on the fridge and in your mind feels WAY better than the pizza or cookie does.  Or you’re choosing to eat something that actually your body doesn’t even want.

Easy…….!

But sometimes the feelings are so deep rooted that you may need some help.  Let me share a couple of my client case studies with you who presented with weight issues.  I have of course protected their names and identities but these are real life cases.

RTT Case study 1

So *Jenny came to me for weight loss – she had tried everything to lose weight and blamed a poor metabolism and a thyroid disfunction for which she was receiving medication but she was determined that she wanted to change.

During the RTT hypnotic regression (where we can access ALL of your mind) we uncovered the reason that her mind had created a “distraction”  to the devastating things that were happening to her as a child.  She had been sexually abused as a child and all the while she was enduring this abuse, her mind was wishing that she was bigger so that it would take her away from this pain.

Did you get that? – Her mind was wishing she was bigger…..!

And our minds are there to protect our life – so if we are saying to ourselves that we hate this and we wish we were bigger so that the pain would go away – then our minds will do anything to oblige to keep us away from pain.  Once she realised what she had been saying to herself over and over as a child – we were able to release it all.

Now this was an extreme case and *Jenny has now finally been able to shed the excess weight (and has also managed to reduce her thyroid medication) but not all cases are as deep and clearcut as this.

RTT Case Study 2

A client approached me from the US as she had found my website – it was slightly unorthodox in that the only free time she had was to drive to a supermarket and park in the car park for her RTT session via a Zoom/facetime call.  But hey….you do what works for you!!

This lady was substantially overweight but when regressed it was again very clear to see why her mind was ensuring that she stayed large.  In each of the scenes her mind took us back to as being the most crucial and significant relating to her weight issue – the scenes were of violent arguments between her Mum and her Dad.  She felt unsafe and she felt helpless and she wished she was bigger so that she could protect her Mum.

These incidents were frequent – and so once again her mind has obliged her thoughts which became her “blueprint” of keeping her bigger so that she would be safe.

Once again, we released the association between the thoughts and the events so that she was able to clearly instruct her mind that she was safe and that what she really wanted was to lose a substantial amount of weight.  She is now losing weight steadily which she has never been able to do before.

RTT Case Study 3

*Lauren came to me saying she had a happy childhood and knew there was nothing sinister in her past but for some reason she could never shed excess weight.

In Lauren’s situation, when we asked her mind why it needed to make her big – it was simply a case of her Mum was big, her Aunty was big, and in fact all the females in her family were big and everyone always told her how much she looked like her Mum.  They were all also always trying to lose weight and kept telling her, how much it was in her genes to be that way too.

We call this “learned helplessness” – because as a child, you just accept what your parents and influencers around you say and when it’s repeated over and over, then once again it becomes your blueprint that your mind follows.  In this instance *Lauren was able to see why her mind had decided to follow this blueprint – then we separated out the thoughts of fact from stories, and then reframed them into thoughts and words that would serve her much better.

In Summary

Many clients I see are just amazed that when they go back to their childhood during regression, they see exactly why they seek comfort in certain types of food.  Working with my clients, I help them see what the issue and the link is – and then work with them to remove the link between the emotion and the food.

At the end of the RTT session – 60% of the work has been done (yep often in just one session) and then I record an entirely unique hypnotic recording specifically for what the client really wants to achieve so that new neural pathways are created – we recommend this is listened to at least once a day for 3-4 weeks.

If you would like to find out more about RTT then simply click the link below and schedule a free 30 minute consultation with me.  RTT helps for many different issues, please see my home page for more information.