Written by: Vanessa McLennan, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Have you set weight loss goals for the New Year and it’s already gone out of the window? Are you now feeling annoyed and rubbish about yourself? Well, stop. I’m here to say it is OK if you have fallen off the weightloss track and here is why.
Goals are logical and something to aim for. They are there to provide a structure or a process to get to somewhere. They ideally will be specific, measurable, realistic and time based. When the goal meets those criteria that is what should make it motivating and attainable. Setting a weightloss goal meeting these criteria can help you to lose weight.
For many people, setting a weightloss goal can be motivating and can be very achievable. All It might take is for you to make a few tweaks to how and what you eat and how you exercise and you know you will very easily hit your goal. That is great, keep going and enjoy getting there. Though this article is really for the people where weightloss is not that easy or straightforward.
For most people, eating is emotional. It is not a logical process. We eat depending on how we feel, not thinking of it as fuel for our bodies. When we set goals that are dependent on our emotions, it is never going to be a linear line to get there. We also have many associations with food, for instance certain foods remind us of people or occasions. Many of us use food as an emotional crutch to help us get through tough times. All of these make it difficult to factor in when setting goals and with so much riding on our emotions it is inevitable that we are going to fall off the wagon. When we fall off the wagon, in other words eat something we deem we should not have done, often feelings such as guilt and shame come in. This clouds our judgement about our patterns and eating habits and we conclude that there is something wrong with us, not with the framework that we have set for ourselves. Sticking to an outside framework such as a diet, is never going to be successful in the long run if you are an emotional eater.
A better framework to increase your chances of success are to work on the reasons behind your eating habits. When you understand and heal those, it is setting you up for life time success.
Here is how you can do that.
1. Become aware
Before you can change anything, you need to become aware of what your patterns are. Start by keeping a note of what you eat and more importantly why you eat. Is your food driven by genuine hunger, or is there another reason? Boredom? Feeling sad? Feeling anxious for example. When you can start to understand your patterns, then you understand the emotion that is driving you to eat.
2. Work on your emotions.
Especially the emotions that are driving you to eat. Sometimes it is as straightforward as one emotion, for instance sadness. In this case you can break it down to know what the trigger is for feeling that emotion. You can start to learn to process that emotion rather then turning to food to help you deal with it. Very often though, it is not as straightforward as that.
3. Forgiveness and acceptance
It can be easy to blame ourselves for the way we eat. We internalise our patterns and think we are at fault. Often, it is not our fault. Our patterns have come about for many reasons such as Learning how to eat from others, using food as a coping mechanism, as a way to find comfort and companionship when all around us is full of uncertainty and trauma. If we can see beyond the food that we eat, understand why we are eating the way that we are and learn to forgive ourselves for the way we are eating, then our weightloss journey starts to become easier and more fulfilling.
4. Find Joy.
The journey of weightloss can be such a roller coaster. Each week it can be one day up, one day down. Another week of putting on weight and another week of feeling rubbish about ourselves. This can often strangely lead us to eat more. We may think ‘food makes me feel good and I put on weight anyway, so I may as well eat the things that I want’. This can all feel very heavy. Life does not become fun and we are perpetually verbally talking down to ourselves. This can get us into a downward spiral. To break this cycle, we need to find our joy, our pleasure in life. What do you love doing? Do more of it. How do you like to be spoken to? Speak that way to yourself. You need an ally in this weightloss journey and your biggest ally needs to be yourself.
5. Keep going
This rollercoaster of a journey can be difficult at times. When we have put on weight and eaten foods that have been so hard to avoid, it can be easy to give up. When the new diet doesn’t work, it is demoralising. You will lose weight if you keep going. By keeping going, I do not mean by going on a diet, that is never going to work. I mean by following these steps and working on your mindset and emotions. Getting to know and understand yourself, will help you break out of your cycles and give you permanent weightloss.
Vanessa McLennan, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine "Vanessa McLennan is a hypnotherapist/psychotherapist specialising in Binge Eating, Weight loss and obesity. After experiencing challenges in life, she found therapy and it was a life changing experience for her. Her life moved forward so much that she wanted to help others. She started specialising in weightloss and disordered eating because her own poor health caused her to clean up her own diet and healthy living became a passion of hers. She helps people who have been on many diets and they have not worked. Their eating has got out of control and they can't escape the cycle betw een eating too much or restriction. Are you ready and open to exploring your mind and emotions to help clear your unconscious saboteurs? To go within to work on the cause of your habits and not just the symptoms? Vanessa takes her clients on a healing journey where they heal the relationship with themselves and with food. An exploratory, liberating, life changing journey"
