There’s a great quote out there, attributed to Dorothy Day, that goes along the lines of: ” Food for the body is not enough. There must be food for the soul.”
In many ways, this is probably one of the most pertinent concepts for the work that I do, and the people I support to lose weight and develop a positive and healthy approach to their food intake and everyday diets.
While many people see food as being a purely physical thing which we use to gain sustenance, I’m always very conscious that you can’t separate our emotional and psychological responses to eating with the physical act, itself.
When most of us sit down to eat a meal, there’s a whole host of psychological processes going on which are much more powerful than simply sitting, and eating.
We have the social aspect of mealtimes, where families gather around the table and share their day, for example.
We have lunch out with friends, taking time to catch up over a shared meal, or the pleasure of going to the cinema and having a box of popcorn with a partner.
Much of our social interactions and what we do seems to revolve around the act of eating, showing that food is much more a part of our social, emotional and psychological make-up than merely being a way of gaining sustenance for survival.
This means that when we want to tackle issues such as difficulty in losing weight, challenges with making healthy food choices or reaching a plateau in our healthy eating regime, it’s critical to look at the psychological aspect of our approach to food, rather than just the physical evidence.
For example, someone who has an issue with eating lots of junk food at certain times of the day, is much more likely to be battling with a deeper problem than a simple craving for sugar, or a desire to eat. The psychological reasons behind our reaction, response, approach and attitude to eating can often be so powerful that they control our diets completely.
Why focussing just on the physical won’t change your weight
This is why when we’re looking to tackle long-term weight loss, it’s really important to take stock of our mindset, and work to put in place positive and powerful suggestions for beating old habits.
This could be through coaching, to encourage the individual to feel more confident about their personal strength, motivation and ability to succeed at their goal, or through hypnotherapy weight loss, replacing old food associations with more relevant and workable alternatives.
When someone succeeds in losing weight, a whole host of emotional rewards take place.
We feel proud of our achievement, we feel more confident about the way we look and feel, and we gain really strong motivation to continue with our healthy eating to carry on the positive feelings of success and strength that reaching our goal has brought.
For me, these emotions are the very crux of long-term weight loss success. It’s these feelings that we want to get to, and maintain, as they are the single most powerful tool in assisting each person to achieve the weight they always wanted, and then maintain it.
Hypnotherapy Weight Loss: Food for thought
It’s true what they say – if you free your mind, the rest will follow.
Your body is just a vehicle for all of the thoughts, attitudes and beliefs you have.
Because of this, you will always have absolute control over how your body behaves – because it’s your mind that tells it what food to consume, and what choices to make! This is why any coaching or hypnotherapy weight loss programme designed to help you lose weight will work directly with your mind (your thoughts, motivation, aspirations and determination to succeed, confidence and strength) rather than simply focussing on your body.
How to get the best results?
Feed your mind with positive suggestions, boost your confidence and your determination to succeed, and your body will be nourished accordingly!
