[Podcast 9] My weight loss clients’ deep work.

Is the goal of losing weight a shallow goal? To some people It may seem like it is and of course it depends on where you are in life, what are your priorities at this point. 

What I know for sure is that the work is deep. In this episode, I want to share with you examples of four women I worked with and what they faced in their minds as a part of their weight of process.

If you think that this is about calories in and calories out, but so far it’s not been working then this episode is for you. 

I know that people choose different methods  to create a body they want, some are  in a hurry and they go for the more aggressive procedures. Some prefer to take the pills. Adding something is always tempting because it seems like an easy solution. 

Adding is easier than removing something, but using the external solutions will never be as powerful as using the mind. 

This is how we take complete control over our habits. In the beginning of coaching work, we feel we are out of control. It seems like we have zero control over the food that makes us gain weight. 

During the work, we discover places in our mind we used to revisit or visit for the first time and make conscious changes. So, the weight loss goal is not a shallow goal.  When I ask people:  “Why do you want to lose weight?” What do I hear? 

And when somebody reaches a milestone, I ask: why keep going? Why don’t you stay here? The most common answer is: because that is not the real me. Every time I look in the mirror, I’m surprised because in my mind I’m much thinner. 

I also hear:  I want to do this for myself. I would like to do something only for myself 

In the examples I’m about to share with you There is a common theme. 

The first example. 

With the first lady, we just did six nutrition and hypnosis meetings. It was before I had my current program, but she took the information and experience and applied methodically in between the sessions. She lost 25 to 35 pounds over 5 months. It was interesting because there was very little on the conscious level I could work with.  Literally The only thoughts I found that made her overeat was “what the heck!”  followed by overeating. And it’s  like this for a lot of us, right? 

The powerful thoughts sound like this, “Fuck this” “screw this”  “What the heck?”

So we explored her subconscious mind to find the reasons for overeating. Okay, the conscious mind is revealed in a conscious conversation like in coaching, but if it doesn’t give us the results that we want, then you go deeper in hypnosis. 

One of the methods I used was age regression where I was looking for triggers in every decade of her life and we landed in a time over 50 years ago. What I mean by this is I knew we found a key to the problem because she had a surprisingly emotional response. In Hypnosis she realized things she was doing then, she forgot about. 

And that’s the crazy part. What she discovered in hypnosis prepared her for an event in real life. A few weeks later, a situation exploded in her family. Something resurfaced from decades ago, related to what we discovered. So what? Others would be in shame, raging, or hurting, but she handled it very well. When she returned, she kept repeating the truth that she discovered laughing, feeling free. She admitted, I would not be able to handle it So well, if not for our sessions. We also work on more positive self-talk. So, she could escape the cycle of overeating. 

It happens to many of us. If we don’t consciously break the cycle of certain thoughts and feeling It continues. 

The second example, the second woman I work with, lost  40 pounds over six months.  We didn’t even do hypnotherapy, only coaching and nutrition.  It might seem like she needed a strategy to stop snacking on sweets at night. The strategy would be the surface work. 

What we really needed to work through was resentment that accumulated over 30 years and was coming up in her mind at night. She also needed to be kinder to herself but that’s easier said than done. This would be more healing than replacing bad food with healthy food because when you are kind to yourself, choosing better food is the next logical step.  People who judge themselves know this. We have a hard time learning to be kind to ourselves. There is a lot of resistance to self-compassion. We believe that self judgment is a way to improve, to become a better person. So the logic is we have to be a bad person to ourselves in order to be a good person. 

We believe self judgment is a way for us to pay for what we did in the past. But really it’s not. Do you know what self judgment does? It creates a practice of self-judgment. We get really good at it. All it creates is a feeling of being judged and feeling guilty, self-judgment doesn’t create freedom, doesn’t create a slimmer body, or a better relationship with others or yourself. 

I know, it may take a leap of faith, but if you also struggle with it, try to talk kindly to yourself in your mind, in moments you used to be mean to yourself. 

The next thing we did with this client we had to slow down her eating. 

In weight loss we talk a lot about mindfulness. Mindful eating, slowing down, being present. All good advice. But in her case that would be surface level advice. 

What we needed to do first was to increase the awareness of what was going on in her mind, when she was at the table eating with other people. If we didn’t do this we would try to overpower the brain she had then with new things to do. 

There was enough drama in her mind already. First there had to be clarity. 

The third woman 

It looked like we needed to work on controlling her environment. 

What food was in the fridge, what food was in the house,  though she was already quite organized and had great self-discipline. But that would be a surface level work. What we really needed to work on was self-love,  self-acceptance and deeper belief in her worth. She had room to grow to be more gentle with herself and give herself permission to create a project she wanted to work on. 

Creativity and weight are related. 

When we don’t feed our soul we feel unfulfilled. And so, we unconsciously try to fill the void with food or another easy pleasure.

With this client, We also needed to work with her on self-love because it was in the moments of self-loathing when she was overeating. It also might seem like we needed a strategy to handle family dinners, how to say, no,  How to create boundaries and that’s a skill everyone needs. But before that happened, she needed to be aware that she was pleasing people. She needed to practice having her own back in her decisions. 

If it’s challenging for you to create boundaries, it may be because you want to accommodate everyone around you, make everybody happy. So you end up unhappy in those situations, you spread yourself thin because you never know what will make people happier.

The fourth lady in the fourth example, maybe the solution here was to change what’s on the table. Maybe even change what she did in the afternoons. Maybe she needed to create an agreement with her spouse. But what she really needed was for her to feel the feelings, get comfortable with the uncomfortable feelings for a moment. Get present. And also let go of the dreadful project she did out of obligation and focus on what she loved to create for herself. Of course she needed to be clear that she wants to let go of the project. 

Sometimes you think you need more motivation to lose weight, but the truth may be that you need to drop all the things that drain you, and leave you unfulfilled.

Saying no to what drains us is the most loving thing we can do.

We need to first have those experiences where we fail and learn from them.  the good news is that we never have to do anything perfectly for it to work. I’m going to repeat that. We never have to do it perfectly for it to work.