How do I know that the Break the Crave System works? Because I was one of the very first guinea pigs to use it! It was an early, rough form of it then…not the Break the Crave System I use for clients today..that has developed out of all those years of learning exactly what does (and doesn’t!) work…It was just me, having more than a few light-bulb moments and putting together all the different elements I knew about what worked for weight loss and using them on myself first!
I studied nutrition and diet 20 years ago…we were trained in the traditional diet advice of the times…we used a chart in the shape of a dinner plate with the various ratios of the food groups in the appropriate amounts…a large portion of the plate was for carbohydrates, and another large slice for fruit and veg. Fat and sugar were both put together in the tiniest slice, with protein making up the rest of the plate. The reason why I say this is because NOTHING has changed with the diet advice today! The ratios are virtually the same and yet we know so much more now about the delicate balance of getting the right fuel for your body.
The old idea of ‘calories in, calories out’ just doesn’t hold up any more!
The thing is…if I had followed that out-dated diet advice, I would still be 4 and a half stone heavier, and probably 4 and a half times more miserable today! I studied in anatomy and physiology, and also hypnotherapy and various other psychological tools too. All these elements gave me a real grounding in understanding what was going on in my brain, but also in my body too. And I did a LOT of research into what REALLY works. What our bodies really love to run on. What our appetite is really telling us. And….why diets are not working. Why, no matter what, I simply couldn’t stick to a traditional calorie restriction diet. Why my body felt so rubbish. So I found a way of eating that seemed to fit for me.
Being a sugar girl, and that being the main reason I had managed to pile 4 and a half stone on in just a couple of years in my early 40’s, I knew that sugar was a BIG problem for me! I didn’t yet know I was a sugar addict, that realisation was to come much later, but all the evidence seemed to point in moving away from sugar (and by that, I mean all processed carbohydrates too, as they are converted to sugar by the body). 8 years ago, this was still pretty new information, Dr Atkins and a few others were putting the pieces together of where we had been going wrong these last 50 years, and there was growing evidence that they were right.
So, after a couple of years of trying traditional calorie restriction diets, and failing miserably, I put my ear phones in and used my own hypnotherapy sugar aversion to ‘switch off’ my sugar cravings, and went on a low carb high fat diet.
The change in my body was unbelievable! The weight dropped off.
I felt more energetic than I had ever done. But there were more subtle signs that than…my skin and hair felt amazing, my mood was so much higher, and my brain was clear and sharp…I could suddenly concentrate for hours, and I was full of energy first thing in the morning. My joint pain disappeared too! If I ever had sugar, I would find myself back in that ‘sugar urge’ cycle, and after a couple of years of ‘dabbling’ with the sweet white stuff, and then finding myself in an out of control cycle that would inevitably take me back to listening to my own hypnotherapy!
I finally realised that I was a sugar addict.. this was such a revelation for me!
By then I had done A LOT of research on sugar, the nervous system and why we irresistibly reach for sugar and processed rubbish, as well as how we use ‘addictive thinking’ to support that reaching mechanism. I am ‘clean’ pretty much these days as far as sugar is concerned, and I feel better than I did 20 years ago! My weight has been stable for quite a few years now but the most important thing for me is knowing that I won’t go back to those old ways. It’s not about motivation or will-power or anything like that. I just love this very natural way of eating. I enjoy a really satisfying diet, and never feel hungry…in fact even as I was losing the weight I never felt hungry! That’s the joy of eating and lower carb higher fat (lchf) diet…you never do! Because it’s a natural way of eating that our bodies have enjoyed for 1000’s of years. Whenever I talk to someone who eats a lchf diet (and by ‘diet’ I mean ‘the food I eat’ not being ‘on’ a diet’)…they always say the same thing…they wished they’d done it years ago!
The fact is, that I lost 4 and a half stone in around 14 months, and have never put it back on. I’ve gone through Christmases, birthdays, holidays, meals out, meals at friends’ and family meals, cafès and pub meals and buffets and posh lunches…If I’ve eaten more carbs than normal, and come out of ketosis (fat burning mode), then it’s the easiest thing in the world to jump back into it, and the weight drops off in a few days. In fact, if I ever want to lose weight now, I tend to up the fats until I’m back where I was. The most I’ve ever put on in 7 years is 5lbs…which is usually gone in a week.
The bottom line for me is the fact that I just don’t have to think about my weight any more, or what I ate yesterday, or how many calories in that, or how am I going to fit into my favourite outfit? I’m just not obsessing any more…no more having to constantly cheerlead myself to more self discipline and higher motivation. I love how my body feels…I’m not skinny by any means, and at nearly 52 my body shows all the evidence of a life well lived, but I average about 9 stone 10, and at 5 foot 6, that feels perfect for me…my body feels light enough to walk me up mountains and take me on hours of bike riding. I think I can honestly say that horrible old feeling that chips away at my own self worth seems to have disappeared.
It’s just a relief to have that peace of mind, and space in my brain to think of something more interesting instead!
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