One of the big changes in our lifetime compared to our mother's or grandmother's time, is eating with our hands. In those days, they didn't really have access to much handfood, and they ate their meals with cutlery sitting at the table. They weighed on average 10lbs less than we do now.
Of course it is not just about cutlery, but going through the ritual of laying a table for your meal makes you more aware of your eating. It becomes a planned event. Compare that with eating out of the packet, on the hoof etc. Mindless eating, automatic eating is one of the ways in which we are getting heavier. Think of the things that we eat without thinking, and you will realise that these are handfoods rather than sitting-at-a-table-with-cutlery foods - pizzas, burgers, pies, sweets, chocolate, cakes, popcorn, crisps. And these foods are full of fat and salt or full of fat and sugar - the fastest way to gain weight.
So a simple rule is Always Eat with Cutlery. And you will find that you are easily giving up the most calorie-packed foods.
www.carolinebrowntherapy.com
Friday, 12 February 2010
Monday, 8 February 2010
How to manage cravings
Cravings seem to arise out of the blue and we are overcome with the need to eat the craved item, often sweet things for women. Well, the key thing to know is that like a screaming child, if you ignore them, they eventually stop, and if you keep ignoring them, they will stop for ever altogether.
So how to ignore cravings.
Well, one way is to identify what is triggering them. It is not hunger. It could be your routine. For example, if you have always had a snack at 3.00pm your cravings will arrive on the dot. If you always eat in the car on the way home, they will be there too. If you walk past a sweet shop and always buy chocolate or crisps with your paper, you will repeat the actions on and on. So these are environmental and habit-based triggers for cravings. Change your route, have no food in the car, stop snacking at 3.00pm. And if the trigger is boredom, develop a portable hobby so that you can distract yourself. And if I might bang on about this again, if you always munch away at chocs and crisps in front of the telly, just turning the telly on turns your belly on.
Changing behaviour in these relatively small ways is quite easy. You don't have to deal with everything all at once. One or two a week is quite enough. Then what?
When cravings come, ignore them. Distract yourself. This could be by going for a walk, phoning a friend, washing the car. Just tapping your finger onto your hand for a few minutes is also quite distracting.
Cravings disappear in only a few minutes. You can handle that!
www.carolinebrowntherapy.com
So how to ignore cravings.
Well, one way is to identify what is triggering them. It is not hunger. It could be your routine. For example, if you have always had a snack at 3.00pm your cravings will arrive on the dot. If you always eat in the car on the way home, they will be there too. If you walk past a sweet shop and always buy chocolate or crisps with your paper, you will repeat the actions on and on. So these are environmental and habit-based triggers for cravings. Change your route, have no food in the car, stop snacking at 3.00pm. And if the trigger is boredom, develop a portable hobby so that you can distract yourself. And if I might bang on about this again, if you always munch away at chocs and crisps in front of the telly, just turning the telly on turns your belly on.
Changing behaviour in these relatively small ways is quite easy. You don't have to deal with everything all at once. One or two a week is quite enough. Then what?
When cravings come, ignore them. Distract yourself. This could be by going for a walk, phoning a friend, washing the car. Just tapping your finger onto your hand for a few minutes is also quite distracting.
Cravings disappear in only a few minutes. You can handle that!
www.carolinebrowntherapy.com
Thursday, 4 February 2010
The diet industry is growing fatter and fatter
The diet industry is vast - about $70billion a year. Huge food companies, like Kraft, have diet product businesses - fattening us up on the one hand and then selling us stuff when we want to lose weight. And the reason Big Business are in the diet industry, is because we keep failing at maintaining our diets. We put the weight back on again and again. Pretty much everyone does. None of us can keep up a lifestyle of diet, deny and deprive for long.
I bang on about changing behaviour and habits rather than going on diets. Diets are fine in the short term, if you want to go on the beach in the summer, then a crash diet will help.
I think Julia Roberts was speaking the truth in Notting Hill when she said she had been hungry for 10 years. And in an interview with Jenny Murray on Radio 4, Joan Collins said that it was her job to keep looking good, so she spent up to 8 hours a day primping, preening and exercising, before she went out to face her public. What are they telling us here? Well, it is that they have made a lifestyle choice. They have habits that help them to achieve the goals they have set for themselves (pretty tough goals, but the rewards of obviously huge for them!)
So let me bang on again. If you feel you are heavier than you want to be, look at your lifestyle. What habits do you have that encourage weight gain?
Most of us do not get fat by eating 3 meals a day. Research has shown that the calorie content of our 3 meals has been flatlining. It is the hidden 4th meal that puts on the pounds. Getting out of established habits is not easy, but you will have done it lots of times. When you change job, you change habits. When you get a new partner, you change your habits too.
Think about these new habits, making one or two changes each week. Don't do it all at once.
www.arolinebrowntherapy.com
I bang on about changing behaviour and habits rather than going on diets. Diets are fine in the short term, if you want to go on the beach in the summer, then a crash diet will help.
I think Julia Roberts was speaking the truth in Notting Hill when she said she had been hungry for 10 years. And in an interview with Jenny Murray on Radio 4, Joan Collins said that it was her job to keep looking good, so she spent up to 8 hours a day primping, preening and exercising, before she went out to face her public. What are they telling us here? Well, it is that they have made a lifestyle choice. They have habits that help them to achieve the goals they have set for themselves (pretty tough goals, but the rewards of obviously huge for them!)
So let me bang on again. If you feel you are heavier than you want to be, look at your lifestyle. What habits do you have that encourage weight gain?
Most of us do not get fat by eating 3 meals a day. Research has shown that the calorie content of our 3 meals has been flatlining. It is the hidden 4th meal that puts on the pounds. Getting out of established habits is not easy, but you will have done it lots of times. When you change job, you change habits. When you get a new partner, you change your habits too.
Think about these new habits, making one or two changes each week. Don't do it all at once.
- No more fizzy drinks. Even diet ones. You are training your taste buds to want sweet stuff. And they don't refresh thirst. Train yourself to drink water when you are thirsty.
- Cut down the takeaways. You really don't know what they contain. Just look at the orange fat floating on the surface.
- Don't watch the telly when you eat (you don't notice your food and you eat much more). Eat at a table whenever you can.
www.arolinebrowntherapy.com
Wednesday, 3 February 2010
Using your belly as a bin
The generation that was told to eat everything on their plate find leaving food very tricky.
So when you go to the fridge and see the remains of a meal, there is a powerful urge to eat it, to avoid waste. Don't tidy your fridge by eating up the contents.
These suggestions from your childhood are persistent and powerful. What can you do to overcome them?
Well, hypnosis can embed new suggestions, permitting you to throw food away. In hypnosis, you can learn to always leave your plate half eaten. Breaking the instruction to eat everything up needs a bit of support. However, many of us feel strongly about food waste. Hypnosis can help you develop new habits, simple things - like cooking smaller quantities or cooking a bit more so that you can store some in the freezer. Sometimes we just need to be able to focus.
You may feel that to be eco-friendly, you can't use the oven to heat up or bake just a small portion. So you could think about getting a small table top oven.
You might keep a dog - scraps and bones are apparently the ideal diet! Or chickens, so when you throw food out it doesn't feel so wasteful. Whatever works for you.
But your belly is not the bin. Don't fill it with rubbish.
www.carolinebrowntherapy.com
So when you go to the fridge and see the remains of a meal, there is a powerful urge to eat it, to avoid waste. Don't tidy your fridge by eating up the contents.
These suggestions from your childhood are persistent and powerful. What can you do to overcome them?
Well, hypnosis can embed new suggestions, permitting you to throw food away. In hypnosis, you can learn to always leave your plate half eaten. Breaking the instruction to eat everything up needs a bit of support. However, many of us feel strongly about food waste. Hypnosis can help you develop new habits, simple things - like cooking smaller quantities or cooking a bit more so that you can store some in the freezer. Sometimes we just need to be able to focus.
You may feel that to be eco-friendly, you can't use the oven to heat up or bake just a small portion. So you could think about getting a small table top oven.
You might keep a dog - scraps and bones are apparently the ideal diet! Or chickens, so when you throw food out it doesn't feel so wasteful. Whatever works for you.
But your belly is not the bin. Don't fill it with rubbish.
www.carolinebrowntherapy.com
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
Disturbed body image affects men too
Most research on body image relates to women. But a nice piece in the American Journal of Psychiatry shows that men are trying to achieve bodies that women don't actually want of them.
They worked with men from 3 different countries (culture is a very important driver in body image) and found that the men wanted about 12 pounds more muscle, which they thought was attractive to women. However, the women wanted normal looking men. The researchers suggest that maybe this mismatch is one of the reasons why men are increasingly using steroids.
Striving after unachievable goals just makes you unhappy.
What makes you happy? Here is a really good list from the Centre for Confidence and Wellbeing in Glasgow, drawing on sources such as Assen Alladin - a great cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who shows us the huge benefit we get from doing difficult work, and Diener and Seligman at the University of Illinois, who found that happy people developed and maintained their kinships and friendships. If you are finding you are not as happy as before, then meet up with a hypnotherapist and start work on getting happy.
www.carolinebrowntherapy.com
They worked with men from 3 different countries (culture is a very important driver in body image) and found that the men wanted about 12 pounds more muscle, which they thought was attractive to women. However, the women wanted normal looking men. The researchers suggest that maybe this mismatch is one of the reasons why men are increasingly using steroids.
Striving after unachievable goals just makes you unhappy.
What makes you happy? Here is a really good list from the Centre for Confidence and Wellbeing in Glasgow, drawing on sources such as Assen Alladin - a great cognitive behavioural hypnotherapist - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who shows us the huge benefit we get from doing difficult work, and Diener and Seligman at the University of Illinois, who found that happy people developed and maintained their kinships and friendships. If you are finding you are not as happy as before, then meet up with a hypnotherapist and start work on getting happy.
www.carolinebrowntherapy.com
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