Two Weeks In

I have been going to Margaret for two weeks now. Each day I have been writing everything I eat down in a journal. That's been a big help. Part of me doesn't want her to see me eating bad things so I have been really good at eating only good stuff for the most part. I could cheat of course and not write things down, but truthfully, who would I really be cheating? I paid a lot of money for this for me to quit now and so I am honest and I write down everything.

I have been listening to a hypnosis cd every morning for about 20 minutes. This has been quite helpful. At work I am listening to another cd that I uploaded to my ipod. This contains all the basic principles of the program and hopefully they will become so ingrained in my psyche that it will soon become second nature for me to practice them.

I have weighed myself. Actually I did it before I even went to see Margaret and I was horrified and disgusted by what I saw. I am getting close to 17 stone. At 17 stone that would mean an incredible 238 pounds. How on earth did this happen. I feel so sad about that. The thoughts of it weigh me down more than the actual fat does. I am already on medication for High Blood Pressure and high cholesterol medication. Although to be honest, I was put on that as a purely preventative measure. I am a heart attack waiting to happen. I huff and puff when I go up the stairs. My knees hurt. My hips hurt. My ankles hurt and my feet are in agony. No wonder . . .

Margaret and I have talked a lot at my sessions. She has not actually hypnotised me yet herself. We mostly talk about my feelings about food. I realize that I have a very unhealthy attitude about food. Food is not the enemy but I am using it to kill myself. I love food, but I hate what it has done to me. A lifetime of thinking of certain things as bad foods, feeling deprived every time I am on a diet, of feeling like a diet failure etc. have brought me to a very bad place in my relationship with food. I've spent a lifetime and oodles of money only to learn that diets don't work, and that dieting has only made me fatter. I could not face another diet, knowing that at the end of it I would be slimmer for a short, but ultimately I would end up even fatter than before. A mother who counted every morsel that went into our mouths has turned me into a closet eater that eats in secret. An ex husband that abused me emotionally and mentally helped me to turn to food even more as comfort, solace and protection.

Here are some scary statistics:


99.5% of all dieters fail. For every 200 slimmers that successfully lose their weight and don't give up halfway through the diet (not many of those around I'm afraid), a year later only 1 in 200 of them will still be slim. The other 199, will be like me . . . unhappy, fatter than ever and feeling not able to bear the yo yo cycle of dieting followed by failure and disappointment yet again.

Dieting is all about deprivation. There are no fun foods. No pleasure. Even sinful foods. You go out with your friends, and inevitably you have to restrict what you are going to eat or drink if you are going to succeed with the plan, or you are going to let yourself and your diet down by going with the flow, or worst of all . . . you don't go out at all so as to resist temptation completely.

I am a very stubborn person. If you tell me I can't have something or do something, that only makes me want it more. Deprivation makes me feel sad. I hate feeling deprived. I hate feeling like a failure.

The good news is that this is not how it has to be, and I've finally figured that out.