Nuala O’Kane – NI Hypnosis Mid-Ulster
‘Stop eating! You’re getting so fat.’ That’s the words my sister said to me one night I was working my way through a block of cheddar cheese (again) at 11 o’clock at night. I think it’s pretty obvious to say I was devastated, but once I got over myself and put my cheese down I realised she was right. Inside the space of 3 months I had put on almost 3 stone of weight.
My eating habits had completely changed, I was constantly eating, it didn’t matter what it was, I had to always be eating, snacking, picking, ensuring I was always eating, when I was eating I wasn’t thinking and I wasn’t feeling.
I had lost my mother to cancer three months before this night, she had battled cancer for two and a half years before she passed. While she was sick I had lost over a stone weight, but I understood this, I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping, I was constantly worrying and on top of that doing exams. When I looked in the mirror the next morning, for the first time I was very aware of the weight I had gained, and for the first time I couldn’t understand why, I had never had a problem with my weight, had always been slim and probably more underweight that overweight, but here standing in front of this mirror I was faced with a reflection I didn’t recognise and what was more concerning was that I actually had no feelings other than I wanted to go downstairs and stuff my face.
I was eating to suppress emotion, I was completely avoiding the grief process. So, subconsciously, every time I had a thought or emotion in relation to my Mother’s death I grabbed something to eat, so in order to stop something coming up I shoved food down my throat.
After a lot of soul searching, walking, counselling and hypnotherapy I was finally able to realise the reason for my weight gain, yes I wasn’t eating the ‘right’ foods, I was eating late at night and eating more than I normally did, but it was something more than that, something so much deeper, something that through experiencing all of the above I was able to identity, explore and completely understand. Through hypnosis I was able to break up the associations I had with food in relation to comfort and grief and I was able to change my thinking and patterns around food and therefore enabling me to cope with the things that proceeded my mothers death in a healthy helpful way and therefore not needing to suppress my feelings or emotions with food.
Comfort eating is a way many of us deal with stress, anger, guilt, sadness and many other different emotions we may be going through, so for many of us it can be a vicious circle, we eat when we feel down, we usually end up eating too much which in turn makes us feel even worse and so the circle continues.
The difference between someone who is overweight and someone who is slim? Their mind and time! If you think and act like a slim person, eat healthy, exercise you will lose weight.
Hypnosis works by breaking up any mental limits you will have put on yourself and to reprogram your thoughts around eating healthily, around junk food, portion size and exercise. It’s not a diet it changes your awareness around food, it’s simple effortless and life changing.
