Chrissie Webber works as a writer, business coach and motivation/ leadership trainer and is Managing Director of Life-Shapers Ltd, an online weight-loss motivation company. With over 20 years experience in the field of business and people development she has an expertise in the area of motivation for permanent weight loss.
Following a lifetime of weight issues - at her heaviest, over 21 stone and a massive size 30 – she has personal experience of diets and their devastating effect on size and psyche. With a background in nursing, psychology and business coaching, coupled with a lifetime of dieting, she developed and successfully used a series of models and tools that enhance weight loss motivation. Now over 5 dress sizes smaller and having sustained her weight loss for several years, Chrissie continues her passionate drive to change the mindsets of people away from a ‘Scarcity’ dieting mindset – where food is demonised as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – to an ‘Abundance’ mindset where mind, body and spirit work hand in hand with food and nature.
I have just finished reading a book called ‘The Diamond in Your Pocket’ by Ganagaji. One statement she makes is “Wherever your attention is, this is what you love”. Whilst this is so true, it does not mean that it is a healthy love affair.
In our obsessive love of food we lose sight of the one thing we should focus out minds on and love more than anything else – ourselves. When we love food so much that we place all our attention on it, the love can be an unhealthy one. We find ourselves driven by want, need, greed, desire and rebellion. The more we place our attention on food, the more (for most of us) we yo-yo diet and gradually gain weight.
Studies over the past 20 years in Finland support the belief of many experts, that the obsession with weight loss has disrupted our normal eating patterns and contributed to the parallel increase in obesity. (Underage and Overweight by Francis M Berg) When we diet we switch off most of the common sense skills of ‘Conscious Eating’. These are the normal eating patterns of people who live without dieting.
(Read more at http://www.lifeshapers.co.uk/published_articles.htm)
Re-educating ourselves in the ways of normal eating patterns of behaviour is not about what we eat but how we eat. It is a process of re-learning the many and varied skills of ‘Conscious Eating’. This means a focus of attention on ourselves, how we think around food, actions we take around food and how to be in touch with our body’s feelings in relation to food.
Making a mind-shift away from food can be a scary thing for many people as they feel they will lose control and gain even more weight. The reality is that when you place your focus on ‘Conscious Eating’ you replace your unhealthy love affair with food through a new and loving set of controls. These are the controls that give you back your love affair with life…
· Knowing when you have had just enough food and one more mouthful will spoil the enjoyment.
· Focussing your attention on the things that bring you joy in life, not pain.
· Focussing your attention on actions (with food and self) that increase your energy levels. (More tips at http://www.lifeshapers.co.uk/consciouseating.aspx )
