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.
Over the weekend I was doing some research for my third book, which is about the issues of parenting overweight children. The more I read about the research into obesity over the past 30 years, the angrier I became.
Statistics and information that diets don’t work for 95% - 97% of people have been available for as long as three decades. The problem is the media are withholding these truths from us. It is not only the findings about weight loss efforts leading to inevitable weight gain, for those millions of people who weight cycle (yo-yo diet), but the findings regarding the psychological harm dieting does.
Yet the quick fix diet is still being promoted. Many of the healthy eating campaigns fail to address the issues of how to change your mindset away from ‘Scarcity’ – demonising food – to be able to lose weight permanently.
Just think about it for a moment. When did you ever buy a product or service (apart from a diet related one), that when it didn’t work you blamed yourself? Have we gone crazy? The research has proved time and time again, for over 30 years, that diets don’t work. All we do is blame ourselves and inevitably reach out for food as a comforter to our stress and feelings of failure.
The point is YOU ARE NOT A FAILURE. You are absolutely normal.
What is failing you is the mindset of a dieter and the media messages that portray a distorted picture of the truth. The point is there is an alternative, one that leads you out of this mindless and destructive trap and still leads to weight loss.
All it takes is a decision to change your habits and your lifestyle. Easier said than done for some people. But it is not impossible, with the right mindset and loving support from yourself and others.
If you want to find out more about the research and statistics then I can recommend you read…
Underage and Overweight by Frances M Berg, MS LN
