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.
Giving up food and weight control to a holistic natural process, linking mind, body and spirit, after years of playing the dieting game, can be a scary prospect. That is until you consider that the human mind actually knows how to do a jolly good job of taking care of you, if you could only switch off your judgemental and self-critical thoughts.
These are the negative thoughts that get in the way of the natural mind, body processes and produce the stress and emotions that lead to our inappropriate comfort eating. They keep our mind firmly routed in the past or the future, yet it is the present moment that contains all the information we need to instinctively make the right choices with food and life.
In the present moment, ‘The Now’, we are…
J In touch with our body signals and satiety levels
J Able to make rational and appropriate choices about food, without them being obscured by emotion
J Able to see and feel the joy of life and therefore do not need to find comfort in food Training the mind is no different from training the body. It takes daily practice in Mindfulness techniques. These are a variety of meditative and body awareness practices, that when used regularly, every day, change the way you view and use food. The wonderful thing is that these changes occur without you even controlling them. Take the example of last weekend. I had a personally difficult and emotional situation that would have normally sent me on frequent visits to the refrigerator. My comfort eating and even binge eating would have been triggered by the stresses of my emotions. In the past I may sometimes have managed to overcome the temptations of my mind but it would have still been a struggle. Without the clutter of negative chatter or emotions, the mind is able to see clearly the loving choices that the moment presents. Instead of withdrawing from the world and eating inappropriately I was able to easily make decisions that enabled me to stay in the moment much more, connected with the love and beauty that surrounds us every minute of our lives. This is where reality lies, not in the past or the future. This is where our mind is free to make the choices it needs to keep us happy and healthy. Of course we need to spend some of our time in reflecting on the past and planning for the future. It is all about balance and making sure we spend time every day in Mindful pursuits. 
Using the Mindfulness techniques I was able to sit and welcome my emotions, not bury them with food. By healing the emotions and letting them go I was again, balanced and at peace. Where peace is present, there is no need for food as there is no longer anything that needs comforting.
Research is now showing that physiological changes occur in the brain, linking thoughts and emotions together, as we habitually focus on the negative. The more time we spend in thoughts of guilt, shame and self-judgement, the stronger these physiological links become.
It has long been recognised that meditation aids stress reduction but now research is showing that it also alters the physiology of the brain. The more you meditate, the more the links between thoughts and emotions in the brain are separated. This reduces stress, depression and aids in the development of new, more positive thoughts and actions.
And the final remarkable thing is that there has been a bar of chocolate in my fridge for the past two weeks and I haven’t even thought about it, craved or wanted it!
Using words such as ‘Fat’ and ‘Obese’ helped both parents and children to fully address the reality of the children’s growing weight issues. More than that it highlighted the importance of…
