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.
At last, a programme that was true to the issues of childhood obesity. ‘Too Fat to Toddle’ (6th May on ITV 1) examined so many of the issues that confronted me as an obese child. In its sensitive and challenging way it highlighted to the parents, not just the usual issues of diet and exercise but of honesty and openness when talking to children about their weight issue.
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…
¯ Being honest about the situation with the children;
¯ Working together as a family team to support the life changes;
¯ Increasing physical activity by having fun and the joy of sharing it;
¯ Creating strong boundaries around food – what, how much and how often;
¯ Acknowledging parental responsibility and an understanding of sound parenting around food and exercise;
¯ Allowing the children to know what choices they were able to make around food and teaching them to take responsibility for those choices;
¯ Creating self-esteem and an ability to learn how to love oneself through the experience of being able to give and receive love as a child. All these are the actions we also need to integrate into our adult lives, even if you did not suffer the traumas of childhood obesity. The fact is that to lose weight permanently we need to re-parent ourselves. J Re-establish sound boundaries around food for ourselves, without the need to listen to the diet trends;
J Learn to love ourselves unconditionally, not with an expectation of being loveable enough when we are a certain size or shape;
J Be honest with ourselves in accepting the reality of our size and shape whilst acknowledging we can make changes to some of our issues;
J Ask for support and encouragement for our life changes from friends and family;
J Find ways to experience the fun and joy of increased physical activity;
J Place a focus on living an loving life and not food as your priority;
J Accept that excess food does not offer comfort and is not a solution to stress or emotional hunger. Not only can we help ourselves by these re-parenting actions, we can also act as role models for our children and grandchildren. The tide is at last turning on 4 decades of a dieting mindset. Let’s be the ones to lead an example of how to live in harmony with food and nature. For more ideas of how to keep your motivation for permanent weight loss high, check out my FREE 44 page e-book on my web site at www.lifeshapers.co.uk
We need to…
