As a Hypnotherapist and NLP Master Practitioner in Kent I see many adults with eating disorders – whether that be overeating, not knowing when to stop, not knowing when they are full, and eating for reasons other than hunger.
As I said in the previous article, many mums, for the good of their children may want to ‘just get that extra spoonful in’ or ‘just finish off what was in the bowl’ even though they suspect the baby has really had enough, just to make sure. (As I said before this is placing no judgement on what mums are doing – it is all with the best intentions) This extra spoonful can teach the baby’s body to override its feelings of being full and make it able to put more in than it needs.
Studies of naturally thin people have shown that the key to maintaining a healthy weight for most people is actually learning to stop eating when they are full. Naturally thin people don’t count calories or think about food all the time, they just eat when they are hungry (not just because the clock says it’s time), enjoy every mouthful, without being rushed, and stop eating when they are full.
This really is the key to maintaining a healthy weight. So then think about not enabling a young child to control what they eat, and regularly override their ‘I’m full’ programming. This could lead to a grown-up with food issues.
Using Hypnotherapy and NLP I work with my patients on their patterns of behaviour. It is very important for us to establish any ‘problem programming’ they have – you can liken humans to computers in that we have programmes we follow – when you get dressed in the morning, you don’t even think about it, you ‘go on automatic’, and when it comes to other behaviours it can be very much the same.
It is important for me to say here that all change-work is done in the interests of the patient. I always work looking through the eyes of my patients as best I can. If something the person is doing isn’t a problem for them in their life (even though it might not be something I would do in mine) then we leave it well alone. However if there are areas of a person’s life that they want to change because it is not working for them, then we work on it, uncovering resources they didn’t know they had to make those improvements.
And these patterns of behaviour can be improved when you know how. To find out more about this read here.
