How do you feel when you hear “you’re going on a diet”? What feelings does this invoke in you and be honest. Can you hear that little voice saying in panic “I’m going to starve, I’ll be deprived, I can’t do it, I’ll still be hungry, I don’t want to go without”. I know you hear this because I hear it to. That mean little inner voice is screaming NO NO NO! What if I tell you diets don’t work for most people in the long run and I don’t want you to go on diet? Does that make you feel better, relieved even? Diet is a scary word, it has the word “die” in it, and of course we’re going to be afraid of it. What if I tell you the anxiety you feel when it comes to food can be changed, will that help? It can be changed and your relationship with food can be changed.
Let me tell you about my experiences with food. I eat when I’m stressed and emotional, that’s not a surprise most people do. However, the emotions I felt when eating were worse than what I felt before the food. I often would eat to squash an emotion, and as I ate I felt even more ashamed and frankly embarrassed by myself. So I ate more. The more I ate the more I focused on becoming full, overfull, and the quicker I ate the more full I could become. It got me thinking about why I turn to food and my relationship with food. I’ve had body image issues for a very long time; this seems to be happening to more and more people at very young ages. We criticise and scrutinise ourselves until we feel so bad about ourselves that we look to something to make ourselves feel better.
The first time I really criticised myself, and I remember exactly when I first doubted myself, my parents are divorced and I lived with my mother, on a visitation to my father he said to me “Why are you so fat? Doesn’t your mother know anything about nutrition?” I was no more than 6 or 7 years old. This cut me to my core, not so much about me being fat, but criticising the person I love more than anything in this world, my mother. I felt like I was an embarrassment to her because I was fat and people would think she was a bad mother. She wasn’t a bad mother at all. She’s the most amazing person in the world and I wasn’t fat at all. But someone had forced their opinion of what I should look like on me because they have their own issues with themselves. This is the worst thing we can do for each other, but it doesn’t stop people from doing it. During high school I remember overhearing people talking about how fat I was. Once again I wasn’t fat at all. I was very tall, taller than most girls, with broad shoulders but because I didn’t look like the other girls and I was different, I was instantly fat. Once again someone else was forcing their opinion into my mind.
No matter how many times people tell you not to listen to others, it still affects you and deep down. It’s ok to feel these things; sometimes you just can’t help it. The choice though you need to make is whether to keep letting it bother you or not. Be really honest with yourself and let your vain side show, look in the mirror and what do you see? I know there is a very small voice in there that is saying something positive. Sometimes you really have to listen hard, but when you find it turn the volume all the way up. Can you hear that voice telling you you’re too fat? Turn it down and become aware of what you see, remove yourself from your body so to speak and look at your body and let’s make some realisations.
From what I see and I’m being completely honest, I’m a overweight, but I also see, nice hair, nice eyes, I look good in what I’m wearing and what I know for sure, is I’m a good person. I know what I look like physically and rather than attach an emotion like sadness to my negative traits I have removed the emotion and see it for what it is. I focus on the stuff I like about myself and soon everything falls in place. I’m not saying to deny the way you look or your weight, but weight can be changed, you need to change your mind first. Once you start making these positive steps to fixing the way you see yourself then you’ll be in a better place to actually change what you don’t like.
I personally feel no shame in my body, yes I would like to lose weight and have a nice body, but I’m not ashamed. I don’t want to attach those sorts of negative words to myself, so I removed them. It takes a bit of persistence but it’s worth doing. As the commercials say “You’re worth it”, because you are. Work on focusing on those good things about yourself, you may only find one thing at first, eventually you’ll find more and more.
So what’s the next step? Let’s look at change. Change can be hard, difficult and scary, but it doesn’t have to be. If you’re even thinking about change, then you probably need it. Listen to that inner voice that speaks your truth, we tend to lose our ability to listen to that voice and it becomes hard to hear but you’ll find it. You’ll know what you need and change is not scary. It’s true what they say “change is as good as a holiday”, maybe not a holiday but it’s still pretty good. You’re reading this because you think you’re overweight, that’s ok a lot of people are, but let’s change this. This is where I sound like infomercial, that’s because I believe so much in this that I know it will work for you.
The Waitplate System is your lifestyle change, it’s my lifestyle change. This system address’s the psychological and physical aspects of eating. It takes the guess work out how much and re-teaches you to eat properly. Don’t think of it as a diet (there’s that word again), it’s not, you won’t be deprived and you won’t miss out. In fact the changes happen almost instantly. The first time you try it you’ll realise you haven’t missed out at all. I promise you, you will still feel satisfied after your very first meal and the next and the next. Take that first step and make the change.
So how does it re-teach me? It’s a whole system, the focus is restoring your hunger/satiety response. Think of this as a reset to default for your body. With assistance you’ll restore this balance and eventually you’ll be able to do it on your own. How does it assist you? The Waitplate comes with a unique chew timer to slow down how fast you eat. It also comes with food templates which show you the correct serving of each food, as well as a portion control plate. The thing that won me over was the cutlery. It’s small. Being small serves a purpose though, it’s help you to put smaller amounts of food into your mouth and it works together with the timer to slow down and reduce how much you eat.
So why not take that first step now to making you feel great.
Oh no, it's dinner! 