If only weight loss was just about food.

How we eat can go back to before we were even born, how our mother felt about food, how she was brought up to eat and indeed, how her mother brought her up. There’s a whole story around food before you were even conceived. If for example, your mother was worried about putting on weight or believed she was eating ‘for two’, worried about her boss knowing she was pregnant, worried about losing her job or not being able to earn, all this will affect how she ate before she even conceived. This then gets magnified in pregnancy as she sees her body change shape and how she reacts to this.

I had a client whose mother was terrified of losing her job if she had a baby but her husband was desperate for a family so she agreed to stop taking precautions. She fell pregnant almost immediately and was very worried she’d be as large as her own mother had become in pregnancy so she was adamant that she would restrict her food intake so she wouldn’t ‘show’. She was very proud of the minimal weight she put on and also restricted her food after baby was born. I was treating her daughter for an eating disorder.

As a baby you were fed by your own mother, breastfed or bottle, this food represented love and continues to do so. We feed our babies and children and this is how we love them. As a couple eating together in a restaurant maybe you take a spoonful of your own food and offer it to your partner, it’s a gesture of love.

How you feed your own children will be informed by how you were fed as an infant. Were you told to eat everything on your plate? Did you have to eat whatever you were given? Did you have enough food? Could you have more if you were still hungry? Was food given with love or did it seem a chore to feed you? Can you remember how mealtimes were for you as a child? What are your good memories and what are the bad ones?

What about your partner, was it the same for them? When couples have quite different experiences from their childhood, this can cause quite intense arguments as food is such an important part of culture and parenting……and how we show love.

Did you discuss with your partner how you would feed your baby, what would you wean them on? Did you agree rules about behaviour at the table, whether they had to eat what was cooked, whether they could snack between meals, eat on the sofa in front of the TV?

When children hear their parents argue about food and eating, meals can become associated with stress and become a ‘battleground’ which they want to avoid by heading up to their room as soon as they can.

I see a lot of clients for food related issues, addictions, eating disorders but also low self worth, fear of failure, anger, feelings around having no control in their lives.

When we overeat, it can initially make us feel good, a treat after a hard day at work but then we feel bad and get angry with ourselves and this can become a cycle. It’s effectively a ‘drama triangle’ where food becomes our ‘rescuer’ when we feel powerless but then it becomes our regular rescue strategy and this can become an addiction.

When we diet we focus on that addiction, the food itself, the eating, but what we should be focusing on is how we feel about ourselves because when we feel bad about ourself, ‘victim’ in the drama triangle, we look for comfort from ‘rescuer’ - food or drink, work, our phone etc.

My book ‘Engaging NLP for Weight Loss’ will help explain all this and help you with exercises designed to help you feel better about yourself and love yourself again so you make healthy choices.