Think yourself a dress size thinner
Tuesday 30 June 2009
TV hypnotherapist Marisa Peer helps overeaters by retraining their thought patterns about food. She shares simple techniques that could help you drop a dress size and look as good as Big Brother’s Chanelle Hayes.
Do you struggle to diet and battle cravings? The celeb hypnotherapist says changing the way you think about food is the key.
“You can retrain your mind to choose to eat well,” says Marisa, 47, who’s worked on Celebrity Fit Club, as well as with actresses, footballers and royalty.
“The minute you say: ‘That food’s not allowed,’ you want it. Hypnosis changes the way you think. So you can eat chocolate, but choose not to.”
She says: “Diets can be too restrictive. Many put the weight back on as diets don’t tackle the issues that drive you to overeat.”
Marisa says it usually takes one hour-long session to “cure” a client: “First I go back in time to find out why they overeat. Usually it’s for comfort when they’re unhappy or bored.
“Over 70 per cent are emotional or addictive eaters. Another 20 per cent are habitual and ignorant eaters, and only 10 per cent are angry eaters. You need to know what sort you are before you can fix it.
“I worked with Kerry Katona – an addictive eater. Her diet consists of things like curry, chips and alcohol. She’s addicted to the chemicals in these. She’s also an emotional eater and comfort eats when she’s stressed. Another session would help cure Kerry.
“We come into the world with eating habits like leaving food on our plates and eating slowly, so I reactivate that ability within my clients.”
With Marisa’s tips you can change the way you relate to food, which means you’ll crave healthy meals, not junk! Follow her steps and you could lose 2lbs a week and drop a dress size in 28 days!
By Kitty Melrose
MARISA’S 10 STEPS TO THINKING YOURSELF THIN
Step 1: Stop associating junk food with pleasure. Instead, focus on a horrible ingredients like grease (for fry-ups), chemicals (for crisps) or boiled up animal hooves (for gelatine in jelly sweets) and see that you’re putting this into your body. Look at the ingredient as something that causes you pain, then learn to link pain to that naughty cream cake.
Step 2: Focus on the positive points about not eating junk. Think about the way you’ll look when you get into those new skinny jeans and how people will see you.
Step 3: Repeat the above points on the way to work, in the bath or whenever you can. Another good technique is when you look at crisps and chocolate, ask yourself: “How long will I feel good if I eat you?” The truth is a fleeting five or 10 minutes. Is it really worth it?
Step 4: Try this exercise. One of my clients never wore boots because she felt her legs were too fat. I took her to a supermarket and asked her to find some junk food that could give her the same feelings she got from imagining herself in a pair of sexy boots. She told me there was no cream cake or plate of chips that could match how good she’d feel in those boots. Whatever your ideal outfit or weight, do the same and keep repeating.
Step 5: Changing the words you use changes your thoughts. So if you say: “I’m starving, I could eat a horse,” your brain will encourage you to overeat.
Instead, you need to use less negative descriptions, eg: “I could eat now.”
Similarly, if you say: “I’m changing my size and shape,” your body will act in a way that matches your thinking.
Step 6: Make a list of the negative things you say to yourself, similar to the ones below and then change your statements into positive things about yourself. For example:
● Turn I’m starving INTO I need to eat something healthy.
● Turn I can’t leave junk food INTO I feel powerful when I refuse junk food.
● Turn I’m the size of a house INTO I’m becoming leaner ever day.
● Turn I hate vegetables and fish INTO My new food choices make me feel good.
● Turn I’m not allowed chocolate INTO Chocolate doesn’t make me feel special.
Step 7: In order to be slim, you must visualise yourself slim. This isn’t easy for someone who has been overweight for a long time, but you can do it with practice. Take five minutes every day to visualise yourself as trim and attractive – maybe in a dream outfit such as a figure-hugging dress or a bikini – with a good attitude to healthy food. It will reinforce your motivation.
Step 8: Replace “I can’t eat that,” with “I’m choosing not to eat that.” The minute you think, “I’m not allowed that,” you’re more likely to want it. You wouldn’t attempt a marathon while telling yourself, “I hate this and I want to go home.” You would tell yourself, “I can do it. I will do it.” The same applies to food. If you go to the gym or eat salads and tell yourself you hate it, you’ll go back to your old habits. Tell yourself your body loves it and it will become true.
Step 9: People tend to favour unhealthy foods such as chips, bread and chocolate because they’re cheap, but you can eat healthily on a budget. Instead of buying a pre-prepared sandwich or burger for lunch, take a hard-boiled egg or tuna with pitta bread to work – it’s cheaper and much healthier.
Step 10: It’s hard to break patterns, but studies have shown that if you eat something every day, by the 10th day you’ll really want it. Think about when you used to have three sugars in your tea then gave it up. After some time, you tried it again and thought, “How did I ever drink that?!” After 21 days you’ll also have different blood sugar levels and lose your old cravings.
MARISA’S DIET TIPS
● Rename your favourite bad foods so they lose their appeal. Call bread, biscuits and cakes “baked glue” and doughnuts “pure sugar.” This sets your mind against them.
● Don’t be fooled by healthy-sounding words, eg “naturally healthy” cereal bars – they’re often no different to chocolate bars.
● Eat slowly. It triggers feel-good hormone serotonin, and stops you eating too much. The brain takes 20 mins to register you’re full.
● Remove temptation from the house. Stock up on healthy snacks such as fruit, nuts and rice cakes.
● To end carb cravings and increase serotonin levels eat banana, egg, turkey and avocado and avoid white bread, pasta, rice and sugar, which cause peaks then slumps in blood sugar.
● Satisfy sugar cravings with dates, berries and other fruits, and with nut and seeds.
● Remove food from your eyeline. Studies show that you eat 50 per cent more if it’s left in front of you.
● Limit the variety of food at each meal. You eat 75 per cent more if you have six tastes on your plate, compared to two. So choose porridge instead of muesli, a tomato omelette not a fry up.
Closer readers can buy Marisa Peer’s You CAN Be Thin for just £10.99, plus free p&p (Sphere, RRP £12.99) To order, call 01832 737525, quoting reference: LB089
Posted by Gwendo
RE: Think yourself a dress size thinner
What a load of nonsense! How boring life would be if you have to tell youself that "chocolate doesn't make me feel special" on a daily basis! You can have everything in moderation if you excercise regularly.
Posted 01/07/2009 15:42:34
Posted by Gwendo
RE: Think yourself a dress size thinner
....and by the look of her, Marisa Peer has replaced her chocolate addiction with plastic surgery, look at the state of her face!!
Posted 01/07/2009 15:44:12