Redefining my relationship with food and myself

I had been struggling with my weight for most of my adult life, you name it I’ve tried it, from Weight watchers to Atkins, from Slimming World to the 5:2, I had even tried some very weird and obscure diets. I quite literally would have done anything to resolve this….and if I would do anything, why couldn’t I just stop eating? If you have been on this journey like me, you will know it really isn’t that simple.

In the summer of 2019 as I turned 39 I was no longer willing to carry this battle into my 40’s. I had also made the decision earlier in the year to grow out my silver hair and really wanted to ‘rock it’ rather than look like I had completely given up on myself. I knew Gentle Release was great for releasing emotional issues and I knew that I had an emotional need to eat. Difficult times with my young daughter and I would dive straight for the chocolate, argument with husband…comfort food, times for celebration…well you can’t have those without food. On the whole I ate pretty healthily and would much prefer proper meals to cakes and biscuits, but my portion sizes were too big.

So I was able to pretty much maintain a size 14, but as much as I tried I couldn’t get to and maintain anything less than that. A friend mentioned that Michael Mosley had released the FAST 800 diet and I joined a few of the Facebook groups to see how people were getting on and I have never seen such remarkable results for so many people, so I decided to give it a try. But eating 800 calories a day isn’t easy, especially when you haven’t dealt with the reasons you need to emotional eat, so determined to make this work I decided I would try using my own Gentle Release Techniques on myself, and to my absolute relief it worked and my emotional need to eat dissipated. I quickly reached a size 12 and with absolute relief at this new found relationship with food. For the first time in my adult life I actually looked forward to Christmas and the foods that surround it knowing that I could lose weight and keep it off. Christmas was a success and whilst I may have put on a couple of pounds the relief about being able to eat without guilt and knowing that I could lose it again was tremendous.

Whilst I was much happier with my weight than I had been in years, I still wanted to lose a bit more so when the Coronavirus came into our lives and we were in lockdown, I wanted to come out of this difficult time with something positive. Once I had eaten the remaining biscuits I decided to go for it again employing the Gentle Release tools and the FAST 800 and in a few weeks I made it to a size 10! I even stayed on track through Easter weekend despite making home-made hot cross buns for my daughter, I only tried a little bite and the spare ones were given away or put in the freezer.

The Fast800 groups have been full of comments with people really struggling with lockdown eating and I really wanted to be able to help so I decided to create the Body Beautiful package. To be able to do a more thorough session on yourself you really need to understand more about Gentle Release Therapy so the online You and Your Family Self Care course is the perfect foundation. The Body Beautiful module then builds on this knowledge with specific support and guided gentle release meditations for your weight loss journey and emotional eating.