Diet Trials : Paul McKenna

Last night’s show on Sky One was about learning how to control binge eating and to increase your self image and confidence in the way that you look. It is a common misconception that fat people want to be thin as that will make them happy, but who’s to say that they will be happy when they are thin. It is not just the body image that needs to change but it is the way that we think and feel about ourselves, and that comes from within.

Often people who are overweight and not happy about how they look, also have low self esteem. They then help themselves feel better by eating more, therefore suffering from emotional eating. It’s a vicious circle that I want to get out of. I wouldn’t class myself as a particularly big emotional eater but I do suffer from a poor self image. I am certainly not what Paul McKenna classes as a binge eater and I don’t have the midnight feast that some of the people had on the show.

He used a technique that has been proven to be successful in treating fears and phobias, and the same technique can be used to gain control over food. It is to do with the direction that desire travels in your body and then to reverse the cycle. For instance if you see a chocolate cake the desire starts in your stomach and moves up into your mouth. This can be represented as a clockwise circle in red, spinning inside your body. Yeh I know this all sounds a bit wierd. The theory is that this red clockwise circle of desire continues spinning, but taking control you move it out of the body. You have to sort of spin your hand around with the motion of the circle. Then to regain control and to stop the binge eating you change the circle to blue and make it spin in the opposite direction. Therefore taking the desire from your mouth back to your stomach where it all started. By spinning the blue wheel faster and faster this surpresses the desire. This is an alternative technique to the tapping one that Paul McKenna shown everyone last week.

The Paul McKenna diet plan must be doing some good, as I am finding myself trying to educate people wherever I go. I found myself today in my local Deli getting my lunch, and ended up spending about quarter of an hour in there talking to the friendly deli owner about the rules of the diet. Plus I was trying to work out what I wanted to eat as he has such a huge selection of tempting sandwich fillings.

One thing I have found is that the more people I explain the diet to the more confident in the diet I become. This probably has something to do with people’s reactions to the Golden Rules. It’s as if when the penny drops with them that what we are being taught by Paul McKenna has to work, I grow in strength. I am now just waiting to be able to weigh myself to see how quickly this diet will work and get me down to mt target weight.

I was also pleased with myself today as I have avoided going to the Deli for a few weeks as I had got into a habit of buying the same amount of food. Normally a large sandwich, a pork pie and a bit of cake, which I would have no problem before the diet eating for lunch. Today I knew that a sandwich would be enough for me and it was.

Since I signed up with the Paul McKenna diet on the website I have been receiving supportive emails on a daily basis, and so far I haven’t found them that useful. Most of them have visualisation execises on, which to be honest I haven’t been doing that much. Perhaps I should, I don’t know. But I think I already know that I want to be thinner, and know that I will be a lot happier when I have lost some weight, so I don’t need to concentrate on it.

Today though I got the usual email pop into my inbox and it was one that I had to read a couple of times as it really made sense. The part that stood out for me was this part:

“There comes a point in the creation of any new habit where it becomes easier to do something than not do it. This is true whether the habit is a negative one (smoking or dieting) or a positive one (exercise, kindness, eating when you’re hungry).”

It become easier to do something than not to do something… a great way to look at the way we form our habits. The email makes you think about when you reach your tipping point, for instance when it is easier to stop eating when you are full rather than when your plate is empty.

Day 14 and still going strong. The next installment of Paul McKenna - I will Make You Thin is on Sky One again tonight. I am looking forward to finding out some more techniques to help me on my way to a new life where I am in control of food.

My fear at the end of last week was the weekend, but all in all it was fine. I made sure that I kept busy with a plan to keep me busy and to make sure I didn’t just wander into the kitchen to check out the fridge. We have taken steps to reduce the amount of tempting food that is in the house, so even if I fancy something to eat when I’m not hungry I can’t find any quick snacky foods. I made sure that I stuck to my plan of getting up reasonable early for breakfast and fitted in with the kids meal time on an evening, so we could still have a family meal at a time that suited everyone.

I started to do jobs around the house that have been on the list for a while, since we moved into our new house back in October. Saturday saw me installing a big hose pipe reel so that I can do the typical weekend task of washing the cars regularly, then a family meal out at the local Italian restaurant. Sunday was a day of sorting out boxes that still hadn’t been unpacked and building shelves and storage units for kids toys. I didn’t over eat nor did I eat when I wasn’t hungry…so I am pleased with how it all went. It will, I hope, continue to get easier the longer I stick to the diet.

After last weekend where I found it hard to stick to the 4 Golden Rules of the Paul McKenna diet I am going to try harder this weekend to organise my time better and resist the temptation to eat when I am not hungry.

I’m not too sure how I will achieve this yet but I know that I have to keep myself busy and motivated. I think the main thing that I have to do is keep myself into a routine that is similar to a normal week day, so I suppose this means getting up before 9am and having breakfast. Then this will mean that the rest of the day in terms of meal times will fit in with my hunger and the kids.

Also what I need to do is go out for part of the day somewhere so that I’m not just roaming around the house in search of food. I’ll perhaps take the kids on an adventure. An adventure to my kids consists on having a walk to the river and exploring the woods. All good fun though. I’ll have to make sure I give the bread to the ducks and not be tempted to have some myself!

Today I know I am going to struggle to get  through the day without eating food when I’m not hungry. Last night I went out to the pub… didn’t drink a huge amount… but this morning I am suffering. Perhaps it is the case because normally I would have more food in my stomach to soak up the lager rather than my small meal that I ate before going out.

The craving for a big bacon sandwich may end up getting the better of me today so I may have to do some tapping to try to stop myself. Hopefully after a few cups of strong coffee I will get back to normal and regain my enthusiasm.

As I was consciously eating my lunch today and reading Sky News, to keep up to date with the latest world events I came across a story on Manuel Uribe, Mexico’s fattest man. He is one of the fattest men in the world. Only surgery can help him now but there is a risk that he could die.
He weighs a whopping 86 stone, so I don’t feel too bad at only 18 stone. Well I should be less that that now hopefully, but without my scales I’m not too sure. You can check out the story on Sky News.

If you have a strong stomach there are also photos of Manual, but these should come with an advisary warning as you might just loose your lunch. If I ever got to being this big… just shoot me or better still don’t give me any food because I’m certainly not going to be able to go and get it myself.

So that leads me to my initial question… would Paul McKenna be able to help? Is there a limit to how big you are before the only answer is surgery?

It’s now Day 10. Normally on a diet I would have had a hard time getting to this point. Sometimes when I diet I can stay focused for quite a while as long as I’m not having to travel to conferences, whereas other times I can start a diet with all good intentions and loose momentum after a week. The best I have done is when I went on the Atkins diet a few years ago, stayed on it for about 6 months and lost 2 and a half stone. Which may I add has all come back on again plus some more.

Anyway back to the point of this post. I am still getting used to the fact that I do not need to put so much food on my plate as I would normally do as by eating consciously you do get full quite quickly and then you have to stop eating. Last night was a classic example. We had gone to Marks and Spencers and treated ourselves to an easy meal. What we bought we would have normally eaten in one go but we decided to half it and have the rest tonight. Looking at my plate, I was slightly worried that this wouldn’t fill me up let alone even touch the sides as I was quite hungry.

By eating consciously and slowly I still get surprised as to how little my body actually needs to keep me going. Once I had finished my meal I was full… there was not quite enough on my plate to be able to leave some, which you are meant to try and do, but I still think that this is a waste of food. The only problem is which caused quite a bit of amusement while I ate last night was that when you start a meal you struggle to chew your food a lot as it is very hot and it can burn your mouth if you’re not careful…. then towards the end of your meal it has gone cold and is not too appetising.

Perhaps I should stick to having salads or something that is cold from the start. Or perhaps the whole conscious eating rule is only successful since you stop eating thinking you are full, but it is actually because eating food that has gone cold is fairly awful!

This is a concept that I haven’t come across when it comes to being on a diet. Normally we are all used to cutting out certain foods that don’t fit in with the diet. But as Paul McKenna explains, if you forbid a food then this just makes you want it even more. So when you are given the opportunity to eat what you want I initially thought that this would be great.

I’m not sure that this is because I am eating consciously and really enjoying the taste of my food, but I find it really hard to work out what I really want to eat. Before starting the Paul McKenna diet I used to eat pretty much anything. Now I fancy certian foods, like yesterday I really could have eated a Hard Rock Cafe Pulled Pork sandwich and fries… but the nearest Hard Rock is about 30 miles away.

I have gone off foods that I would normally love such as currys and pizzas. It just takes me longer mulling around the supermarket trying to tempt myself into buying food that I want to eat.  I have though been able to stay well away from chocolate as I don’t really want to eat that anymore either. Very strange??

To conclude the show Paul Mckenna showed us all how to replace the need to comfort eat to get a happy feeling from the release of chemicals, with a happy thought that we train into the imagination. We have to be able to turn off or reduce the desire to eat food that we crave when we are not physically hungry and replace it with this happy thought.
It was very true when he pointed out that imagination plays a huge role in what we eat and gave the example of a menu in a restaurant. How you can sit there reading the menu and virtually taste and see the meal from the description. Apparently the body can’t easily distinguish between reality and a vivid imagination.

I will have to catch up with the actual process for doing this task from the book as by this point of the programme I was all a bit confused especially with all of that tapping. I may even watch the show again tonight from my Sky+ box and see if I can master this technique too.

It was definately something to do with squeezing your thumb and middle finger together while visualising happy times. This would get this thought programmed in somehow, and then you could release that happy thought again whenever you needed a boost by squeezing together your thumb and finger again?