Things have been changing.
The outer layers have been removed until I have at last reached the centre.
And in the centre is power. A power I didn’t know I had. A power that I’ve discovered was there all along but I didn’t know how to get to it.
Because of all the outer layers I had built up over the years.
Each step in this journey I’ve discovered a new inner layer - but was never sure if I’d made it to the middle.
But at the same time as a transformational journey on a personal level I’ve been on a weight loss journey. And this journey hasn’t made quite the same progress as the other one.
After I ran the marathon I plateaued. Whilst I was consuming less food than before I started listening to the Thinking Slimmer slimpod, I was still scoffing all day. I put back on a couple of stone in muscle but my size remained the same.
For 6 months my size has remained the same.
I knew there was something holding me back because although my behaviours were far from ideal, I run every week day and I eat small meals and after learning EFT and applying it to myself, I also make better food choices these days.
I really should be my target size of between 10/12 by now. I’m not. I am a size 14. That hasn’t changed in 6 months.
Each time I had a session with Trevor I thought “this will be the one that makes a difference to my weight”
But it didn’t.
And then after our last session something so fundamental changed that I knew it would have an impact. I could feel that I didn’t need my weight as protection any more. I could feel I was in control. I had the power. I was getting close to my centre.
And because of this I could see very clearly where I still wasn’t making the right choices. I could see that in situations where I had the chance to choose not to eat something – I always chose to eat instead.
So I asked a friend and fellow Cognitive Hypnotherapist to help me. This was possible now the little black box was gone. I can now look on my past without the darkness and evil shadows.
There is this thing we can do called a timeline. We talk to the subconscious and ask it to find the event/memory that it is using to drive a particular behaviour. Once there, we use our adult, conscious thought, to help the younger version of us look on that moment in a different way. To reframe it.
Most of us have Significant Emotional Events that are slightly out of our awareness but close enough to drive behaviour. I knew I had something there I just wasn’t sure what.
I knew that one of the types of abuse I experienced as a child was neglect. A factor of this was that we weren’t given enough food. There was a time in my early years where I was almost skeletal.
So I was curious what my subconscious was using.
When we asked it to find an event related to the fact that I saw depriving myself of food as a punishment, it took me to 2 but one was more significant.
It was a rare day out with my parents. We were parked up by a castle overlooking the water. My brother and I were cramped in the back of a small sports car. My parents were eating fish and chips. They weren’t giving us any. And I remember how excited I had felt when they stopped to pick them up and how unbelievable it was to me to find myself sat there in that car, hungry and not getting a thing while they ate.
It was pretty high up in the “it’s not fair” scale.
So the trick with these timeline things is to find the learning that makes sense to the child – in this case me at around 6 – and then using your adult experience pass that learning down to the child in a way they can understand. This will be very unique to you.
I explained to her that it wasn’t a punishment – it was just crap parents. That it wasn’t about her. That she would always have enough food and in later life she’d have plenty. She struggled to get it. It was all she had known. In the end I gave her a chip! And I felt something change.
We completed the timeline process. It was upsetting but also a big release. Part of it is to look at yourself in the future seeing the person you would be now that event is no longer driving you. I saw myself up on stage giving TED style talks about my transformation. I was the size I want to be – 10/12
Since then I’ve been noticing the behaviour change and it comes back to a feeling of power.
I can now make a choice not to eat something because it has no consequence. I know food will always be there so I can choose not to eat something now. I can choose to eat what and when I want – I don’t have a need to eat.
This morning I waited until my stomach rumbled and had a piece of bread and butter for breakfast. I went to the cinema with the little one and bought my usual medium bag of sweet popcorn. I didn’t even eat a quarter before I had enough and put it to one side.
I cooked some chicken for lunch and wondered why I felt so hungry as I started eating it. It was 3pm. I chose to have a banana after a couple of pieces of chicken. In the past I would eat a banana because I thought it might be something nice to satisfy my appetite, not because I wanted one (if that makes sense!)
It will be interesting to see what the next few weeks bring. When you do one of these timeline things it can be really hard to know the scale of changes you might see.
