I once had a new client walk into my office and say to me, “What do you know about weight loss? You’re skinny and can’t possibly relate to someone like me.” I had to laugh at the irony and said… “Wouldn’t you rather have a coach who walks the walk and talks the talk to show you that at the end of the line, you’ll have what you are here for?” My client went on to achieve her goal weight.
In my experience, even people who are blessed with fast metabolisms can gain weight. We’ve all heard of the “Freshman 15”… the extra 15 pounds kids gain when they go off to college, stay at the dorm and realize that ice cream can be breakfast, lunch and dinner!
The truth is that I’m an example of someone who has a fast metabolism AND had a mother who was determined to never make an issue of food… it was neither punishment nor reward… EVER. My mom worked her whole life and had neither time nor inclination to cater to our culinary tastes, to say the least. When we turned up our noses at whatever she made for dinner, my Brooklyn-born mother would respond with “Nischt Gefilte Fish”… Which loosely translates to “No Gefilte Fish” and figuratively means “Take it or leave it… eat this or don’t eat tonight.” Needless to say, my mom was NOT your typical Jewish mother and none of us grew up as picky eaters!
When I was 15 years old and had my first date, I was head over heels in love with Gary Schwartz… only to be devastated when he never called me again. What is the typical reaction of a 15-year-old girl who has been scorned? I immediately went to the cupboard to devour every chip and cookie I could find… My mother came in and said, “What are you doing?” My response… “I’m eating because Gary doesn’t like me!!!” My mother’s very compassionate response, “So, do you think he’s going to like you when you’re FAT?” That stopped me in my tracks! I had no idea until recent years that my mother was an intuitive NLP Coach… and she was good!! Pure logic trained me that emotional eating was not going to “make it all better.”
NLP techniques are used in weight loss coaching, along with hypnosis and a number of other methods, to challenge existing beliefs that we may not be aware are present and at play. Food is commonly associated with comfort, control, reward or used as a replacement for something missing in one’s life. Surfacing the subconscious drive behind counter-productive behaviors is the key to releasing and changing them.
Jayne Goldman, MBA, C.Ht. is Founder and Principal of Best Life Hypnotherapy. She is a Certified Hypnotherapist, Master NLP Coach and Master Time Line Therapy® Practitioner in the Los Angeles area.
