5 tips to reboot your weight loss after the summer holidays

My child went back to school this week and I, like many other parents, breathed a sigh of relief. My kid is happy, I get my time back and more so I am happy that we can all get back to our daily and weekly routines. September is a good time to reboot your weight loss efforts. 

The summers, as brilliant as they are, are a time when we loosen up. We have warmer weather and longer evenings. The routines with children go out of the window. We enjoy ice creams and BBQs, and the alcohol may flow more. It is hard being on a diet when everyone around us is enjoying themselves.

Now September has rolled around, many of us want to get back on track. We want to reboot our weight loss efforts again now we have perhaps a little more time and energy. We want to feel healthier and lighter. 

Many of us have learnt implicitly that getting back on track means going full swing into a diet. This is what we mean by having a diet mentality. The diet mentality is going all out on a diet. Going by strict rules. Weighing and following portion sizes. Not allowing yourself certain foods. Falling off the wagon big style. Feeling shame, disappointment, and frustration. Putting on the weight that we have just lost, so going back on a diet again. 

We want to get away from the never-ending diet cycle because let's face it, it is often not successful with long-term weight loss and quite frankly it is miserable. We inevitably can’t stick to the diet rules so we end up blaming ourselves, thinking that there is something wrong with us. (There isn’t). We also end up stuck in a cycle of feast and famine. Going all in or all out. Having an all-or-nothing mindset. With this mindset, we are then not able to learn how to escape the diet cycle.

Tips to reboot your weight loss efforts

So what can you do to help reboot your weight loss efforts, but in a sustainable and long-lasting way?

1. Change slowly

Rather than going all in on a new diet. Change one thing at a time. For instance, if you drink fizzy drinks, swap them out for water or even fruit juice as a transitional change. By making one change at a time, we are learning that it is all manageable and we can focus on that one change without it all becoming overwhelming. 

2. Middle ground

Be aware of the all-or-nothing trap. This might look like; Eating like a saint during the week and going all out at the weekend. Going full in on a diet, following the rules religiously, then eating something outside of that, feeling like a failure so blowing it and eating what you want anyway. 

This polarised eating is forever going to keep you trapped in this cycle. Being aware of it can help you to find a middle ground and escape from this diet cycle. 

3. Relax the rules

When we want to lose weight, guidelines can help. They give us ideas for healthy alternatives to processed food. We learn portion sizes and a healthy amount to put on our plates. What we forget is that they are guidelines, not strict rules. Because every single person is different, each person requires a different amount of food at different times depending on energy and body requirements. Each person processes different types of food differently and that can be down to our gut bacteria, which we all have differing amounts of, different strains, and different amounts of those strains. 

The problem comes when we impose those strict rules on ourselves and have expectations for us to stick to them. Food is not a boot camp, it should be enjoyable and flowing.

We each need to experiment with what is right for us. With too strict food rules it stops us from experimenting and learning what is good for us.

4. Watch your language

Quite often I hear people talk to themselves as if they are little children. Eating something they perceive they shouldn't have is them being really naughty so they tell themselves off. It might sound like this - What are you doing eating chocolate, you know you shouldn't be eating chocolate. You’re going to put on 5lb now. Right, tomorrow, you are not eating anything bad. Only healthy food.

Now consider if a friend spoke to you like this, how would you react and what would you want to say to them? Chances are you would want to impolitely tell them to go away. 

So, if we are speaking to ourselves like that, it is not going to make us feel good and it puts us in a position where we want to rebel. Eating chocolate and cake is a way to rebel. So we end up staying stuck in our eating patterns. 

Think about how you would like to be spoken to. It might sound more like this: 

OK, I am eating chocolate again. I’d made a choice and at that moment I wanted to eat the chocolate. I wanted a bit with my tea and you know that is ok. Though I do want to lose weight, tomorrow I am going to be more consciously aware of my food choices and aim to go for something that will be healthy and make me feel good. It is being said with compassion and understanding. 

This empowers us, we are treating ourselves like an adult which allows us to make choices about our food rather than react.

5. Move more

Moving your whole body, exerting yourself, and getting out of breath are all going to be beneficial for your body. This is about getting healthier and weight loss is a positive consequence of working on many things.

This is not about killing yourself at the gym. This is about starting slowly and building in a few more steps, a swim, an extra dog walk, parking further away, building this into your daily routine.

How can hypnotherapy help you to get your weight loss efforts back on track? 

As well as taking practical steps, there is also the mindset to be worked on. If you have got into bad habits or you know your eating is disordered, this is where hypnotherapy can help you. 

Examples of disordered eating are, you:

• Can’t stop eating even when you are full.
• Have no stop button and keep eating and picking at food.
• Eat at night time. You wake up in the night and have this urge to eat.
• Feel you have no control over food.
• Binge eat.
• Knowing food helps you to manage your emotions i.e. helps you to feel good. This is emotional eating.

In cases like these, the steps above help, but you also need to work on your eating habits. More so the cause of your eating habits.

This is because, you could be eating less, making a conscious effort to eat healthily, moving more, but then your eating issue makes an appearance and it takes you back to square one.

You may well have tried many diets, berating yourself, drinking special shakes, intermittent fasting, and nothing has stopped this eating issue.

That is because eating habits stem from an unconscious response. Meaning, it is a behaviour that the unconscious part of our brain has found a way to get certain needs met. It is a loop. The behaviour will keep happening again and again, until you get underneath it and find out why your brain is doing that.

With the help of a hypnotherapist. You are able to start unpicking and breaking down your behaviours around food.

The hypnotherapist will help you to: 

• Uncover your thought process around your eating habits and help you to change them.
• Uncover the emotional reasons that are causing your eating habits and help you to manage your emotions in a more appropriate way for you.
• Help you to feel more positive, confident and happier within yourself so you stop using food to do that for you. 
• Help you to manage and find better alternative habits for you.

The hypnotherapist will help you to do that by: 

• Questioning your thought processes.
• Helping you to see your thought beliefs in a different way.
• Providing the environment for you to feel safe to go back and start processing challenging events in your life. 
• Helping you to desensitise difficult emotions.
• Showing you empathy and compassion so you can bring that into your own life. 

Visiting a hypnotherapist should be like seeing someone who is on your side, someone who understands you but can also see your issues objectively so they can facilitate the process for you to change. 

It is a beautiful, life-changing process when you know someone is metaphorically holding your hand and helping you with your issues and because of that, you are able to change. 

Many people report life becomes lighter and more fun, and mostly they stop thinking about food all of the time and life gets more fulfilling.