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I turned to hypnosis because I don’t want to ban foods;
I don’t want anything to be off limits as I will only crave and eventually give in to them.
I want to reduce portion sizes and say ‘NO’ to snacking when I am not hungry, and hopefully, in time and
with the help of hypnosis, make more healthier choices.
Subtle changes in the way I viewed food and habits continued over the next three days and caused me to start looking at things from a more scientific approach.
For example:
- it got me looking at how important breakfast is and if it actually affects weight loss when it is missed
- is it really helpful for long-term weight loss by eating foods I don’t want just because they are healthy?
- instead of trying to change a habit like having a mid-afternoon, sugary snack, could I change the afternoon?
- and on trying to reduce portion sizes, I investigated what happens when we overeat.
I also gave in and jumped on the scales…well I can’t change every habit of a lifetime 😉
Day Two – Things to Note
So I survived day one to wake with incredible hunger on day two! I’m guessing this is just my body adjusting and to be honest it was nice to not feel bloated for a change.
But on the day I could have devoured a dinosaur, breakfast was delayed and became brunch! Although this wasn’t planned and I normally always have breakfast, it made me wonder how important this first meal of the day actually is.
Is Skipping Breakfast Bad For Weight Loss?
If I miss breakfast, I feel hungry, irritable and then overeat at lunchtime – but if I have a ‘full English’, it can see me through until mid afternoon without any desire to snack.
Yet some people can skip breakfast, for a whole variety of reasons – limited time, no appetite, calorie saving… And some just forget to eat?!!
So is missing breakfast good, bad or indifferent to overall weight loss?
Breaking The Fast
The time from falling asleep to waking the next morning is called a fast and is when the body has been without food for 8-12 hours. When a person next eats, they are breaking the fast; hence the term ‘breakfast’.
But having breakfast was not always the done thing…
“In the European Middle Ages, breakfast was not considered a necessary meal, and was practically nonexistent during the earlier medieval period” – Wikipedia.
Nowadays, breaking the fast is regarded as an important part of a person’s dietary habit because it gives your body the fuel it needs to start the day. Shake Up Your Wake Up refers to not breaking the fast as ‘effectively running on empty, like trying to start the car with no petrol’.
Which makes sense really because if we want our bodies and brains to work at their optimum level, we need to give it power to drive it.
Web MD lists a whole range of advantages for having a breakfast which include:
- It kick-starts the metabolism, helping to burn calories throughout the day.
- Provides energy to get things done as well as helping to focus and concentrate.
- Having breakfast lowers your chances of getting diabetes and heart disease.
- It also lowers your chances of being overweight.
- Certain vitamins and nutrients are only provided in food that you tend to have at breakfast like grains and fruits.
- You lower the risk of snacking on high-fat, high sugar foods later on.
- And studies show that most people who lose weight and keep it off, eat breakfast every day.
So it could be the case that rather than regularly eating breakfast making you healthy,
healthy people are more likely to eat breakfast. – NHS
I suppose it also depends on what time breakfast is eaten. Nutritionists say that it should be eaten within two hours of waking but that’s not always practical. I, for one, usually have my cereal at work which is about 2-3 hours into the morning. So is this breakfast or brunch? And could this be one of the reasons I start to fade mentally as well as physically late in the afternoon?
One thing is for sure, this hypnosis and way of eating is making me think more about my eating habits and why I do the things I do around food. When I’m not worrying about how many calories are in a particular dish or debating over what meal is the healthiest to have, I find I’ve got more time to investigate my anxiety and pre-determined ideals that do not match what I really want.
For example, why should I have certain healthy foods when I don’t want them? Does it help in the long run?
It never lasts long enough to make a difference and usually leads to total rebellion against anything good-for-me anyway.
The Afternoon Fix
My afternoon was busy so I didn’t really have too much time to think about food until the now-familiar-hunger-pangs began to kick in later than usual (because of the late breakfast) at around 4:30 so I had my usual chocolate fix.
My normal time for a ‘pick-me-up’ is around 3ish; it’s that time of the day when I’m starting to fade, I’ve had enough of being at work and I want to close down for the day and head home. Unfortunately, I still have a couple of hours left which means I have to have something that picks me up both physically and mentally.
That something is chocolate, and although I have tried low-fat, cardboard tasting alternatives, my fix has to be the real deal.
Tipping the Filling Point
My evening meal was, again, a much smaller portion and hubby is starting to look at me as if I have two heads!
The main thing I love about this way of eating is the no-pressure on trying to decide what to have for meals; no checking the calorie content in everything or having to endure ultra low-fat mayo that just doesn’t do the job.
I can eat exactly the same as everybody else and enjoy it, my only task is recognising how my stomach feels and stopping when it has had enough (although I must say it comes a lot earlier in the meal than I would like).
Which makes me think how much I would normally overeat and what actually happens to the excess food I don’t need? (Apart from taking up permanent residency on my thighs!)
Wow!
You know those times when you really should have left Google well alone…?
This was one of them, although such a revelation might make me think twice next time about ordering the extra side of onion rings!
So according to an answer provided by Prakash Ranganath on Quora a large meal can take 8-12 hours to leave the stomach, which means we could be on meal three before our body has even finished with meal one!
He goes on to say that when we overeat our bodies have to work a lot harder and the heart has to pump extra blood to the stomach and the intestines. As well as putting extra strain on our hearts, if a large portion of that meal is made up of fatty foods, then this can lead to blood clots.
If that’s not enough, as our stomachs release food into the intestines, our gallbladders begin to squeeze out bile to help with the fat digestion, and when we overeat this can cause gallstone attacks, (clusters of solid material stuck in the narrow duct that connects the organ to the intestine) which is so painful that a person feels like they are having a heart attack!
And more – when we overeat bits of undigested food slip into the colon and begin to ferment…and you can only guess what that means…flatulence…and lingering stomach pains trying to keep it all in.
I don’t think I want to know anymore…
But maybe this is something that I should be doing – getting to know more. In all the years I have been dieting, I have never educated myself on the human body and how it functions. If I could start to understand how the body works and just what damage I do to it without realising, then maybe it could convince me to stop abusing it.
‘Education is key’ and maybe a step towards my quest for motivation…
Day 3 – Succumbed to the Scales
On the start of day three I woke feeling positive, I know I was in that fog of excitement mixed with hope that it will last, but I didn’t care. My body also felt very light and although I had promised myself I wouldn’t jump on the scales until the end of the first week, I had to take a little peek.
>> 2lb DOWN!! <<
Now I really was feeling confident that I was finally onto a winner.
2lb in 2 days! I was feeling ecstatic! Wouldn’t it be perfect if I could lose 1lb a day?
With these kind of results I wouldn’t need motivation when things got tough, I could just keep jumping on the scales!
Fat or Water
Unfortunately, losing a pound a day is a pipe-dream, one we all know is not healthy or conducive to long term maintenance.
So what have I actually lost? Water and maybe…hopefully…a bit of fat?
In the first few days of any diet, more often than not it is water that we lose because when our body has used up all of the minimal calories we provide, it turns to our stores of glycogen for energy.
Glycogen is a type of carbohydrate and is found in the muscles and the liver, it holds onto water so when our body turns to it for energy, the glycogen releases the water it holds, hence the water weight lost first. – PopSugar
“A body that’s leaner (less body fat), more toned, well-nourished and hydrated will weigh more than one that’s thinner but flabby, undernourished, and dehydrated.” – ABC News
But whether it is water or fat, I didn’t mind – I had it in numbers, I had lost 2lb!
Now I’ve just got to try and keep off the scales for another week…
Day 4 – Still Optimistic
One thing I’ve noticed about listening to the hypnosis (now continuously for four nights) is how good I feel in the morning. And it’s not down to what I am eating, it is the triumph of listening to the hypnosis – it’s a bit like the feeling when you’re on a diet and you’ve succeeded in sticking to it for another day.
And the crazy thing is that I didn’t do anything to feel this way – just put some earphones in and went to sleep.
Eating only when I am hungry and stopping when satisfied isn’t too difficult and I feel as though I am ‘in the zone’.
On one hand this is exciting and hopeful, but on the other, I know this feeling all too well and it never usually lasts! Although I’m reservedly optimistic that because of the hypnosis giving me that added motivation, I can keep going, and more importantly stick to the sensible rules of eating only when hungry and having smaller portions.
So as I leave day four I am still fired up, with no cravings or wanting to eat for anything other than hunger, and of course still up for Mr McGraw when I go to bed…it’s a good job my husband is not the jealous type!
Find out how Week One went!
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