​What if you could lose weight in a healthy way, without ever having to feel guilty?

You might have a caffeine addiction...

​How many of you have found that whilst you have been at home, you have started to grow veggies?

Or maybe flowers are more your thing and you have planted things simply to make your garden look pretty.

What is key when you are growing things to keep them healthy and thriving?

To ensure the best chances of success, you need to prepare the soil into which you will be planting your seeds and you need to be gentle with seedlings as they first appear as they are very delicate.

You need to know how much water to give them and when it is best to give it to them – not too much, not too little. You also need to feed them with the right nutrients to help them develop, at the appropriate stages in their life.

You need to tend to them and make sure that they are not being pestered or overtaken by weeds. You need to regularly check them for infections and any signs of pests.

You need to ensure they are getting the right amount of sunlight, as this is vital for growth.

Many successful gardeners even speak to their seedlings and show them love, speaking kind words to encourage their growth.

You also need to make sure that your plants are protected from the elements (Too much wind, rain, frost etc)

This could quite easily be said for ourselves too.

We need to take care of our bodies to ensure WE thrive.
We need to be gentle with ourselves. (We do need to move and be active, but it is important for our physical bodies that we don’t overdo it.)
We need the right amount of water. (Hydration is incredibly important.)

We need to make sure we are free of infections. (We need to take care of our physical health and treat anything that may be causing us discomfort.)
We need the right amount of sun. (Vitamin D supports many functions of the body. When our skin is exposed to the sun, it makes vitamin D from cholesterol. It also instructs the cells in our gut to absorb calcium and phosphorus, essential for healthy bones. It also helps fight depression and muscle weakness, amongst other things.)

We need to speak kindly to ourselves and show ourselves some tender loving care. (Replacing the negative voices in our heads, with positive and caring voices, will help to boost our mental health.)
We too need the right kind of environment to live in and need shelter from the weather.

You see, we aren’t really that different from the veggies we are growing in our gardens! Our basic needs are very similar.

If you need help with any of these steps, then please do reach out to me. Send me a PM and I can let you know how my new weight loss program may be able to help you. My program isn’t just designed to help you drop the excess weight, it is designed to help you address many areas of your life, to ensure you are living in a healthy manner and to give you the very best chance of transformation at many levels.
​
(Image is of one of the many potato plants that I am currently growing in my own garden at the moment!)

​Wouldn't it be great if one day you woke up and you actually CRAVED it?!

It’s 10pm… You have eaten pretty well throughout the day. You aren’t REALLY hungry, but you just “fancy” something.

Then you hear it, out of nowhere… That bar of chocolate that you stashed at the back of the cupboard last week – for emergency use only. It’s calling your name.

You ignore it for a while, telling yourself that you don’t need it; You don’t want it, honestly. You resist and tell yourself to be strong, but the calling gets louder and the temptation gets stronger.

Eventually chocolate is the only thing you can think about and the yearning just gets too much. Your mouth is watering just thinking about it. You find yourself in the kitchen, rummaging through the cupboard, until you spot it, that shiny gold wrapper, catching the light and twinkling at you.

You tell yourself “I’ll just have a couple of squares”, as you walk back to the sofa, chocolate in hand. The smell of the chocolate filling your nostrils as you open the wrapper… The taste of it as it slowly melts in your mouth. Such sweet sugary bliss.

Before you know it, you have eaten the lot.

Sound familiar?
​
If your late night snacking is getting a little out of hand and you find food mysteriously disappearing in your presence, then give me a shout!

Maybe it's time to make some longer term changes.

What if you actually ENJOYED moving your body?

Fear not! There is a solution!

​If you decide that you want to start drinking more water each day, or you want to practice yoga each day, or you want to start taking a multivitamin each day, you have to consciously make the effort to carry out that action, over and over again, day in, day out, repeatedly, until that habit finally takes hold and becomes a part of your daily routine, without you really having to think about it.
To form a new habit this way, for some people, can actually take months of being consciously consistent and not missing days here and there and quite often, despite starting out with the very best of intentions, people give up before the habit is firmly formed and so they don’t see the desired result.
However, there is an easier way, a short cut if you will – Hypnotherapy.
If you use hypnotherapy to support your habit forming, you will see results in a fraction of the time and your new behaviours (drinking more water, doing yoga, taking vitamins etc) will become second nature much more easily.
This is because the subconscious is the part of your mind that directly deals with habits and behaviours, so if you go straight to source to make the changes, it makes sense that you will get quicker results. Consider your conscious mind, the middle-man – why add extra steps in to a process and make things more difficult for yourself when you really don’t need to?
Hypnotherapy can support you in breaking old habits and forming new ones.
Your conscious mind still plays a part in the process. Every time that you are tempted by something, or consider not doing something, or find yourself making excuses, that is your subconscious’ way of giving you the opportunity to affirm to yourself “yes, I want that” or “no, I don’t” and every time you consciously make that decision, in favour of the new habit you are working to form, it reinforces your mental resolve to achieve your goal, making your desire to attain it stronger and the effects of the hypnotherapy are also magnified.
Do you have habits you wish you didn’t have?
Do you want to form some new and healthier habits?
Get in touch or join my live webinar to find out more about how amazing hypnotherapy is and how it can help you!

​Diets are restrictive…

Restrict the CALORIES you can consume
Restrict the TYPES of foods you can consume
Restrict the AMOUNT of food you can consume
Restrict the HOURS in the day in which you should be consuming food
Restrict the amount of “NAUGHTY FOODS” you can consume

LABELLING certain foods as “naughty foods” in the first place!
Certain foods being completely OFF LIMITS.

Does this really sound like something you would choose to do for the rest of your life?

These kind of restrictive fad diets, CAN work to help you reach a short term goal – the whole “Drop a dress size for summer” kinda thing, but they are not really sustainable for a long period of time and who wants to feel so restricted and limited in their eating anyway?!

Hypnotherapy can make things so much easier. Your brain has the power to change the way you think and feel about certain foods. You can reduce your own appetite, so you feel fuller after consuming less calories. You can go from hating drinking water to actually craving and enjoying it. You can remove the desire for any unhealthy foods, so that you simply do not want them.
​
Your subconscious is programmed to keep you safe, keep you healthy and keep you alive and I can help you connect directly with your subconscious mind, so that YOU can be in control of your eating and your body, once and for all.

​What thoughts come to mind when you think about “dieting”?
No more sweets, cake, biscuits?
No more takeaways?
Having to measure things or count points?
Diets generally create feelings of restriction and deprivation and thoughts of “I’m not allowed”.
As soon as anyone tells you “You can’t do that” or “You can’t have that”, what happens? We often want to do it or have it even more, just because we were told we can’t!
For a lot of people, diets are about suffering and going without and feeling like you are missing out, all in order to lose some weight.
The beauty of using hypnotherapy to address this matter is that we can reprogram your brain and remove the desire for all of those unhealthy foods that you’re “not allowed” and by doing that, you can follow a healthier eating plan, without feeling deprived because how can you feel deprived of something you don’t want?!
If you want to find out more about this, I highly recommend you register for my free weight loss webinar that is happening live at noon on Monday!

Did you know that when you become engrossed in something on the TV, or when you are mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, you do actually slip in and out of trance state?
When you are distracted by what’s on the screen and you aren’t actually focusing on what you are eating, it is far too easy to consume a far higher amount of calories that you would if you were paying attention to your food and your body.
Another side effect of eating while in this sort of trance state, is that you often miss the “full” signals that your brain and stomach are trying to communicate to you because you aren’t paying attention and so inevitably, you will continue to eat until you feel bloated, or at the very least until you’ve polished off far more food than you needed, which can also lead to feelings of guilt.
I would always recommend sitting at a table to eat, whenever possible and leave the telly and your phone off, so you can be more mindful about what you are eating and how much you are eating.

​

​Everyone has heard the news about antioxidants and their importance to good health and proper nutrition. It seems the more scientists learn about antioxidants, the more their value and potential increases.

Antioxidants have shown promise in everything from preventing heart disease to slowing the degeneration of the eyes and brain.
Antioxidants work in a fairly straightforward way, what makes them so effective is their ability to neutralize a group of highly reactive, highly destructive compounds known as free radicals.

The production of free radicals is a normal bodily process, and it's part of the process of breathing and living. Free radicals are normally neutralized by the body’s natural defense system, rendering them harmless. However, anything that weakens the body’s natural defenses weakens its ability to fight off these free radicals, those weakening agents include environmental pollution, excess UV radiation and even excessive consumption of alcohol.

When free radicals are not properly neutralized, the body is left open to illness. Free radicals can damage the structure and function of cells in the body, and recent evidence suggest that free radicals contribute to the aging process and may play a role in a great many illnesses, including cancer and heart disease.

While vitamin supplements containing antioxidants such as vitamin C can be important, there is no substitute for a healthy diet. It's estimated that foods contain more than 4,000 compounds that have antioxidant qualities so eating a healthy diet is the only way to take advantage of these antioxidant properties.

In addition to the well known antioxidants like vitamin C and
vitamin E, healthy foods like fruits, vegetables and whole grains also contain a lot of lesser known antioxidants. Scientists are only now discovering the important role these lesser known antioxidants have in keeping the body healthy.

Let’s take a look at some of the dietary sources for the major antioxidant vitamins.

VITAMIN C
Vitamin C is probably the most studied of all the antioxidant vitamins. Also known as ascorbic acid, vitamin C is a water soluble vitamin found in all bodily fluids, and it's thought to be one of body’s first lines of defense against infection and disease. Since vitamin C is a water soluble vitamin, it is not stored and must be consumed in adequate quantities every day. Good dietary
sources of vitamin C include citrus fruits such as oranges and grapefruits, green peppers, broccoli and other green leafy vegetables, strawberries, cabbage and potatoes.

VITAMIN E
Vitamin E is a fat soluble vitamin that is stored in the liver and other tissues. Vitamin E has been studied for its effects on everything from delaying the aging process to healing a sunburn. While vitamin E is not a miracle worker, it is an important antioxidant, and it's important that the diet contain sufficient amounts of vitamin E. Good dietary sources of this important nutrient include wheat germ, nuts, seeds, whole grains, vegetable oil, fish liver oil and green leafy veggies.

BETA-CAROTENE
Beta-carotene is the nutrient that gives flamingos their distinctive pink color (they get it from the shrimp they eat). In the human world, beta-carotene is the most widely studied of over 600 carotenoids that have thus far been discovered. The role of beta-carotene in nature is to protect the skins of dark green, yellow and orange fruits from the damaging effects of solar radiation. Scientists believe that beta-carotene plays a similar protective role in the human body. Sources of beta-carotene in the diet include such foods as carrots, squash, sweet potatoes, broccoli, tomatoes, collard greens, kale, cantaloupe, peaches and apricots.

SELENIUM
Selenium is one of the most important minerals in a healthy diet, and it has been studied for its ability to prevent cell damage. Scientists see this ability to protect cells from damage as possibly important in the prevention of cancer, and selenium is being studied for possible cancer preventative properties. It is important to get the selenium you need from your diet, since large doses of selenium supplements can be toxic. Fortunately, selenium is easily found in a healthy diet. Good sources of dietary selenium include fish and shellfish, red meat, whole grains, poultry and eggs, and garlic. Vegetables grown in selenium rich soils are also good sources of dietary selenium.
​
Hypnotherapy can be highly effective in removing unhealthy food desires and to replace them with healthier more nutritious ones. If you'd like to find out more about how hypnotherapy might be able to help you get your eating back on track, then get in touch for a chat.

Are takeaways a regular feature in your household or are they an occasional treat?
Are you finding yourself ordering more fast food now due to not being able to get grocery shopping deliveries or not being able to actually go shopping?
Are stress or depression mounting and you find that ordering food is the easier option right now?
There is no judgment here. At this present time, we have to do whatever it takes to get by.
However, if you are ordering regular takeaways because it’s a family tradition ie. Fish supper on a Friday or Pizza and a movie on a Saturday etc, or you are eating fast food just because it’s easier and you can’t be bothered to cook real food, is that a habit that you want to continue?
If you are having fast food occasionally as a treat, or when you are ill and need a break, that’s fine but if you want to lose weight, then you may have to reconsider fish supper night or pizza night every week. Perhaps you could replace them with a healthier option? Maybe just order out once a month?
How would you feel if your desire for those takeaways simply disappeared and instead, your desire was for healthy, nutritious food?
With hypnotherapy, this IS possible!
What are your thoughts on fast food and takeaways? Let’s start a discussion. Remember, no judgement here. This is a safe space.

​What level of success did you achieve with them?
Did you lose weight?
Did you keep the weight off or put it back on?
Did you enjoy following the plan or did you feel restricted and deprived?
I'd love to hear about your experiences. Good or bad.
Pills, supplements, shakes and juices are usually only a short term option. Let's face it, if you had to spend the rest of your life having a handful of pills for breakfast or just a drink at lunch time and then perhaps a very low calorie meal in the evening, I am pretty sure that it wouldn't take long for you to get bored of that idea, or for it to actually make you ill.
We, as humans, need food. A little bit of everything, in moderation. So while these fad diet plans may help you to "Drop a dress size for summer", that is all they are ever designed to be - a quick fix, for short term use.
If you want to find out more about healthy (long term) ways to lose weight safely (and keep it off) and how hypnotherapy can help you do this, then send me a message and let's chat!

If 1 was not at all happy with my body and 10 was I absolutely accept and love my body, where would you put yourself?
​
When you look in the mirror, what do you say to yourself?
"I look so old"
"I look so tired"
"OMG more grey hairs"
"Look at all those wrinkles"
"That belly fat is NOT gonna get me a partner"
"That cellulite is nasty"
"If only I was prettier"
"I hate my teeth/smile"
Do any of these things sound familiar?

When was the last time you looked in a mirror and smiled and said something positive to yourself?
When was the last time you showed yourself some love?

We are always our own worst critics, whether its our own appearance or something else.

The thing is, a lot of the things we say to ourselves, we would never dream of saying to our best friend, so why are we so harsh on ourselves?
The more we say things to ourselves, the more we believe them - that works for both positive and negative statements.

If you tell yourself each day that you will never be pretty enough to get the guy of your dreams.... you wont, because your brain is making that belief a reality.

But if you tell yourself that you are beautiful and that you love yourself unconditionally and that any guy would be lucky to have you... your chances of making that a reality and meeting the man of your dreams, are much higher because you are thinking, feeling and behaving differently.

If you want to find out how hypnotherapy can help you improve your body image, along with other healthy ways to lose weight, then get in touch.

For some people, it's when the kettle goes on... "I'll just have a couple of biscuits with my brew". (Multiple times per day)

For others it's the middle of the afternoon, some time between lunch and dinner... "I'll just grab a sausage roll/pie/toastie to see me through until dinner, as I won't be eating until later".

Perhaps you do a lot of driving for work and your cab is full of snacks for you to pick at throughout the day, so your snacking happens frequently, rather than at one specific time of day.

For some it's during the evening, whilst watching telly... "I'll grab some munchies to eat while I watch the movie". (Several bags of crisps/a bowl of popcorn/a handful of biscuits and a bar of chocolate later...)

For others it's late at night. You might have a snack before finally going to bed... you might take food to bed with you... or you might even get up through the night and go and have a rummage through the fridge in the early hours because you can't sleep. When you wake in the morning, you might even find wrappers or remains of a snack that you barely have any recollection of eating because you were half asleep when you consumed them.

Believe it or not, ALL of these are common issues that I have heard from many clients over the last couple of years, but they are easily addressed using hypnotherapy.

Imagine being able to reduce your own appetite, so that you feel fuller on smaller portions of food.
Imagine no longer feeling the need to snack between or after meals.
Imagine being able to trust yourself and your body to only eat when you are genuinely hungry.
And as a bonus, imagine being able to get a better quality of sleep at night.

How much of a difference would that make to you?
How much easier do you think it would be to lose weight if you weren't snacking?
​
I can absolutely help you achieve this.

What is it that you go for when you are feeling peckish?

Biscuits? Chocolate? Crisps? Bread? Cheese? Crackers?
**Answers in the comments below please!**

Snacking in between meals is a common problem faced by many of my clients seeking help for weight loss.

But what if you could just STOP snacking, just like that?
What if your desire for these munchies, simply DISAPPEARED?

How much of a difference would that make to your life and your weight loss? How much easier would it be to lose those excess pounds?
​
This is absolutely possible with hypnotherapy and if you'd like to find out HOW and learn more about other common food related issues that hypnotherapy can quickly and easily address, then keep your eyes peeled for the sign up link that will soon be going up for my totally free, no obligation WEIGHT LOSS WEBINAR!

In the webinar, we will be looking at 5 Healthy Ways to Lose Weight and Why Hypnotherapy is the Missing Ingredient!

​Sarah was 35, she had two children and led a very hectic life, trying to juggle a full-time job, motherhood and running her household. Her job was in an office and so she spent most of her day sat at a desk and tended to eat her lunch as she worked. On her way home from work, she picked up her two young children from the childminders, where they had already eaten their dinner. So when they got home she would spend time with the kids, playing games, doing homework, getting them bathed and ready for bed and then made a start on the housework and getting everything ready for the morning.
She didn’t get much time to herself in the evenings and felt she was always on the go. Often, she would find herself eating late at night once the kids were in bed. Sometimes she would cook herself something simple, sometimes she would just pick at whatever was in the fridge, sometimes she just didn’t have the energy to cook and she opted for a takeaway out of convenience.
Sarah had felt unhappy with her weight for a long time. She never did lose all that baby weight after having her second child and having spent the last year or so sat at a desk all day, she was very aware that the pounds were steadily creeping on. At the office she worked in, there was always an abundance of cakes, biscuits, sweets etc laid out for everyone to help themselves to and it seemed like it was always somebody's birthday. At home, the cupboards were full of crisps, cereal bars and other yummy snacks and treats for the kids. She felt she was constantly surrounded by temptation and it was getting harder to resist. It may have started with just the odd biscuit or sweet here and there but it fairly quickly became a couple of biscuits with every cup of tea she had, or a handful of sweets to take back to her desk to see her through the last couple of hours of the day.
Her eating habits were a mess. Sarah often skipped breakfast in the morning as she was too busy getting the children ready to leave, before dropping them at the childminders and heading straight in to work. Lunch was always a bit hit or miss and she often just ate at her desk. Sometimes Sarah would take food from home, sometimes she would nip out to the bakers that was just along the road from her office, sometimes she just wouldn't bother and would inevitably end up picking at the goodies that were available at the office. As for dinner, well the children had theirs before she picked them up and by the time they got home, it was almost time to start the bedtime routine, so Sarah felt she didn't have much choice but to wait until later to eat.
She was growing more and more unhappy with her weight and it was really starting to get her down. Sarah had tried various slimming pills and shakes and for a while even joined a slimming club but none of them really got her the results she was wanting. Sure, she lost a few pounds but inevitably ended up putting them back on again. She couldn't understand why nothing she was trying was really making a difference. Then one day, she was talking to a friend of hers about her struggles and admitted just how much it was all bothering her and that's when her friend mentioned me. She told Sarah how she had been for a number of hypnotherapy sessions with me and how it had made a huge difference for her. She gave Sarah my number and told her to give me a call.
So that is how I came to meet Sarah and learn about all of the struggles she was facing. Over three months we did hypnotherapy sessions that were specifically aimed at the issues she was facing. Sarah set herself an initial goal of losing two stone. By the end of the three months, she had lost nearer three. She began eating a small breakfast, she made a point of leaving her desk at lunch times and not visiting the bakery to fill up on pastry! She lost all desire for grazing on all of the sweet treats that lay bout the office. She even started batch cooking at the weekends when she had more time, so that she had healthy, nutritious meals in the freezer that she could simply reheat for dinner, at a more acceptable time of day, during the week. Takeaways went from being a weekly feature in her diet, to being a very occasional treat. Sarah learned to become more mindful when it came to eating and she quickly learned how to recognize whether she was actually genuinely hungry or not, and only eat when she needed to.
It was an absolute pleasure to watch Sarah's transformation and an honour to be a part of her journey.
If you can relate to Sarah and would like to find out more about how hypnotherapy may be able to help you, send me a message.

​When you think about the word "exercising", what images does that bring to mind? What feelings surface when you consider doing something active?
To a lot of people, the word "exercising" triggers mental images of sweaty people wearing lycra, working out in a gym, surrounded by weights and lots of scary looking equipment.
To others, "exercising" brings to mind loud music with a bouncy beat, shortness of breath and a bunch of women trying to keep up with an over enthusiastic instructor at the front of an aerobics class.
But exercise does NOT have to involve a busy, scary, expensive gym. It's not essential that your exercise has to involve sweating buckets. It's also not always necessary for you to end up out of breath.
What feelings come up? Dread? Exhaustion? Self-consciousness? Self doubt?
Or does the idea of moving your body actually give you a buzz and excite you?
There are so many possibilities for you to explore but I would absolutely recommend WALKING in NATURE. It is free, you can set your own pace, you can choose to stay on flat ground, or work your way up to inclines and hills and the fresh air and natural surroundings will also help to boost your mental and emotional well being.
If you have some green space local to you, then that would be a great place to start. Or perhaps you are fortunate enough to live near the beach. Being able to take a break from the hustle and bustle of busy life and just appreciate the peace and serenity and beauty of your surroundings, really can do you the world of good.
I truly believe that exercise does not have to be painful to be beneficial! And I will be sharing other suggestions with you over the next few weeks.
Considering the restrictions we currently have placed upon us, my outdoor daily exercise consists of taking my dog Bear (that's him in the photo) out for a good walk and enjoying the scenes of nature around us as we go.
I also consider gardening and vigorous housework to be exercise too! You'd be surprised how many calories you can burn bouncing around the house with a hoover! But that's for another post ;)
For today I say, whenever possible...
"LET NATURE BE YOUR PLAYGROUND"