2011 Paul McKenna part two - our final diet

[whomovedmychocolate]

Welcome etc. blah blah. :)

I'm pretty impressed I've lost 19 pounds in about a month! And I'm confident I can lose the next 16 pounds in another two months as well.

Ursula good luck in giving up the flour. I do find bread etc makes me feel quite down and totally out of energy for some reason - not pasta strangely so it may not be the wheat but bread definitely does not work well with me so I limit what I have.

mummyosaurus - shrinkingnora was, I believe, having hot chocolate as an alternative in the evening (don't know if she still is) but could you try that instead? Just to crack the habit (and it is a habit - see my previous posts on my feelings about chocolate now and I was very much an evening chocolate scarfer before).

Also I used to overeat in the evening because I was bored. Perhaps you could do something in the evening. I've gone back to Aikido (martial arts) classes. But even if you just do something different one day a week it breaks your pattern.

Hi everyone, am I too late to join? I really need to lose about a stone. Have short-term mobility problems so it'll be a challenge as I usually rely on activity to keep my weight down. This challenge is also an incentive, as I have to do a lot of physio work on my weight-bearing, balance & gait, and the heavier I am, the more painful it will be.

I "Pauled" about 3 years ago and stayed at my ideal weight for 14 months. Then I got pregnant..!

Very inspired by the results you're all getting.

Welcome willyoudothedangfango - glad to have another one aboard the good ship McKenna. Take it a day at a time, there are others with mobility issues on this thread who are managing it. I'm sure you will too :)

Thank you wmmc. You've had an impressive result, I see! Congrats!

Thanks so much for the encouragement, Bssh, howtolook and mummyosaurus.

wmmc, I'm inspired all over again! Well done!!

I'm making slower progress this month, although I think that might be because I've been at the wine bottle a bit more than usual!

I did the tapping and visualisation exercises for coke and it totally put me
off, I have no interest at all. The other day I fancied a can as a pick me up and I literally could not lift the can from the shelf in the shop. Vat weird.

That's what inwas going to say.... Sorry I was typing away and totally lost my train of thought!

I find the adversion stuff quite powerful, and obvs with coke there is a good reason to stay away from it, but it's harder with cheese and chocolate etc. Especially as I'm veggie, cheese is pretty vital.

Hi willyoudothedangfango

welcome and tell us more - how much did you lose last time and do you think you overate when pg or just put on weight and struggle to shift it?

That's really good news though, i have been a bit worried hat I migh take my eye off the ball when I get to my ideal weight!

ppeatfruit - should I be looking for anything in particular when I google?

I like that blog, Bssh. I relate to this:

"How many rice cakes does it take to satisfy a craving for chocolate?
Five rice cakes. 7 baby carrots. 4 celery sticks. One orange. A container of light yogurt. And a Snickers bar."

wwmc: I've been going back through this thread trying to find your posts about chocolate but can't find them. Searching for 'chocolate' gives a lot of results :) Can you give me some dates or other pointers?

I'm thinking about trying the hairy prawn thing on some foods that I binge on, but am not sure I actually want to give up chocolate ...

Welcome willyoudothedangfango

WMMC, i do have hot chocolate with a flump broken up into it and that is lovely, but I still want chocolate.

The tapping works, stops the craving but then I get this mad urge to eat - rice pud, bowls of cereal, toast.

So a few time this week I've had the hot choc and 1 creme egg. I then feel ok. This is much better than pre paul, when it would have been 3 bars of choc and other snacks.

I actually go out at least 3 nights a week (college and zumba). But I have ordered some cross stiches from ebay as I used to like doing them pre children and they might keep my hands busy while I watch tv.

franch, I am so with you on chocolate, I know from having managed it give it up in the past (when highly motivated - losing weight to get pregnant) I am better without any, but I don't truly want to. The other danger is if I give up chocolate, what I will replace it with cakes and puds which are actually worse. (Is this thinking self sabotage?).

However, today. so far so good.

WMMC fantastic news on your weight loss, you are doing amazingly. Are you still no chocolate? I remember you did the aversion therapy didn't you?

"What do I really want?" I have posted this all over the kitchen! I know I am making excuses. Got to chip away and let the thin me out...

I have 4 - 5 stone to lose, to have got that overweight my bad habits are pretty ingrained.

Franch actually very recently I wrote:

whomovedmychocolate Fri 11-Mar-11 20:02:12
Gosh your dinner sounds nice BsshBossh.

I had an interesting experience yesterday. I ate a tiny bit of chocolate brownie because the kids said it tasted funny and I wanted to check it wasn't off (we were in a cafe). I could taste that is was chocolate and that it was sweet but I had absolutely no emotional reaction whatsoever - I could have been eating a dry cracker - in fact I think I'd have actually preferred that. It was like nothing .

But you'd have to hunt back through the archives to when I first did PM about umm one child ago (three years ago in the big/slim/whatever and dropped 20 pounds) to find the rest. Did the aversion (chocolate/prawns/hair) thing and that did it mainly.

If you don't want to give up chocolate you need to either do the tapping or the havening technique whenever you are craving it - or do the craving buster CD to get rid of the need and it will gradually reduce.

But I think both you and mummyosaurus are getting something out of chocolate which is totally unrelated to nutrition and until you acknowledge that it's not the chocolate, it's the chemical effect of the chocolate on the brain, you will find it very hard to moderate your intake. You sound like you are craving that serotonin hit you get when you consume chocolate or white flour at high speed. Which doesn't last (hence the need for several bars) and actually does you no favours long term.

Have you tried creating a happy link using your finger and thumb on your right hand and focusing on that instead?

Thanks mummyosaurus

lililolo I think my weight piles on due to a basic refusal to believe that i can't eat anything I like. Luckily I don't have any food issues, I perhaps comfort eat a little when my period starts but apart from that it's absent-minded eating: 4 biscuits standing up in the kitchen, bit of ham while looking into fridge deciding on tea, etc.

I think that's why the rule about eating consciously and really enjoying each mouthful was the best for me.

I did a gentle version whilst pregnant, being very careful to always eat when hungry. It was my 3rd pregnancy and I definitely put on a lot less weight, until the very end when I forgot the whole thing! Then breastfed for nearly a year and for me it just wasn't workable, I did try Paul once but found I went straight past hunger signals to "Help my blood sugar has plummeted and I am trembling" signals. I just grazed and was about albs heavier than usual, nothing drastic. Unfortunately when I stopped feeding I didn't scale the grazing down so here I am 6 months later with a stone to lose!

Good first day - DH was paid for a big job so we took the family to a Harvester. I only wanted half of my chicken and chips. Almost ordered a veggie burger & new pots, but remembered the rule about having what I wanted, not what I thought I should have!

I know what you mean about the breastfeeding willyoudothedangfanjo. I'm still breastfeeding my youngest. It is a mixed blessing in weight loss terms. The big problem for me used to be that little children are actually quite dull and it's easy to snack to detract from that.

Also re the tapping - last time I had the old version of the book without the tapping chapter - BUT I was taught EFT about 6 years ago for a driving phobia. I went from not being able to get to the end of our close, to being able to take the family on holiday involving a 6 hour drive including ferry & 3 motorways I'd never been on. So it gets my vote!

Yes wmmc, boredom definitely plays a part!

Thanks wmmc. Yes there's something very emotional about chocolate. Plus the force of sheer HABIT - reaching for the chocolate at the end of EVERY meal.

But yes you're right about substitutes mummyosaurus. I eat Green & Black's 85%, which is relatively ok in moderate amounts. When I don't have any in the house I binge on Nutella or whatever else I can find. I'm not sure I can rid myself 100% of the desire for something sweet after a meal - in which case I may just need to use the tapping to restrict my chocolate/pud eating to when I am HUNGRY only.

Takes a bit of working out ... Aversion has clearly worked for you wmmc, so I'm certainly not discounting it!

WMMC, you are right on the money about the chocolate. I will just have to see how it goes with chipping away at the weight. Keep up the tapping and see if I can keep it under control

I do the thumb and middle finger thing and it works all day long, but the evening is another story!

WillYouDoTheDangFanjo Who did you see about the driving phobia? I have a motorway phobia, although I am ok locally and I am very interested in how it worked.

I am not sure it is aversion. More absolute total apathy - I feel nothing in relation to chocolate. I can try it. I can appreciate it's smoothness or sweetness but it doesn't make me feel anything at all. It's just like nothing. It's also quite disturbing to have had this thing which is a tool to change your feelings totally obliterated.

Have you tried doing absolutely crazy things to change how you feel. Jump up and down for two minutes, laugh out loud and try and gargle the national anthem before eat chocolate. (Hopefully you won't want to afterwards). Anthony Robbins has a great idea that if you want to change where your mind is, you have to change where your body is - so to move is to change your thinking. However daft it seems, big bodily movements can make a big difference.

I've been doing the mirror technique and visualisation really regularly. I know exactly how I want to look in the summer. But last night something really clicked.

Last night I had the most amazing dream....i really saw it, felt it, saw the clothes i could wear and how i moved. It was so real and i liked what i saw. I feel like it was a real breakthrough.

have had a bit of a difficult week as really really busy and haven't eaten consciously at all and slipped into some bad habits (ate two large warm crumpets with butter on friday afternoon because they were left at work and everybody had gone home, and they were fresh from the baker in the morning and would be rubbish by monday ,nevermind i'd already enjoyed one at tea break time). I was very tired so I had just got lazy with the rules. Complete disregard. So tired, at 5pm, knowing i had to go back out to work at 6pm.

I need to slow down generally, not just my eating.

Incidentally i met a real life paul mckenna coach on thursday at a meeting, which is good to know in case i lose the motivation again.

Hurrah nevergoogle, once you hit that connection and it becomes really real, you won't look back. :)

Thanks, I woke up excited and had a much better day as a result. Ate consciously in pizza express and made healthy choices that were genuine.

Ive found out that white rice makes me bloated. In the past, Ive always eaten far too much to actually know what foods make me more bloated than others, because I was always bloated. Last night I made egg fried rice, and today ive woken feeling very blah and thicker in the tummy area. I love how I have been so in tune with my body that I can see what is good for me & what isnt :)

Hope everyone has a great Sunday! :)