Today I had a wonderful message from a client whose successful weight loss and personal coaching sessions finished 7 weeks ago..."Just a quick message, Just to say I have been putting all your hard work into action and so far so good!!!! I have a lot more energy and I've lost 1 stone.... 7 lbs ish to go! I feel more like myself again and in control. Work in progress but all good! Thanks sooooo much for being such a great coach & cheerleader Nicky and helping find 'Me again'!!!" Sharon, Farnham.

This wonderful client had been feeling really low and out of control with her life and eating. She had gained weight and whatever she seemed to want to do i.e. "Not be fat" she just kept finding she was eating the wrong foods for no particular reason and no obvious triggers.

After much delving and strategic questioniing, we uncovered a multitude of negative emotions and limiting beliefs related to childhood, confidence issues, and much more, that we were able to remove and replace with positive ones that helped her want to be a healthy weight again and feel like the person she wanted to be and remembered once being.

We changed her values to "towards" values about health and weight loss so she now wanted to "be a healthy weight and fit" rather than "Not being fat". It's important to note that values are the motivational drive for something and can be either 'Towards' or 'Away from' something. If you are away from a value related to weight for example, you will either be focused on... " I do NOT want to be fat". But ironically the unconscious mind, which is your 'goal getter' part of the mind, is unable to hear the NOT part so actually hears "I do want to be fat", so sabotages your weight loss efforts once the initial efforts and repulsion from being fat subsides. These people tend to have a pciture on their fridge of them looking really large, and these people tend to be yo-yo dieters. 

By using techniques and interventions within NLP, Time Line Therapy (TM) & Hypnotherapy, I was able to change Sharon's values to be towards 'wanting to be a healthy weight', which means her unconscious mind was able to be focused on the desired goal as opposed to accidentally being focused on 'being fat'. Remember that the energy flows to where the attention goes. So whatever you are focused on you will get in the end. So it's important to ensure all your values are aligned to your goals, which is what I did as part of the sessions with Sharon, making weight loss much easier and more possible.

I was then able to work with Sharon to install more positive beliefs, and create new positive neurological connections and set SMART goals to help align and focus her mind to allow her to achieve them. I then reinforced them using hypnotherapy and providing Sharon with hypno recordings specific to her that she can use regularly to listen to at home on an ongoing basis.

Our sessions were intense & productive but we had a good giggle too. Sharon used to say she enjoyed these sessions each time, even though intense at times but always felt hugely different and more positive after them.

So thank you Sharon for your hard work and may you continue in the same focused, motivated way to reach your goal as you are certainly on target. You are AMAZING!!!

Do you get cross with the fact that you are overeating for what feels like no obvious reason, afterall you may not be hungry or even like what you are eating? Or are you a comfort eater, reaching for food whenever you feel low or unfuilfilled? Our Emotional state has been found to be a big cause of overeating. 

So it's vital we address and deal with our emotions to help stop this destructive behaviour.
With obesity rising fast even with the government putting money into health and food education, the situation is getting worse. This is scary for many individuals and for the country as a whole, as where will it stop?

As a nutritionist I am well aware of what people should be eating so can help pass this information onto my clients easily but what I noticed that many clients seem unable to make that change and follow the diet. Afterall the best balanced diet in the world is no use if it is not followed. 
By considering why this may be the case, I started to research and look into the power of the mind-body connection and really aimed to understand emotional overeating as many clients would blame an emotion for their eating.

I therefore trained as a Master NLP Life Coach and Master Hypnotherapist, allowing me to help my clients, remove these negative emotions and rewire the brain connections into a more positive behaviour, setting new positive beliefs, tools and strategies specific to each client.
My new approach to losing weight has been transformational to my service and more importantly to my clients. Fantastic!!!

So what do you need to do?
1. Keep a food, emotional and lifestyle diary to identify the negative emotions that are spiralling your eating out of control.
2. Have Time Line Therapy (TM) to remove these emotions and beliefs
3. Insert new positive beliefs
4. I then provide tools and strategies for each client to deal with their eating in future
5. And only then do I provide the nutrition advice and support, which the client will now be able to follow easily and effectively as there are no more internal thoughts sabbotaging their goals anymore... leaving them free to move forward.

Please stop suffering in silence as I can really make you feel so much more positive and get the weight loss you require, that also stays off, if you do as I say.

Please give me a call on 01252 706995 or 07795467090 or nicky@mind-bodywellness.co.uk

This blog looks at how the beliefs we relate to certain foods may have an impact on our health greater than the actual nutrition & health implications of the food itself.
For example is: sugar really addictive? Can non alcoholic beer make you drunk? Is butter bad for you? Are vegetables and fruit really good for you? Or does it depend on what you believe? Lots of questions!

Following on from my last BLOG showing that what a person believes about how stress will effect them in fact has an enhanced impact on their health independent to that of the actual stress itself. For example in the low stress group that thought stress was bad for them, they had a greater death rate than those in the high stress group who believed stress was not bad for them. I then wondered would this be similar in how we perceived food.

As a Registered Nutritionist, in addition to Master Hypnotherapist & NLP Life Coach, I am interested in the beliefs people have about foods. With many people believing that carbohydrates are the devils food, through to dairy being really fattening, and sugar being as addictive as morphine, I wondered if our beliefs drive these so called phenomena.

As people have to eat food to live, eating is a very emotive subject, with everyone an “authority”. Additionally we all obtain food related experiences and other peoples’ views throughout our lives, driving our beliefs, so often people lose sight of what is fact and what is a belief at times.

I often suspect that these skewed beliefs, set as early as childhood, influence people’s health as much as the food itself. And so find that when I work with my clients to release these beliefs and install healthier beliefs they are then able to achieve their goals easier and feel better in themselves also.

For example do those that have a strong belief that eating any carbohydrates will be very fattening, are they causing the nocebo effect, (see an earlier blog I did on placebo effect) getting the mind to lay down more fat than someone with a more balanced belief about carbs? Unfortunately I cannot support this either way, however it is interesting that many of my clients who come to me to lose weight believe carbs are the culprit for them being overweight! Obviously a weight problem is multifactorial and these unique individual’s factors are what I aim to tackle and address including their personal, specific beliefs.

So if you believe something is very bad for you, such as we used to believe of butter, are we potentially causing our bodies to react badly towards it more than the actual nutritional effects it produces itself? It’s a thought.

Similarly a study showed that a group of people who were told that they were going to be studied to look at the effects of alcohol consumption on different people. They were sent to a pub and filmed, seeing them get drunker and drunker with each pint. Some people started flirting more with the opposite sex, some girls got teary, most started slurring their words and just general behaviour seen with drunk people. However, and rather amusingly, but surely embarrassingly for some for them, after many of them had a job to stand they were told that the beer they had been drinking was in fact alcohol free! This shows the power of the belief in relation to food and drink. Remember our beliefs can produce a placebo effect, a significant effect on our bodies, so what we believe makes us adapt to fulfil these beliefs.

If we believe we are addicted to sugar does that give our minds permission to crave more because there is a reason why we are doing this... “Afterall, it’s not my fault I can’t stop eating sugar, I’m addicted!” I think this is something we should be thinking about as the evidence is not clear in this area in particular, due to many reasons including a poor model used to understand this area. Are our minds the key to solving this? Or is it more comfortable for us to blame something perceived to be out of our control? Controversial, or do you agree?

This article is more to raise awareness of a new way to think related to food, as may hold the key to a multitude of food related health problems, so if we educate people not only about what we eat but also the way we think about food, that could have a 2 fold increase on the health of the population.

So what I like to get across to my lovely clients is that it’s good to develop a balanced view of food, and focus on the positive beliefs of those known healthy foods, such as fruits and vegetables, to gain both a placebo effect and a healthy physiological effect, from eating them, on their bodies. And in contrast I try to educate them that there is no bad food, it’s all about proportion and balance, so a treat once or twice a week is fine for us.

If you would like a chat about how I can help you then please give me a call on 01252 706995, or nicky@mind-bodywellness.co.uk , as love to help you in whatever area of your life you would like to address.

Amazingly, there were less deaths in the high stress group who did not believe stress was bad for them compared to those in the low stress group who believed stress was bad for them. Total opposite to what we would expect, showing what we believe really does impact on our health!!

To summarise, it’s not so much the stress we deal with but more how we perceive what stress will do to us. Incredible don’t you think?

In fact, the scientists researching these findings concluded that during the 8 years of the study, 182K people had died simply from the belief that stress is bad for them. According to Dr Kelly McGonigal, that equated to the 15th leading cause of death in the US that the study was conducted, was actually due to the Belief that stress was bad for you. Yes, that’s right... a BELIEF featured in the Top 20 leading causes of death!!!

Imagine what would have happened if they had been helped to think differently about stress and change the way that they thought and believed about things!!!!

As covered in my previous blog on Placebo Effect, the belief that stress is bad for you almost acts as a nocebo effect (opposite of the positive placebo effect) making the negative effects of stress more enhanced and damaging.

So what should we do knowing this?

Do we ignore thinking about how stressed we are and just carry on thinking “We’ll be fine”? Do we avoid personally evaluating whether the stress we are under is likely to negatively effect us in case we turn it into a belief? Do we invest in stress management techniques? Or what?

It’s important to remember that what we would like to tell ourselves that we think, doesn’t actually mean we believe it, so never ignore stress if you feel you are stressed, as prolonged, continual stress can be harmful to health especially as most people I suggest do believe that.

This is a very powerful study as shows the power of the mind body connection, and the importance of addressing our belief in factors associated to health,  to aid in the optimum health of individuals, which is a big area of my work.

So what does this mean practically?

Well I would suggest that we should all prevent and address continual high stress levels, but it’s useful to understand that stress now and then is also fine for us, and can be motivating at times particularly if we are “Away from” personalities. However if you feel you find yourself in a situation or thought process that is stuck in a high stress mode then it may be useful to address this. You can get help to release whatever is holding you in this stressful place and  in addition to the corresponding beliefs that need to be removed and replace them with  new positive beliefs congruent to health.

If you would like a chat about how I can help you then please give me a call on 01252 706995, or nicky@mind-bodywellness.co.uk , as love to help you in whatever area of your life you would like to address.

Did you watch that great BBC Horizon programme looking at the Placebo Effect and the power of the mind body connection a couple of weeks ago?

My interest and work is centred round the Mind Body connection, where I see great results in my clients when I help them develop the right mindset and emotional & mental wellbeing, as well as giving them the right advice, support and physical help. Hence loved this programme showing what the midn is capable of.

The Placebo Effect can actually change the chemicals that are produced in our bodies by tapping into our internal, natural, pharmacy (chemical systems) in our brain. In some cases it uses the opium pathways in the brain acting like natural, “homemade” morphine, helping us control our pain. This highlights the Power of the Mind!

Parkinsons Study
For example one study replaced dopamine drugs in a Parkinsons patient with sugar pills, who was told by a doctor that these pills contained an active drug that would be very effective for their Parkinsons. Baring in mind that the patient who normally could not walk, without his normal drugs that provided dopamine, was up and walking around whilst taking the sugar (placebo) pills, just like he was with his dopamine drugs.

What was amazing was that they found his brain produced & released dopamine to a similar level as found in the dopamine drug! Basically due to the patient’s belief that it would work, the brain compensated for the lack of dopamine and made its own instead. How amazing is that?

Electric Shock Study
Another study used electric shocks on a person’s arm, but they used an anaesthetic cream on one point, a moisturising cream on another (control) and the same moisturising cream on another site but this time the subject was told this one was also a powerful anaesthetic.

The subject had to rate the pain for each point. The person found the Lidocaine anaesthetic cream helped reduce the pain, as expected, and the control cream hurt more but what was bizarre was that the patient perceived the pain of the pretend anaethetic cream to be the same as the Lidocaine cream! Just through their belief that it would help.

Need for Belief
So what we have seen is that the Placebo effect requires belief in the intervention for it to work successfully.  Our expectations determine what happens in our bodies and controls what chemicals are produced in our brain. This emphasises the care we need to take with what and how we think. If we think stressful thoughts and beliefs our minds will release those chemicals related to those emotions, not only giving a psychological effect but also a physiological effect on our bodies too.

What’s interesting is that the placebo effect works better when someone is perceived to be an expert, especially if they look medical by dressing in a white coat. Additionally the type of medication effects the Placebo effectiveness. Capsules work better than tablets, and in the UK capsules work better than peccaries, whereas in France peccaries are more accepted than capsules so peccaries work better there. Furthermore, Big capsules tend to work better than small and the more expensive something is, the better the intervention works compared to the value option. For example Nurofen is perceived to work better than basic Ibuprofen, which is the same drug just with different, more expensive packaging! Colour also influences the placebo effect. With red pills working best for pain and blue best for anxiety.

Perception
So what we perceive can affect us hugely, firstly by changing our internal representation, which in turn effects our emotional state and subsequently our behaviour.

If we consider that ‘Perception is Projection’ that means what we perceive is what we project, then it’s important to ensure that what we project is what we want to perceive!! Making sense? So, for example, if you are an optimistic person, you are also likely to be projecting and perceiving the best of a situation, which will change your emotional state for the better and produce the associated good chemicals accordingly, having a better effect on your overall behaviour and health of your body and mind. Sound more preferable than the alternative?

Placebo Problems
Interestingly a study found that the placebo effect was able to alleviate a range of issues and problems including insomnia, nausea, pain & ADHD plus many more. However, a Harvard study showed although subjects had relief from placebo pills for 3 weeks but once pills were stopped symptoms returned.

Unfortunately the placebo effect generally relies on deception as we need to believe the intervention is really going to work. So the big question is how do we harness this effect ethically?

What’s interesting is that there is a strong overlap between hypnosis and placebo effect with the hypnotherapist being able to help guide the clients mind to tap into the latent power of their mind and the resultant mind body connection; a very powerful process, providing great results.

In fact many dentists are now using hypnotherapy to extract teeth effectively... even wisdom teeth, as a replacement for anaesthetic.

Relationship between doctor & patient is vital for health and recovery of patient tapping into the placebo effect.

Poor doctor-patient relationship can result in a “nocebo effect” i.e. the doctor actually undoes any good done by the drugs or surgery. A very worrying fact, what with stories from patients and my own personal experiences, of bad bed side manners, for instance on one occasion my surgeon stated “this procedure is unlikely to help” just before I went under for my procedure! Now, I understand their need to manage patients’ expectations, but stopping someone believing in the intervention is unhelpful , potentially derailing the effectiveness of the operation and therefore unacceptable.

One study into acupuncture found that 42% relief was found when a patient experienced no interaction from their doctor/therapist but 62% with good doctor-patient interaction. Giving a 20% Placebo effect of good contact with the patient/client!

So in summary, the Placebo effect is REAL and widely accepted by those who were sceptical 20 years earlier. Harvard continues to study and understand the placebo effect and how we can tap into it ethically in the future. But stop worrying, panic over, as hypnosis helps us tap into this fantastic power of the mind very effectively.  If you would like help to enhance this effect in yourself please give me a call and I will help you to do so in whatever area of your life that you need help with.