After writing my blog last week I was amazed how many people read and responded to it. I normally get 5 or 6 people reading my blogs. But I suppose it resonated for people.
Why am I writing another blog so soon about my weight loss journey? Not much could have changed in just a week. A couple of pounds I suppose, and t-shirt that showed every ripple of fat a few months ago now fits me, and even hangs quite loose.
The reason I wanted to write this blog was to talk more about how I have approached losing weight this time.
This week, along with some wonderful colleagues from across our Group I have been learning about Restorative Practice and co-creating a training programme to help embed this approach. We have been tracing by the amazing Tom and Anna from Restorative Labs. You might be wondering what this has got to do with losing weight. Well one of the first things we explored was the onion theory. As you know onions have layers (I can tell you are way ahead of me here), and yes we have layers too. This theory starts with the outer layer of the onion, as this is what is most visible, our behaviours if you like, what we do what the world can see. Our behaviours have an impact on us and on the our environment, which you could suggest is the strong smell and stinging eyes you get when you cut into the onion. Underneath the surface layer of our behaviours lays our thoughts and feelings and the world we are in. Our thoughts and feelings are informed by our values and beliefs. Our thoughts and feelings influence how we behave. Underneath the layers of thoughts and feelings, and values and beliefs lay our needs. Whether our needs are met or not influences what we are thinking and feeling, based on our map of our world which is created in part by our values and beliefs, this has a direct influence on how we behave. The premise of restorative practice is that if we always just tackle the behaviour we witness we are unlikely to address the cause of the behaviour and therefore we are unlikely to instigate lasting change, whatever that behaviour might be.
This got me reflecting on my weight loss and help me articulate what I want to achieve. I think I was starting to use this theory of the onion without really naming the processes. For me it makes perfect sense and feels natural. It is very similar to Dr Susan Davids’ Emotional Agility and Paul McGee’s Stop Understand and Move On. It resonates more as chop onions most days and see those layers and live through the impact of cutting a juicy onion. Let me talk you through it. The challenge I have always faced with my weight is my behaviour towards food. I use food as an emotional crutch. Any negative or hard thoughts we create an urge to eat, any boredom would result in reaching for a packet of crisps or a biscuit. I am also a lazy thinker, this means I can easily fall into a routine of choosing the same thing to eat everyday, and if it gave me a dopamine hit it would become my go to. So crisps, pies, chocolate and fizzy drinks were my staple lunch. At a weekend I would drink 4 or 5 cans of lager with 3 or 4 packets of crisps or a big bag of peanuts. If i felt sad I would go to the shop and buy a packet of biscuits (normally hobnobs) and scoff the lot. I would never choose fruit and rarely drank water. This has been a pattern for all of my adult life. On and off I would go on a diet and lose some weight, the problem was I would always fall back into my old habits. I would always just try and solve my problem by changing my behaviour without ever addressing what lays in the layers below. I was not addressing the unmet needs that was causing the unhelpful eating habits.
This time is different, I have decided to start looking at my thoughts and feelings and I am beginning to understand what those unmet needs are. In a nutshell the prevailing need is to feel safe, to feel cared for. Which seems quite simple. The issue is that my belief structure needs some examination and adjusting. Throughout my childhood, my Mother reinforced the belief that personal happiness was the absence of sadness and pain. This clearly was impossible to achieve, however you could momentarily fend off sadness and pain by having something fatty or sweet. As my childhood progressed and my parents relationship fell apart, sadness and emotional pain became more frequent so this behaviour became more and more entrenched.
Therefore the first thing I have to do is to re-write my beliefs on happiness. If you have been reading my blogs for a while you pick up a theme that I have been working on doing this for a number of years. I am not quite there yet. This is a belief I have had for most of my life, and it is reinforced by the culture we live in. Starting this weight loss programme and learning more about restorative approaches has helped massively, I now feel I am on the home stretch. Being truly happy is accepting that it comes with the cost of feeling sad and experiencing emotional pain. Feeling safe is not dependent on not feeling sad.
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