How I talk about Beyond Chocolate

I am training to be a Chocolate Fairy. At a recent session, one of the more memorable discussions for me was that of honesty and testimony: how we remain authentic in our work spreading the Beyond Chocolate message.

Now, I really struggle with the prospect of being a Chocolate Fairy who tells people about how wonderful Beyond Chocolate and how much it’s changed my life, because I am still overweight.  I find it hard to believe that anyone would appreciate the changes that have occurred in my life over the past 3 years.  This may be true for some people I will speak to, they simply won’t be able to see the differences as my fat will be all they can see.  However, this assumption is largely based on my own insecurities and on my unsuccessful attempts to talk to people about Beyond Chocolate and elicit a positive response.

It occurred to me over the course of the training weekend why that was.  I always consider myself an honest and open person, I love to talk, especially when the subject is “me”.  At least that’s what I tell myself.  However, on closer examination I realise I don’t give people the details so I don’t really get the point across.  I talk about Beyond Chocolate in a more general sense.  I dabble in a bit of diet-bashing and make some very obvious comments to the detriment of the fashion industry, but I never really talk about my experiences or my relationship with food.  In fact when we were asked to think about this I realised I had blocked a lot of the pain from my memory.  

I had forgotten about the almost permanent feeling of guilt I had when I thought about food, which was pretty much all of the time.  The anxiety that I felt around eating food in restaurants or in friend’s homes, how I made choices based on whatever diet I was “on” at any one time instead of what I wanted or what my body was telling me that I needed.  I remember asking my friend on several occasions to fry onions in water instead of oil, she always accommodated but the shame I feel looking back at those times because I would binge on my own later.

The lack of guilt around food is the most significant change.  I don’t feel guilty eating food I enjoy anymore.  I feel unpleasant and experience regret when I eat food that feels wrong in my body.  What that food is depends on what day or time of day it is and what kind of mood I’m in and what I have been doing.  

Before I was constantly sneaking food and eating it in secret.  The boxes of chocolates I have bought under the guise of them being a gift then taking them home and guiltily consuming them at speed until the sticky chocolate clags up my mouth and I feel so thirsty and sick I swear I’ll never do it again.

I can’t say that I never binge now but I can say that I sometimes go very long periods of time without doing so.  I am going through a difficult stage at the moment and my episodes of overeating and bingeing have increased.  But I have something that I never had before… awareness.  I am not halfway through the box of chocolates before I realise it.   I know what I’m doing and I know why, most of the time, and I have tools to help me explore what I’m really stuffing down – usually anger.  Or what I am replacing with the food - usually love.

I know things about myself now that I simply had no idea about before my work with Beyond Chocolate.  I know that I overeat instead of living because it’s safer, nothing will change and I won’t have to face up to the fact that I create my destiny and things don’t just happen to those who are fortunate enough.  This is my work in progress and it won’t end.  I always want to be working to better myself but I also want to appreciate how far I have come, and it’s only by being honest and recalling what my life was like when I was endlessly dieting with no real hope of success, in any form, that I can truly see that.

I hope that I will run workshops one day, if I want to, because I do want to shout about it.  I want to scream that you are not alone and that it doesn’t have to be like this, to all of the women who feel that there is no hope and who are so tired they simply cannot go on in this battle with themselves over their bodies.   I want to do this because it’s true for me and my work with Beyond Chocolate is one of the most authentic things in my life.


Abbi Welch is training to be a Chocolate Fairy. If you would like to join our team, get an intensive dose of Beyond Chocolate for yourself as well as learn how to offer support to other women who want to stop dieting and have a healthy relationship with food and their body, read more about our Professional Training Programme.

Letter to a co-worker

Dear co-worker


I have been working with you for a few months now and some things have come to my attention, which I may be able to help you with.


I gather (from our colleagues) that you have recently gained a lot of weight and I know that there are a number of pressures in your life. Your husband is ill, your mother has just been diagnosed with dementia and your son recently lost his job. You are working full time to keep the family going.


Since I started work here, I have observed that you eat non-stop from the time you arrive at work until you leave.


I know that it may sound presumptuous of me, but I do know what that’s like. I have been in places like that before. Sometimes I’m in that place myself, even after working with Beyond Chocolate for a couple of years. The difference between us, I suspect, is that I know when I’m over-eating and can choose to continue or stop, whereas you just eat – because it helps.


I acknowledge that eating helps. It helps in so many situations and in so many ways – but ultimately eating when we’re not hungry will cause us to put on weight. If we don’t know we’re doing it, we can’t choose whether to continue or stop. If we don’t know that we eat because we’re unhappy or frustrated or bored, we can’t decide whether that helps or not and we can’t decide whether we want to stop, or not.


I spent many years eating out of boredom, anger, fear, upset, and also because food was there, because it was a meal time, because someone offered me some food, because (I thought) I loved food and just wanted to eat lots of it. Over these years I attempted to counter-balance the eating with a range of diet and exercise plans, but I never looked at why I was over-eating in the first place. And, not one of the diets ever helped me to get to the bottom of my over-eating – all the diets were interested in was reducing my bottom ;)


What changed for me was the moment when I went on to amazon hoping against hope that there was a new diet out there, one that would work first time and forever ... and what amazon recommended for me was ‘Beyond Chocolate’, by Sophie and Audrey Boss.


I don’t hesitate to recommend it to you.


With warmest wishes
Gretel

Beyond Chocolate ‘Mistake’ Number 9 – thinking we can diet AND do Beyond Chocolate

Gretel Hallet, is a Trained Chocolate Fairy and is running the Getting Started half day workshop in Norwich - perfect for beginners to experience the core principles of Beyond Chocolate and equally great as a refresher for any Beyond Chocolater. If you live in East Anglia and want to know more about Beyond Chocolate or her workshops, get in touch with Gretel.




Ok, so maybe it’s not a mistake, but it may well be a delusion. Imagine someone who had been a fervent believer in a religion for many years, suddenly deciding they didn’t believe any more, but they carry on with all their religious observances, just in case. A ‘saved’ dieter who continues dieting while starting to work with the Beyond Chocolate principles, is someone who is hedging their bets and will possibly end up not ‘doing’ either ‘properly’.


I can see the attraction, though. It may be that someone has been dieting for many many years. Dieting is familiar territory; it feels ‘safe’ and ‘known’. Dieters know exactly what to expect; they sign up, they buy the books, special food and equipment, they tell friends and relations so that their food can be ‘policed’ and keep them being ‘good’, they make charts to plot the progress of their weight loss, they go to clubs with lots of other women in the same boat as them, to be weighed and praised (or condoled) and they talk the same language as all the other women out there on diets. Constantly.


Beyond Chocolaters venture out into completely new territory. There aren’t that many other Beyond Chocolaters out there in comparison with the major diet companies. There’s nothing to buy apart from the book. No 'special food' (just the rather bewildering concept of being able to choose from ALL foods!), no gadgets. Beyond Chocolaters may find it tricky to talk openly about what they’re doing because there’s no shared vocabulary with the majority of other women. And, if they’ve come to Beyond Chocolate from many years of dieting, there may well be re-education to be undertaken with near and dear ones who think they are helping by ‘policing’ all food and drink. Charts may help, but are not a requirement. Weight loss can take a back seat to some of the other benefits of Beyond Chocolate and the Beyond Chocolater can find that her relationship with food and her own body takes over from the initial desire to lose weight.


All of this can be isolating to the new Beyond Chocolater. A changing relationship with food and her body can (in some cases) result in weight gain and this can further alienate the new Beyond Chocolater from her former dieting buddies – not only has she dropped out of the choir, but LOOK! IT DOESN’T WORK! SHE’S GAINED WEIGHT!! And this can lead the new Beyond Chocolater to think, ‘Ok, I know I can lose weight on a diet, and I do understand and believe in the Beyond Chocolate principles, so if I combine the two, I’ll lose weight AND improve my relationship with food and my body.’


And maybe she can. I personally can’t see how the two can be compatible. But that’s just me. One of the beauties of Beyond Chocolate is that everyone gets to make their own choices – if it works for you, keep doing it. But, at some point, I suspect, you will reach a point at which a firm decision will be needed – do you continue dieting or do you commit to working with the Beyond Chocolate principles? I'd be curious to hear from anyone who can do both.

Beyond Chocolate Mistake number 8 – Thinking we can do it on our own

Gretel Hallet, is a trained Chocolate Fairy and is running the Getting Started half day workshop in Norwich. If you live in East Anglia and want to know more about Beyond Chocolate, get in touch with Gretel.

As I’ve said before on this blog, diet clubs have sprung up like low-fat, low-calorie mushrooms all round the town where I live. Their cheerful notices feature a slim woman crouching by a set of weighing scales and give details of the nearest club to the notice. One of the reasons I suspect that these diet clubs are so popular is because they offer dieters a chance to be in a room with other people in the same boat. And we like being with other people who speak the same language as us, understand the issues we are facing, sympathise with our failures and celebrate our successes – they understand. 

From what I gather from women who attend these groups, they go mostly for the support, not necessarily for the products or the weighing in etc. I have even met women who carry on going to the classes even if they’re not actively dieting, because they enjoy the support and company of women who speak their language – and, as I’m sure you all know, the language of dieting is very pervasive among women. 

Beyond Chocolate Principle Number 9 is ‘Support Yourself’. Right at the end of the list, along with ‘Be Your Own Guru’, these principles can be overlooked by ex-dieters keen to get to grips with formerly forbidden foods and developing their own self-awareness. But these principles are just as important as the earlier, more ‘sexy’ ones. 

If we attempt to work with the Beyond Chocolate principles without input from other like-minded women, we run the risk of becoming isolated, feeling hopeless and eventually giving up and re-enrolling in our former diet class with our former diet buddies (they’ll all still be there!). 

We are social animals, we humans; we need the company of others and particularly those who are walking the same way as us. Swimming against the tide is for salmon! Being a Beyond Chocolater can be a lonely thing; we are still comparatively rare – so when there is a chance of meeting up with others, we should seize it with both hands. 

Spending time with other Beyond Chocolaters is a wonderfully reviving experience – even spending half an hour a day on the Forum can re-vitalise us and, perhaps, nudge us gently back on track if we’ve been veering off into a cul-de-sac of diet-ridden despair. 

Even if we’ve been working with Beyond Chocolate for some time, it’s still vitally important to seek that validation and support from other women, particularly from those who are just setting out – they can have some startlingly valuable insights into things we may have forgotten about. 

Being with other Beyond Chocolaters is one of the best ways to ‘Support’ ourselves – so I would encourage you all to look at the list of courses available across the country and see if you can get to one of them – you certainly won’t regret it. If there isn't a course near you, take a look at our membership which gives you access to the forum and monthly phone-ins.

 

Above all, support yourself – it’s harder to do anything alone. 

How do you support yourself?

Beyond Chocolate ‘mistake’ number 7 – thinking we can ignore Principle Number Eight ...

Gretel Hallet, is a trained Chocolate Fairy and is running the Getting Started half day workshop in Norwich. If you live in East Anglia and want to know more about Beyond Chocolate, get in touch with Gretel. 

A quick check in your Beyond Chocolate Book will remind you that Principle Number Eight is MOVE!


And it’s ‘Move’ rather than ‘Exercise’ because Beyond Chocolate wants to embrace a much wider definition than we might understand from the word ‘Exercise’. The very word ‘Move!’ (with an exclamation mark) opens up an intoxicating world of possibilities.


For many exhausted and demoralised ex-dieters, ‘exercise’ is the enemy – the stick that can be used to beat us with – not only are we over-weight but we’re clearly couch potatoes as well - and yet, it can be so hard to haul ourselves back out after a full day’s work and face the skinny women in lycra and the trainer who appears to have been welded out of steel and has no concept of mercy or tiredness.


And when it comes to our weight, simplistic advice is handed down with an air of disapproval – Just eat less and exercise more – well, if it was that easy, we’d all be fit and slim. In the real world it’s not that easy. Exercise classes aren’t suitable for all of us and/or we just don’t like gyms. But we come back to the fact that if we want to look after our long-term health, we do need to move our bodies. Enlightened health care professionals will acknowledge that being over-weight but fit is better for us than being slim and unfit. Slim people can still suffer from heart attacks, strokes, osteoporosis and other conditions related to a lack of exercise.


There really is no getting away from it – Principle Number Eight is essential for health. What we need to ask ourselves is:


a) What am I moving for?
b) How do I enjoy moving?


If the answer to (a) is something along the lines of ‘Because I have to’, then the answer to (b) is going to be crucial. If we attempt to commit to a course of action that we don’t enjoy, there’s very little incentive to keep it up. So, if moving doesn’t come naturally, we need to find something that’s fun to do and that we would gladly do frequently enough to benefit our health.


If the answer to (a) is ‘because I want to lose weight and tone up’, then the answer to (b) is equally important. Because even if we are committed Movers, it’s still better for us in the long run if we enjoy the moving we do and look forward to doing it. And, if we have a specific goal in mind, it’s worth researching which form of moveing will best support us to achieve that – we could also experiment with different types of movement to find out which is the most effective for us.


If the answer to (a) is ‘because I want to take part in the 2012 Olympics’ then the answer to (b) is probably academic – you will need to train very hard in whatever sport you were hoping to represent – and the best of luck to you!


So if you are a Beyond Chocolater who thinks she can work with the other 9 principles and ignore ‘Move!’, I’m afraid it’s not so. All ten principles are intended to work together and ‘Move!’ is an essential and integral part of the whole package. I would encourage you to get out there and move in as many different ways as you can to see which ones work best for you and which ones you enjoy.

Beyond Chocolate ‘mistake’ number 6 – thinking that we are ‘above all that dieting stuff and don’t need to make any effort any more’

Gretel Hallet, is a trained Chocolate Fairy and is running the Getting Started half day workshop in Norwich. If you live in East Anglia and want to know more about Beyond Chocolate, get in touch with Gretel. 


Thank you again to Truffle35 for reminding me of this (remarkably subtle) ‘mistake’, which is probably the outcome of a hostile Gremlin (for those unfamiliar with the term – a ‘Gremlin’ is our own internal saboteur(se) that tells us we’re not thin enough, pretty enough, successful enough etc and that we’re doing it all wrong and that we’ll never do anything right etc etc) ...


In her comment to my first blog post in this series Truffle35 said, “The great news, though, is that I don't have to think about what I'm going to eat at breakfast, lunch and dinner as soon as I wake up, I don’t have to remind myself how little that will have to be, I don’t have to wonder what I'm going to do if/when I'm hungry but am ‘not allowed’ to eat etc. The effort I have to make, though huge, ‘only’ involves three things: being aware of my gremlins and shoeing them away, being aware of why I’m eating and how, in order to stop when I’ve had enough, and thirdly, actually STOPPING when I have had enough! This is the key, but I can’t do it without the first two being in place. (At least not a lot of the time…)”


You’ll notice that Truffle35 has spotted the Gremlin’s interference there – and it may be that we don’t notice that little voice in our heads at first. It’s very sneaky and this time it’s saying, ‘Oh now that you’re not dieting, you don’t need to bother about anything, you can just eat whatever you like and as much as you like!’ And it is a great relief, as Truffle35 says, not to have the day’s food eked out by the latest diet, or force ourselves to eat huge bowls of free (undressed) pasta or salads because they’re ‘allowed’.


But the bad news box on this liberation contains the words, ‘you do have to work at Beyond Chocolate too’. That may seem obvious, but it is surprising how many new Beyond Chocolaters think that stopping dieting means not having to make any kind of effort around food any more forever. And, of course, it’s not that simple – very little in life is, I find.


So, if you have reached the point beyond the dieting and bingeing where you are thinking, ‘This isn’t working,’ it may be because you’re not actually working at it either. It’s a two way street – you work at your relationship with food via Beyond Chocolate, which starts helping you with your relationship with food and your body. The results can be subtle or dramatic, slow or roller-coaster fast, comforting or invigorating – but trust me, there are results.


In Truffle35’s words, ‘It is hard work but this is liberating, whereas dieting is like an imprisonment.’

Beyond Chocolate ‘mistake’ number 5 – Just Not Dieting

Gretel Hallet, is a trained Chocolate Fairy and is running the Getting Started half day workshop in Norwich. If you live in East Anglia and want to know more about Beyond Chocolate, get in touch with Gretel. 

In response to my first blog post in the Beyond Chocolate ‘mistakes’ series, Truffle 35 said...


“I have realised I've been making a HUGE mistake. I've been expecting not to have to work very hard (at all?!) on the 'listen to your body/satiety levels' front. I thought that by just eating what I fancied, I would stop when I had enough. Not so. It takes a LOT of awareness and courage and, therefore, mental energy to stop. I thought stopping, even just pausing, would be easy, and worse, would not be necessary. How wrong I was. I've learned this lesson the hard way - I've put on a few pounds/my trousers don't fit so well (I haven't weighed myself for a year).”


Certainly, I agree with Truffle35 – this is another ‘mistake’ that ex-dieters can make. Once we’ve made the decision to stop dieting, it can be difficult to accept that, if we want to work with Beyond Chocolate, it’s not going to be a piece of cake (deliberate pun!). In fact, it may take many many pieces of cake before we realise that we’re not actually working with Beyond Chocolate at all – we’re just not dieting. We may think, as Truffle35 did, that our bodies will know what they’re doing and we will stop eating automatically when we reach ‘full’ and/or ‘satisfied’. But why should we? If we remember the diets we’ve been on – what in those diets would lead us to believe that our bodies will be anything other than confused by this sudden freedom?


For example, I spent 2 years of my life never allowing myself to become hungry – my diet guru at the time warned me that to do so would lead inevitably to uncontrolled eating and that the only way to avoid that would be to eat every 2 hours regardless of whether I was hungry or not. So, when I stopped listening to that diet guru, I no longer knew what it felt like to be hungry. And, if I didn’t know how it felt to be hungry, how would I know when I had satisfied that hunger?


Beyond Chocolate has taught me how to really listen to my body, to respond to genuine hunger and to recognise when I’ve ‘hit the spot’ as regards satiety and/or satisfaction. I am able to recognise subtle gradations of hunger from a realisation that it’s been a while since I last ate, right up to ‘get out of my way, I’ve got to eat NOW!’. I know that letting myself get that hungry is likely to lead to panic induced over-eating, so I choose to eat at an earlier stage and am then able to spot the (often very small) signs that I’ve had enough.


I remember watching an intuitive eater once who pushed her plate away and said, ‘I’ve had an elegant sufficiency, thank you!’ and that’s how I like to feel at the end of a meal or snack – energised and ready for the next thing I have to do, not weighed down and sluggish because I’ve over-eaten.


So the question is, are you just not dieting, or are you really working with the Beyond Chocolate principles?

Beyond Chocolate Mistake Number 4 - Despairing that we will NEVER feel ‘normal’ around food

Gretel Hallet, is a trained Chocolate Fairy and is running the Getting Started half day workshop in Norwich. If you live in East Anglia and want to know more about Beyond Chocolate, get in touch with Gretel. 

I can remember this feeling very well. I used to regularly despair that I would never be ‘normal’ around food, that I would forever have to ‘watch myself’ around it...and that I would always ‘feel fat’. If you know what this feeling is like, you may also know that it  can be compounded by the belief that, really, we ought to go back to dieting, because that provided structure and there’s no structure with Beyond Chocolate and we need to be told what to do!


This is a moment where we need to calm down, take deep breaths, go back to basics. This may be the moment where we go back to the book, or decide to focus on just one principle and do it just once and build again on small successes. Gradually we will reach a point where we aren’t watching ourselves with the hawk-like vigilance required for dieting, we will begin to trust ourselves to make the right food choices.  


We may begin to feel happier in our bodies, regardless of weight, shape or size – this is what we’ve got, this is us! And always reach out for support – the Forum, a sympathetic friend, any way that helps.
And (because I have an eye for the main chance!) how about attending a Beyond Chocolate workshop? Even if you’ve been on one before, there’s nothing like a top-up, meeting other like-minded women – you never know, if they’re newbies and you’ve been working with Beyond Chocolate for a while, you may realise quite how much you know and how far you’ve come. And that’s got to make you feel good.


Someone commented after one of my previous blogs that it all sounded too hard, that she didn’t want to have to ‘watch herself’ all the time ... well, I can assure you all that there will come a time when you realise that’s not true any more. I keep an eye on myself but only at those moments when I tune in to check whether this is hunger I’m feeling, or boredom or upset or happiness – because I can then choose what to do about it. The process has become semi-automatic for me and is no longer something I do mechanically, as I did at the start.


I have now reached a point where I feel ‘normal’ around food and where dieting no longer has any appeal at all. It’s a great place to be – join me!

Beyond Chocolate ‘mistakes’ number 3 – Picking the Most Challenging Bit to do First

Gretel Hallet, is a trained Chocolate Fairy and is running the Getting Started half day workshop in Norwich. If you live in East Anglia and want to know more about Beyond Chocolate, get in touch with Gretel. 

In Beyond Chocolate terms this can mean going straight for the ‘Stocking Up’ part of ‘Eat Whatever You Want’ and then bingeing on chocolate/cake/crisps (delete as applicable), throwing up your hands in despair because ‘it doesn’t work’ and going back to the diet club.


It’s not possible to hear everything all at once, so often, in our experience, women who attend Beyond Chocolate Workshops remember the bits that appeal to them most. And what often appeals most is ‘stocking up’.


I can quite understand why stocking up is so attractive. After years of dieting and being told what to eat and when and how much, an apparent ‘free for all’ is very appealing. The newly liberated ex-dieter rushes out to the supermarket and fills her trolley with formerly ‘forbidden foods’. Then she finds over the next few weeks that the presence of those foods in her house turns her into a Munch Monster. She just can’t stop eating those foods and so she decides it doesn’t work and stops buying them.


However, the bit she probably didn’t quite remember from the workshop was the bit that said, (like ‘Eat Whatever You Want’), stocking up isn’t a licence to binge – it’s about working on transforming our feelings about formerly ‘forbidden’ foods and starting to view them as ‘normal’ foods. And it takes nerves of steel and utter determination to see it through. For me it has meant giant bars of Cadbury’s Milk Chocolate broken into pieces and put in a glass jar on my desk at work. It’s meant another glass jar of Cadbury’s mini eggs on my desk at home. And every time I eat some of the chocolate – I fill the jar up again. 


To the top.


Every time.


For some of us it’s also about ensuring we have more than we can possibly eat in one go all the time, providing a reassuring ‘plenty’ to avoid the feeling of possible famine (or ‘running out’ or feeling we ‘just have to finish up that last little bit’).


And so it’s possible that this actually isn’t the best place to start for new Beyond Chocolaters – it’s certainly not the easiest place to start and it’s so far from our previous experiences as dieters, that it’s more likely to make us feel that we’ve ‘failed’.


If you reach this point, I suggest looking back at the other 9 principles on offer and choosing one of them instead to work with. Why not ensure yourself some success at the outset?


The 10 principles are intended to be used in conjunction with each other, in balance. So taking one out to over-focus on may well be counterproductive, particularly when you are just starting out. Be kind to yourself first and foremost.

Beyond Chocolate 'mistake' number two - worrying about 'falling off the wagon'.

Gretel Hallet, is a trained Chocolate Fairy and is running the Getting Started half day workshop in Norwich. If you live in East Anglia and want to know more about Beyond Chocolate, get in touch with Gretel. 


Dieting necessitates will-power. The serious dieter knows she has to stick to the diet to the letter in order to achieve the weight loss promised. This, as many of us know, isn’t as easy as it sounds. Life has a habit of throwing curve balls at the serious dieter – a sudden Wedding, or being invited to dinner or an outbreak of cream cakes at work. On occasions like these, the dieter can choose either to enter monastic solitude in order to avoid temptation, or throw herself off the wagon with abandon. This can then lead to a full scale binge as the (now ex) dieter thinks, ‘Oh well, I’ve blown it now, I may as well eat what I like. I’ll start again on Monday and this time I’ll stick to it.’


And so when we reach the point where we have decided NEVER to diet again, and have found Beyond Chocolate, we may bring with us all the fears and language of the serial dieter.


Worrying about ‘falling off the wagon’ often occurs around those binge times, when all the principles seem to have gone to the four winds and we find ourselves again at the bottom of a biscuit barrel (or 12 pack of crisps or whatever is your binge food of choice). As the wonderful ladies on the Forum will tell you, there’s no wagon to fall off any more. Every binge, every eating opportunity is another learning opportunity. We can observe ourselves with curiosity and compassion instead of beating ourselves up verbally or mentally. We can decide if we want to carry on eating like this or not. We can decide what we do next. Personally I shrug my shoulders and move on – it happened, sometimes I know why, sometimes I don’t ... either way, it’s been a valuable experience for me. It’s another success – at least now I know I’m bingeing!


Knowledge is power – knowing what I’m doing gives me the choice to continue or stop and do something else. I have found over the last couple of years that my binges have reduced in quantity and volume to the point where someone else might not consider them binges at all. Eventually I suspect they will stop all together, but for now I’m working with what happens as it happens, and I’m very glad to be totally ‘off the diet wagon’ forever.

Dieting 'mistakes' and a little tough love

The helpful advice on the internet is now focusing on ‘Your Dieting Mistakes’. These include; missing meals, skipping carbs, eating less, not exercising, ‘all or nothing’ mentality, keeping ‘forbidden foods’ in the house and not avoiding ‘traps’ like cake shops on the way to work ...


I personally think that the first big mistake is to go on a diet! And I’m delighted that none of this is relevant to me any more (apart from the exercise bit, but that’s another blog!), but I know from personal experience and also from the conversations on the Beyond Chocolate Forum, that some of the same issues arise for many of us as we work with the principles. So over the next couple of blog posts, I’ll have a look at some of the more common Beyond Chocolate ‘Mistakes’, and what we can do about them instead ... stand by for some Tough Love!


Mistake number one: Assuming that it’s not going to work.
Let’s face it; Beyond Chocolate is a pretty revolutionary idea. For the last 40 odd years women have looked in one direction only for how to manage their eating – the diet industry has had a field day. It’s become almost expected for women to start a diet before weddings (their own and other people’s), in time for ‘bikini season’, before and after major events that involve a lot of eating (Easter and Christmas), and sometimes just because a friend wants to do a diet and has asked for support.


There is a growing movement in the States and over here that is challenging the notion that dieting is the best way to manage over-eating and/or lose weight etc and Beyond Chocolate is in the vanguard of that movement. However, it will take time to change attitudes and stop women from turning instantly to dieting, rather than investigating the alternatives.


Almost no-one (apart from Beyond Chocolaters!) will start a diet assuming it’s not going to work, so why begin Beyond Chocolate assuming it won’t work? Perhaps having a clearer idea of what you want from Beyond Chocolate at the outset might help with that feeling that ‘it’s not working because I haven’t lost weight.’ Why not turn it around and say, ‘It is working because ...’ and look at your successes rather than your perceived ‘failures’. For example, do you sometimes eat when you are hungry instead of always at meal times? Do you respond to your body’s request for a particular food? Do you buy clothes you like regardless of the size on the label? Do you exercise because you enjoy it rather than because it might help you lose weight? All of these are successes and can be celebrated.


Of course, at the end of the day, if what you really want is to lose weight, you may have to be prepared to either work consistently with the principles and/or wait while your body processes this new change in your eating habits. Remember how long it took you to reach this point – how long you’ve been dieting/bingeing – it could well take time to turn it around again. Diets promise dramatic weight loss in less and less time – Beyond Chocolate offers a way to completely free us from yo-yo dieting hell, and I personally am prepared to wait for as long as it takes.