I saw today that Danni Minogue has posted pics of herself in a bikini as she is about to become a judge on Britain and Irelands next top model. I for one thought she looked gorgeous before she lost the weight and am only sad for her if it truly has taken her so long and to lose so much weight to feel good about herself.  She said in You Magazine that she used to dislike the way she looked before she lost the weight. This is the second time in a week I have heard a beautiful woman celebrity say publicly they were not happy with how they look. Last week on Loose women the stunning Shobna Gulati said she had  Body Dysmorphia and didn’t even own a mirror! I nearly fell off my chair she’s clearly absolutely gorgeous; what is it these girls and thousands like them don’t see, that is visible to everyone else around them?  I would love to help her. On reflection, I don’t know why I was surprised as each week in my clinic and at my Think More Eat Less seminars, I meet people who literally loathe the way they look. Before I teach them how to really lose weight for good, without dieting, I help them to increase their self esteem and feel better about themselves. This is essential as if you are going to make long term changes, you have to first believe that you are worth the effort. If you don’t, you will kid yourself for a few weeks, go without things you like, and then think it’s all too much like hard work and go back to doing what you did before.

The reason getting the right mind-set and increasing self esteem and self worth is so important, is that a diet is something you “go on” and then of course by default “come off” when you have achieved your goal. I once met a woman at a seminar who thanked me profusely for what I had taught her, and said it was going to change her life forever; she then told me that over the previous ten years she had lost 20 stone!  As I gasped for breath she explained, “I have lost 4 stone, and put it back on again 5 times”. If she had really felt she was worth the effort and been taught the right mind-set, the weight would have stayed off the first time.

I help people lose weight, that’s one of the things I do, but on it’s own that’s not a worthwhile enough cause. People have to feel good about themselves physically and emotionally.  A HUGE part of that is accepting that we are not designed to be stick thin. Women especially are not designed to be a straight line, we are designed to be curvaceous. Of course obesity is a huge problem in terms of health, but many people who want to lose weight have very little to lose and don’t feel attractive unless they reach the elusive size zero. Why is it that so many women aspire to this? Clearly for almost everyone this is only achieved by a life of deprivation and a strict regime. That lifestyle is so restrictive, that without a resident chef who can make you raw food meals on a daily basis and a personal trainer who can enforce a strict exercise regime, it’s almost impossible to achieve without a phenomenal effort and denial.  Not for me thanks! I want to be slim and healthy, but I have no desire for a 6 pack due to a lack of  natural body fat. Lets not forget, all prisoners of war had a six pack, male and female.

So when I see superslim celebrities and supermodels I certainly don’t aspire to be like them: in fact I count my blessings that I am normal! Of course I do care about how I look, and I happily do what it takes to maintain a healthy weight (I’m a size 10 and don’t possess a pair of scales – if my jeans get to tight I pay more attention to what I eat until they fit comfortably again). I exercise 2-3 times per week, a mix of Yoga and cardiovascular training,  because I want to be able to eat pavlova when I am out without having to worry, and not least because I don’t want to be having joint replacements due to inactivity or weight gain, or increase my chances of Cardiovascular and other obesity related diseases. If I was a celebrity or a supermodel living under the constant pressure of having to look super slim and super fit – I would look at people like me (and you?) who can enjoy everything in moderation and say “I want to be like her!”

So perhaps it’s no surprise that Danni and Shobna have both felt unhappy with how they look. They are both in an industry that perpetuates the myth that skinny is happy. I have worked with enough actors to know these feelings are alarmingly commonplace in this industry. Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder, but no one is born feeling ugly, we become programmed to feel like that based on other peoples perceptions and pressures. I worked with one client who suffered from body dysmorphia who was slim and beautiful, but saw herself as ugly and fat because of a spiteful comment made when she was 14 by a teacher of all people! Someone who was in a position of trust. She was clearly a beautiful popular girl at school, and this teacher (who clearly had her own issues) felt compelled to “put her straight” and tell her in no uncertain terms that she was “nothing special” and that she was wrong if she thought she was anything other than plain. She believed her. Twenty years later she was still living with the effects of that one comment which had held her back on so many levels. It took just 2 sessions of Thought Field Therapy to collapse those negative feelings and some hypnosis to reinstate her own genuine feelings of self worth that she was born with. Life changing stuff.

Friends often ask me how on earth I cope with working with people that have so many problems and feel so bad about themselves. Not just weight loss clients, but also people suffering from anxiety or depression. I always tell them that I actually look forward to meeting someone for the first time with any one of these challenges, as with the right help I know they can deconstruct all the rubbish that has been programmed in from other people, delete it, and begin to replace it with a healthy dose of self worth. That doesn’t mean telling everyone they are lovely and making it all airy fairy, and British culture is very quick to cut anyone down who comes across as arrogant! but there’s a certain gratitude and a deep sense of inner peace that comes when you realise your own self worth.

My next 2 TFT (thought field therapy) courses are coming up in Rugby on April 20/21st and Glasgow May 4/5th so if you want to learn how to use this amazingly simple tapping therapy to eliminate a range of negative emotions, anxieties fears or phobias, or just to stop self sabotaging, then come along and have 2 days of treatment and go away with a skill set that can literally change your life. Check out my website for video clips and a brochure.  The next Think More Eat Less seminars are in Watford on 12th May and Warrington on 1st June.