What does food symbolize to you?

As promised, this weeks reading from Becoming Slender For Life is What does food symbolize to you? Last Sunday I posted So what’s your story? and on Thursday my post was Time for a new story?. Today, you have the opportunity to journal about what food symbolizes to you. If you are like many overweight people, you have childhood stories and myths around food that are part of your mental and emotional program today. The problem of course is that these old fables you live by today aren’t helping you achieve your weight loss goal. Clients of my Seattle weight loss hypnosis and Bainbridge Island weight loss hypnosis program Slender For Life™ learn self hypnosis so that they can in the moment create a new story that supports their health and fitness goals today. You can do this too with hypnosis for weight loss.

What does food symbolize to you?

List all your downfall foods, ones you know (or suspect) are bad for you, then write about each one. Key into the olfactory memories (the smells, which are our strongest), tell the food’s history in your life, it’s role in your life, when and where you first ate it, who you were with and so on. See what each food symbolizes to you (comfort, independence, feeling special, etc.). A variation would be to write your life story with food, your earliest memories about food; ask your parents what they recall about your eating habits as a young child, what things you liked or disliked.

In examining what associations you made long ago with your favorite comfort foods, see if you can’t separate them from the foods themselves. Perhaps you connect fried chicken to family picnics, and those were the rare exceptions when your father seemed to relax around you. Now, instead of driving through KFC whenever you miss your dad, give him a call or talk about him with a family member, or enjoy old pictures. Eating fried chicken won’t recreate those good feelings—in fact, quite the opposite. It boils down to gaining awareness about why you crave what you do, so you can diffuse the power that food has held over you.

From Becoming Slender For Life, second edition,
pages 106 -107

When I weighed 110 pounds more than I do now, food was my drug of choice. When I felt unloved, I ate cinnamon rolls. Today, thanks to hypnosis for weight loss I can enjoy the smell of a cinnamon roll, or even just think of the smell and feel grandma’s love.

When the oil light comes on in your car, it will do no good to stop at the gas station and put gas in the gas tank, especially when the gas tank is already full. You need to deal with the oil issue. When you feel anger, hurt, fear, sadness, or stressed, eating will do you no good….especially when you are not physically hungry. You need to deal with the emotion.

At Seattle weight loss hypnosis and Bainbridge Island weight loss hypnosis clients learn the mental and emotional tools to heal and to change their behavior. You too can change your story.

Read So what’s your story?

Time for a new story?

Check out Slender For Life™ and call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

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