Changing your thinking is the key to losing kilograms and maintaining a healthy weight, says author Susan Maiava. Here’s how to think like a slim person.
Susan Maiava’s lightbulb moment came when she tried to get her teenage son John to eat his dinner and he replied, “But I’m not hungry. Why should I eat when I’m not hungry?”
Susan, who had battled her weight for years, says she suddenly realised that John’s attitude towards food was the key to maintaining a healthy weight. “It was like a bolt of lightning,” says Susan, from Palmerston North.
“I realised slim people have a different way of thinking about food. They only eat the amount of food they need to maintain their slim weight.”
Susan realised she had to change her attitude towards eating. She needed to only eat when she was hungry, to choose foods that were nutritious and healthy, and to stop eating as soon as she’d had enough.
It was a straightforward approach, but for it to work she had to get out of bad habits, which meant changing her thought patterns.
An academic with a PhD in development studies, she used her research skills to look into ways of doing that, as well as finding out about the science involved in losing weight.
She came up with various strategies, many of them based on cognitive behavioural therapy, a psychological treatment, and was able to successfully lose weight and keep it off.
When she looked for a book on the subject of changing eating habits by altering thought patterns, she couldn’t find one. So she decided to write one herself.
The result is Fat Chance! The No-Going-Back Weight Loss Workbook. As well as being full of important information about changing your thinking, along with advice on good nutrition and being active, it’s a kind of journal, encouraging people to write down their thoughts and feelings about food and eating over 12 weeks.
“The idea is that you use the workbook every day and gradually start changing the way you think about eating and the importance it has in your life, until you form new habits that become a new lifestyle,” says Susan.
Each day of the week has a theme. These include thinking like a slim person, establishing new habits and dealing with emotional hunger. “Change is gradual and builds up over the 12 weeks so that it becomes embedded,” says Susan.
Establishing new slim habits
We react to triggers: When we see or smell food, we eat it out of habit because that is what we normally do. We eat because it’s there. Ask yourself, “Am I actually hungry?” If you’re not, but just want to eat it, keep it for the next time you feel hungry and enjoy it then.
We eat too quickly: This takes us past satisfaction before our brain registers we’re satisfied. Eat slowly. Tell yourself eating fast is uncouth and crass.
We pile our plates with food out of habit: Always use a small plate. Get used to always eating small portions as a habit.
Food tastes too good to stop: Say to yourself, “I’ll save the rest of this to eat later when I’m hungry again.” The pleasure of taste usually diminishes after the third mouthful anyway.
We follow the clock out of habit: Tell yourself, “My body is my clock and will tell me when to eat.” Eat when you are hungry.
Fat Chance! The No-Going-Back Weight Loss Workbook by Susan Maiava (Fat Chance Publications, $39.99). For more information, see fatchance.co.nz.
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