Counselling to specifically target weight loss is not a new concept. There is no shortage of weight loss support groups, online programs, diet “clubs” (with or without the expensive food), and even magazines specifically about weight loss, all aimed at teaching you how to eat and exercise. But do you really need to be taught all that?
You probably know it all anyway. Despite your weight issues you are most likely more than a little informed about what to eat and how to exercise effectively. No doubt you’ve already tried a plethora of different eating and exercise plans in your search for your ideal weight, fitness level and body shape.
You can often succeed with these traditional methods, but how long does it last? For most people, the triumph of weight loss is only temporary. When the weight starts creeping back on you berate yourself for giving up, going back to old habits, not sticking to the program. The classic pattern is to start a new diet or regime and begin the cycle again. And so it continues.
As your weight loss therapist, the assumption we make is that you don’t need to learn how to eat well and to exercise. So what’s the missing piece of the puzzle?
Your values. We will help you to uncover your values and align yourself to them so that you can take strong action that you truly believe in. The motivation you’ve been missing is inside you. You just need help to tap into the standards you’ve set for yourself that you’ve forgotten to live by.
Rachael Walden can help you to overcome these barriers to achieving weight loss success. Her past life as a fitness instructor and her passion for healthy living makes her uniquely placed to encourage you to reach a better level of health, both mental and physical, as part of your holistic personal growth plan.
Your ultimate goal is reaching and staying a healthy weight for the rest of your life, so let’s do the deep work and make lasting changes from the inside out.
Why choose weight loss counselling over personal training or diets?
Initially it might seem counterintuitive to seek weight loss counselling, especially in Bondi where fitness boot camps abound and an active beach-side lifestyle is easily accessible. After all, we don’t prescribe a diet or exercise and we sit quietly in The Bondi Psychologist clinic – not exactly a recipe for blasting calories.
Weight loss counselling is not a replacement for an exercise regime or good nutrition plan. Rather, it works beautifully in conjunction with positive healthy food and fitness efforts.
What’s been missing from your efforts to lose weight so far is the deeper layer where your values live. What is most important to you at your core? Where is your mindset when it comes to health, fitness, work and play?
Together we will examine what makes you tick and use your responses to form a blueprint that will help you live meaningfully. Then, rather than launch right into a time-limited program that you may stick to for a while then stop because it’s not sustainable, we will set you up for lifelong weight loss success that doesn’t depend on finding the “right” program or nutrition plan. Instead, it focuses on changing your mind first.
For example, you’ve said that you want to lose weight. Why? Which value is driving this desire? Is health a very important value for you? Do you want to live a long life for your children?
Once we identify your core values, we’ll examine your lifestyle. How are you living in alignment with your values and where are you way off? Is wellness a strong value for you, yet you eat poorly and neglect exercise?
From here, we guide you one step at a time to make small changes that bring you closer to your values. What can you do today that’s a tiny bit better than yesterday? Now, what can you do tomorrow?
Little by little, we will clean out the habits that are no longer serving you and replace them with improvements that are consistent with how you want to live. You’ll become conscious of the negative behaviours you’ve installed over time and why you feel so bad when you live that way. You will start to live mindfully. Losing weight will become something that makes sense on a deeper level, rather than something you think you must do for reasons outside yourself.
Why would weight loss counselling work for me if nothing else has?
Being out of alignment with your values has a destructive impact on your self-esteem. You feel crappy because your life does not resemble the one you want, whether consciously or subconsciously. You become hard on yourself, using admonishing angry self-talk, which further diminishes your self-worth and motivation to live well.
When you feel this way about how your life is going, it is so difficult to make healthy decisions and keep moving toward a better life. You sabotage your efforts and then find it even more difficult to get back on track. You become trapped in a weight loss, weight gain cycle because you have lost sight of what you want in life, who you are, and why it’s important to you to lose weight.
Weight loss counselling can help you identify your self-sabotaging tendencies and explore why they arise. Often it’s stressful and unsustainable to make dramatic changes to your food and fitness habits overnight, so therapy for weight loss can introduce changes at a manageable rate with the goal of long-lasting success.
Therapy for weight loss works in conjunction with healthy lifestyle changes (on its own, it cannot help you lose weight!) and it’s the difference between temporary results and finally succeeding for good.
Book an appointment now for weight loss counselling with The Bondi Psychologist.
