You Can Be Thin: The Ultimate Programme to End Dieting... Forever by Marisa Peer Read Free Book Online Page B

restrictions in your lifestyle and spending in order to be a home owner and get on the property ladder. Even having pets has almost as many restrictions as benefits especially when it comes to travelling or cleaning up their mess or taking the dog out for a walk when it’s pouring and you have the flu, but we accept that it’s part of the deal. Nothing comes with only benefits not even that gorgeous puppy or cute kitten.
    In terms of restrictions on food, we don’t eat garlic or onions if we are about to go on a hot date or go to an interview. We may choose to avoid foods that give us gas like beans, pulses and dried fruits if we are in certain situations such as an important meeting. These are choices that people willingly make and it is not hard at all with some effort and persistance to transfer these thoughts and feelings to your everyday diet.
    With our jobs, pets and relationships we accept the restrictions and enjoy the benefits, and by using this programme to apply the same principles to how you eat you will succeed in reaching and maintaining your ideal weight. Most of us don’t abandon our job, spouse or children because they aren’t perfect, yet people abandon diet after diet because they can’t do it perfectly, we lose motivation as soon as it goes wrong and give up. This is the major flaw with diets – we can never adhere to them completely so we give up and feel like a failure. This programme will work for you because you don’t have to do it perfectly in order to get visible and lasting results, you just have to do it.
    When I first began to work with overweight clients I was amazed that they would do almost anything to lose weight except change how they ate. They would pay for liposuction, diet pills, crazy quick-fix diets, expensive gym membership that they never used, slimming treatments that were a con and drugs that hadn’t been approved and yet they would not embrace a lifestyle where chocolate was an occasional item instead of a regular one. They would even say, ‘I would do anything to lose weight’, but that turned out not to be the case.
    I had many discussions with clients who would begin the consultation by saying, ‘It’s so unfair that I can’t just eat whatever I want’. They had never considered that half the people in the world can’t eat whatever they want and even in the developed world many people can’t eat whatever they want either due to medical conditions, religious beliefs or financial restrictions. I can’t eat whatever I want and have the body and good health I want and I accepted that long ago, and once I had accepted it life got better and easier and I became much happier too. Smokers and drinkers can choose to smoke and drink whatever they want, but they know they will ultimately pay a price. So I answered my clients by saying, ‘You can eat whatever you want, if you are prepared to pay the price.’ I got one client to list what he would have to pay and what he was prepared to pay, and when he saw how high the stakes were he changed his mindset. It was very important that he did it, rather than me forcing it on to him, because we resist being made to do things by others, but are more open to changing when it’s our own idea.
    When I asked one of my clients to write out what she was paying to eat indiscriminately the list was scarily long. She began with her fertility as being overweight by even a small amount can be linked to polycystic ovary syndrome, and excess fat acts as a kind of sponge absorbing the female hormones vital to conception. She included in her list high blood pressure, heartburn and feeling inhibited when she was naked so she never had the kind of unabandoned sex that both she and her husband would have liked. She ended the list with a higher risk of developing some cancers and her depression about never wearing the clothes she wanted to wear and always feeling that she was missing out.
    At the end of this chapter I want you to write out your