The Food Philosophy will show you how to lose weight, feel genuine choice and control around food and set yourself free from overeating for the rest of your life.

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

A few months ago I started up a more affordable version of The Food Philosophy in the hope that I could help more people to overcome compulsive overeating. It was a great success for most of those who tried it and I'm getting lots of lovely emails and have met some very nice people in the Vital! forums.

There's one problem, though, I seem to be doing less and less coaching and more and more admin. My work day has just turned around from the exhilarating task of helping people to make massive positive changes to their lives to recruitment, emailing backwards and forwards about course documents and showing people how to use the forum.

I need to directly help people and watch them change because it's what I do best and it is my purpose in life. So FP Vital! is going to have to be phased out shortly, I'm afraid.

Big apologies to everyone. This won't affect the service for the current FP Vital! members.

The wonderful full-coaching version of the course is most definitely still available.

Sx

The Food Philosophy will show you how to lose weight, feel genuine choice and control around food and set yourself free from overeating for the rest of your life.

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

Here's a post from the Food Philosophy forum (our virtual classroom). One of the course members who is well on her way out of the overeating trap decided that she needed to let off some steam.

I read week 3 part with interest his week. I also laughed out loud in several places - and thought that this (about the diet industry) really hits the nail on the head. There will always be someone to make money out of other people's misery and fear and we let them - in fact we actively encourage it!!

Sorry rant over but needed/wanted to get this down so I can look at it when I want and remind myself of why I'm taking the path I'm taking.

The Food Philosophy does provoke all sorts of feelings, including shock, surprise, euphoria and as you can see from the above post, anger and rebellion.

Every day I feel privileged to have so many fantastic and intelligent women to talk to on such an interesting subject. I invite anyone to chat on here or if you email me. I can help you out of the overeating trap. I really can!

Sx

The Food Philosophy will show you how to lose weight, feel genuine choice and control around food and set yourself free from overeating for the rest of your life.

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

This week's blog entry is in the style of a classic magazine angony aunt Q&A.

Dear Sue

I’ve just started my first week on a VLCD (very low calorie diet). I’ve already lost five pounds in just four days and I’m so excited. I am starting to feel a bit dizzy and sick, though, but my counsellor tells me that this will wear off. I can put up with that and the terrible cravings for food because the payoff is so good, but the thing I’m most worried about is that one of the side effects is hair loss. My counsellor reassures me that this is temporary as well. My hair is my best asset and I don’t want to lose it – even temporarily. I’m terrified that I’ll end up thin but bald! Is there anything I can do to stop my hair falling out?

Debbie, 23, Manchester

The problem with VLCDs is that people believe the advertising and sales talk of the companies that sell them, as you have. Obviously this is going to be heavily biased towards playing up their ‘advantages’ and playing down (sometimes even hiding) their disadvantages. Embarking on a VLCD is a very serious medical decision to that requires much thought and a full understanding of what you are actually doing – most people don’t find out enough to make a truly informed decision. Would you say you’re fully informed?

So my advice would be make sure you are very aware of the consequences and fully educated about what you’re doing. Basically, if you’re looking for one or two periods of fast very temporary weight loss, ultimate very fast more permanent weight gain, coupled with unpleasant side effects and the chance of long-term physical and psychological damage as well as a few years off your life, then go for it, VLCDs are perfect.

The Food Philosophy will show you how to lose weight, feel genuine choice and control around food and set yourself free from overeating for the rest of your life.

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

I watched The Great British Body last night. I didn’t want to watch it really as I knew what it would be like – another dumbed down piece of nonsense aimed at the ‘uneducated’ British public (the TV people’s seeming opinion, not mine). And I was right.

It was mostly just meaningless hot air. Apart from the bit about the fat gene which was astoundingly ignorant and bizarre.

Hundreds of people took part in the programme and everyone gave a saliva sample which was taken to a lab and tested for the fat gene. Then all of the women were herded into three groups: those with no copies of the fat gene, those with one copy and those with two.

They were all showing nervous anticipation about finding out whether they had this gene or not. The whole outcome was based on the premise that if you've got the fat gene it isn’t your fault if you're fat, but if you haven't got the fat gene, it is your fault. So all the ‘overweight’ women were hoping they had it so that they could explain the reason for their weight and all of the thin people were terrified that they would get fat later in life because of this gene.

Bear in mind that scientists don’t yet know anything about this fat gene or how it contributes to body shape. The presumptions in the programme were based on guesswork and hearsay but, as usual, they were fed to the public as fact.

Trinny and Susannah both took part in the test and it turned out that Susannah doesn’t carry the fat gene, but Trinny does. Susannah called Trinny ‘my fat friend’ and said she felt elated about the result. She looked like she was going to wet herself in her gloating self-satisfaction.

All this loosely based presumption and mis-education of the public was bad enough but the worst and most offensive part of this programme by far was when Susannah turned to her fat-gene free group, some of which were overweight, and aggressively and accusingly shouted at them: “That just shows you that we get fat because we’re basically greedy and lazy.”

They looked humiliated and the group fell silent and serious and their eyes turned on Susannah for a moment that lasted just a bit too long. The utter raw and painful shame on the face of one woman made me want to cry.

And this from a programme that is supposed to get the British public to ‘Love your body shape’. The ITV website says: “Trinny and Susannah explain why they want YOU to feel better about your body and rejoice in your differences.”

No, that's just the programme's politically correct angle - what they really think is very obvious indeed.

If you know nothing about The Food Philosophy you might not see the point of my rant, but believe me when I tell you that the result of their programme and their shaming of these women and coercion into more guilt, more self hatred, more blame, will only mean more overeating and Trinny and Susannah’s ignorance has dug them further into the overeating trap than they ever would have been. AND it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the thin women who have never cared much about their weight will now gain weight in their attempt not to! And none of this harm that has been done to these women will be anything at all to do with the fat gene!

The Food Philosophy will show you how to lose weight, feel genuine choice and control around food and set yourself free from overeating for the rest of your life.

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

Most overeaters come to The Food Philosophy believing they know all there is to know about overeating and weight loss. After many years of reading and absorbing information (in some cases in amounts that excel PhD levels of education on the subject!), you could be forgiven for thinking there’s nothing more you can learn. Each time you read something in a magazine or see some advice and information on TV or explore a ‘new’ weight-loss plan that says it’s different – including the fashionable alternative to a diet – it fits in with what you know, seems reasonable and obvious and you want to try it, but there’s an underlying feeling that it won’t work because something about it feels really familiar.

No matter how fancy the new method or technique is wrapped up, everything just feels like the same old same old.

This sensation is something you will have experienced over and over again if you’re like any overeater worth their salt who will hunger for a new method and try anything to get out of the trap. This is a sensation that you will be expecting to feel once more with The Food Philosophy.

This is a feeling that will hinder you as it will mean you are reading the information with a closed mind. The Food Philosophy is going to blow wide open everything you think you know and you have to be prepared for it by suspending your cynicism and stopping yourself from ‘expecting’ to learn nothing new. We all filter information in the same way and the danger here is that you will have your filter switched to a setting that will absorb all that backs up what you already believe and discard the important stuff that will change your life and catapult you right out of the trap you’re in.

Another type of closed mindedness that might hold you back is fear. If you’ve spent your whole life trying and failing to gain control of your eating, you’ll be feeling desperate and panicky that this will be another method that doesn’t work. You’re afraid that this might be a last resort and when your expectations are fulfilled and it becomes just another one of those things you’ve tried and failed that you’ll have nowhere else to turn. You might also be feeling exhausted by the repeated failure and approaching FP with a flat feeling of ‘OK, here we go again.’

If you do read the course material with these filters switched on and don’t let any of it register internally, you’ll then approach the steps and exercises with the wrong mindset and you’ll be doing them with reference to old information that comes from the diet industry and not from FP and this won’t work.

In order to ‘get’ FP, you might have to wave goodbye to some of the opinions you hold and these might be very strong opinions with what seems like good evidential background. I’m not asking you for blind trust (that would make me the same as the diet industry!), I’m asking you to have the most open mind you can achieve and pretend that not only are you reading this new information for the first time, but that all the information you think you know is being read for the first time.
Then I want you to weigh up these two sets of information and use your own thinking skills to compare them both to your internal experience and come up with a conclusion that is entirely your own, with outside influence being only a tool. Basically I’m asking you to switch off your ‘passive receive’ setting and switch on your ‘thinking for yourself’ setting!

As you move through the course, this advice won’t be needed as much as it is now because you’ll see the difference between FP and other methods and your filter will change to accommodate your new learning. But to give yourself the best chance right from the beginning please open your mind and suspend your cynicism and be prepared to learn a completely new way to stop overeating.

FP is really very exciting and it gives you a high that is indescribable when you realise you have control.

Sx

The Food Philosophy will show you how to lose weight, feel genuine choice and control around food and set yourself free from overeating for the rest of your life.

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

I'm a bit too busy to write anything profound this week so I'm going to post a couple of messages and emails I've had this week from people who are on the course. They're all genuine and you can talk to the people who sent them if you join the course because they're all there in the forum.

I'm really really chuffed with the response I'm getting from people on The Food Philosophy.

_________________________________________________

I can't quite believe how much difference FP has made to my life in just one week, I feel so different already - its amazing!

Thank-you
Celia

_________________________________________________

Week 2 part 2 reading material is a complete revelation (I know it all is – but this makes so much sense to me, and I can see absolutely how I got into the state I was in over food).

Jessica

_________________________________________________

Today is the second day. This morning I was in tears at the realisation that all these years I have been beating myself up and made myself feel worthless because I cannot "diet" and all along it wasn't my fault at all.

Marion

_________________________________________________

That's not all of them, and it's only Tuesday. But it will do for now. Don't want the post to be too long!

The Food Philosophy is the best! I spend my life watching people make their lives better. I can't think of a better job.

Sx

The Food Philosophy will show you how to lose weight, feel genuine choice and control around food and set yourself free from overeating for the rest of your life.

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

I just recieved this email from a lady who recently started the new £30 FP Vital! course and I thought you might like to read it for yourselves. It contains a link to an article the Guardian that gives a rare sympathetic take on overeating:

Dear Sue
I am a changed woman. I have just been away for a long weekend and had a wonderful time. I went to a party with lots of gorgeous foods. I looked at all the food and I tried quite a few of the things, but actually, I found that I was not too bothered about it and felt really in control. This is a first for me and its thanks to the exercises in Week One of the course. I believe it has really worked. I am also feeling very satisfied with whatever I choose to eat.

and I was almost moved to write a letter - we know what the answer is to all of these eating disorders - it is your Food Philosophy!

It still makes my day after all this time, when I hear about the positive changes that FP has helped people to make in their lives.

Sx

The Food Philosophy is now available for £30 (without coaching), you get all of the online course material as well as limited membership to The FP forum where you can chat to other people who are doing the course, support each other, go through the steps and exercises together and also talk to those who have already been through the course and who are already out of the overeating trap. You'll also get to read regular comments of mine and articles posted in the forum that are full of valuable help and information.

The Food Philosophy will show you how to lose weight, feel genuine choice and control around food and set yourself free from overeating for the rest of your life.

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

Eating disorders are on the rise and it’s well-known that dieting has a lot to do with this rise. There’s oodles of evidence for it - which you’ll have to research yourself if you’re interested, but it’s easy if you just type ‘dieting and eating disorders’ into a search engine. Evidence includes the parallel rise of enforced body dissatisfaction and the advice to diet with rising instances of anorexia and bulimia and binge eating disorder. Also, countries that haven’t been exposed to Western culture and dieting have extremely low to non existent levels of eating disorders. There’s more, though, much, much more.

Anyway, while looking up the statistics for eating disorders in the UK for something I was writing, I noticed – not for the first time – that the way eating disorders are classified excludes obesity and overweight. It’s very strange. It always stands out to me but it seems to be accepted as normal that even a scientific or medical trial paper can separate the two. It’s the perfect example of a sleight of hand that Derren Brown would be proud of, except that it pulls the wool over everyone’s eyes and blinds everyone to the obvious truth in favour of a belief that helps the diet industry to earn millions, but which destroys the quality of life for millions of ordinary people.

Bulimia, anorexia, binge eating disorder, compulsive overeating are all classified as eating disorders with various theories about their cause, including the pathological need for control, the anaesthetising of past trauma and abuse etc, but the main driver for these disorders is well-known to be high levels of body dissatisfaction and chronic addiction to dieting.

The physical effects of eating disorders such as anorexia’s extreme weight loss are taken as a side-effect of a psychological disorder and although shocking, as the physical side effects are, anorexics are never blamed for being severely underweight and they are treated as if they suffer from a mental illness.

Where eating disorders are shown in a sympathetic light and sufferers are largely described as victims, those who are obese and overweight are linked with greed, weakness and lack of self discipline. Obesity is given a class all of its own and overweight people are given a diet sheet and told to control their overeating by self discipline and shown that they are thought of as weak and greedy and lacking in self respect. The message is: if you don’t respect yourself enough to stop overeating, then how do you expect anyone else to respect you?

Overeaters take this on board and struggle their whole lives trying to follow this advice when in fact their problem is as much of an eating disorder as any anorexic or bulimic. In fact, just like weight loss is the physical symptom of anorexia, so weight gain is the physical symptom of compulsive overeating and binge eating disorder – AND the direct cause, as has been established, is body dissatisfaction and the drive towards chronic dieting!

The compulsion to overeat, driven by dieting, is in fact the basic foundation of all eating disorders. Anorexics are compulsive overeaters whose different neuroses and needs drive them to starve themselves and the overweight and obese are compulsive overeaters whose needs drive them to overeat! It’s exactly the same disease. But because of the current prejudice against obesity one is given treatment that, although largely ineffective, is at least sympathetic, and the other is treated by blame, humiliation and given directions to follow a solution that is actually the known direct cause of the problem itself.

THIS is the reason why obesity seems to be on the rise and why everyone is running about like headless chickens worrying about the cost to the NHS and where we’ll be in 2010 when so many more people are predicted to be overweight. This is why our kids no longer grow out of their puppy fat.

It's also the reason why you are sitting there thinking 'I don't suffer from an eating disorder, I just need to be able to stick to a diet,' and then going on to lose control of what you put in your mouth, day in, day out, obsessing and worrying about it and letting it destroy your quality of life.

Many things are truly bizarre about our culture, but this has got to be one of the most unbelievable of all.

If you want to step away from the madness and help yourself in a real way The Food Philosophy will show you how to get out of the overeating trap without giving you any advice that is really designed to keep you yo-yoing for the rest of your life. It’s straightforward, practical and frankly amazing. But I would say that wouldn’t I?

The Food Philosophy is now available for £30 (without coaching), you get all of the online course material as well as limited membership to The FP forum where you can chat to other people who are doing the course, support each other, go through the steps and exercises together and also talk to those who have already been through the course and who are already out of the overeating trap. You'll also get to read regular comments of mine and articles posted in the forum that are full of valuable help and information.

The Food Philosophy will show you how to lose weight, feel genuine choice and control around food and set yourself free from overeating for the rest of your life.

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

I feel that it's time The Food Philosophy was made more widely available so I have decided to offer a non-coaching version of the six-week online weight-loss course for just £30. Not everyone can afford the course at the moment and it is important that as many overeaters are reached as possible and given the tools to get themselves out of the overeating trap, lose weight, increase confidence and raise their self esteem.

Would a £30, non-coaching version of The Food Philosophy be of interest to you? If so, just email me at sue@foodphilosophy.co.uk, marking your email "FP Vital!".

I've included a forum post from last week from a current course member below this message to help you to see how it has benefited others.

For £30, you get all of the online course material as well as limited membership to The FP forum where you can chat to other people who are doing the course, support each other, go through the steps and exercises together and also talk to those who have already been through the course and who are already out of the overeating trap. You'll also get to read regular comments of mine and articles posted in the forum that are full of valuable help and information.

Let me know if this is something that would interest you. Also, I'd be most grateful if you could take the time to let me know if it wouldn't. All feedback is very valuable and much appreciated.

Warm wishes,

Sue x

"I think that it's so important to KNOW in your heart that you're not willing to waste another second of precious life wasting time on dieting. I too wasted YEARS dieting (23) and when I found The Food Philosophy I was so ready to never diet again. It helped me to think....'you know what? All dieting has brought me is feelings of deprivation, feelings of 'not being good enough', feelings of not being able to do it without bingeing...so feelings of failure. I was 40 at this point. I just realised that if I kept on dieting I'd keep on going round and round the diet treadmill. I wasted 23 years of my life doing it and so frankly I'm NEVER doing it again!

"I won't lie and say I haven't overeaten at all since I started FP, I have, but each time it happens I realise that there is no pleasure in it – it is too uncomfortable. I have lost weight and easily maintain now what was my target weight for all those years which I couldn't quite get to.

"Now that I know Ican trust myself though, I don't worry about weight like I used to ( I obsessed and judged myself solely on my appearance for years ) It's very sad, but I'm so glad to be out of it now. Embarking on FP is the best thing you can ever do for yourself. It might be a bit of a struggle sometimes when you're trying to grasp it, but just reming yourself that if you do what you've always done....you'll get what you always got! FP really works because it's about you learning to trust your internal cues, and learning to trust yourself.

Sorry if this is a bit of a rant, it's meant in the best possible way.
L X"_________________

The Food Philosophy will show you how to lose weight, feel genuine choice and control around food and set yourself free from overeating for the rest of your life.

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

If you can't control what you eat and no matter how much energy you put into dieting or cuting down, you always end up on a binge - eating the very things you're trying to avoid - are you just weak, greedy and lacking in willpower or do you have a clinical eating disorder?

The general opinion seems to be that you're weak and greedy and lacking in willpower. That you don't care about what you look like or you're rebelling against the current pressure to be thin by sticking two fingers up at the establishment and stuffing yourself with fried chicken and donuts.

That's why you're bombarded with diet advice, told what and how much to eat and provided with ceaseless examples of pure and good ways of feeding your body and shown exactly what type of body you should aspire to look like.

The truth, though, is that compulsive overeating is as much an eating disorder as bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa and, although it is not recognised as such by the popular media, compulsive overeating kills more people than bulimia and anorexia put together.

Despite this, while anorexics and bulimics are given the benefit of the doubt and their illnesses taken seriously overeaters are led to believe that their eating disorder is their fault and that they only need to learn how to stick to a diet and they will be cured.

You know personally how much energy you've put into trying to stop yourself from overeating and you know the shadow it casts over your life. No amount of willpower or dieting to lose weight is going to stop the psychological compulsion to overeat.

You have to stop listening to the weight-loss advice you're being bombarded with and learn to deal with the actual problem itself - compulsive overeating.

The Food Philosophy is the very first programme that will show you a way to literally switch off the drive to overeat - and all you have to do is change your thinking.

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk