I’ve been a
little quiet of late.
I’ve had to
step away from The Food Whisperer a little bit as other aspects of life have
taken over. My blog has suffered, but I’m pleased to say that we’re continuing
to grow through social media. There’s a nice community building up on Facebook in the Food Whisperer Nutrition Hub,
with lots of lovely people sharing recipes, talking nutrition and health, and
asking questions – I’m always around to take part in the discussions!
Whilst I’ve
not been able to devote as much time to the Food Whisperer as I’d have liked,
it has been for a good reason! First up, I changed jobs. This then necessitated
a house move which, I’m glad to say, is now complete! In the sense that my
husband and I are in the new house – we’re still surrounded by boxes J
The change
in the day job has been a fantastic experience. I now specialise in weight
management, an area of dietetics I am extremely passionate about.
I work with
people whose BMI (body mass index) ranges from 35kg/m2 up to and
exceeding 100kg/m2. Some of my patients will go on to have bariatric
(weight loss) surgery. All of my patients – whether going forwards with surgery
or not – will work hard at making positive lifestyle and dietary changes.
Patients
come in despondent, hopeless, talking about themselves with disgust and
despair. “Useless, rubbish, a failure…” I wonder how anyone can hope to muster
the strength and determination to make sustainable, meaningful changes to an
integral part of life when they have such low self-esteem and no self-belief.
Weight loss
is hard-work. It takes years for the weight to come on, and it's hard to be realistic that it will take time - sometimes a lot of time - to lose it. And if it were as
simple as eating less and moving more, then two-thirds of UK adults wouldn’t be
overweight/obese. No one chooses to have a BMI of 60kg/m2. No one aspires to
needing weight loss surgery. It’s a situation that most people sleep-walk into,
and then struggle know how to change.
Much of the
work I do is to help people to understand what has brought them to where they
are now, and to identify the emotional and habitual aspects of their eating
which – typically – are at the core of their weight gain. Eating is a
behaviour, and not always one that we are consciously in control of. There is
much, much more to weight than simply choosing the ‘wrong’ foods and being
lazy. And this widely held, superficial ‘understanding’ is often part of the
problem – if it sounds so simple, and yet is so hard to achieve, then how can a
person value themselves and belief they are worth the effort to change?
I am in awe
of the determination and hard-work that goes in to achieving the total life
transformations that I have had the privilege of seeing and supporting, and over
the next few weeks and months I’m hoping to write a series of posts about weight
loss, bariatric surgery and explore the thoughts and behaviours that influence
our food choices and eating behaviours.
If you have
anything you’d like to me write about, please leave a comment below and/or come by the
group or page on Facebook.
All the
best,
Sarah
a brilliant post Sarah...
ReplyDeleteI'd like to know a bit about emotional eating: what is it? who falls into it?
ReplyDeleteDo you think just being lazy and eating too much - even if it's healthy food - is just lazy people eating too much? Or do you think that the relationship we, as humans, have with food has become very skew?
Yes weight loss requires motivation and willpower - but how much of it is purely a love of food, and how much of it could be attributed to some deep, psychological need to "find love in a cookie"?
There is something for your next blog :)
A very interesting post, I look forwards to reading more.
ReplyDelete