FAQ

Question 1

What is artificial attraction to food?

Accepted Answer

Anyone who has difficulty resisting food has developed an ‘artificial attracted to food’ (aAF).  Being unusually or ‘abnormally’ attracted to food and therefore, having to actively put effort into resisting food is not a ‘normal’ relationship with food.

A ‘normal’ relationship with food is when a person is normally attracted to food (nAF). Being only normally attracted to food means that no ‘effort’ is required with their eating because they don’t have to ‘control’ it so that they don’t overeat – ie eat more than their body needs at any one time or eat for any other reason than physical hunger.

The nAF person is not actually ‘doing’ anything with their eating as they are using their natural ‘instinct’ to lead their eating for them.  There is no conscious thought making eating decisions for them other than the usual one about what they are going to eat at any one time. Even this is often left to instinct as they already genuinely know what they prefer to eat.

With normal, instinctive eating the body automatically controls everything about eating. And this includes, the when, what and how much. There is nothing else that needs to be thought about or ‘controlled’ because the body does it all perfectly well on its own.

But for the abnormal eater – with an aAF – they are having to think about every aspect of their eating decisions. “Should I eat?”. “What should I eat”. And “How much should I eat?” They have to keep a conscious eye on all this because their body has long since stopped taking care of the business of eating for them. And, as a result, they have to take over and tell us exactly when, what and how much to eat. They are often making agonising decisions about the when, what and how much of eating and how it all will affect their weight.

The aAF comes about because the mind taking over the eating decisions uses up the brain-space that the eating instinct needs. And the two can’t function together. So once the person has learnt to ‘take control’ of the eating the instinct easily stops working to enable the person to do it without effort.

If the person learnt about ‘taking control of their eating’ – the willpower-way – as a child then their brain will have formed around this way of thinking and so it is deeply ingrained in their psyche and very difficult to change.

This brain formation or just years of controlling their eating as a adult is how the person becomes ‘hooked on’ willpower and so develops and maintains an aAF. There is no instinct to make them be only normally attracted to food and so protect them against overeating.

The only solution to overeating is to eliminate the aAF and relearn the instinct of eating. Welcome to TryFreedomTM this is what we do.

Question 2

Why is this all about “willpower-free’ eating?

Accepted Answer

Using willpower with eating means you are not using your eating instinct to tell you when, what or how much to eat. You are over-riding the instinct with your own (willpower) thoughts. This leads you to become artificially attracted to food because the instinct protects you from overeating and when you don’t use it or it disappears for good you then depend on willpower to make all your eating decisions.

If you are just ‘dabbling’ in willpower from time to time and have a very solid base of eating by instinct the overeating protection is still functioning alright and the aAF can be a temporary state. You can recover from a temporally aAF with a little rebound overeating. You will get cravings to drive you to overeat in the amount – and of the specific food type – required to properly neutralise the aAF.

If you try and resist the necessary aAF neutralising cravings you will accumulate aAF and so will make it stronger over time. It’s a simple law of physics, that every food restriction requires an equal and opposite overeating reaction.

So those people who have done more restricting in the early years are experiencing their accumulated reaction to this and are carrying a permanent aAF with them because the thought if doing all the overeating required to eliminate – neutralise it is quite frightening.

At TryFreedomTM, we support people through their aAF neutralisation in the most effective and comfortable way in the early stages of eating therapy.

Question 3

What is ‘trieting’?

Accepted Answer

‘Trieting’ is simply ‘the use of willpower to control eating’.

‘Tr’ as in ‘trying’ using effort.

’iet’ as in ‘diet’

We hope to replace the word ‘diet’ with ‘triet’ over time,  to eliminate any further confusion to the public about what constitutes a ‘diet’.  If there is willpower, then it’s a diet (triet).

The word triet also makes another interesting phrase, “trying to diet” because we know that dieting doesn’t ‘work’ and so the word ‘diet can only be preceded with the words ‘trying to’. All diets fail and all triets will as well. Using willpower for someone who is already damaged by it and carrying an aAF can only make their aAF worse just force them further and further into willpower-dependency and a strong aAF.

Some people can continue with dabbling in a little willpower because they are maintaining enough natural instinctive protection from overeating to keep their aAF from being raised too high.  But as soon as the instinct starts to become more solidly eroded and the eating instinct really loses its power there is usually no easy way back from willpower use.

At TryFreedomTM, we support people through their willpower-rehabiliation in the most effective and comfortable way in the early stages of eating therapy.

Question 4

Will I lose weight?

Accepted Answer

When a person has aAF they are constantly fighting it to keep their food intake down to anywhere near a ‘normal’ intake.

And because of all this ‘battling’ takes a lot of effort they usually have an ‘on-the-wagon-off-the-wagon’ relationship with food. They alternate between periods when they are putting the effort in and ‘really trying to control their eating’ (restricting) and periods of ‘forced rest’, when they have to stop because their aAF is being topped up from it’s base level and starting to peak and making it impossible to continue.

During the early years of restricting the aAF was accumulating pretty much undetected and periods of restricting were still possible without the level becoming to significant. But further on this changes and so the periods of restricting shorten and the periods of resting lengthen because the aAF has accumulated more significantly.

This will leave the person fighting a very strong aAF and so they settle into a pattern of generalised willpower-overeating with the odd foray into more serious restricting. But in terms of how much a person in this situation eats overall – for example, imagine a year-long period – they will be eating a much larger amount of food in total compared to a ‘normal’ intake, even though they are using willpower much of the time. There aAF accumulation is just not manageable any more.

So, imagine if that person goes from this pattern of willpower-overeating to putting that same effort into learning how to eliminate their abnormal attraction to food. And, gradually they start to eat normally. And eventually they start to eating normally without any effort.

You can imagine what happens to their weight once the normal eating is coming very naturally to them and they don’t have to think about their eating let alone having expend energy trying to ‘control’ it. This is a very long and winding process for some people because their aAF was so severe but weight loss MUST be imperceptibly slow so that the body doesn’t start to suffer with all the well-known problems from being in a negative energy balance – increases in hunger hormones and slowing of the metabolic rate for example. This is the topic for discussion elsewhere,

Instinctive eating does NOT focus on weight loss (or any other measure of the body), however, because this is a very large part of willpower-thinking and so completely counter-intuitive to the instinctive way of thinking. We use many other more powerful, healing and helpful markers of success.

Obviously, clients are often horrified at the prospect of not measuring weight and actively ignoring the changes to the body and they imagine that they will just ‘not care’ about themselves at all and so will not be able to stop eating if they aren’t ‘watching their weight’. But it’s the aAF that makes people eat and retraining the thinking makes it obvious why weight loss (or food-focus for that matter) is actively eliminated.

We, of course, are ready to work with any level of resistance to giving up physically measuring the body. And if someone is particularly keen to hang onto this outlook for a while, it just means we have to work with it.

It certainly doesn’t mean that we don’t care about health but we know we have to learn to look at it in a completely different way. And along the way the transition from ‘weight-watching’ to ‘thought-watching’ and ‘feeling-watching’ gradually occurs and when people really start to feel the power of how only being normally attracted to food can be they have forgotten the reason why they were monitoring their weight (or food intake) because there is no longer a need for this as they are no longer fighting an artificial food attraction. Game over.

If you have more concerns about this very important aspect please get in touch with us.

Question 5

If it’s not about weight loss (or food intake), how do you define ‘success’?

Accepted Answer

We define success on feelings and how it feels to not have cravings anymore and powerful it feels to be driven to not overeat instead of being drive to overeat.

So, the focus is on the things that will eliminate the aAF and then learning how to nurture the instinctive-eating back into action. As feelings are created by thoughts, we first focus on thoughts and changing the willpower to instinctive way of thinking.

There are the main signposts that we highlight along the way to clearly show that people are on the right path and once the internal feelings kick in the client can identify them as feedback of progress and that autonomy is approaching. At a point along the way the client starts to clearly know the difference between willpower-eating and instinctive eating so they will be able to can quite easily monitor themselves going forward. They also can take the credit for what they have achieved with the comfort of also knowing that the results are permanent and that they aren’t just using willpower as a stop-gap solution to controlling their eating, but they are automatically controlling their eating from within.

They gain tremendous reinforcement of success knowing that this control is coming from an effortless place. But, the best of all, is that once the ground-work is done, there is very little on-going maintenance and many people enjoy completely maintenance-free eating.

Question 6

How long will it take?

Accepted Answer

It depends how ingrained in willpower someone is. How much restricting that they done in their past to crease their aAF.

A lifetime of thinking very strongly in one way – using willpower to ‘control’ your eating – is a tricky habit to break. And then, relearning how to think in a completely opposite way is also challenging. However, once clients realise that not only have they been going down the wrong – willpower – tunnel but there is a new tunnel filled with light, they can make very quick progress. They are more motivated to learn something that will change them for good, instead of fighting their aAF of fruitlessly using willpower.

A craving-free life means a clearer mind and willpower-free means the client has the energy to put into on the learning process of thinking. Momentum is gained as a result and the new thinking becomes more ingrained.

So, back to the question. All this all takes time and practice and there is a lot to unlearn as well as learn before the first feelings of being protected against overeating start to come. So, depending on how much restricting has been done in their lifetime and whether this started as a child is a factor. Discovering that they were taught incorrectly about eating as child can be a wonderfully positive experience for some because they can now move forward, while for others, it can leave them resentful and angry. So, the latter has to be worked through if it arises.

Also overeaters are very resistance to being ‘told what to do’ as they have been on the receiving end of advice from the so-called weight loss experts – the willpower-mongers – all their lives. We work with this in the most effective way. Client’s can often can get inspired knowing that we have been their too.

Therefore, and back to the question again, some people who have quite a good instinctive base can make significant progress almost immediately when they realise they were trying the wrong way.  But others – who have extremely strongly engrained willpower-brains – can take several months or even years to become more autonomous.

However, even with the ups and downs of learning anything worthwhile, many of the benefits of learning the eating instinct can become worth the effort very early on, and in many unexpected ways.

In my (Alison) mind, the value of being able to ‘control’ something subconsciously that you have spent a lifetime of time and effort into trying to get a handle on is priceless, however long it takes.

Question 7

BUT……… I need to lose weight! Can I lose weight myself first and then come to you to ‘keep it off”?

Accepted Answer

I hear you. But people who are with aAF are already experts at losing weight. Weight loss and not worrying about the increase in aAF is relatively easy, especially for someone who has done this many times before.

Even if losing weight seems to be getting harder and harder for you as time goes on, generally, the willpower-eater can immerse themselves in willpower for long enough to lose the weight that they want to lose.

At the point where the weight has been lost, the aAF will have peaked and the willpower will have reached its limit and is about to cave in. But also, at this point, because of the restricting and negative energy balance (weight loss), the hunger hormones are at their maximal secretion levels and physically make the person really physically extra H-U-N-G-R-E-Y.

So, even with only these two these conditions apply their pressure, there is a huge aAF which will create a very strong ‘weight gain’ potential. ,The person will be physically and mentally exhausted, more driven to eat for a variety of reason and, in addition, the thinking will be even more willpower-focussed than usual.

So you can see why this would be the worst time to start to learn how to eat instinctively. And the rebound overeating – weight gain – due to the weight loss period would be blamed on the new programme. Therefore, save time and energy and don’t have that one last ‘willpower-hurrah’ just to check again if willpower will ‘work’ for you.

Come to us ‘as you are’, ideally without carrying the additional immediate negative effects of a period of weight loss. This way we can begin the process from a physically and psychologically better position.

A very simple explanation of what we do is that we teach you how to maintain normal eating and ensure that you can do this without any effort. And you master this a very long time before anything happens starts to happen to your weight. What we teach you makes you the king of eating normally, and no one who eats normally is overweight.

This is in contrast to the old ‘willpower-way of weight loss’ which is weight loss first and, second,  try and keep it off using more willpower. Go figure.

Question 8

What is the definition of ‘overeating’?

Accepted Answer

The definition is overeating is, of course, eating more food energy than the body needs to maintain a normal weight. But in the triet industry they can also use ‘overeating’ to describe eating more than normal at one particular meal or snack.

So, for clarity we will focus on the intake over quite a long period of time because the instinctive eater may well eat what might seem – to the ‘food-sluthes’ – more than a normal amount at any one particular time. But as the instinctive eater aren’t keeping any kind of score card on intake and only auto-reacting to the immediate biology of the body, it is therefore not helpful to make an evaluation about how much a person eats at any one particular meal or snack.

The instinctive eater is eating on current biological feedback and so they always the ‘right’ amount, even if the ‘amount’ appear to be smaller or large than what would be considered ‘normal’. So you can see how focussing on ‘portion sizes’, ‘amounts’ or ‘type’ of food in any way is totally counter-intuitive to instinctive eating. If the body asked for it then it’s right.

Because of this, we don’t use the term ‘overeating’ in the normal way. We prefer to use the terms ‘abnormal’ or ‘non-instinctive’ eating instead of ‘overeating’ because these terms describe what is really going on at any one time that eating is taking place. For example, when the person eats instinctively, which means the time, amount and food type that they ate was are all decided on by the instinct, and so whatever they ate, at whatever time and in whatever amount could not be ‘overeating’ because, at that time, it was exactly what the body was asking for.

Also, an instinctive eater would never be ‘overeating’ on the whole because the eating would even out over time to maintained a normal weight. Another point about instinctive eating is that food intake is actually very consistent which is the next best thing to not eating more than the more needs where health is concerned.

Question 9

I’m a ‘real foodie’, will I lose my enjoyment of food?

Accepted Answer

If you are someone who finds it very hard to resist food, it’s easy to believe that the only reason another person wouldn’t find food difficult to resist is because they are ‘just not really that interested in eating’. You could not imagine anyone who eats on instinct be a ‘foodie’.

But this could not be further from the truth and the real explanation for an instinctive eater not having to put any effort into ‘resisting’ food is because they are only normally attracted to food. They are extremely ‘interested’ in food but only interested in eating it at the times their instinct tells them to. And, here is the crux of this matter, when food is eaten on instinct the person will perceive the most pleasure from eating. Without instinctive ask the food is not perceived in the same pure pleasure way.  When the aAF asks for food it is more to do with eliminating cravings (feelings of discomfort) than pleasure of the taste.

The person with aAF will always have their enjoyment marred by negative emotions connected to eating. They feel guilt, disappointment, and often shame, during and after eating so pleasure can’t be perceived at the same time.

Even though the instinctive eater spend a small percentage of the time eating compared to the willpower-water, the intensity of the pleasure perceived over time is much greater making the overall pleasure much greater as well.

So if you are a willpower-eater and you think you are a foodie now, just you wait and see what a spot of instinctive eating can do for you taste buds.

Question 10

Don’t all eating programmes include the ‘psychology’ these days? (so how is this different?)

Accepted Answer

All the ‘diet’ programmes are banding the work ‘psychology’ or ‘cognitive’ around. But when you take a closer look at what is actually being advocated for the client to do, it’s willpower all the way. The ‘pseudo’ psychology offered in these programmes is usually ‘support’ and ‘motivation’ which are ‘willpower’.

For a programme to eliminate the client’s artificial attraction to food, it must totally eliminate willpower use. And to do this there must be not be any element of food-focus‘ (ie ideas about what’ or ‘how much’  to eat) or ‘weight loss’ as ANY part of the programme.

It is easy for the trained professional to detect if there is willpower there, but for the consumer it is practically impossible to make sense of what the marketeers are really selling beneath the “psychology’ hype.

Two questions you can ask yourself about programmes:

    Does it mention weight loss?
    Is it ‘food-focussed’? Does it mention the ‘health’ of certain foods in comparison to others?

If, yes to either, then you know you won’t be giving up willpower and so you won’t get rid of your aAF. A ‘cure’ for overeating which leaves you protected from overeating – effortlessly able to control your eating – cannot involve willpower in any way shape or form.

Be aware of imitations or ‘dumbing down’ of intuitive Eating or the willpower-free approach.

Question 11

Do you do ‘group therapy’ to make therapy more affordable?

Accepted Answer

We do offer group therapy sessions via the internet. The group must be made up of a group of like-minded people looking for a genuine cure for their overeating. All members must agree to a confidentiality of the information presented by any member of the group. If you have a number of friends who are you think might interested please get in touch. We can send information out to potential members to make sure they are accurately informed and they are happy with the type of approach we will be using. We hope to offer a certain number of FREE group internet sessions as well. Watch this space or sign up for the newsletter as we will announce it there. If you would like to be added the waiting list for the FREE internet group sessions please email us specifically about this.

Question 12

Do you do offer ‘in-person’ group meetings?

Accepted Answer

We will be offering a regular free local (West London) group ‘support and learning’ meeting for those interested. Places will be allocated on a ‘first come’ basis. Watch this space or sign up for the newsletter as we will announce it there. If you would like to be added the waiting list please email us specifically about this.

Question 13

This all sounds very complicated and difficult – what if I ‘fail’?

Accepted Answer

Willpower-eaters are very familiar with ‘failure’ because they are still trying to make the willpower-way work. They blame themselves for the failure because they don’t know that willpower has caused all the damage that had made them artificially attracted to food. This self-blame is a major stumbling block when it comes to being able to face trying something else because failure is bad enough but failure that you think it your fault is even worse. Once people realise that it isn’t them, it’s the willpower-way that was the problem, there is a weight lifted from their shoulders and they can re-focus on something that there is no possibility of failure with.

Many willpower-eaters have given up even trying because, strangely, this is actually feels like the least painful of ways to be after years of using willpower. It holds the least risk of failure because you are not ‘doing’ anything that can fail. Of course, people do carry on overeating as they have always done because of their artificial food attraction but they are protected from the label of ‘failure’ at the end of a period because they are no longer ‘trying to be good’. They will still be eating in a willpower-way because this is the only way they know how.

So, in order to make the transition from willpower-eater to instinctive eater we need to start to practice thinking the instinctive way. The main point is that practicing this until it really starts to eliminate the artificial food attraction and protect against overeating is no-risk. At worst, it is NOT GOING TO DO ANY HARM – like using willpower does – and at best it will cure overeating and leave you effortlessly protected.

There is no ‘end goal’ here.  The new way of thinking becomes more and more automatic as time goes on. And if it becomes very powerfully protective against overeating – where the drive not to overeat that is stronger than the drive to overeat used to be – then that is a bonus.

We lead you through the process, one step at a time and even a small change away from willpower will feel like success. A one point or another you will then organically take the lead and not require any help again.

Question 14

Isn’t this just the ‘dieting and just leading a healthy lifestyle’ that everyone is doing these days?

Accepted Answer

The new wave of ‘dieting’ (trieting’) is to give up dieting and switch to the ‘healthy lifestyle’ approach. But, this is still purely willpower-based and so, for the overeater, more willpower – however ‘moderate’ – will not only, maintain their artificial attraction to food, it will also and continue to increase it.

It’s a bit like saying to a drug addict, “just use the drug in moderation and see how you go”.

Changing the brain itself so we are automatically protected against overeating is complicated and requires going cold-turkey on the willpower. Willpower thoughts are, not only the exact opposite of how we need the brain to work, we also need brain space that they are occupying to accommodate the new cognitions that are need space and silence.

Question 15

How does exercise fit in?

Accepted Answer

It doesn’t. To become an autonomous instinctive – normal – eater we must separate the connections of thinking between eating and things, like exercise. A willpower-eater would link to their eating to exercise and use the doing of the exercise as a trade-off for ‘eating more’. Or simply put, as a way of ‘burning calories’ to induce a negative energy balance.

This is pure willpower thinking where eating is concerned and will be stifling to the working of instinctive-eating because it is willpower-based and it also quite simply takes up the brain-space required by the eating instinct process.  We must remove these cognitive links to make the progress with the change in the thinking that is required.

Usually, with careful management, we can teach people how to disconnect the eating-thinking with the exercise and weight control element and continue with their exercise (if they wish) while in therapy.

Sometimes, it is necessary to stop exercise temporarily because the person can’t easily break the cognitive link between the two without stopping the exercise.

We certainly wouldn’t encourage someone, who hasn’t been involved previously in exercise, to take it up at the same time as initiating eating therapy.  Whether physical activity becomes a element in a clients’ life is a purely dependant on whether exercise have any benefits for them outside of the eating.

Question 16

I know that I use food to deal with my emotions. What will I do without ‘using’ food in this way?

Accepted Answer

Overeating makes you feel awful and bingeing makes you feel even worse, so it is very common for overeaters to use overeating as a distraction from their many uncomfortable feelings. There are many emotions directly and indirectly linked to the overeating from shame and anger to anxiety and depression.

Willpower-eaters learned to ‘use’ food as a distraction in this way at a very young age and so it is difficult to reverse, but the whole process of going willpower-free and becoming normally attracted to food means that the stress of overeating is eliminated. Gradually all the other negative emotions disappear also. Some people find the anger at the world for misleading them for so long along the willpower-path a little hard to let go but we get there in the end.

So, without the emotional backdrop of overeating – and also now knowing that there is a solution – we find that clients are already extremely capable of dealing with life’s normal stress levels. After all they have been dealing with the most stressful thing all their lives – overeating and using willpower to try and fix it.

They are now able to redirect that intelligence and energy into learning instinctive eating and dealing with the relatively little stress that life throws at them. And when a more unusual stressful life event comes along they have more than enough energy in reserve to deal with it AND eating is no longer something that they would even consider using to manage stress.

Question 17

What is Intuitive EatingTM and how does it fit into TryFreedomTM eating therapy?

Accepted Answer

TryFreedomTM is eating therapy and we use the full (ie not dumbed-down) Intuitive Eating programme together with our own Willpower-free eating programme to give our clients the best possible approach to cure their overeating.

The current definition of the Intuitive Eating is: “a dynamic mind-body integration of instinct, emotion and rational thought. It is a personal process of honouring your health by paying attention to the messages of your body and meeting your physical and emotional needs. It is an inner journey of the discovery that puts you in front and centre; you are the expert of your own body”.

People very often misunderstand Intuitive eating and try and dumb it down into the language that people who are not experts in Intuitive Eating use when approaching trying to help with overeating.

The Intuitive EatingTM book explains the principles behind the programme and offers practical exercises to enable people to understand of the process and go onto being able to make the change towards ‘autonomous’ Intuitive eating.

Many people who are suffering from aAF and therefore are willpower-eaters can struggle to work through the Intuitive eating programme alone because it’s difficult to find the clarity of mind and focus to find the specific changes to the thinking that are needed.

And this is where TryFreedomTM eating therapy comes in. We are certified Intuitive eating therapists and can teach you how to eat intuitively. Also as we are coming from a very anti-willpower prospective makes us unique in that we also seek to actively eliminate the high aAFas quickly and effectively as possible to enhance the effectiveness of Intuitive eating.

We believe that when a therapist has genuinely been on both sides of the abnormal/normal eating fence and recovered by becoming an Intuitive eater but also learned how to actively avoid willpower forever, that they are in the best position to help others to do the same.

We can help people from scratch with Intuitive eating or, if someone already gained a good intellectual level of understanding of Intuitive eating by reading the book, we can take them to the next stage and more them towards autonomy.

Simply reading the book will help and the Intuitive EatingTM programme can and has worked for many people on their alone. If you unsure about embarking on TryFreedomTM therapy itself, my advice would be to start by reading the Intuitive Eating book, and see how you go. Have no preconceptions and put no pressure on yourself to ‘do’ anything. Many people come to us having done just that, and many just need help getting ‘unstuck’ every now and then. Also look out for our FREE online group and live local (West London) group sessions.

You can also read more about Intuitive Eating TM here.

Question 18

Could I just read the Intuitive EatingTM book and be ‘cured’ of my overeating?

Accepted Answer

Some people could just read the Intuitive EatingTM book and, not only ‘get it’, but also be able to ‘do it’. These people are more likely to be someone who perhaps hasn’t got involved in ‘dieting’ in their past and only need an ‘intuitive eating reminder’.

Having said that, I am sure that it is possible for anyone to take the information in the book and run with it. I (Alison) would say that I was one of the worst cases of a willpower-brain that I have come across and I took the book and limped with it for a very long while. I turned it into the ‘eat-when-you-are-hungry-and-stop-when-you’re-not’ diet a for a very long time. I thought I had ‘cracked it’ and hadn’t – because I didn’t know what it was ‘asking me to do’. Plus, I was very fed up with being told what ‘to do’ about my eating. All I could think about was using willpower.

But eventually, after studying more about willpower and realising that was this particular way of thinking that was causing all the problems with aAF, I made more proper progress.

Also, it helped when I realised I was very angry at the unfairness of it all – being told to just ‘try’ all this time. After some more clarity of mind, I started to break into a jog with Intuitive eating.

I can see now how that having some expert assistance from someone qualified in Intuitive eating would have really helped me, especially in the early stages.  But overeating is very personal and quite an embarrassing until you realise it’s not your fault because it’s not got anything to do with greed or weakness.  Also, at that time, there was no one in the UK who was qualified.

So, proper expert assistance can help to ease and quicken the process for those who have a more ingrained in the willpower habit. Once someone has read the book and there is an intellectual understanding of the concepts, they can easily get stuck with trying to actually applying it to their own thinking and behaviour. There is such a lot of willpower-thinking going on against an uncomfortable emotional backdrop that it’s difficult to see which route to take and how to make, let alone be able to detect progress.

‘Learning to unlearn’ something is even more difficult than learning something new so this is where TryFreedomTM eating therapy can really help, especially early on. Once things calm down emotionally and the new thinking is becoming easier, people can continue by themselves because they know how to go around obstacles and how to gauge their progress in a way that is reinforcing for them.

Another understandable reason why people who are stuck in the willpower-trap aren’t inclined to read, what might seem to be just another ‘what to do about your eating’ book, is that they are really tired of being ‘told what to do’. For many, this completely understandable mind-set is preventing them from doing any kind self-help work. And they are fed up with false-hope and disappointment of trying what they now know are just the same ineffective, overly simplistic, willpower- approaches. Diets in disguise. Triets! So, why would they think that Intuitive eating was going to be anything but a complete let-down.

Intuitive eating is so different to the way overeaters normally think that it can just be too overwhelming, and motivation cannot be channelled into reading, let alone the repetitious practice required to make any real sort of head-way. You can understand why. And we know how that feels and we can help you. Please, get in touch if you need help – even if it’s only to get you back on track with your thinking every now and them.

Question 19

I have a diagnosed eating disorder (or I think I may have one) can you still help me?

Accepted Answer

We are not medics who treat people with eating disorders. It is not ethical, and very unlikely to be effective, to use a treatment for general overeating like this with a person who has a diagnosed eating disorder.

A patient must be sufficiently far along in their recovery from their condition before entering eating therapy. The patient’s medical team must agree that the patient is ready for an eating therapy intervention. We must gain the patient’s medical team’s express consent to us for us to work with them.

We also screen our prospective clients for eating disorders and, if necessary, will refer people to the correct medical professional in advance of coming for eating therapy. Eating disorders include: Anorexia Nervosa,  Bulimia Nervosa,  Binge Eating Disorder,  Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID), and  Other Specified Feeding or Eating Disorder (OSFED). If you are worried that you may have an eating disorder, please get in touch and we can help you find the right path for you at this time.

Question 20

I am currently ‘in therapy for my mental health’, can you still help me?

Accepted Answer

Eating therapy is not used as a first treatment for people who are dealing with complicated mental health problems. The client’s mental health counsellor must give their express permission for the client to work with eating therapy as an adjunct to their regular therapy, or the client must be appropriately discharged from mental health therapy before entering eating therapy. NB: If we do gain permission to work with clients who are also undergoing counselling for their mental health, we will make the client aware to look out for signs that their mental health counsellor is guiding them towards a willpower-eating (trieting, dieting etc). These cases are very common as the counsellor themselves may be not be aware of what the ‘proper’ solutions to overeating are, or they may, themselves be stuck in the willpower trap. The counsellor may, therefore, be inadvertently making the clients overeating, and therefore the mental health issues worse, as a result. Therefore, we ask clients who are in this position, if we can contact their counsellor to help them understand how not to reinforce willpower use with eating. Some counsellors are able to adapt, but others aren’t.

Intuitive Eating Counselling

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How I overcame overeating

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Medical Professionals Stuck in Diet Culture

Human Awareness – how we feel

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The Difference Between Self-Esteem and Self-Worth

Nourishing Mind and Body: The Art of Practicing Food Neutrality

The Power of Interoception

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