Are you fed up of the endless cycle or weight loss and weight gain?
Are you ready to improve your relationship with food?
Are you ready to change your old patterns and replace them with healthier ones that also support you towards a healthier and happier future?
The reason for inviting Lori along is because over the years, we’ve seen many patients come into clinic because they’ve got back pain, neck pain, joint pains, but fundamentally the root cause to some problems or aches and pains hasn’t always been because of mis-alignment.
The root cause can be a result of food and eating habits, which have then created inflammation in the body and then as a result pain.
We do have a huge diet culture including Slimming clubs. Many of these routes are concerned with calorie restriction rather than eating for health and maintaining your goals by having the best mindset to support you.
A Bit About Lori Weber
Lori started The Mindful Eating Clinic to help others find a happier life around food. Through channeling her own eating disorder experiences and re-training in psychology and nutrition, she has developed pragmatic yet empathetic approaches to treat yo-yo dieting, weight issues, bulimia and binge eating.
Her clinic offers coaching and courses in a supportive and confidential setting.
How Lori Ended Her Disordered Eating Pattern
Lori had about 40 years of disordered eating, with yo-yo dieting, and bingeing. She now realises with hindsight that she actually had binge-eating disorder, but at the time I didn’t think she had any eating disorder. She just knew she was embroiled in very unhealthy eating practices and behaviours, which were causing a lot of emotional and sometimes physical pain, because it’s hard to consume large amounts of food.
She’s tried every single ‘diet’ plan out there and had bookshelves groaning with every diet book that existed.
When she reached her mid-fifties she realized she just had to do something about it.
Lori employed some of her business coaching techniques (she’s been a business trainer and coach for 20 years)
- Looked at her behaviour and behaviour change.
- Used some NLP (neuro-linguistic programming).
- Read a number of books.
- Learned about intuitive eating and body image.
It was the combination of all of these things which lead to Lori fixing herself within six months. This was all 4 ½ years ago.
Having been through her journey Lori understands what it is like and also knows that it is possible to have a happier relationship with food.
As a result, she has re-trained and is currently completing the Master practitioner with the National Centre for eating disorders.
Who Does Lori Weber Work With?
The things that are important is that you are at least ½-2/3rds of the way to wanting to change. It may be that you are incentivised to create change for serious health reasons.
You may have been entrenched in some eating disorders for a long time. It may be that you don’t believe that you can change. Or not quite know who they are outside of that eating behaviour. This happens a lot in the overeating disorders.
It is important to detach yourself from how you refer to yourself and you can start to define yourself by a label e.g. I’m a binge eater or an emotional eater. Changing your dialogue can help to detach yourself from the behaviours associated with it. If it’s something that you’ve lived with for a long time, that it becomes part of something that is woven into how you operate. Change can be scary even if you want it. You may not know what it is. Emotional pain can leave you terribly isolated and distressed. Lori can help you through this.
It is important to note that Lori doesn’t treat under eating disorders. She does treat over eating disorders of which there are a number of types. This can include people with what is known as atypical anorexia. This is where you may be bingeing and purging. The driver is the behaviour – the bingeing in order to then be able to then deprive yourself of food.
What Is Mindful Eating?
Lori isn’t a nutritionsist but can refer you if needed. She can help you with healthier food choices and helping to eat in a way that helps to balance your glucose which is key. In addition in line with the mindful approach helping you to reflect and notice the effects of the foods you are eating. Do certain foods make you feel more sluggish or hungry sooner?
This approach helps you to build a sense of connection with how you’re eating, what you’re eating, the impact that’s having on what you think and do.
Savour The Flavour
Bring in mindful eating practises. These help your body to acknowledge when it is full so that you will naturally eat less. We have hormones that let us know if we are hungry or full. Leptin needs time to let you know when you are full and it’s time to stop eating. When you eat mindfully you allow this natural process to occur.
When you eat mindfully you acknowledge the flavours and textures of the food you are eating. You enjoy the experience as well allowing leptin to let your body know, thank you I’m full now. You will naturally stop sooner and also satisfy your need to eat. Lori mentioned within the interview that on one of her Podcasts she discusses that if you want macaroni cheese, have macaroni cheese. No amount of lettuce is going to satisfy you if that is what you eat. However if you are going to eat the macaroni cheese eat it mindfully. Think about every mouthful and how it tastes, savour every mouthful.
Lori describes mindful eating as imagining you are in the Masterchef kitchen and you are the food critic. How would you describe what you are eating?
Why Don’t You Lose Weight When You Eat Less?
Lori explained how the situation can occur where you are restricting your calorie intake and have done for some time but you don’t lose weight. Often this is because your body goes into survival mode as a result your metabolism slows down and hangs on to everything that you eat. Which prohibits you from achieving your weight loss goal.
What Are The Most Successful Forms Of Weight Loss?
The most successful, long term consistent weight management scenario is when you don’t have a numerical goal in mind. The best results occur when your goals are behavioural.
This goes against all of the advertising for ‘lose a stone in a week….’ Etc Yes you may get to the target but how will you feel both during and at the end of it? You could fee miserable!
You need to address the behaviours that lead to either the disordered eating or the weight gain in the first place.
Reasons Behind Over-Eating
There are many reasons why your eating may have become disordered. Lori can help you to re-frame these incidences. Help you to re-frame them and put them into context in the here and now and help you to observe that these events can be your triggers.
The reasons include:
- Trauma’s in the past. This can be that food is an emotional comfort or can be a way for you to re-gain control of your life.
- Bullying
- Being told you need to go on a diet either by people around you or from media pressures.
Lori’s Role In Helping You Towards Mindful Eating
Lori’s role is to try and work out the best approach for you. She has a number of tools in her kit bag to be able to do that she will apply whichever she thinks is the right at that particular time. Mostly the journey will start off with some kind of exploration of your food story which you will discuss together.
See the role that food has played and also a food diary to see exactly what someone’s doing. It is important to understand that this isn’t a diet, you are not reporting into Lori. She doesn’t want to see your perfect day she needs to see what is a normal week for you. If you have binged or purged, write that down. There is no judgement. Lori is there to help in the best way that she can and there is very little that she hasn’t already experienced herself. She is on your side. It can be really helpful in itself just to express yourself and share your week
70% of people who come to me have never told another living soul, which can be really emotional and at the same time liberating.
Working With Lori
There are the sessions themselves which can be over zoom or by phone. She is also there for you when needed. You can send her a text or WhatsApp. The chances are if you are having wobble it won’t be when you have your appointment booked or 11am on a weekday. Most likely it will be later in the evening on a weekend. If it happens, Lori is there for you to get in touch with.
No Food Plans Or Restrictive Diet
There won’t be a dietary plan to stick to. By slowing down, being more mindful of what you eat and how it tastes, how your body responds to it, and then underpinning that with emotional help and support, creating a positive change in behaviour your relationship with food and the choices you make will naturally change. You will work with a nutritionally sound platform without being obsessive. You will have choice and options.
It isn’t about being, super healthy all the time, but about generally making it more stable in association with food. Understanding your existing thinking towards food and towards yourself and your body and trying to work through those in a holistic way.
As with any coaching relationship, it’s a very organic process. You work together with where you are at that particular moment help you through any challenges that come into your head and try and weave through it.
Rebuilding or changing the cognitive pathways is absolutely crucial so that the new behaviours get bigger and bigger and bigger and more embedded. And the subconscious voice, which is just trying to look after us, you know, its intentions are good. But that’s just because that’s what it’s learned, but that’s not, what we want to do anymore. This can be changed when working together.
What Is The First Session Like?
Then at the first session you’ll look at your lifeline very often. So if it’s an eating disorder, we’ll look at a lifeline and, map that out in quite a detailed way to see where the behaviour started, what was happening at the time etc.
You will then look forward and describe your ideal version of you around food. What are you thinking? What are you doing? We might incorporate some of what might you look like? This is something to be a little bit careful on because we don’t want it to be number based, but there’s nothing wrong with having a little bit of aesthetic pride. There’s nothing wrong with that, but we have to make sure that we balance that and that it’s realistic.
How To Contact Lori Weber At The Mindful Eating Clinic
This will then be used as a template. So over a course of sessions might be six, 10 or longer. Every now and again, we’ll say, let’s go back to what we said in the first, in the first session.
It can be a really help to then notice oh yeah I can do that now or that ones still a bit tricky. It’s a great positive incentive it helps to keep you motivated towards where you want to get to?
Also if you have a relapse, and often if you do you can feel the guilt and shame for going back to an old pattern. Then when you refer back to the template you will see how you described how you did this, this, and this….You will see how much you have stopped doing when you first started and how far you have come. It helps you to put things into perspective and stop you catastrophizing over things that really are not as bad as you think they are. You start switching your mindset to see the positives.
How To Contact Lori Weber At The Mindful Eating Clinic
If you are interested in working with Lori or want to find out more about what she can offer she can be contacted through her website:
