There is no set number of sessions. For each person, our individuality means that a formularised approach is not appropriate. For someone wanting to make some simple changes relating to not eating a particular food, they may only need one or two sessions. For someone else where there may be other issues or emotional responses involved, a few sessions might be more appropriate.
A common pattern for our clients is where we might do 2 or 3 sessions within a period of a few weeks, which allows us to get some momentum as patterns and habits shift. Then if you and your therapist decide together on further sessions, we will space out those sessions further and further apart. This allows us to maintain influence over a little time, in a way where you do not need to keep coming back all the time.
In any case, we are guided by how you feel. This is about self-empowerment, and our goal is for you to have things resolved, so you don’t have a need to be here! We aim to reach that target quickly and efficiently.
You will notice many changes straight away. There might be other changes you become more aware of over a little period of time. What is important is noticing behavioural changes, and not how much weight you lose within a small period of time. Lasting weight loss is about changing the patterns that have caused your body to put on weight. It is not about some temporary fix (like a diet), where you might lose a little weight quickly, only to put it back on again as the old patterns resurface.
If that’s your goal, the processes that lead to your losing weight will being immediately. You will experience positive change right from the first session. However it is important to realise that this is a process, and not a single event. Those changes will be developed and supported in following sessions, until things are happening in the way you want them to with a sense of harmony and relative ease.
This does not mean you can get on the scales the next day and observe how many kilos you might have lost. This view, a product of the dieting mentality, that you can make some temporary adjustments and have that validated by the scales a few days later, is illusory, artificial, and missing the point. Secure and reliable weight loss happens in a different way. This is certainly something that we will discuss in the sessions.
Well, that’s up to you. You make your own decisions! However you will find that you are able to make the right decisions more easily – the decisions that are in accordance with the outcomes you want, without a sense of hardship or deprivation.
It is a particular type of frustration – making the effort to do all the right things, only to have the goal seem as elusive as ever. It is a common frustration, and very often results in a sense of futility and despair.
The way we have been conditioned into thinking about weight loss includes many assumptions about what we should and shouldn’t do, and assumptions about the rate at which our bodies reduce weight. There is also a lack of understanding about how the body metabolises certain types of stored energy, and the best ways to promote that metabolism.
By bringing into harmony the fundamental elements involved –conscious, subconscious, physical, psychological, emotional – we allow circumstances where old problems begin to resolve themselves and the body moves towards its correct weight.
It is difficult to generalise about these things, because the specifics involved vary from person to person. For this reason we take an individualised approach, so that the work in the sessions is what is necessary and appropriate for you.
When we are out of the habit of exercising, the idea of doing it seems arduous and unpleasant. Faced with the feeling of not wanting to do it, we need all our will power to force ourselves to exercise, then it becomes a chore and part of the struggle to lose weight.
The other side of the coin is that when we begin to raise our physical energy and increase muscle tone, we receive a corresponding boost in our emotional responses. When we get into the habit of exercising, it becomes its own motivation, not something that requires constant force. Part of our work in the sessions will be to create the bridge between those two points – beginning in a way where it’s really not too awful, and having it become an enjoyable and empowering experience.
Our physical and emotional well-being depends to a large degree on our physical energy, and an abundant physical energy arises out of physical fitness. A lack of this energy and fitness can lead to many imbalances, of which being overweight is one. Therefore exercise is not just about losing weight, it is about the creation of well-being. Where weight loss has become the primary goal of exercise, it indicates imbalance or an error in thinking.
Our weight loss work is about creating greater harmony and balance within the mind and body. Within this shift other elements of your awareness are positively influenced, including your tastes, preferences and choices. You can take the morals out of it more easily (eg, ‘good’ food and ‘bad’ food) and in changing your relationship to food and your choices food that is perhaps not the ‘right’ food becomes less important, and food that is the right food becomes more enjoyable and satisfying.
Our clients experience successful outcomes because our work is tailored to each individual. Remember, this is a therapeutic process, and not a product we are selling. We do what is appropriate for you, which might be different to what is appropriate for someone else. No matter how long someone may have struggled with being overweight, the mind and body together can let go of extra weight when the patterns and issues that have led to that weight are resolved.