Where do I start?

I understand how confusing and overwhelming all this information may be if you’ve just come across it.
If you like what you’ve read so far and you want more, may I suggest that you listen to a few episodes of the Support to Stop Overeating Podcast.

What can I do next?

If you like what you have heard on the Podcast and are wanting to create some more structure in your life, you might consider buying the book, “Eating Out of Control – 7 steps to understanding why you do it, so you can stop.”

Is there more help available?

If you’ve read the book or you are longing for a more personal experience of support, then please consider getting in touch with me to organise your own Telephone Support Call – find out more.

Do I need to be binge eating for this to apply to me?

Not at all. You don’t need to hit any kind of “rock bottom” or extreme to be worthy of support. Whether you snack a bit too much when you’re stressed, or maybe you feel totally overwhelmed by your eating habits at times, your experience is valid, and real change is possible no matter where you are right now on your journey.

What exactly do you help with?

I can help you feel more in charge of your eating, no matter how long you may have been overeating.  I provide a support service and there are different levels of support available, according to your needs.

If you have felt stuck in cycles of overeating, and whether you identify as struggling with: Compulsive overeating, Emotional eating, Binge Eating or Bulimia, I can help you.

As a beginning step: I can help you with a full vocabulary of feelings and needs.  When you get connected with your actual feelings and needs, underneath the top layer, the symptom/the coping mechanism of “overeating”, a whole new world will open up for you.

You won’t need to use food anymore to help you express how you are really feeling and you can explore dozens of new non-food ways to get your unmet needs met.  Do you think these two new skills would make a difference in your life if you were to adopt them into your lifestyle?  

My goal is to empower you with the skills, strategies, tools and resources that you can pull out and use to help yourself with, and that way, you get to own all of your own successes too.

Will this help me lose weight?

That’s a really common question, and I’ve wanted to know exactly the same thing more times than I care to remember, usually right after I’ve had a binge – that’s when we’re in a full-on guilt trip and feeling remorseful for all our perceived “food sins.”

Many people come to this work feeling exhausted by their diets and yet still hoping for some kind of miracle with something else.   As Martha Beck (author of The 4 Day Win) famously quipped:  “We’d all like to find a place of Thinner Peace!”

My approach isn’t focused on weight loss, it’s focused on empowering you with skills you can use for the rest of your life – for long-term sustainable lifestyle change that will heal your relationship with food, your body, and help you find your true Self. 

A Self that you can like and feel comfortable with, a Self who is worthy of the best of everything that life has to offer, including your enjoyment of eating and your body and a Self that knows that you never need to deprive yourself of the deliciousness of food again.

Your journey may or may not include weight loss.  Unfortunately, (or fortunately) I don’t own a Crystal Ball and because of this, Trust has needed to become a large part of this process of taking our power back from the billion dollar weight loss industry.  Growing trust in ourselves and finding a way to like ourselves is the last thing the Weight Loss Industry wants us to do.

Is this therapy?

No, this isn’t therapy and I am not a Psychologist, or a Doctor.

I provide support to people with their Eating Issues.  I am simply one person who has recovered from her Eating Issues providing support to another person who is seeking help to overcome their Eating Issues.

I use the metaphor of ‘walking alongside you’ like a supportive friend, while we work together.  I am very happy to provide hope, encouragement and support.  I can also provide skills, strategies, tools and resources that have helped many others on their journey to overcoming their eating issues.

I see my role as a part of your Health and Wellbeing Team – I imagine others in your team might include: your Doctor, an Exercise Physiologist and maybe a Dietician.

How is this different from working with a Dietitian or a Medical Specialist?

Most traditional approaches (or Medical Approaches) to eating issues focus on what you’re eating and they simply give you a Special New Diet that is supposed to change everything for you.  I used to think a New Diet was going to be the answer to all my problems too.  God knows, I’ve spent the last 40 years looking in the fridge for those answers, and I haven’t found anything yet – nor did I ever understand why I ate the way I did.  It was all a huge, expensive and disempowering mystery to me.

My approach focuses on why you’re eating the way you are.  And I like to put you 100% in the driver’s seat of your own car on your own journey.  There is no money to be made from teaching people how to do it for themselves.  This is a long-term, sustainable, as in for the rest of your life, approach.  

I can teach you skills so you can learn how you might have been feeling at the time you overate and further, what your unmet needs might have been when you overate – you can consider what void were you trying to fill with food?  This information alone has the potential to change the whole dynamic of your relationship with food.

There are a million reasons why we overeat and none of them are really about food.  Eating is our first response at self-soothing and it is always an attempt at making things better.  We eat when we’re happy, sad, bored, upset or anxious.  Food comforts us and Food is love in many ways.

If you’re interested in learning more about long term sustainable weight loss, I would recommend watching a documentary film on Youtube called “Follow Me” – Tony Vassello interviews 16 people, including himself, who have kept 1600 pounds (727 kilos) off – for anywhere from 5 years to 30 years.