November 30, 2022 / by Suzanne Ingleton / Weight Loss
For the life of me, I don’t really know why I have not shared this publicly, since I am in the business of helping women to lose weight and change their relationship with food and body, and it does make a lot of sense to share my story, so here goes…
Last week I attended an incredible 3 day Life, Leadership & Business Retreat run by the amazing Jodie Nevid from The Seven Effect, and it was called Freedom Fest.
There were a host of wonderful speakers, and one of the speakers, Amelia Ryan, who, among other things, is a Cabaret Performer. Amelia told us a very real and raw story of how she came to be where she is today.
We learned, that it’s not what we do that’s the real draw card, it's our story and HOW we came to be there so that we can be of even greater service to our clients.
And so, I wanted to tell you a little more about me and my own past eating disorder and unhealthy relationship with food and my body.
As a side note, I was chatting with my Mum today, and she said that when she was a young mum, she went to a Hypnotherapist to get help with her fat stomach……it’s a little ironic that I now help women to lose weight using hypnosis…..
Just so you know, neither I nor my mum were overweight in any way. My maternal grandmother was also not overweight, but Mum thought her mum had a stout body. My great grandmother was, according to my Mum – a very fat woman.
I remember as a child that Mum was very body conscious and would often say that she used to have a 22inch waist – and in my recollection, that was very important to her.
As a young girl at school, I was skinny with freckles, flame red hair & glasses, & wore home-made clothes and was to some extent ridiculed. I was called a variety of names, like “spotty” & “fire engine red”, “towering inferno” & “pippy long stockings”.
I didn’t have a lot of friends, and as I grew more into my body, I became aware of what other girls were doing to impress each other and the boys, of course. Being thin and having a flat tummy were things to be admired – and I had both of these things, and I made it my mission to hang onto these – as in my mind at the time, they were the only things going for me where I felt more accepted among the clicky groups of girls at school.
I became obsessed with keeping my stomach flat, and when one of the girls in class was known for doing 100 sit-ups a day to keep her washboard stomach flat, I did the same.
I also started to experiment with purging after eating, and discovered that I could maintain a flat stomach, as long as anything I ate didn’t stay there.
This was the start of many years of being Bulimic and fighting my body. I also discovered laxatives in my early 20’s and I would use them on a regular basis to purge from both ends.
Any kind of diet or way of eating that was restrictive became a beacon to me, and I tried the lettuce & sugar diet among other weird things & I remember only eating rice grain by grain with a bit of soy sauce.
Always, I would default to the laxatives and if I became too hungry and could not stave off the cravings for food…….I would binge and stuff myself to satisfy the hunger…..and then I would be in the toilet with my fingers stuck down my throat to vomit it all back up.
I’ve kept all this to myself, and I’m sure there is more that my subconscious mind is holding onto, which I know will be uncovered…..because now, at the age of 60, I’m ready to make peace with it.
Since recovering from Breast Cancer nearly 15 years ago, the things that are important to me about my health and my body have changed, and I have been on a very long healing journey. I no longer binge and purge. However, I still have challenges with my gut health caused by overuse of laxatives, no doubt.
I hope that by telling my story about my own destructive relationship with food and body, I will be able to reach the ears, eyes and sentiments of other women, to let them know that they can heal from this, and they don’t have to wait for decades or live in constant fear of food and body shape.
There IS a way out, and if you would like to chat I would love to listen. You can book in a time with me HERE.
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I'm a fully qualified Eating Psychology Coach, Hypnotherapist, Time Line Therapist©, NLP Master Practitioner and a writer who has been featured in publications like Thrive Global and the Institute for the Psychology of Eating.
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