I have to admit I had little confidence in Paul McKenna when I first heard about his ‘I Can Make You Thin’ book. To me he was just a hypnotist trying to make a quick fortune – I’d tried hypnosis before and pretty much giggled all the way through it so I certainly wasn’t going to fall for this. However, I’m not one to dismiss self help books totally, I’d given up smoking overnight with the help of Allen Carr’s book so I know that if you are in the right frame of mind and want to take action, sometimes an outside influence like a book or a TV show can give you a nudge in the right direction. I caught one of his ‘I Can Make You Thin‘ (ICMYT) shows on SkyTV last year and although I wasn’t totally convinced I bought a copy of the book a week or so later when I saw it on special offer.
The main guidelines of the plan are:
Rule 1. Eat when you feel hungry
Rule 2. Eat what you want, not what you think you should
Rule 3. Eat consciously and slowly so you taste every mouthful
Rule 4. Once you think you are full, stop eating
I have the first two down to a fine art (or so I thought) but realised I really wasn’t practising the latter, and probably never had.
McKenna states that overeating is caused by unproductive habits and aims to re-programme your mind and the way you think “to new develop habits of thinking and acting that will guarantee your success. You don’t even have to believe that it will work. Just follow my instructions and you will not only lose weight but stop obsessing about food forever.” Sounds too good to be true I thought, so I took a closer look at the four guidelines and what they actually mean.
Eat when you feel hungry
McKenna explains in the book how starving the body actually makes you put on weight and also what the secret of thin people’s success in maintaining their weight is – they only eat when they’re genuinely hungry. Pretty obvious no, but easier said than done which is where the third principle comes in…
Eat what you want, not what you think you should
Mmm, this is a pretty difficult concept to get your head around after a lifetime of calorie counting and WW Points. However, the point behind the guideline is that as soon as you deprive yourself of something you upset the natural balance of your relationship with it. It controls you rather than you control it.
Eat consciously and slowly so you taste every mouthful
McKenna makes a good point about overeaters – you obsess about food constantly until the second you are eating it when you wolf it down without even tasting it. If we take time to really slow down and eat slowly without distractions you help your body to break down the food and so you feel fuller and more satisfied after each meal. This tip is the one that has had the biggest impact on me and has made all the difference.
Once you think you are full, stop eating
Another state-the-bloody-obvious tip but we’re so programmed to clear our plates and only believe we are really full when we feel bloated that we regularly carry on eating way after we’ve actually had enough. McKenna explains how to measure your hunger on the hunger scale, to avoid waiting until you’re ravenous to eat and how to feel whether you’re full or not. (It took me ages to regognise that ‘full’ feeling but I have a very good tip – when you feel yourself sigh after eating your way through a meal, that’s your body’s way of saying no more please. Try it!)
So, does it work? Yes. I’ve lost approximately 2.5 stone and I haven’t gone without or felt deprived. It feels good to be relaxed around food after a lifetime of bingeing, worrying about calories, over eating, dieting, over exercising, feeling guilty about that piece of cake, starving myself….well, you know the score. It’s quite a relief to slow down and eat and drink like a ‘normal’ person without panicking where the next mouthful is coming from or how many miles you need to walk to work off that last cake.
Give it a go – you won’t be disappointed.
