Catherine saw an interview I’d done with a national newspaper last November, and messaged me saying, “I have lost over a stone and a half thanks to reading your book. Thank you!”
“I got something different out of each chapter – willpower, hunger pangs, the Appetite Pendulum etc. I just wish I had this understanding earlier in life.” I really related to this – when I was developing Appetite Retraining I was discovering things about the biology of the appetite system I’d never known myself.
These biological insights were not only interesting, but practically useful in helping to see what was happening in the way I ate. I often ignored fullness sensations as I cleared my plate, and would have a snack to avoid the risk of feeling hungry. Without realising it, I’d become a stranger to my own appetite signals.
I’ve written more about my own experiences in my book, and I know that everyone uses Appetite Retraining differently, so I wanted to hear more from Catherine about what she had learned, and what she’d done with that knowledge.
I asked Catherine if we could chat about the changes she had made, and then share her story so that you could benefit from it.
Catherine’s story
Catherine told me that in the past she had used Slimming World and Weight Watchers as well as nutritional approaches to lose weight, but these had not worked over the long term. She had resigned herself to being overweight, and was now focused on making other improvements to her health. She often experienced knee pain and said she got out of breath easily. She was keen to exercise more and move more generally, and her knees and breathlessness were limiting what she could do.
Catherine explained that she had attended a webinar I had recorded a few years ago for Health Education England as part of their staff wellbeing programme. She said, “I was absolutely hooked from the webinar and so I bought your book”.
The overall approach had clicked with her – focusing on eating behaviour rather than nutrition. Two things stood out –
- Making small sustainable steps to her eating patterns. This is one of the key features of Appetite Retraining, because a major problem with weight loss diets is their short-lived success. When a diet requires you to overhaul how you eat overnight, chances are it will be hard to stick to the new regime. Behavioural science shows us that it takes effort to change established habits. It’s disappointing when hard-won changes unravel, and it can chip away at your self-confidence, as Catherine knew from bitter experience.
- The “let’s experiment” approach integral to Appetite Retraining. You don’t know before you start to make changes how they will go, and being open to discovering what suits you (and what doesn’t) allows you to respond flexibly to changing how you eat. When you make a change that works, you stick to it and if something doesn’t work, you let that go and focus on the next specific eating habit change.
How Catherine started
Catherine seized an opportunity to focus on changing her eating habits (and therefore her weight) when she started a new course of medication. She had recently been diagnosed at the age of 51 with ADHD, and prescribed a drug which, as a side-effect, reduced her appetite (though it wasn’t a weight loss drug as such). As food noise reduced, she decided to seize this opportunity to change her eating patterns. Seizing upon an opportunity to make changes is a useful way of pump-priming behaviour change.
What Catherine learned, and how she applied this
- A flash of insight about feeling hungry.
Catherine said that the Appetite Pendulum was really helpful to her, as she began to change her relationship to feelings of hunger. Previously she said that feeling hungry had caused her a sort of panic reaction, but on learning more about the body’s hunger mechanism, she was able to remind herself that mild hunger is a useful thing when you want to lose weight, because it signals that your body is burning a bit of stored fat. She found that instead of panicking she was able to think, “This mild hunger is a good thing – I can wait to eat because I’ll be having tea soon”.
- Reframing willpower.
Until her recent ADHD diagnosis, Catherine believed she was an impulsive person who had no willpower. She compared herself unfavourably with others who seemed to have much greater self-control. Understanding that ‘willpower’ is not a fixed trait, but can be seen as a type of energy that gets depleted by making decisions and resisting impulses, enabled her to stop being super self-critical. Using this insight alongside getting to understand ADHD, meant that she was kinder to herself. She could see that she was successfully making changes, and began to feel a greater sense of self-control.
And then other things seemed to change
Interestingly, people often find that once they initiate changes in how they eat, other things seem to change too. Catherine found that what she was eating started to change…
- Chocolate cravings reduced
Chocolate had been a passion for Catherine. She was known to those around her as being a chocoholic, even affectionately named “Auntie Chocolate” – she would eat a chocolate bar walking round the supermarket before she got to the till, and never paid for petrol without buying some chocolate alongside. Catherine said that this started to change AFTER her weight loss progressed. She noticed that she no longer craved it, and had stopped buying it without realising and came to feel free of what had previously felt like an addiction. Eight months later and she has not had a single piece of chocolate and reports that she isn’t tempted to either! Willpower is not a factor at all.
She had gradually removed the added sugars from her food and added in more nutritious foods. This may be something of chicken-and-egg in that the craving reduction made it easier to remove added sugars, and less sugar meant less craving.
- Eating more healthy foods
Catherine told me, “I’m reducing UPFs (Ultra-Processed Foods) too and this is helping me to sustain the changes I’ve made. I am eating foods that keep me fuller for longer and not snacking in between meals,”
Catherine said that she still thinks about food a lot, but cravings have been rewired so that the hyper-fixation that is a part of her ADHD is now focused on preparing healthy food from scratch and eating healthy foods and minimising Ultra-Processed Foods.
The results
- Weight
- Losing over a stone and a half (nearly 10kg) has helped Catherine’s physical symptoms. Her knees no longer hurt and she has less breathlessness. She has found that she now wants to move and exercise more and has joined a gym, focussing on strength training.
- Self-confidence
- Catherine said that her self-confidence has increased, and this is not restricted to her body image. She said she now feels in control. Whilst she had previously tended to be negative to herself, and had compared herself negatively to others, she now no longer feels so insecure.
- She had previously felt stuck, but now feels that the barriers that are in your way are things you can change. This gives her a greater sense of optimism and agency than she had felt before.
- Greater enjoyment
- Catherine added that she now eats more with intention, and enjoys food more than she used to. This is great news, as getting more pleasure from her new patterns of eating means they are much easier to stick to.
Was it Appetite Retraining or the medication?
After losing weight Catherine wondered if she would regain it if she wasn’t taking medication that reduced appetite and food noise, and was keen to know if Appetite Retraining or medication was to thank for the weight loss. She experimented with medication-free days at weekends and noticed that her eating patterns and habits did not change.
She then came off the medication completely for a few weeks and was pleased to see that nothing changed. Likewise, it was also a relief to see that going out for meals and the odd alcoholic drink at the weekend did not result in weight gain, as long as new habits were returned to as a matter of course.
What does this mean for you?
Catherine’s experience is her own unique way of applying Appetite Retraining principles to how she eats.
You are unique. How you apply Appetite Retraining techniques will depend on your own unhelpful eating habits.
Perhaps you too may not have been taught much about how your appetite system works, in which case learning the basics from my book could make a real difference to you being able to eat in tune with your body.
Then, decide which of your unhelpful eating habits you want to change, and focus on just that. There’s lots of guidance and strategies in my book, on my website, my YouTube channel and in previous blog articles. Once the first habit change feels like second nature, you can choose the next eating habit to work on.
A note on weight loss drugs
The new GLP-1 agonist drugs have made an enormous difference to weight loss, through their effect on the appetite system. If you’ve been prescribed them, you may not be needing any other help to eat differently.
If however you aren’t eligible for the medications, or have decided against them for any other reason, you will find that Appetite Retraining offers an approach that enables you to experiment with changing how you eat.
When you change how you eat, your weight changes.
What is really important to recognise, is that if the approach does not work for you, it is not your fault – it means that the approach does not fit.