Hypnotherapy for Picky or Restrictive Eating
Can hypnotherapy resolve picky eating issues?
Junk food, packed with sugar and salt is notoriously addictive and feeds our natural cravings for salt and sweetness.
Stress and trauma can lead us to choose these sorts of foods over others. Sometimes the textures, smells or tastes of particular foods are unappealing to children because of negative associations laid down in childhood.
We know restrictive eaters are not usually getting the variety of food they need to have healthy minds and bodies. That’s where Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can be helpful in helping ease you in to healthier eating patterns without creating distress.
How long does it take to create a new habit?
According to the healthline website, “It can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days for a person to form a new habit and an average of 66 days for a new behaviour to become automatic”. That sounds like a long time, but much of it depends on the client’s age, the length of time a bad habit has been ingrained, current levels of stress and anxiety and the support of friends and family.
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy speeds up the process of forging new, heathier habits and makes the process of embedding them painless and relatively easy.
Can hypnotherapists work with people of any age?
It’s often when people reach their 20s that they decide they want to address their picky eating habits.
Breaking habits formed in childhood
Bad habits formed in childhood can become embedded. Sometimes something traumatic happened and became associated with certain food types. It may be as simple as having parents who themselves had limited diets, and an awareness of health and fitness leading them to want to eat better and be more healthy.
Usually bad habits are related to choosing foods that are sweeter or saltier. Children and teens naturally crave sweeter foods and dislike bitter foods as their taste buds develop.
Primed to seek out sweetness and salt
We are all primed to seek out sweetness as our ancestors had to be motivated to search for, pick and dig for sweet fruits and vegetables. When the craving for sweet or salty food dominates, and becomes associated with emotional comfort then we have laid the foundations for picky eating and food issues.
Fussy eating leads to health issues
Naturally, fussy eating may then lead to other health problems linked to either under-eating, or over-eating the wrong kinds of high fat, high sugar foods that lead to obesity and related health issues.
So picky eating and overeating are linked more to the emotions associated with food than the food itself.
Basic understanding of good nutrition
It helps to have a basic understanding of good nutrition. But in order to move forward it might help to take one step at a time and simply break the negative associations and explore different foods to increase food intake.
Weight loss and picky eating
I treat weight loss and picky eating in a similar way.
We explore the emotional associations linked to various foods, food habits, eating habits, eating times and sleep. By supporting clients to frame and visualise incremental changes in their eating habits, we can work together to make those changes at the pace of the client. There’s no sense of force or unrealistic or achievable goals. The client sets the goals, which often become more ambitious as they become more confident. But they always come from the client; not me.
How do we work together to resolve a fussy eating issue?
We start by keeping a weekly record of what has been good and better. We begin by asking:
What do you currently eat?
What would you like to try to eat this coming week?
What would you absolutely refuse to eat at the moment?
The phrase ‘at the moment’ is very important.
No habit is embedded for ever and there is always an opportunity for change. However, there may be some foods that never appeal – as is true for all of us – but clients find they can increase the variety of food they eat while feeling comfortable that their absolute ‘red lines’ will not be pushed too far.
Hypnotherapy reduces the anxiety of trying new foods. If appropriate, we work with Rewind Trauma Therapy and hypnotherapy to change traumatic associations and to remove or reduce any triggers so the client can create new, healthier and more enjoyable associations with a variety of foods. By reducing stress overall and improving sleep, clients feel more able to try new foods and create new associations – step by step.
How long does it take to resolve the issue?
Sometimes progress is rapid; sometimes it takes time. The pace is set by the client taking the pressure off them to find a quick solution.
Being motivated
It’s particularly important that the client is motivated to make the change themselves rather than feeling pressured by a friend, partner or parent. Solution Focused approaches – which keep you firmly anchored in the present and future and involve no analysis or digging in to the past – ensure the client remains in control of the process at all times.
What success looks like
Firstly, the client needs to determine what success looks like. What are their best hopes for the process? To eat a wider variety of foods? To eat almost all food types? Or to overcome a dislike of specific named foods?
One the client has determined a frame of reference for success, we might expect to work together for 4 weeks to 12 weeks, depending on the nature of the issue. Often, we work intensely together for the first few weeks and take stock of where the client is on their journey. In short, we take it session by session.
Does hypnotherapy work with children?
I can work with children over 10. Often this involves working with the parent too, ascertaining whether the parent is putting too much pressure on the child, or has issues with food themselves. As hypnotherapy sessions are absolutely tailored to the individual the nature of the issue, and possible solutions would need to be discussed with the parent and child, along with safeguarding issues.
Children who are fussy eaters
If you have a child who is a fussy eater, it’s very important that mealtimes don’t become a battle of wills involving coercion, force or shame.
I can help parents create a healthy eating environment. Eating meals at the table as a family, where possible, is helpful as is modelling healthy eating. Avoid using sugary or salty foods as rewards as this creates unhelpful associations which will create lifelong unhelpful habits.
A Testing Chart
Creating an exposure chart of new foods to try each week can be helpful for children and adults. The chart CRM be created by the child and allows for 5 to 10 new foods and includes fee the following sub-headings:
Appearance
Smell
Texture
Taste
Thoughts
As each food is tried it is scored out of 10 (top marks) and 0 (disliked). This makes a game of trying new foods and separates this fun activity from mealtimes. It’s a way to try one grape, one cube of cheese, one strawberry etc at a time. The child has agency and can judge the food and, with the help of relaxing hypnosis.
What does healthy eating look like?
Healthy eating involves eating a variety of food types: protein, complex carbohydrates, vegetable and fruits. Scientists have explored the relationship between sweet, salty and fatty foods and how these create cravings in the human body and brain including the relationship between losing self control, over-eating and weight gain.
So replacing sugar and salty snacks is often a good place to start.
Changing habits; breaking negative associations
We keep nutritional knowledge very basic at this stage. The aim is to change habits and break negative associations. There is plenty of information out there about healthy eating and many nutritionists can help with specific nutritional needs for sports performance, or to reduce symptoms in the case of chronic illness.
How can parents help children who are picky eaters?
Always offer the healthy option first and have plenty of fruit and vegetables to hand. Avoid buying cakes, biscuits and sweets until habits are broken. If they aren’t in the house, they can’t be offered. Our taste for sugar and sweet things does change quite quickly, once our body becomes more regulated. The whole issue of sugar and its impact on our bodies is, in itself, a complex one.
Sugar is highly addictive
Firstly, it helps to understand the impact of refined carbohydrates and sugar on the system, including behaviour.
Sugar is associated with all sorts of health issues, from diabetes to dementias. It also impairs our cognitive abilities and self-control.
The NHS page at the bottom of this piece outlines some basic information you might find helpful.
Don’t link food to behaviour
The biggest piece of advice is to avoid using affirmations that link bad foods to behaviour, things like; “If you are good you can have some cake”. This sets up bad eating habits for life as bad foods become rewards for good behaviour!
Equally avoid blame and shame, such as “There are starving children in Africa. Eat up.” Whether the comments are positive or negative, linking reward or shame to eating may create unhelpful associations which are difficult to shift.
Stick to the mantra; “Eat what you can; leave what you can’t. Just do your best.” The same applies to adults trying to change habits.
Just trying a new food type might be a step forward to start with.
How does Hypnotherapy help?
Hypnotherapy is simply working with your subconscious mind to support you to make new and healthy habits. We work with hypnotic suggestions, which do not involve direct commands - the subconscious mind can resist commands.
Using guided meditation to help you get in to a deeply relaxed state, I then add in these suggestions, many of them in your own words, to create a state of relaxation, encourage a healthy sleeping and eating pattern, and to create new positive associations with new food types.
Healthy patterns of eating
I can help you get back to healthy patterns of eating in a relatively short time, and these changes will be embedded for the future improving your health, wellbeing and maybe even your life expectancy!
For further information click on the Contact button or text me on the number below for an informal chat.
Jane Pendry
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy & Coaching
35 Farm Close Road, Wheatley, Oxon OX33 1XJ
www.sense-ability.co.uk
jane@sense-ability.co.uk
07843 813 883