For this month’s podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Caroline, a client of our Swords Clinic and a wonderful example of how a positive mental attitude can benefit us, regardless of how difficult our situation is.Caroline had breast cancer in 2018 and went through a challenging time. She began gaining weight as a result of two operations, rigorous chemotherapy and radiation, and the treatment with medication.Do you think this prevented Caroline from having a proactive and optimistic attitude? Absolutely not! Caroline is a fighter and her journey will inspire you to beat whatever obstacles you may experience. Speaking with Caroline made me realize that when we’re going through a difficult moment, negative thoughts are all we can see and we often neglect our own wellbeing, while in fact, being active and optimistic may help us clear our brains and keep going.I hope you enjoy my chat with Caroline! Her story has truly inspired me, and I am sure she will inspire you too.          

What an emotional story we have for you in the latest podcast. Elaine, who did an incredible job losing 3 stone, 4 pounds. She was close to having to get a hip replacement, facing serious surgery she instead decided to take control of her eating, once and for all. Focusing not on what she was eating, but why she was eating.  She improved her health to the point where she has been able to come off medication and doesn’t need to have the surgery anymore. It is people like Elaine that make what we do worthwhile and we think you will agree that her story is an emotional rollercoaster that just grabs you.

Welcome to the second episode of Connecting the Dots, a three-part podcast series that aims to help parents and their adolescent / teenage children to understand and address some of the most pressing issues they face both at home and in society today. The theme or title of today’s podcast, Understanding Risk Taking & Peer Pressure in Adolescents, is a natural progression from the 1st podcast where we looked at body image and self-esteem. I’m absolutely delighted to have Stuart Wilson from Zest Life back in the chair with me and I have to say, Stuart’s input is invaluable. My message to parents and adolescents: please tune in, you will be so much the better for it. We may not have all the answers but oftentimes, knowing how to identify the problem and being able to handle it in the most appropriate and effective way is the critical part. Also, if you think you are the only parent / adolescent facing these challenges. Rest assured; you are not. There are communities out there with support frameworks to help you. Remember….. You are not alone. So, to the topic at hand – understanding risk taking & peer pressure in adolescents. Risk taking is actually part of the process of developing as a young person. Before we get to risk taking, we need to spend some time looking at the various development stages from baby through to adulthood. As toddlers, kids are embedded. That is, they are utterly dependent on their mother and father for everything. At the age of 5 or 6 when they start school, they are starting to disembed a little. The disembedding is an entirely natural process where the child is learning how to decide for themselves and make their own choices, be it friends or activities that they prefer. This is normal behaviour and it’s good, though naturally, for some parents it can be emotionally challenging. This disembedding stage lasts a while and leads into the interiority stage. Typically, this is around the first year in secondary school. This is where the adolescents begin to define their own friendships and groups. It’s all about fitting in and belonging. This interiority stage lasts for 5/6 years from which they progress to the integrated stage, where they feel they’ve landed, kind of know who they are and perhaps, know what they want to do with their future. Then they launch into adulthood. Depending on how embedding, interiority and integrated went, this has a defined impact on whether the launch into adulthood is a good one or a bad one. Adults can get trapped in the interiority stage and addressing that issue requires assistance. ____________ Adolescents want to speed through interiority. They will try to fit in with various groups and to do so, may engage in risk taking or activities deemed appropriate by the group – alcohol, vaping, sexual encounters. So, they will take risks and it’s important to note that risk taking is normal. It’s good that they are in this state but as parents / adults we have to be careful of the risks we allow them to take. You are not alone. What can we do that will help our children move safely through the interiority stage where risk taking is part of that life? Talk. Talk. Talk. As obvious as it may seem, talking is the most important thing you can do. Parents can often feel that their children don’t want anything to do with them during the interiority stage. The opposite is the case and you bridge this by bidding. Bid for their time by continually offering your time to listen and to help. To be there.

This podcast series, Connecting the Dots, is about awareness and trying to find out why adolescents are overeating in the first place. We find that there are three main reasons or triggers that are at the root of why adolescents are overeating. Bear in mind, overeating is but one of the escape or safety valves that adolescents may turn to. In today’s podcast we will deal with the first trigger and that is Body Image / Self Esteem and the Influence of Social Media. We need to be very real about what is happening to our young people and how challenging the environment is for them to be growing up in. Adolescents are growing up in a world of social media and can only see one world. The parents grew up prior to this super connected, always-on world, so they can see two worlds. Parents can call this the online world or the internet world but for the adolescents it simply is the world. Body image is hugely impactful on your people’s lives. This manifests itself in two ways: How they see themselves and what they think of themselves when they see themselves in their world. You are not alone. The culture in which adolescents are growing up is a pressurised and instantaneous one. So, pretty much everything that see thy can get their hands on pretty quickly. There is a keen competitiveness attached to that – FOMO. Parents have inadvertently added to this. If you’re like me, you are coming from a generation that grew up knowing what it’s like to have to do without. We naturally want the best for our kids – there is a genuine goodness and kindness behind it but as a consequence, we are adding to the pressure. Also, incorrectly, we used to think that body image was exclusively a female issue but it’s very different now and body image is a significant issue for boys. The pressures of what they look like or should look like is incredibly difficult to deal with and manage. As parents, rather than managing or criticising that culture, we need to understand it. ‘Culture’ is used to encapsulate the world of the adolescent. Their world. Culture today is ever-on, it has no down time. From a generational aspect, say 30 years ago, you had to go out of your way (that is, get off your backside) to find information on any given subject, be it to your library, newsagent or to borrow a book or magazine from a friend. Today, that search and discover cycle is shortened to an on-demand model with an over-supply of near perfect bodies and superstar lives. Mobile phone usage is not an adolescent issue – it is a household issue. There are various levels of addiction but a basic level, many teenagers are addicted to their phones. Protracted absence from the phone, in most instances, leads to an inability to think straight other than to get the device back. As parents, we have to role-model this. So, the big question for parents – when and how often do you use your mobile phone at home in front of the family? You are not alone. This leads on to the concept of the numbing effect. Th numbing effect originally came from watching TV. You simply zoned out or got engaged in something that was showing on the TV, resulting in a numbing effect. Remember, 30/40 years ago, many households had one TV with only 1 or 2 channels). But with mobile phones, the numbing effect has an impact on the central nervous system. This is due to the back light on the mobile or tablet device screen. This back light leads to an over production of cortisone which leads to increased stress levels. Our serotonin levels also drop and to counteract the stress and the lowered serotonin levels, we look to paths of least resistance which leads to coping strategies, and one of them is……..eating. For adolescents this is a problem. As mentioned previously,

This is the remarkable story of Eoghan Brennan who lost 6 stone with Motivation Weight Management. Eoghan, who just recently turned 16, was topping the scales at just over 19 stone / 120 kg in 2021. Over the course of his weight loss programme in our Swords clinic, Eoghan shed an amazing 6 stone / 38 kg. Eoghan tells his story in the podcast below and it’s aptly titled, ‘A Teenager’s 6 Stone Weight Loss Journey’. There are two audiences that this podcast is aimed at. First of all, and the most important is other teenagers who are struggling with their weight. For you, this is an important reference point as there is hope and there is a way out of your current situation. One thing to note – where you are now is only temporary. Fix that in your mind. It’s temporary and we can help you lose that weight and move on to where you want to be. Listen to Eoghan’s story and you’ll find it parts of it should resonate with your own situation. Secondly, the parents of the teenager that probably has had several false starts in trying to lose weight. It’s a story that’s played out over and over so you and your child are not alone in this. It’s not easy and the traps are many but with the right guidance and framework it is manageable, and your son / daughter can lose that excess weight in a controlled and safe environment. You too should listen to Eoghan’s story and hear what the story sounds like from a teenager’s perspective. As adults we’ve forgotten what those teenage years were like so it’s important to listen to Eoghan. At just over 10 minutes, his podcast, ‘A Teenager’s 6 Stone Weight Loss Journey’ is short but it’s well worth the listen. In addition to the podcast, please feel free to download our short eBook, ‘Teenage Weight Gain: What You Can Do?’ On the day that we recorded Eoghan’s podcast, his mother Roisin was in attendance. Aisling Connolly, our clinics director and chief podcaster-in-arms, asked if Roisin, as she was in the clinic, would she like to tell how she viewed Eoghan’s 6 stone weight loss from the mother’s side. Roisin agreed and what followed is another great podcast. A parent’s perspective is also a critical consideration for any other parent in a similar situation and we are very grateful to Rosin for donning the microphone and telling her story.

The Laura Grant story is a story for the ages. There is something in this story for everyone, small and big nuggets of advice that will help you in so many aspects of your life – weight loss, physical and mental health, and being able to face up to and overcome issues of confidence and self-belief. Laura Grant joined Motivation in 2019, just after the birth of her third child. As Laura herself noted, it is a very stressful, busy and full life being a mother of a baby (x3). Her immediate experience of Motivation was the me-time, that time and space she now had to herself. For the first time, she realised how manic your life can be, as she herself says, “how busy, not only your head, but how life itself is.” Through her weekly consultations, it was evident that stress was a significant contributor to Laura’s overeating. Motivation helped Laura to identify her stress triggers and to take on board new coping mechanisms to deal with stress. This transformed Laura so much so that when I describe the stressed individual I first me, she replied by saying that she didn’t recognise that woman any more. As Laura remarked, “It’s as if you are talking about someone else.” Laura quite rightly points out that she still gets stressed but she doesn’t let it implode on her anymore. She’s now able to identify her stress triggers and is able to manage them very well. It’s important to note that stress occurs naturally in all humans. It’s how we cope with it that is crucial to our physical; and mental wellbeing. I mentioned triggers above and this leads me quite nicely into the next part of Laura’s story. Laura was aware of issues in her life – she was overweight so there was obviously something amiss but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. With our help, Laura identified four key triggers that were at the root of her overeating: * Loneliness * Stress * Perfectionism * Guilt Laura is one of eight children and she’d describes herself as a socially orientated kind of person so she was astonished when loneliness was identified as an issue. Laura’s Mental Weight report identified loneliness as an issue and when she saw it in ‘black and white’ it made her, for the first time, question what was happening and going on in her life. Words can sometimes not do the justice that such a revelation deserves. For over 25 years, I’ve sat with thousands of clients who’ve had those light bulb moments, when like a flash of intense bright light, they are startled and awakened to a whole new world, a world in which they are now in control. When I asked Laura about negative and positive motivation, she agreed that when she started with Motivation, she was engaged mainly with negative motivation, that is thoughts and behaviours associated with failure and lack of self-belief. Laura has tried any number of weight loss programmes – she’d tried everything and nothing worked for her. Her next thoughts were noticeably negative – am I setting myself up for failure, again? or will I be able to do this? Laura’s fears are not unique to her and fear of failure is normal. As humans, we are predisposed to being influenced by how good or bad events or experiences went for us in the past so it should come as no surprise that fear of failure with weight loss is so common. The tools we use and share with our clients are the tools that equip you for life. Weight maintenance is a journey and our programme enables you to embrace milestones (weddings, special events, holidays), not fear them. Laura now feels empowered as she no longer has that fear of not having achieved what she set out to do. What she now has is a sense of purpose and positivity that sees her through and beyond those significant miles...