UAE Weight Loss: “How I Lost 30kg Using Virtual Gastric Band Therapy”

“When I wanted to physically fight against reducing my food consumption, I knew there was a problem and that I needed help with it,” recalls Micheal Lomas, 38.

The UK-born, UAE-based expat had spent much of the start of last year gaining weight when the global pandemic crippled lives for a time. “I was getting to the point where I was ridiculously fat; I was the fattest I had ever been, so in May of last year I quit smoking, in July I started training, ”he says. But while exercise was something he was working on, working out on portion control seemed like a problem.

The food, he said, was comforting. “I used to find a lot of solace in food – it was my favorite thing. If I was feeling down or needed a lift, I’d be there and that’s what I would do, ”he recalls. Then came the meeting that would change everything. “The area where I live, there is a group of guys and we play football. One day after a game I started talking to one of the guys and he told me the story of one of his neighbors; a couple who had done this course [virtual gastric band surgery]. And what he said to me was, ‘I hadn’t seen the guy, the neighbors, for about three months and saw someone do something to his car and I hadn’t seen them. not recognized and it was the same person, they had just lost so much weight. So that convinced me to have at least one conversation, to investigate a little more.

And so came the meeting with Anna Yates, of Mind Solutions, who designed a four-step program that combines counseling, NLP (neuro-linguistic programming) and hypnotherapy to help you revise your relationship to food. . “It took me a while to figure out that my body will tell me when it wants food instead of my brain telling me when I want food,” Lomas explains. “This program is changing the way you do business.

This is an intense 1.5 hour session where you talk about your relationship with food; what it means to you and how it has affected you over the years and why. Your daily intake is noted and you are asked to write down three things: 1. How did the habit help you, 2. 8 ways you will replace this habit, and 3. 8 ways you will reward yourself for to have changed. this habit. These lists should go back to somewhere where you can see them easily and often.

About 30 minutes of this session is a personalized hypnosis track played to you, where you are asked to visualize what is and what could be (good and bad). This clip is sent, so you can listen to it every night – or day – before the next meeting. “There is a fork in the road and there is a downward part where it is a slippery slope. This is the wrong way, in 12 months think about where you will be and what you are going to have to do. It’s really horrible, you don’t want that. What are everyone going to think? And you’ve got the other path that’s a little more difficult and it’s going to take a little more control but you have control and that’s where you can come. And you’ve made that choice and you’ve made that choice time and time again. And it’s the same with affirmations, when you provide that [positive alternative], repeating this action over and over again, it changes your behavior, ”says Lomas.

Along with talking more about why food affects you the way it does, this session covers nutrition, macros, and understanding which portion control would work for you. At the end of this meeting, you will have homework, to keep a food journal for a week, in which you write down what you eat and when, and how you felt at the time.

This is a review course where you go over everything you’ve talked about, take note of progress and triggers, and prepare for the next step. At this point, things got more routine; leads – as affirmations call for change; this is autosuggestion at its best.

Lomas remembers his days between sessions. “Waking up at 5:30 in the morning, listening to the tape before getting out of bed at 6 am, then I would run 5 km. And at night, I would listen to the tape and fall asleep with it. It would be routine, ”he recalls.

In this session you will learn about the gastric band operation with a detailed presentation accompanied by a video on how the band is placed and what you can expect from it. Finally, you are hypnotized; a virtual gastric band is placed in your stomach by this process. You are full.

“Whenever we [people who are overweight] eat we have this kind of annoyance at the back of our mind that little bit that does not allow us to do it [stop]- you want to do it, you don’t. Why don’t you do it? This little piece of information that seems to be missing is what she [Yates] implements. That little bit of focus you need to be able to make this change. What is that [the plan] the fact, does it reprogram the unconscious part of your mind, therefore the little that you don’t think about – it reprograms the mind so that your food database, your experience with food is reset. Thus, the food no longer comforts you, it is there to nourish you. I eat so that I don’t need comforting.

Lomas raved about this method of assisting in weight loss. Today, 30 kg lighter, he says: “My whole personality has changed. My attitude towards life has changed. I am more energetic. I lost weight, gained muscle and ran my first 10k last week. It’s, like, amazing for me who couldn’t walk around the parking lot. I couldn’t run 100m 12 months ago, so running 10km now is huge.

“The key to this is to listen to your body,” Lomas adds. And the key to that is to understand your mind.