Yesterday I told you about how I had given up on the CBT and instead had a session with Felix a hypnotherapist. I saw Felix at the end of July so it has almost been three months. I am delighted to say that's three months on the road to recovery with only one week of a relapse! The food I have been able to try is unbelievable and I am so proud of myself. I have also already noticed huge improvements in my health in particular the condition of my hair and skin. Unfortunately weight lose has not happened yet, but I know it will, so I am just concentrating on developing and improving my eating. Once I have 7 different lunches and 7 different evening meals I can then start the serious fight to lose weight. I have devised (with my doctor) a three step recovery plan and I am currently working on steps 1 and 2. I will post my plan at some point as I think it would be useful to anyone wanting to lose weight and get healthier regardless of their eating issues.
As it has already been three months, its really not possible to share my thoughts and experiences of each time I tried something. But don't worry there is still more to come so I will try to be better at keeping this diary and recording the tries!
So in order to catch up, here is a breakdown of the food I have tried since treatment with Felix and what I thought of it:
1. Beetroot (yum!)
2. Beetroot salad from Tescos and Morrisons (yum yum!!)
3. Radish (vile never want to try again)
4. Closed cup mushrooms (delicious, I am now obsessed!)
5. Coleslaw (bleurgh)
6. Morrisons Potato Salad (bleurgh)
7. Quiche Lorraine (ok, didn't like the crust as it was too hard)
8. Raw Grated Carrot and raw sweetcorn (nothing special)
9. Raw green, red and yellow peppers (not very impressed and would rather not).
10. Tinned Red Salmon sandwiches homemade (gorgeous have them very often!!)
11.Battered Cod (not very nice, quite chewy - apparently wasn't a good example need to try a different battered Cod).
12. Black, Red and Green seedless Grapes (took a bit of getting use to but quite nice. Favourites are red).
13. Macaroni Cheese from Marks and Spencers (not very nice didn't finish it).
14. Flame Grilled Steak McCoys Crisps (very tasty but flavour gets quite intense after a while).
15. Nectarine (woody, not pleasant)
16. New Potatoes (lovely with a bit of butter melted on them)
17. Cooked sweetcorn (edible but still a challenge)
18. Corn on the Cob (yuck, too sweet and puts teeth on edge)
19. Petit Pois Peas (surprisingly nice, prefer these to normal garden peas which are minging)
20. Peach (prefer the ones with orange flesh, and love the tinned ones. Can't eat too much as flavour gets too sweet, but working on it).
21. Red Plum (nice)
22. Black Plums (gorgeous but gets very sweet, working on it).
23. Clementine (not nice, can't cope with the white pithy stuff).
24. Tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce on toast (nice).
25. Mincemeat in a smooth pasta tomato sauce (Goodness range from Tescos for kids! No bits).
26. Doritos (DISGUSTING)
27. Yoghurt - different kids yoghurt (too sweet and overpowering smell), Activia yoghurts various flavours, Tesco's low fat yoghurts banana, orange, and peach, Goats Yoghurt (vile), Natural Yoghurt, West Country Yoghurt, Ski yoghurt (so far not found any I like. Taking a break from them while I develop my taste buds. Will come back and try again before I decide if I am a yoghurt person or not).
28. Garlic croutons - (5) and cold pasta not sure of flavour (tried at the Harvester - alright).
29. Fried Egg on Gammon (gorgeous)
30. Fried tomato (scrapped out the middle and only ate a bit of the side. Not horrible, not nice. Need to try more).
31. Cheese & Tomato Baguette Pizza (ate half, ok but tomato quite strong flavour).
32. Cheese Feast Pizza (really not great)
33. Strawberries (not bad but can only eat a few at a time and still struggle with the seeds).
34. Barbecue Flavour Chicken (nice).
35. Cathedral City Baked Bites Mini biscuits (gorgeous!!)
36. Tesco Italian Range Beef Lasagne (very nice, quite a lot of pasta).
37. Thinly sliced Pork loin slices - not fatty (delicious).
38. Walkers Deli Crisps Cornish Mature Chedder Flavour (lovely, very tasty).
39. Walkers Deli Crisps Balsamic Vinegar of Modena Flavour (delicious - my new favourite crisps!).
40. Hellmens Mayonaise (need to retry with something else).
41. Tomato Ketchup (have it with a lot of things now - a bit addicted!).
42. Cadburys Chocolate Button Dessert (vile - far too sickly and sweet).
43. Dolmio Pasta Vita Carbonara (really unpleasant - not a good example, will need to try carbonara another way).
44. Multigrain Ryvita (nice - but need to have butter and cheese on it).
45. Seriously Strong Spreadable Cheese (not much taste, and not very nice).
46. Pepperoni Pizza (yum yum)
47. Ham & Mushroom Pizza (my favourite pizza so far).
48. Chicken Fajitas Pizza (horrible)
49. Tinned Mandarins (I quite like these, but can only eat a few segments at a time. Working on it).
50. 1 leaf of Spinach hidden in a cheese roll (ate it but the thought of it caused panic and anxiety to set in so didn't push it. Haven't repeated this yet).
51. Hartley's Orange Jelly no added sugar (really odd texture and very sweet. Ate the whole pot, but not a fan and not bothered about trying again).
52. Uncle Ben's Egg Fried Rice - cook in the microwave pouch (love this, really struggled with rice, but love this).
53. Chicken marinated in soy sauce (really loved this but the salty taste got really strong very quickly which was unfortunate).
54. Vegetables cooked in soy sauce - red, green and yellow peppers, sweetcorn, carrot, diced onion, petit pois peas, mushrooms (love this so much! Have had it a lot. So tasty!).
56. Runner Beans (added to the veg stir fry above - really did not like the beans).
57. Beef Casserole ( disgusting. The meat is horrible and chewy and fatty and bleurgh).
58. Elmlea Double Cream Whipped (very nice with Vanilla Ice Cream and some tinned fruit - Naughty!)
59. Cathedral City Spreadable Cheese (ok but nothing special. Lacks the strong flavour of the normal cheese).
60. Wholemeal toasted teacake and butter (nice nothing special).
61. Southern Fried Wedges (a bit hot but nice)
62. Fish Fingers (ok but prefer something else).
63. Stir Fry x2 - Same rice and veg as before but chicken cooked in chow mein stir fry sauce (a bit sweet but nice. Will have again).
64. Lemon and Brown Sugar basted roast Chicken from Morrisons (bloody beautiful. Definitely have again).
65. Morrisons Cheese & Onion crinkle crisps (one of my new top 5 crisps).
66. Mexican - Fajitas with chicken in El Paso Sauce, peppers, diced onion, tomatoes, shredded lettuce, with sour cream and chive dip wrapped in tortillas (this really went badly as we followed my Mum's recipe of adding lemon and lime juice to the meat and sauce. It was vile. Couldn't manage more than two bites. Even my Dad was gagging. Ended up having toast! Maybe try again if I can convince Dad!).
67. Smooth Branston Pickle -no bits - with a cheese sandwich (ate it, was alright, still not sure if I like it or not, but can eat it).
68. Grilled Rump steak - not dissecting it into little pieces and frying it like normal (really tasty and I like it quite rare. Was a very lean piece of steak. Still very particular and would not be able to do this with a fatty or grisly bit).
69. Season and Shake Cajun Chicken - with egg fried rice and soy sauce veg (I loved this. It was a very strong flavour and the top end of my range. I wouldn't want this every week, but will have it again. Tasty).
70. Sage and Onion Stuffing ( quite nice, but can only eat a very small amount before it gets too strong. Prefer the crispy bits!).
71. Deluxe Hand Cooked Vegetable Crisps seasoned with salt - beetroot, sweet potato, carrot and parsnip (absolutely horrible. Even Dad couldn't stand them.)
72. Hunters Chicken (tasty but had to cut the streaky bacon off as I still can't do fat).
73. Fusili pasta with mincemeat in a pasta tomato sauce (the Goodness range for Kids one from Tescos - still no bits) with soy sauce vegetables (this was nice but it was hard going eating all the pasta. Odd texture, but I will get use to it).
74. Tiger Roll (unpleasant smell)
75. Swirl Bread Roll (Viennese?) with poppy seeds (gorgeous!).
76. Applewood Vintage Chedder (absolutely disgusting, very odd texture and horrible flavour).
77. Butter Basted Roast Chicken (Roast in the Bag from Tesco) - (lovely tasty, moist chicken, hmmm!).
That's all the stuff tried in the last "just under" three months! Not bad! Feeling very proud of myself as that is quite a list!
Wednesday, 22 October 2014
Tuesday, 21 October 2014
CBT and Felix
Yet again I have been extremely terrible at keeping this blog up to date. Huge apologises! As I said in a previous post I had started CBT in the hope it would resolve my SED issues. Well I continued with it for a while and had limited success. I began to understand why my brain reacted the way it did to new foods and more importantly began to understand the sheer mountain I had to climb in order to beat this disorder.
I successfully managed to drink an entire small bottle of Tropicana orange juice during a session even though I found it extremely vile! But beyond that my progress was almost not existent. I found the few techniques I was given were not really suitable for food. For example one was to sit there with the food and wait until the anxiety passed and then try the food. This is based on the idea that it takes between a hour to a hour and a half for anxiety to rise and then dissipate. Now if this was sitting with a spider in a tank (which I would not do!) or something else that didn't have a time issue then it probably does work. The problem with food is if its hot it gets cold and is inedible, and it its cold it gets too warm, melts, goes off etc. So I was becoming increasingly frustrated that I wasn't making any progress and the anxiety would get so bad I would be lucky if I tried one new food a month! Added to this was the sudden announcement that I only had a set number of CBT sessions. I was over half way through my allotted sessions when I discovered this and it was acutely obvious that I was not going to make any significant progress before the sessions ran out.
Thankfully I had also joined a Facebook forum about SED and discovered a wonderful magical guy called Felix Economakis who ran a clinic in London and was a qualified hypnotherapist. He seemed to have dedicated a lot of his time studying and treating people with SED. More importantly the forum was full of people who had gone to see Felix and had been cured of their SED issues which allowed them to start the long fight to recovery. He had something like a 97% success rate and was very open about the times when it hadn't worked. He also filmed a lot of his sessions and they could be watched on You Tube. After months of reading other people's success stories and hearing the foods they were suddenly able to eat, I made the decision I had to see Felix.
I managed to get the money together for an appointment (with a little bit of help from Felix himself) and booked my appointment!! I was so excited! But I also wanted to make sure I had realistic expectations. He did not have a 100% success rate so I had to be prepared that it might not work. I also knew from the forum that some people found after a few weeks their eating issues were completely gone, while for others it took longer and required more effort. I spoke to a few of the forum members who had seen Felix recently and who had varying degrees of success, so I was as well informed as I could be. I decided to go in to the session with an open mind, and a hopeful heart.
Dad came with me to my appointment and it was his reaction to what happened which really proved to me what a dramatic change had taken place. The appointment was suppose to be 2 hours long but we had got stuck on the motorway for an hour when they closed the motorway to clear a fatal accident. So my appointment was condensed and I was concerned this would have a negative impact. I really didn't need to worry. There are three stages to the treatment which include getting you to agree to change and the final stage is the hypnosis.
I really didn't think the hypnosis had worked, but as days passed I remembered less of what had been said to me during the hypnosis and had to rely on Dad to fill in the blanks so I must have gone under! Thankfully my subconscious remembered! When I was "woken up" Felix got me to try some of the foods I had taken with me. He asks you to bring 5-6 foods to try at the end of the session that you would like to eat but couldn't. The first thing he handed me was a carton of Ribena. I took it off him - no hand shaking, no shallow breathing, feeling sick or anything - and stuck the straw in and began to drink. The shocked look on my Dad's face said it all! He had prepared himself for me to start crying and gagging etc. But nothing happened. I just drank the juice, and found it ok but a bit sweet.Then I tried a red grape, a strawberry, a piece of pineapple (which was disgusting but when Felix tried a piece he said it was vile and clearly had turned in the hot car), melon and a cherry Activia yoghurt. I was so incredibly shocked!!
After the session we went back to the car and I continued to try stuff including raw grated carrot, beetroot (yum!) and a leafy bit of lettuce that made me gag because it was so bitter. On the way home we stopped off at a Burger King to have some dinner. I still ordered my usual plain burger and fries but this time I asked for a ketchup sachet. My mind was obsessed with trying some on my fries! Now I am the girl that if there was a spot of ketchup on her burger she would be unable to eat the whole thing, and any fries with it on, would not be eaten and neither would the fries touching the fries with ketchup on! Suddenly I was putting a bit on every chip, and by the end of the meal had squirted some inside my "plain" burger! It was lovely!! My Dad just sat opposite me watching, and only commented after I had finished that he couldn't believe the difference!
It was an awesome day, but in the days that followed I was concerned it hadn't worked properly or would wear off. With a bit of encouragement from Felix and my Dad I stopped trying to test it, and just accepted it had changed and got on with it. It turns out I was not going to be one of those who completely changed in 2 -3 weeks after seeing Felix. Instead I was going to have a slower recovery, but still a recovery. As days and weeks passed I was trying at least 2 new things a day, which was a huge improvement on my CBT "one new thing a month if I was lucky"! I didn't always like what I tried, but I was trying it!
Felix had "cured" me of my anxiety and SED issues and it was now time for the hard work. The road to recovery. My taste buds were completely under developed so I needed to give them time to get use to new flavours (and still doing so). I had to get use to new textures in my mouth, smells etc. I also had to work out what I liked and didn't like! Food had suddenly become exciting!
I successfully managed to drink an entire small bottle of Tropicana orange juice during a session even though I found it extremely vile! But beyond that my progress was almost not existent. I found the few techniques I was given were not really suitable for food. For example one was to sit there with the food and wait until the anxiety passed and then try the food. This is based on the idea that it takes between a hour to a hour and a half for anxiety to rise and then dissipate. Now if this was sitting with a spider in a tank (which I would not do!) or something else that didn't have a time issue then it probably does work. The problem with food is if its hot it gets cold and is inedible, and it its cold it gets too warm, melts, goes off etc. So I was becoming increasingly frustrated that I wasn't making any progress and the anxiety would get so bad I would be lucky if I tried one new food a month! Added to this was the sudden announcement that I only had a set number of CBT sessions. I was over half way through my allotted sessions when I discovered this and it was acutely obvious that I was not going to make any significant progress before the sessions ran out.
Thankfully I had also joined a Facebook forum about SED and discovered a wonderful magical guy called Felix Economakis who ran a clinic in London and was a qualified hypnotherapist. He seemed to have dedicated a lot of his time studying and treating people with SED. More importantly the forum was full of people who had gone to see Felix and had been cured of their SED issues which allowed them to start the long fight to recovery. He had something like a 97% success rate and was very open about the times when it hadn't worked. He also filmed a lot of his sessions and they could be watched on You Tube. After months of reading other people's success stories and hearing the foods they were suddenly able to eat, I made the decision I had to see Felix.
I managed to get the money together for an appointment (with a little bit of help from Felix himself) and booked my appointment!! I was so excited! But I also wanted to make sure I had realistic expectations. He did not have a 100% success rate so I had to be prepared that it might not work. I also knew from the forum that some people found after a few weeks their eating issues were completely gone, while for others it took longer and required more effort. I spoke to a few of the forum members who had seen Felix recently and who had varying degrees of success, so I was as well informed as I could be. I decided to go in to the session with an open mind, and a hopeful heart.
Dad came with me to my appointment and it was his reaction to what happened which really proved to me what a dramatic change had taken place. The appointment was suppose to be 2 hours long but we had got stuck on the motorway for an hour when they closed the motorway to clear a fatal accident. So my appointment was condensed and I was concerned this would have a negative impact. I really didn't need to worry. There are three stages to the treatment which include getting you to agree to change and the final stage is the hypnosis.
I really didn't think the hypnosis had worked, but as days passed I remembered less of what had been said to me during the hypnosis and had to rely on Dad to fill in the blanks so I must have gone under! Thankfully my subconscious remembered! When I was "woken up" Felix got me to try some of the foods I had taken with me. He asks you to bring 5-6 foods to try at the end of the session that you would like to eat but couldn't. The first thing he handed me was a carton of Ribena. I took it off him - no hand shaking, no shallow breathing, feeling sick or anything - and stuck the straw in and began to drink. The shocked look on my Dad's face said it all! He had prepared himself for me to start crying and gagging etc. But nothing happened. I just drank the juice, and found it ok but a bit sweet.Then I tried a red grape, a strawberry, a piece of pineapple (which was disgusting but when Felix tried a piece he said it was vile and clearly had turned in the hot car), melon and a cherry Activia yoghurt. I was so incredibly shocked!!
After the session we went back to the car and I continued to try stuff including raw grated carrot, beetroot (yum!) and a leafy bit of lettuce that made me gag because it was so bitter. On the way home we stopped off at a Burger King to have some dinner. I still ordered my usual plain burger and fries but this time I asked for a ketchup sachet. My mind was obsessed with trying some on my fries! Now I am the girl that if there was a spot of ketchup on her burger she would be unable to eat the whole thing, and any fries with it on, would not be eaten and neither would the fries touching the fries with ketchup on! Suddenly I was putting a bit on every chip, and by the end of the meal had squirted some inside my "plain" burger! It was lovely!! My Dad just sat opposite me watching, and only commented after I had finished that he couldn't believe the difference!
It was an awesome day, but in the days that followed I was concerned it hadn't worked properly or would wear off. With a bit of encouragement from Felix and my Dad I stopped trying to test it, and just accepted it had changed and got on with it. It turns out I was not going to be one of those who completely changed in 2 -3 weeks after seeing Felix. Instead I was going to have a slower recovery, but still a recovery. As days and weeks passed I was trying at least 2 new things a day, which was a huge improvement on my CBT "one new thing a month if I was lucky"! I didn't always like what I tried, but I was trying it!
Felix had "cured" me of my anxiety and SED issues and it was now time for the hard work. The road to recovery. My taste buds were completely under developed so I needed to give them time to get use to new flavours (and still doing so). I had to get use to new textures in my mouth, smells etc. I also had to work out what I liked and didn't like! Food had suddenly become exciting!
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