Turning Fat into Love
Pauline Kerkhoff
Author Bio
Dietician and nutritionist Pauline Kerkhoff has helped hundreds of overweight and obese people around the world lead happier and healthier lives. With her scientific background (a master’s degree in health and nutrition), fifteen years of practical experience with clients, and personal experience of overcoming multiple sclerosis as well as divorce, she is known to be a humorous, intelligent, and empathic self-development expert who inspires people to transform their lives. Kerkhoff has been featured on Dutch television and print media, and she lives with her two children in Soest, the Netherlands.
Description
“A down-to-earth approach to weight loss that begins with loving oneself.
Even a cursory glance at bookstore shelves will reveal a glut of self-help and diet books, and it can be difficult for readers to wade through the competing theories. Kerkhoff, however, has discovered a new way to slim down, not by cutting out a particular food or exercising until you drop, but by listening to the real emotional needs beneath the cravings. Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a young woman, Kerkhoff became motivated to take care of herself by drawing emotional strength from the love of others and, eventually, her love for herself. The wisdom she’s gleaned from her own experience may be useful to many, regardless of whether they’re looking to lose weight. The first step in Kerkhoff’s program is to become your “authentic” self by truly engaging with the world and your feelings at any given moment. Once you participate in the present moment, she says, you can form meaningful relationships. Other steps include retraining your brain to frame setbacks in a positive light, taking responsibility for your circumstances and setting a course of action to improve them, managing the fear of failure, and exercising your mind. What sets Kerkhoff’s approach apart from others is her philosophy that the self responds best to love and gentleness, not criticism and hatred: “I don’t want you to feel deprived; I want you to feel fulfilled. I don’t want you to feel scared; I want you to feel confident. I don’t want you to feel alone; I want you to always feel good in your own company. Because it matters. It is practice.”
A debut diet book with an effective method and a warm heart.”
-KIRKUS REVIEW
Book excerpt
Three or four times a year, I am a mother who loves to bake cookies. The messier the kitchen, the better and tastier the dough. My two-year-old son, Daan, does not like the taste of the dough, but he enjoys cleaning his spot on the kitchen counter. With water. A lot of water. Not my daughter Kiki and I. We love tasting the dough before we begin cutting out the cookies. Afterward everything is spic and span: Daan has cleaned the kitchen counter, and Kiki has licked all the kitchen utensils and pastry bowls clean. That saves me some time and energy in these busy days! (Yes, I am kidding.)
We are proud when the cookies are baked, and we enjoy the taste, smell, and sight of the cookie stars, the puppets, and the little footballs made by Daan. But the most tempting are the hearts, decorated with pink glazing and silver sugar pearls. Sometimes we make little holes in the hearts, so we can hang them in the Christmas tree with pretty red ribbons. The hearts with holes in them almost never make it to the Christmas tree; they are usually devoured by little hungry mouths long before they get anywhere near the tree.
Not only do heart-shaped cookies have holes in them. You might feel like you have a hole in your heart too. You may feel empty, unfulfilled, or restless, without knowing exactly why. Or maybe you do know why. Have you ever had the feeling that someone devoured your heart? Or that your heart was not whole anymore?
Sometime during your life, someone who was not capable of giving you what you needed at that moment may have cut out a hole out of your heart, just as if your heart were made of cookie dough. The dough may have gotten holes in various shapes and sizes, leaving an emptiness that is not easily filled. These holes might been shaped by an absent father, a depressed mother, or a boyfriend or girlfriend. Someone who hurt you emotionally years ago may have left a footprint in the dough that is still visible. Your ex may have cut out the shape of a little heart and ate it with gusto. Or someone tried to knead your heart dough in such a way that it never can return to its authentic form.
Life is not always easy when you have a heart with holes in it. You may feel a natural urge to fill up these holes with food, by eating chocolate, or cookies, or chips, or candy to compensate for the lack of sweetness in your life.
But you are not the only one. You are not alone.
Others fill it up with working too much, with the Internet, or with alcohol or drugs. But many people try to get their heart back into its original shape by eating a lot. Quickly. Now. Now, because the need to feel better is so urgent you cannot postpone eating. Quickly, because you don’t want to get caught in the act. And a lot, because your body will never, ever be able to send you a stop signal. You won’t feel a stop signal because your body did not ask for food in the first place and because your hunger is at another level—you are trying to fix an emotional hunger with a physical answer. You want to fill the holes in your heart by eating, but the food will never get there. Still you keep repeating the same trick: A lot. Quickly. Now. Secretly.
Author Website
https://www.paulinekerkhoff.com