LighterLife Weight Loss Counselling
By WLR Dietitian
Tell me more about the counselling
All the LighterLife counsellors are qualified and hold the BTEC Professional Certificate and Diploma in Operating a
Weight Management Consultancy. The groups are single sex and
include between seven and 12 people. After the first couple of
weeks, no one else is allowed to join your group. The
counsellors use a combination of cognitive behavioural therapy
(CBT) and transactional analysis (TA) to help people
understand the reasons why they eat.
What exactly is cognitive behavioural
therapy?
CBT is used to treat emotional and behavioural problems,
including depression, panic attacks, phobias, obsessive
compulsive disorder, chronic anxiety, post-traumatic stress
disorder, insomnia, substance abuse, low self esteem and poor
coping skills. But it’s also been found to be useful for
treating obesity and eating disorders such as anorexia and
bulimia.
CBT combines cognitive therapy and behaviour therapy.
Cognitive therapy teaches you how certain ‘thinking patterns’
cause symptoms by giving you a distorted picture of what’s
happening. Meanwhile, behaviour therapy helps you weaken the
connections between difficult situations and your habitual
reactions to them. It also teaches you how to calm your mind
so you feel better, think more clearly and make better
decisions. When combined in CBT, these two therapies provide
powerful tools for stopping symptoms and getting your life
back on a more satisfying track.
How about transactional analysis?
TA is a therapy that helps people break patterns they may
have had since childhood, which influence their behaviour and
interactions with other people, sometimes in a dysfunctional
or destructive way. TA focuses on helping people to solve
problems, make new choices and achieve goals. Ultimately, it
helps people to adjust their behaviour in a way that makes
them feel better about themselves. |
