Janet Thomson

Janet Thomson

Janet Thomson professes to have found the key to feeling great, losing weight and being truly happy, so we chatted to her about her weight loss secrets, why they work, and how she’s left feeling like Harry Potter when they do.

You’re a qualified life coach but you originally specialised in weight loss, what was it that made you want to work in health and nutrition?

Janet Thomson – “I originally trained as a personal trainer and I had three health and fitness clubs, so that was my first job in health and fitness. I trained and worked as a consulted to Rosemary Connolly for a number of years and I used to advise on her books and create her DVDs. She then wanted to open the fitness clubs and asked me to move the Leicester and work with her to train the franchisees. I did that for a number of years until I had a young family and it just wasn’t practical to work those kinds of hours.

“I left and ultimately opened my own three health clubs and then wrote my first book which was called Fat To Flat. When I was running the clubs I found that people were losing the weight through my nutrition system, which was great, but they still felt really rubbish and it hadn’t really given them the emotional shift they thought they would get, and others couldn’t lose the weight because they couldn’t get their head around not associating chocolate with pleasure.

“So I felt that I was only doing half a job and I decided to go and train in a range of psychological techniques spending the next ten years doing Clinical Hypnotherapy, NLP, CBT Courses, Thought Field Therapy and general life coaching, and my main aim was just to help people lose weight but of course what I realised was that so many other people needed these things, not just those who wanted to lose weight. So I then started worked with people with anxiety and phobias, rather than just weight loss, but weight loss has always been my passion and speciality.”

Your book Think More Eat Less promises to help people lose weight without going on a diet, can you briefly explain how that works?

JT – “It works by helping you to understand why you make certain associations with food, if when you were young and every time you fell over and scraped your knee your mum said ‘stop crying and you can have a biscuit’ and then at 30 you find yourself thinking about how when you’re upset you’ll reach for the biscuits, when you finally understand why you do that it’s easier to deconstruct it and put it in a different light, reframing it.

“There are all sorts of techniques you can do by yourself without going to see someone like me, which are in the book, were you can take a bit of control over your own programming. If you’ve got things that have been installed in you from the past that you want to change it gives you some practical ways to do that.”

What would say is the most effective technique?

JT – “Well, it’s different things for different people and that’s one of the key things in the book, there is no one set system that works for everyone because we’ve all had however many years of different experiences. For some the Thought Field Therapy works really well because that can deal with compulsions, cravings and anxieties. For others the self-hypnosis works really well, or the visualisation NLP techniques so I can’t say there is one technique that will work for everyone. The whole point is that you don’t follow a system, you just change the way you think.”

For many women the idea of losing weight without a diet seems impossible, but if the roles were reversed and you’d heard of your book what would your initial thoughts be?

JT  – “I think most people who want to lose weight know they’ve got to change how they think, and that’s one of the things I hear most when people come to me. Once you get to that point, then that has to be the logical choice of book. If you’re half a stone overweight and you just want some nutrition guidelines then any healthy diet will work but if you’ve had years of up and downs and you’re at the point where you’ve acknowledged that you have to change how you think then I’d look at my book and think ‘that’s what has been missing’.”

Having seen the effects of how your books and classes change people’s lives, how does that feel?

JT – “I love it, I get really emotional, really, really emotional. I can’t help it and I couldn’t do it if I didn’t love it and I know it sound really corny but I really do have the best job in the world. It’s awesome, and I sometimes say to people that I feel like Harry Potter because some of the changes are transformational.”

It was National Work Life Week last week and it’s notoriously hard to eat right at work, have you got any tips for keeping a healthy diet in the work environment?

JT – “You’ve got plan ahead because if you get to the end of a busy day and you haven’t thought about what you’re going to eat and you’ve nothing in the cupboard then that’s when you turn for the fish and chips. Now again, fish and chips are fine but if you fail to plan then you’re never going to have a structure.

“In terms of the work place, in the same way that you get up and go to work at the same time every day, you’ve got to build into that structure what you’re going to eat. So you can’t just wait until 5 o’clock at which point you’re probably starving and then think about what you’re going to have. I think ever house should be issued with a slow cooker, that’s my secret weapon because no matter what you throw in it in the morning it always tastes good when you get home.

Is there anything that you would say are definite ‘no’ or definite ‘yes’ foods?

JT – “No, I wouldn’t say there is anything that is a definite no because as soon as you say that people immediately start to want it. I really am an advocate for everything in moderation. If interviewed 100 slim people, most of them have the odd pudding or chocolate, they just don’t have it much. Even if they have it often they’re only eating a little bit.”

For those who have tried a number of weight loss programmes but were maybe reluctant to try yours, what would you say to them?

JT – “It’s not a weight loss programme; it’s a way to change how you think and feel. Actually, weight loss is almost a side effect of it. So rather than being fed up of being overweight, it would be if you’re fed up of feeling like you need to lose weight, if you’re fed up of feeling guilty and out of control then sort your head out first.”

What can we expect from you next, what does the future hold?

JT – “I’ve written a training course to train other people to run my programme because I see clients individually and in groups and what I would like to do is train other people to do what I do. I’ve just created a five day course which has just been validated by Skills Active which is a Government awarding body for the health industry.

“There are so many people out there, personal trainers and fit instructors, helping people with their body but not looking after their heads so in the future I want to train other people to bring the two things together like I have.”

Janet Thomson’s book Think More Eat Less is available now. Visit her website www.powertochange.me.uk to find out more about Janet and what she does.

 

Cara Mason @FemaleFirst_UK

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