Dr Kate Barnes is a GP and a trained hypnotherapist. We asked for her professional appraisal of 46 GONE. This is what she wrote:
Mike Sheppard, a professional musician and composer, has produced a wonderfully accessible programme that is straightforward for anyone to follow. It was kick-started by a need for him to focus on healthy eating and weight loss through his own fear of contracting covid-19 with personal health issues related to obesity. A silver lining to a profoundly difficult period of time, he has found a way to lose and maintain a healthy weight and simultaneously compiled a structured and easy to follow plan geared towards current views on health eating, weight loss and maintenance, including advice on intermittent fasting.
What I particularly like about this programme, as a GP and hypnotherapist who focuses on the importance of establishing a positive mindset in health, is the emphasis placed on the reasons behind over-eating.The unconscious bad habits we develop, often from childhood, are so frequently bound up with factors such as poor self-esteem, need to feel safe, reward, stress and boredom and Mike takes a look at these triggers and helps us to understand by way of examples how we can learn to challenge and change our patterns of thinking and behaviour with practices such as positive mental attitude, affirmation and visualisation.
Changing these patterns of thinking along side instituting changes in practical eating behaviour is the holy grail when it comes to optimising and maintaining a healthy weight resulting in a beneficial effect on both physical and mental health.