I came to see Linda because my relationship with food and my self-esteem was pretty poor. It affected my daily life and I knew I needed help to improve it. Linda is a very good listener. She never interrupted me, even when I felt like I was talking too much. I felt comfortable and not judged during our conversations which allowed me to be completely open to her. Thanks to the support, I no longer think about food 24/7 and I feel more confident in my body and I accept myself as a person I have received many insights and tools to learn to deal with the urges of my binge eating and now I can act in a healthy way and give myself what I really need! Together with Linda I have achieved more than I expected at the start of the process and I am very grateful to Linda for that!

I came to counselling because I was extremely sad and miserable, I was morbidly obese, my weight consumed every thought I had from waking to sleeping. I needed help. I needed to find a way to live. I had tried and failed at every attempt to lose weight, this in my eyes branded me a loser with no will power or discipline. I was shutting down and shutting off to the world. I lived with constant negative thoughts about myself. The positive changes to my well-being are phenomenal. I know longer am consumed with the shape and look of my body. I would say that 90% of the time I no longer am consumed by “diets, what I can and can’t eat”. When I wake in the morning my first thought is not about food, it’s about my day. When I have negative thoughts, I can use the Tools that I have experienced through the counselling sessions to work through them. Linda took time to know me as me, not as a number or person to fix. She nudged me in the right way: to enable me to reflect on a lifetime of negative thought processes and to live my life in a positive way. Linda enabled me to come to terms with some confronting issues and work through them. I think that the biggest gift that Linda has given me is that I no longer dread life, I can enjoy food, I no longer live in a state of deprivation or negativity.

Talking to Linda is like chatting to a friend and our conversations are relaxed and without judgement. Linda has helped me to understand why I sometimes turn to food for comfort and now that I have that awareness, I can make different choices. The process has been really freeing for me. It is a great feeling to have no restrictions on the types of food I eat. I now eat delicious food at nearly every meal (but sometimes life gets in the way!). I feel like I am getting mentally stronger around food and the way I see myself. My self-talk is much kinder than it used to be as I no longer berate myself for my food choices. I have also noticed that I have more energy all throughout the day and generally feel much happier. I have changed my reason for exercising too, it is now for the way it makes me feel instead of burning calories. I love it so much more! This isn’t a quick fix. There is still work to be done to undo the 35 years of mental and physical damage that diet culture has instilled, but I know that I have great support in Linda.