Dearest Chocoholic,

I trust you had a lovely Easter and enjoyed your chocolate! Yep,  I did just write that! One of the most common questions that I am asked is if I am anti-chocolate, I am absolutely not; rather I am pro-balancing the role cohcolate plays in your life. Typically, for a Chocolate addict it plays are ‘overly active’ role as a way of compensating for lack of love, joy and pleasure in their life, where they tend to give into to feelings of fear over feelings of love

Today I would like to help support those of you who feel drawn to Chocolate Rehab make a conscious commitment to take your addiction to cohcolate seriously and set the intention to do something about it:)

It is a powerful time, after Easter as we start a new part of the seasons, so why not go for it, give yourself the gift of embracing this amazing growth opportunity of looking at how you can overcome your addiction to chocolate!

I know, it always helps having people who have been there and done that do it, and I so have, and so I can support you all the way be it here on my blog, on the facebook page, or even via the self-coaching modules on my site or by having one-to-one coaching and shortly via group coaching! A wonderful way of setting an intention to commit to overcoming your addiction to chocolate could be to write it down in your phone or diary and let a close friend or your partner know of your commitment; or better still buddy up with someone you know who will help support you through this journey!

The best place to start once you have a set this intention is to actually raise your awareness of your chocolate eating habits as you have likely  been eating chocolate unconsciously and not really being fully aware of your emotional or behaviourial triggers. So start this by tracking when you eat chocolate, and how you feel before during and after! Yep really, I am completely serious here!

This process helps you enormously to truly build an accurate picture of just where you own growth opportunities are in terms of how your addiction to chocolate is affecting your life and so how to it is showing up in your life. This could be through low self-esteem, low self-confidence, boredom, loneliness, overwhelming stress, heart-ache or just plain fear! Okeydokie, I look forward to hearing from you about how you find this process ! Oh and set a time frame on tracking your chocolate eating habits; such as for a week, two weeks or even a month, go for whatever feels righ to you!  

Much love, light & giggles, Carriexxxxxxxx

Dearest Chocoholic,

Happy Easter! I know, it’s that time of year where chocolate is pretty much everywhere!!! LOL! It’s the time of year too, where if you are a chocoholic you can quite simply ‘blend,’ into nearly everyone who celebrates Easter, at least, scoffing their way through ‘mountains’ of chocolate!

For me, this is not a bad or good thing, it just is! Honestly, I would just surrender to this moment of madness, these hours and then just commit when you are ready to balancing our your chocolate addiction, as I am firm believer in ‘what you resist, persists,’ so sometimes it is absolutely vital to actually surrender to the moment, and to our feelings! Your feelings this Easter could be initially of joy and happiness about chocolate and then could change to be sad, and depressed. Whatever your feelings are this Easter just surrender to them, as they will pass!

As you pass through your feelings  and allow them to be felt, then they will have less of a ‘hold’ over you, especially if they are negative feelings. For example: guilt, if you feel guilty about eating too much chocolate, feel the guilt and then just let it go as otherwise it just keeps you in the guilt!  This is because your ‘head or ego,’ just wants to constantly punish you and keep you unhappy and suffering, so just forgive yourself and move on as the guilt just keeps you in the negative and will very likely keep you just having and wanting more and more chocolate making you feel more guilt, making you feel worse and worse!!

 I know, you know, and I know and we often find this hard to do, especially when our head is involved! So, I invite you to let yourself off the hook and after your Easter chocolate eating, just see how you can let it go with love and move on!

Say you felt lots of very positive feelings about your chocolate eating, fully feel them, feel your feelings of joy and yummyness around the chocolate and then let them go! As more positive feelings will arrive in your life, it’s natural!

Once you get into the habit of acknowledging your feelings before, during or after eating  chocolate you will be able to notice the triggers for your excessive chocolate comsumption and start to be able to then address the underlying issues of it which will then ultimately help you to balance out the role that chocolate plays in your life!

If you are in denial of how you feel about chocolate,or you are incessantly bingeing on it,  or even constantly thinking about where you next chocolate bar is coming from with a ‘chocolate brain’ , then the more you acknowledge this and often just eat some, you are often more able to move on!

So surrender, eat some chocolate this Easter  and  then after Easter see how you feel, how you deeply really feel and then see what you would like to do about it, be it addressing your feelings and needs such as low self-worth, and look at ways you can improve this!

Love, light & giggles, Carriexxxx

Much love & light & laughter,

Carriexxxxx

Dearest Chocoholic,

I wonder if you have been following the Austrailian Olympic Swimming in Adelaide recently? Maybe some of my Aussie followers? Can you tell I am a bit of a swimming fan? Well, Ian Thorpe, Australia’s most successful swimmer, mounted his comeback and bless his soul got so so close to qualifying for the Australian team for the London Olympics but he did not qualify…He got so so close but ‘failed.’ He put all his energy, efforts and soul on the line, he put everything and was just seconds away from qualifying for the semi-finals in either the 100m freestyle or the 200m freestyle.

And guess what he did discover? He discovered a love for something, swimming that he had lost during his years out of swimming, around 5,  after many years of being pheneomonally successful. He discovered that he still wants to continue swimming as he just loves it and wants to see what can happen as he develops further.. Interesting!!!

Carrie, what’s your point here? Aha, well you see I feel that many of you might not be taking your addiction to chocolate seriously as you are fearing that you might fail?mm does this resonate? I understand completely and you know you might well fail. Yep I just wrote that. You might ‘fail,’ ie get a completely different outcome that you expect, and?…

I know I have been there and done there and got many t-shirts during my rather extended journey in overcoming chocolate and you know I do have my odd challenges and moments when I have and need some chocolate, it is just that they are no longer as intense or as extensive…!

For me, I can provide you with a number of tools that you can draw upon, and hyou can apply them in your daily life; but as we all emotional beings and life happens there are no guarantees whatsoever as it all depends on how you respond to your own unique challenges in life! For example: what I personally have discovered is that as you learn each lesson, be it overcoming your addiction to chocolate or learning to love yourself more, another lesson magically appears; which is what life is all about!

So by embracing the prospect of ‘failure,’ and really acknowledging your fear of it, actually makes it less likely to happen and more likely that you will become successful at whatever it is you have set your heart on, and often it what you have set your heart on does not manifest in the way that you intended it to, something even better often does!

For example, as I made my way through my own ‘Chocolate Rehab,’ I ‘failed,’ and ‘failed,’ and ‘failed,’ throughout many months but each time I discovered invaluable feedback which I will be sharing with you in my forthcoming book such as the importance of a multi-level approach, ie not just looking at chocolate addiction from a mental or nutritional or even emotional level!! Yes, I screamed from the top of my lungs repeatedly at the time, yet now I see the gold in it!! 

So, I wholeheartedly invite you to fear your fear of failure and do it anyway! In this case, take your addiction to chocolate seriously and commit to overcoming it be it with Chocolate Rehab or something else, as you so deserve to feel and be happy which I honestly feel is the sole purpose of our lives!

As always, I look forward to hearing from you and I absolutely invite your questions and suggestions for blog posts which I will post and even coach you in; just email me at: carrie@chocolaterehab.com

Much love, light & giggles,

Carriexxx

Carriexxxxx

Dearest Chocoholic,

Chocolate addiction help

Long time no blogging hey! Not to worry, here I am, back here blogging!

I have been avidly watching how the British Olympic Trials have been panning out since Saturday; paying particular attention to Rebecca Adlington, bless her soul:) I love her honesty as she expressed she was very scared on not qualifying for the Olympics in any of her two main events being 400m and 800m freestyle; even if on paper she is at least five seconds ahead of her nearest rival in the UK.

For me, Becky’s honesty and that she owned her fear of not qualifying for the British Olympic Swimming team for the 2012 Olympics, made me think of people like yourself trying to overcome an addiction to chocolate  and the possible fear you could have about NOT overcoming your addiction to chocolate; which I completely understand!

In life, as with anything there are no guarantees; life happens to us, and is an ever-changing dynamic daily, hourly and even second-by-second our lives can literally transform for better or worse before our eyes. What changed for me on my own journey towards the development of my Chocolate Rehab programme was that I just felt ready to ‘feel this fear and go for it anyway,’ so just thought and felt it was worth a try whatever the outcome.

It’s tricky as we are so conditioned; especially in the Western world to try to control and allow the mind or ego to rule our hearts when really, the more we embrace our hearts and follow our fears and feelings and just go for it whatever the outcome, let go of the outcome then magical things can in fact happen, as there is space for them to ‘arrive in!!’  So quite simply, acknowledge your fear, even writing it down, about not being able to overcome your addiction to chocolate, dissipates the power that it has over you and allows you to the energy to go for it even more; it’s when we do not allow the fear to come through that is when further issues come up and manifest!

So in short, ‘what you don’t own, owns you,’ so by Becky Adlingtin, owning her fear of failing to qualify it allowed her the space to qualify,-obviously she needed to swim fast; it still was very wise for her to honour her fear! For you, as a chocolate addict, by owning your own personal fears of overcoming your chocolate addiction it will, I feel help you on your own personal journey with me or someone else to overcome your own addiction chocolate addiction!!

I trust this helps and very much look forward to hearing your thoughts and feelings about this post!

And I’m thrilled to say Becky qualified in her first event, 400m on Sunday, bless her, she cried with joy as did I and many others I can easily imagine; bless her soul:)

love, giggles & light,

Carrie Eddinsxxx

Dearest Chocoholic,

First of all, Happy New Year! I wish 2012 to be your best year ever!

I wonder whether this will be the year when you will be ready, willing and prepared to take your addiction to chocolate seriously and really really look to overcome it using whatever ways feel right for you?

I know when I decided to take my own addiction to chocolate seriously, I did feel rather scared and overwhelmed about the possibility of it actually both working and not working as I had honestly become so used to it having such a hold over my life I found it pretty challenging to see how I could actually imagine my life without it. It had quite simply become a ‘painful comfort trap,’ that I often felt stuck so stuck on this seemingly relentless addiction to chocolate, even though often hardly experienced the taste of it, as I just had had so much of it!!

I know chocolate addiction can affect each of us very differently, from affecting our self-esteem, self-worth, stress levels and even impede our ability to go about our daily activities as dramatic as they can sound, it can actually be that challenging…

I would very much encourage you to listen to your hearts this year and really go for what you want and if your addiction to chocolate is stopping you or slowing you down then go for ways to overcome it; be it with my Chocolate Rehab Programme or  any other method that you feel attracted to, as life is all really about making yourself happy, following your heart, and absolutely feeling good about yourself and creating and having a meaningful life with meaningful relationships and if your addiction to chocolate is preventing or limiting this then you deserve to made the conscious choice to transform your life to realise and manifest all of the above! You are so worth it lovelies x

I would very much like to invite you to post on the blog, questions which  I will happily answer here about overcoming chocolate addiction or indeed about chocolate rehab, as I intend to answer one of these a week!

For me, your chocolate addiction is really about fear and love and choosing to follow which one of these. The more you ‘feel the fear and do it anyway,’ about overcoming your addiction to chocolate and face your own feelings and fears the easier your life will become and the less hold your addiction to chocolate will have over you!  If you want ‘virtual hand-holding,’ through this process then you can sign up for my chunks of Chocolate Rehab, from  just ten British pounds per chunk!

Whatever method you choose, do it for you, for your happiness, do it to honour yourself and demonstrate to yourself just how much you love yourself and treasure yourself!

Much love, giggles & light,

Carrie xxxx

Dearest Chocoholic

Sincere apologies for not writing to you any sooner! It’s been all change here some ‘forced’ which on reflection have been very healthy albeit rather challenging at the times! Not to worry life happens and the more we face our issues and our feelings and fears the easier life becomes is how I feel:)

Only 31 days to go until Christmas and quite honestly I have not done anything about it yet… all gud as I know what I am going to get and for whom so it is just a matter of doing it! I have my Christmas card list to write and then my Christmas cards to invest in which without a shadow of a doubt will be from my friends Sue & Rich’s charity-www.animalhealingtrust.org as they have some absolutely stunning and uplifting pictures of their 24 horse.. omg.. you’d love them..so beautiful!

So, back to you:) With anything in life the more we face our feelings the easier life becomes as the role of a feeling is to be felt and often we can be particularly challenged by facing our feelings especially those of a negative nature! I know I can be! We are human after all and sometimes we can all forget this and’ beat ourselves up’ for not being able to move on quickly or transform our lives at the pace that we desire! Sometimes it absolutely is a matter of facing your feelings and fears with oodles of self-love and self-compassion as often we have oodles of love and compassion for others and hardly any for ourselves and we allow our egos to punish us for feeling low, negative or even depressed!

The more you feel you feelings the quicker they can move on so this is particularly important for the negative feelings you might be experiencing being a chocoholic! By becoming more conscious and aware of your feelings around your chocolate addiction you will be able to identify patterns and issues which you can start to address and fully face; as you do this you will find in time that you will become less addicted to chocolate! I know this might sound at the moment to some of you like a far-flung fantasy but trust me it can absolutely work for you!!  For example: you might feel lonely so as you start to become your own best friend and look at the multitude of ways of making yourself happy and honouring yourself and your gifts as well as tapping into higher realms which for me are with the spiritual realms you will likely feel less lonely and more comfortable in your own skin!!

For some support with this you can sign up for my Chocolate Rehab self-coaching chunks which will walk you through the Chocolate Rehab process on chunk at a time at your own pace as I will not be personally coaching you; you will be doing that yourself under my guidance and coaching via the emails which will be delivered to you throughout each chunk! I have decided also to offer until 31.12.2011 the free option of having the opportunity of emailing me three questions about your chocolate addiction per module at no extra cost to you!

Here’s the link and the benefits of the Chocolate Rehab self-coaching chunks!  http://bit.ly/gSM7pC

and….

Here’s a reminder of what benefits you could potentially gain from the Chocolate Rehab chunks of coaching:

* You will be guided by someone who knows just how you feel and has been there and has overcome her decade-long addiction!

* You will be able to pace yourself according to your own needs and your own lifestyle, so it can potentially be a very liberating process for you!

* You will be guided to face your feelings and fears around your addiction to chocolate, in safe, secure and also very private sacred space, which you will create; which will I feel will resonate with quite a few of you, as I know many of your are both ashamed and embarassed by your addiction to chocolate

* You will have the affordable option of hiring me for personal email coaching sessions, enabling you to have direct and very private support and encouragement!

* You will feel like a trusted friend is helping you to transform your life from within, with as much fun, laughter and joy as possible( ie I’m the trusted friend!)

* You will feel better and better with each Chunk of Chocolate Rehab and feel increasingly empowered and in love with yourself and your life, provided you keep taking the steps and following through on the exercises:)

* You will come away, at the end of your Chocolate Rehab with a much greater level of self-awareness, self-love and have in your heart such a strong connection with who you are and who you are destined to be that you will, ooze positivity, self-acceptance and love-which is my intention!!!!

Any questions just ask me; I’d be happy to help: carrie@chocolaterehab.com

Many thanks:)

Love, light and oodles of giggles

Carriexxx carrie@chocolaterehab.com

Dearest Chocoholic,

Wow, all I can say is the magic of laughter knows no bounds, as yesterday I set the intention to laugh as much as I could, and believe I laughed a lot and I woke up laughing! Am seriously considering training in as a Laughter Therapist as I feel so incredibly well:) I will let you know:)

Today, I am intent on continuing with the giggles, as I feel it’s so the way forward, with it’s transformative healing powers and also helping me to continue to get my stuff done with the biggest smile on my face, even doing the for me challenging stuff, like structuring work I am writing which for a blonde -dyslexic I find a bit tricky, am getting there with the help of gorgeously-coloured post stick notes, which are really helping!

I would like today to chat about your chocolate addiction and forgiveness! Generally, we have all been conditioned to come more from our heads than our hearts so when we make a mistake, offend someone or do not feel that we live up to our idea of perfection, whatever that might be in terms of how we look, what we do, where we live, what we have and how we are, we more often than not actually are extremely tough on ourselves and I am sure that this happens at times with your chocolate addiction.

Let me get a bit more explicit here. For example: you ate a number of chocolate bars, and felt down after your initial high had subsided and then you were incredibly hard on yourself afterwards which really did not actually help you to move forward from your feelings as you we re overcome with guilt and ‘punishing yourself’ for what you had done and that is mostly because you are coming from you head more than your heart, as your head or ego is making you just feel worse than you already do without any let up, like ever!

Well, where forgiveness comes in here, for me, with your chocolate addiction, or with like anything! Let, me explain:  I am all for feeling your feelings, so if you are feeling guilty or low because of excessive chocolate consumption feel those feelings! What I feel is unhealthy though is  to continually keep feeling guilty, for example, as you will remain stuck both mentally and emotionally and that will not help you to overcome your chocolate addiction, or anything really!

For example: I might say feel very guilty that I have say eaten five bars of chocolate and then punish myself and then I decide to get in touch with my deeper feelings and realise what I really need to do to transform these feelings  is to acknowledge them through noting them  down mentally or literally in a notebook to build up a deeper picture of why I ate the chocolate in the first place, for me it was often due to loneliness, stress and boredom!!!

Chocolate Rehab Tip: I would then invite you to simply connect with you heart and forgive yourself! Simple I know! When you truly do this, it  really works and is really rather powerful to help you through each and every stage of your chocolate addiction! Even forgiving yourself for being so addicted in the first place really really helps you to feel better about yourself, which of course is key to healing yourself and loving yourself and coming out of your chocolate addiction!!

I’d love to know how you get on, so please do let me know!

Much love, light and LAUGHTER and as much self-forgiveness as you can muster!!

Love Carriexxx

Chocolate Addiction help

Dearest Chocoholic,

 Long -time no post- whoops! Sincere apologies for this I having  being planning out lots of cool and fun Chocolate Rehab workshops close to where I live in the West Midlands, in the Uk. All is exciting, and a little scary, which I feel is good as that for me is a sign that I am doing something that makes my heart & spirit sing which is very important to me

So, lovelies, back to you, here is a little post about the importance of having some fun!

When you are feeling trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of eating chocolate and feeling worse off for it, and you have identified through recording how you are feeling before, during and after eating it; I would intuit that many of you would benefit from looking at raising your vibration!

What do you mean here Carrie? Well, by vibration, I just mean your energy, as everything emits an energy, high or low, good or bad and when we want to feel instantly better about something, a great way is to raise your vibration!

So, where am I going with this? Aha, well, imagine you have eaten one too many chocolate bars, felt pretty low afterwards, and identified you true inner craving was for more happiness, lightheartedness, connection and fun! Then, by going out into the world and giving yourself this, will absolutely help you to transform your energy and feel so much better!

Naturally, when you go out with the intention of having more fun, for example, in might not last forever, what it might do is give you an insight into how you can powerfully transform yourself through raising and transforming your vibration by simply having more fun, whatever you deem that to be!! 

Of course, the more you do this, the better, like with anything you will become at it and you are better able to centre yourself and ground yourself with more of it and sustain it much much longer until it becomes who you are much more regularly, ie like daily!

For me fun involves having a good laugh  as many times a day as I can be it with strangers or with my friends! This can involves dancing and singing both on my own and or with others; watching live music and recently pooh-picking- I know-the later might not sound like fun to you, it is just that my friend has a horse sanctuary and a group of us went to help with the pooh-picking and we had such a laugh and we came away feeling amazing! Esssentially, for me I just set an intention to have much more fun, joy and laughter each day now and just see what happens, as I feel better and better the more I do this!!

By just adding a little more love and sparkle and fun into your life it can help you to get more in touch with your feelings, and help you to come much more from your heart than you head so that you can transform your addiction to chocolate towards a feeling of self-love and self-acceptance where you will be much more inclined to honour your gifts, to honour your feelings and  go for what you really, really want in your life!!!!

I trust you have found value in this post, I’d so love to hear your feedback here or via email to me personally: carrie@chocolaterehab.com

Much love, light & giggles,

Carriexxxxxxxxxxxx

 i

Chocolate Weight Loss Diet

Dearest Chocoholic,

I decided that today I would respond to a common question  that I am asked through revealing my feelings regarding the ‘chocolate weight loss diet,’ as I just feel the need!

First of all, those regular readers of my blog surely must have twigged that I am not remotely anti-chocolate as I feel that the more you try to avoid something; especially when you are addicted to it, the more compelling it can become; especially both energetically and emotionally! So, I feel it is important to reveal my feelings to you regarding the chocolate weight loss diet!

For me  as  a coach dedicated to helping female chocolate addicts overcome their addiction to chocolate, I feel that  I could not ‘hand-on-’heart,’ and ethically recommend something like a ‘chocolate weight loss diet,’ for a number of reasons.

Firstly, I feel that the excess weight that someone carries is rarely addressed merely on one level, for example nutritionally. Secondly, if someone was addicted to chocolate, I do not feel it would be healthy or ethical for me to recommend such a diet, even if the suggested chocolate on such a diet was indeed raw chocolate which is deemed considerably healthier than mainstream chocolate; as someone could still be very addicted to chocolate, therefore just perpetuating it even if there were lighter in weight, the same issues could still prevail! Is that therefore a helpful process; only to a degree, I imagine.

And finally,  rarely is it the case that by going on a diet the underlying issues are addressed; especially the emotional ones  which for me is a very significant aspect of the Chocolate Rehab Programme, as I fundamentally believe that emotions are the key to our power and our happiness, both feeling them fully and managing them effectively. I also believe that we are spiritual beings, having a human, emotional experience, so by just looking at  a nutritional level, with a chocolate diet, the weight loss could happen, which of course I am not remotely suggesting would not be a powerful thing, would there be a spiritual aspect to this process; unlikely I feel.

So here they are!Fundamentlly, I sincerely  feel that if something works for you, then go for, as at the end of the day you are the best judge, coach and healer for yourself, so if you feel that you are drawn to it and you have had results with it, who on earth am I to discourage you?!!!

My instinct and passion about helping women, in particular overcome their  addiction to chocolate is to help them to address their underlying issues of their addiction; which could be as wide-ranging as low self-esteem, poor body image, lack of joy, love or purpose in their life!

My intention with my Chocolate Rehab Programme is not only help and support my Rehabees by addressing their underlying issues, it is to transform their energies  and self-belief so that they can let go of their ‘weight’ of their addiction, and move on peacefully as they bring their chocolate eating habits into balance. As a result then, my prime intention is  not weight loss; although it might happen it is a deeper sense of ‘weight loss,’ and it could happen as a unplanned side-effect of the rehabees addressing their feelings and need.

We are all different and we resonate with different methods, people and ideas so I just encourage you to go for what feels right to you and you alone!

I’d love to hear your feelings about the above post!

Love, light & giggles,

Carriexx