You know that book The Secret? The self-help book that promises to give you whatever you want? Well, I think Hala is the secret. She has given me everything,’ says Annie, 27.
Annie is one of Hala El Shafie’s former clients – and credits the dietician with saving her life. When she first walked into Hala’s Harley Street clinic, Annie was a model, 5ft 9in, eight stone, and struggling to lose the remaining half inch on her hips. She was bulimic, addicted to diet pills and spending every spare moment in the gym. Within six months of Hala’s tender care, Annie had thrown out her scales, stopped dieting, quit modelling and become, in her words, a ‘healthy size ten girl’. She has a thriving career as a make-up artist and the old Annie is a distant shadow. ‘My skin is better, I’ve got curves,’ she says. ‘Hala taught me to love myself, be myself and follow other dreams.’
If Hala is indeed ‘the secret’, she’s unlikely to remain under wraps for much longer. Until now, the registered dietician has worked quietly from her practice, the Harley Nutrition Clinic, building a steady following through word of mouth.
Her numerous celebrity clients, as well as high-functioning professionals, usually arrive having witnessed a friend transform under her direction. Some need help as their health is under threat – Hala has anorexic patients and bariatric patients (undergoing obesity treatment such as a gastric band or bypass), both extremes trying to build regular eating patterns.
Many others have no visible weight ‘problem’ at all – yet they’re tyrannised by food, fat and body image. They are women who can’t enjoy food without guilt, who medicate their emotions by raiding the fridge, but wake the next morning mortified and determined to miss breakfast. They don’t have an ‘eating disorder’ but do have ‘disordered eating’ – and they come to Hala to be freed.
This January, Hala, 37, started as resident diet expert on ITV’s This Morning. She has been approached to record her own pilot TV show and write a book. On top of this, Meg Mathews, one of Hala’s former clients, was so inspired by her work that she has just launched a website based around Hala’s wisdom: nutrition-rocks.co.uk features frank interviews with Meg and her celebrity friends about their own body image. There will be a discussion forum for users, recipes, information and advice from Hala and a team of experts.
Now cradling a mint tea in a West London eatery, Hala is easy to talk to and full of questions. After a few minutes in her presence, you want to confide. (As one former client told me, ‘She’s calm, loving and never makes you feel guilty.’)
This is crucial to Hala’s approach, because her work has relatively little to do with calories and everything to do with emotions. ‘Emotional eating’ – eating when you’re not actually hungry – is rife, she says.
It could be that you’re feeling stressed, angry, bored or anxious. It could be the end
of a long week – or the start of a lonely weekend. ‘Some reach for a drink or light
a cigarette…lots of women will simply eat,’ says Hala. ‘It could be a means of coping or a way of rewarding yourself, but it has nothing to do with physical hunger. I call it “head hunger”. It’s the mind telling you to eat, not your body.’
Clients are encouraged to differentiate between ‘head hunger’, which can come on quite suddenly, and ‘physical hunger’, which builds quite gradually a few hours after a meal as blood sugar levels dip. They keep detailed ‘food diaries’ as well as ‘mood journals’ which identify the feelings that prompt them to over- (or under-) eat. A ‘timeline’ of their lives can also pinpoint the start of a problem.
‘It could be a means of coping or a way of rewarding yourself, but it has nothing to do with physical hunger. I call it “head hunger”’
This January, Hala, 37, started as resident diet expert on ITV’s This Morning. She has been approached to record her own pilot TV show and write a book. On top of this, Meg Mathews, one of Hala’s former clients, was so inspired by her work that she has just launched a website based around Hala’s wisdom: nutrition-rocks.co.uk features frank interviews with Meg and her celebrity friends about their own body image. There will be a discussion forum for users, recipes, information and advice from Hala and a team of experts.
Now cradling a mint tea in a West London eatery, Hala is easy to talk to and full of questions. After a few minutes in her presence, you want to confide. (As one former client told me, ‘She’s calm, loving and never makes you feel guilty.’)
This is crucial to Hala’s approach, because her work has relatively little to do with calories and everything to do with emotions. ‘Emotional eating’ – eating when you’re not actually hungry – is rife, she says.
It could be that you’re feeling stressed, angry, bored or anxious. It could be the end
of a long week – or the start of a lonely weekend. ‘Some reach for a drink or light
a cigarette…lots of women will simply eat,’ says Hala. ‘It could be a means of coping or a way of rewarding yourself, but it has nothing to do with physical hunger. I call it “head hunger”. It’s the mind telling you to eat, not your body.’
Clients are encouraged to differentiate between ‘head hunger’, which can come on quite suddenly, and ‘physical hunger’, which builds quite gradually a few hours after a meal as blood sugar levels dip. They keep detailed ‘food diaries’ as well as ‘mood journals’ which identify the feelings that prompt them to over- (or under-) eat. A ‘timeline’ of their lives can also pinpoint the start of a problem.
‘It could be a means of coping or a way of rewarding yourself, but it has nothing to do with physical hunger. I call it “head hunger”’
‘Sometimes, if we’re going round in circles and there are certain emotions that are
causing disordered eating – such as extreme anxiety – I refer clients for more help,’ says Hala. ‘That could be hypnotherapy, neurolinguistic programming, cognitive behavioural therapy, meditation. Whatever works.’
According to Hala, for many of us, the patterns start in childhood. ‘It could be the associations we learn very early on,’ she says, ‘an upset child soothed when mummy hands over a biscuit; a child who is rewarded with a treat when daddy gets home from work with a lollipop.’ It could be growing up with a mother who is always on a diet, coveting foods that are ‘naughty but nice’.
Added to our early behaviour patterns is the fact that food has a powerful physiological effect on mood, which makes it so attractive as a form of instant relief – the ‘happy hormone’ boost from foods such as chocolate, which raise serotonin levels in the brain, or the temporary blood-sugar spike from carbs. ‘On top of it all there is this massive pressure on women around appearance that means there’s probably not a woman in the West who can eat without thinking about how she looks,’ says Hala. ‘It can all make for very disordered eating patterns.’
Hala’s own family background exposed her to a healthier approach. Although she was raised in Scarborough, her parents are Sudanese, and she says, ‘For the Sudanese, there are no “food issues”. Food is a wonderful celebration of family and love and togetherness. My mum is one of those women who could cook for 50 people just like that, always from fresh. I used to love being in the kitchen with her. I feel the same sort of pressures around appearance as everyone else, but, for me, food is food. It’s not a reward: it’s not a punishment. It’s not medicine.’
At a first appointment, Hala’s clients are given some basic guidelines. ‘It sounds very boring, but you need to have a regular meal pattern so that you don’t get the blood sugar highs and lows and you’re less prone to cravings,’ she says. Everyone should eat three meals a day, ensure regular fluid intake and choose foods that keep blood sugars stable (hummus and crudités, pulses, chicken, fish, vegetables, whole-wheat pasta, whole-grain rice).
Any kind of ‘diet’ – be it Atkins, blood type or cabbage soup – gets extremely short shrift. ‘For every unsustainable diet, you eventually regain the weight and then some,’ says Hala. ‘I may tell clients that, from now on, they’ll be eating more – and their response is terror. My role is to assure them that if they eat regular meals and enjoy their food in a healthy way, their weight will stabilise.’
Louise, 40, a solicitor in the City, found Hala’s techniques particularly useful. Louise had not had a weight problem through her teens or 20s but had been stuck on a cycle of diets through her 30s. When she turned to Hala two years ago, she had crept from a size 10 to 14 then 16. ‘I knew that if I didn’t do something, I’d be an 18, then a 20,’ she says.
Identifying the behaviour causing Louise’s weight gain wasn’t hard. ‘I was extremely controlled through the week – no breakfast and a sandwich at lunch – but then I binged at weekends, starting with a Friday night takeaway and then a Saturday morning fry-up.’
Using a timeline, Hala and Louise traced the start of Louise’s erratic eating to the end of a relationship a decade earlier. ‘I’d probably coped by eating too much for a short period – and then that became my method of coping through subsequent difficult times,’ says Louise.
‘If your mother wasn’t a size 8, and your grandmother wasn’t a size 8, why should you be? That aspiration is often the root of the problem. It starts with a wish to look like someone else’
For Louise, understanding her triggers was crucial. She has stepped off the diet cycle and eats regularly. Hala has also helped her find other ways to cope with problems. ‘Rejection’ was identified as a key issue – including at work. Now, when feeling overlooked, Louise addresses it directly, speaking to her boss or colleague. Hala has also suggested alternative ‘rewards’: a manicure instead of a takeaway; dinner out with friends rather than a box of chocolates home alone. For the past 18 months, Louise has stabilised at a size 12 – and she still keeps a journal so she can ‘manage’ any changes in mood that could alter her eating.
Finding your body’s natural ‘set point’ is central. ‘Who said size 8 is the perfect size?’ Hala asks. ‘If your mother wasn’t a size 8, your grandmother wasn’t a size 8, why on earth should you be? That aspiration is often the root of the problem. When I ask someone to find a photo of themselves around the time of their first diet, they’re shocked. They never had a weight problem – it started with the diet and their wish to look like someone else. I try to build self-esteem and help clients have a much more accurate body image.’
In the coming months, Hala is launching a series of workshops for women with emotional eating issues. ‘Women will be able to meet for an hour a week and discuss the issues that affect the way they eat. We may not end up talking about food but the underlying factors, such as work stress, or relationship problems and how to manage them in other ways.’
As Hala says herself, much of her work is not rocket science: ‘Weight is basically calories in versus energy expenditure,’ she says. Yet somehow, for so many women, it’s an issue that never goes away.
If Hala is indeed the secret – and that secret is to take out the emotion, stop dieting, eat well, enjoy your food and love your natural weight – then it’s likely that there’ll be thousands of women only too happy to hear it.
What is emotional eating?