Weight Loss Hypnotherapy

Using hypnotherapy for weight loss still involves eating differently, or exercising but it can make the process a whole lot easier, by aligning thoughts, feelings and emotions together so you can find it easy to follow  a healthy diet, rather than a conflict.. You don’t eat the biscuits. Not because of strength of willpower, but instead because they are just unappealing. You eat less food at dinner time. Not because you force yourself to eat less, but because you just now seem satisfied on half as much.

Hypnotherapy for Weight Loss aligns plans, goals, feelings and emotions to help you move forward. If you can relate to any of the points below then perhaps hypnotherapy for weight loss is for you.

1. You have been on a number of diets before and the weight just won’t come off. Or it comes off and comes right back on. You would consider yourself a Yo-Yo dieter up and down, up and down.
2. When you get depressed upset or emotional you find yourself eating. Perhaps you are bored, anger or lonely, and you found self heading for the fridge.
3. The chocolate, lollies or ice cream is like a strong feeling of  ‘I just have to have it, I need it’, like a craving or addiction, that food just keeps calling for you.
4. You find it hard or uncomfortable to turn food down, when offered to you by friends or family.
5. You constantly eat and snack and yet you never feel full.
6. The weight came on quickly once you stopped smoking, or stopped some other busy activity like work.
7. You suffer an inner contest of wills. Good verses bad, little angel versus the little devil. I shouldn’t  eat this, I have to have it.  I have to exercise, I could stay in bed another minute.

Hypnotherapy works with feelings and emotions  So instead of  feeling  a contest of wills, craving or a need to continually snack instead, those feelings simple are not there and the need to eat more at dinner, or to eat certain foods can be reduced  which makes it easy to eat healthy, and make healthy decisions and in doing so,  lose weight.

A habit is any action that can be performed  without having to pay conscious attention to it. For example, getting out of a chair, has a habitual pattern to it, the way you walk, run, the side you sleep on in bed, etc. Habits are good, they are routines that save us time and energy.

Habit Hypnosis

However habits do not just magically appear. A habit is formed from repetition.  And we repeat things because whatever that activity is, it is important enough to us at the time that we have to keep doing it.

Things that are important to us are important because they fill a particular need in our life.  A need is anything that when filled, bring us closer to comfort, happiness, or satisfaction. We have a need to sleep. In order to meet this need we go to bed usually at a certain time, sleep in a certain room and on a particular side of the bed.  So we have a habit of preparing ourselves for sleep. Habits are formed to satisfy needs by expending the least amount of energy to fulfill them. Habits free up our consciousness, and by having habits we can direct our attention to thinking, or planning to other tasks.

A habit is easy to break if there is no longer the need behind that habit which formed it in the first place, or if the need can be satisfied in another way. Let’s look at some examples;

1. Is it easy to break the habit of sleeping on the right side of the bed? Yes. Because the need is sleep.  And you can fulfill this need by sleeping on either side of the bed.
2. Is it easy to break a habit of Nail Biting? As a child thumb, sucking and nail biting fills a need of comfort.  As an adult these needs can be filled in many different ways. So nail biting as an adult is easy to break, however it helps if you know the right technique.
3. Is it easy to break the habit of  smoking ? No. Because as long as a smoker smokers, they  continue to create a need. That need is to satisfy the withdrawel of nicotine from their body. This need for nicotine is met by the habit of smoking at certain times of the day and in certain situations to obtain more nicotine.   The need comes first(nicotine), the habit comes second to satisfy the need. ( However there are ways of using hypnosis that can change how the withdrawal effcts of nicotine are interpreted by the mind and this can make stopping easier).
4. Is it easy to break the habit of eating sweets at work Maybe? You may have a habit of eating sweets to fulfill the need of hunger at certain times of the day. To change this habit you take an apple to work, which then fulfill this need.  However if you were in the habit of eating sweets every time you were bored at work, this would may be  more difficult to break. Because the sweets are fulfilling a need, breaking up the boredom. So first you would need to fulfill the need to have challenges or interest at work  in another way, e.g. find more interesting work, e-mail your friends. Then the habit of eating sweets at work is easier to change.

If you find it difficult to break a bad habit, it is because the habit is fulfilling a need for you. What you have to identify is what that need is. And then find a way of satisfying it in another way. Once you can do that the habit is easy to break. Alternatively, if you can’t form new good habits, it is because there is not enough satisfaction in what the habit sets out to accomplish to sustain  it.

So you want to stay motivated. Motivation comes in two forms, internal and external.

External motivation is anything happening in the external world that drives you towards losing weight. Life events such as planning to have a baby and increasing the chances of fertility, looking for Mr or Miss right, the big wedding day or an overseas holiday are all external motivators. Because the motivation is tied to an event, once the event passes so too does the motivation and old eating habits tend to return and with this comes the weight.

Internal motivation, is when we take action for the benefit of ourselves. This motivation can be divided into goal directed motivation and anxiety directed motivation. Anxiety driven weight loss occurs when a person steps on the scales, finds their weight has jumped, and panics. In this scenario people take action so as to move away from discomfort.

Anxiety driven behavior can produce an initial surge of activity, with crash diets and exercise regimes, however as the weight begins to come off, the anxiety lessens, and as it was the anxiety which was the motivator once it is no longer there the person is back eating the old foods, and the exercise program is a distant memory.
However goal directed motivation tied to the value, belief and worth of who you are is different than anxiety driven motivation. If your sense of self worth increases, your sense of appreciate of yourself rises with it. And as your sense of appreciation rises it is easier to spend more time looking out for yourself and ensure you eat right.  If you have had children or a pet or someone in your life you love you look after them, it isn’t a struggle it doesn’t require motivation, you simple take action because you value and appreciate them. The same applies to you.

You also probably know of or met someone who really is a slob, who you just  feel has a low value of themselves to get that way. Well it is all by degrees. The reflection of that person is really no different than the reflection of yourself in the weight you are right now.

Self worth is a learned process, formed by previous life experiences.  We are not usually consciously aware of our own sense of value. Hypnosis is one method to change any old and outdated misconceptions of ourselves that may still be lurking in the back of minds. Beliefs or ideals that quietly sit there directing our behavior. “Why bother, It isn’t worth the hassle”. “You’re not worth the hassle”. “”Never worked before, Will never work again”. “You are just not pretty, why bother trying”.

If you lack motivation, and give up too quickly, if the diet is always tomorrow and the exercise always next week, then perhaps it is time to appreciate yourself a whole lot more. With hypnotherapy it can become a whole lot easier to perceive yourself differently from both a conscious and subconscious perspective. When you appreciate something you remain motivated to look after it, and with this comes a better healthier looking you.

Hypnosis  can be traced back to the early day of religious practices and cultural sermons by different civilizations and cultures, and usually referred to as a trance. There is evidence that Egyptians, Greeks, Persians and Hindu’s all practiced trance like states.  The Egyptians were thought to have use hypnosis in the use of dream temples, and American Indians in the induction rituals of boys into manhood.  Priests or elders may have induced hypnotic states using rhythmical drumming and chanting and often the trance state was attributed to the possession of the person by demons, ghosts or spirits.

The 1600’s ushered in a time period where hypnotic inductions and beliefs were instilled upon people by healers such as Valintine Greatrakes (1628-1661) known as the Great Irish Stroker who believed himself to have been blessed with the divine gift of healing.  His nickname  was coined because with his hand he would gently stoke his patients body to cure the inflicted aliment.  Belief in himself and the belief of his patients in his healing abilities were all attributors to his phenomenal success. His healing abilities were thought to be the divine gift from god rather than a natural occurring human phenomenon.

In the 1700’s Western scientists began to take an interest in what was termed the trance state. Devils and gods were ruled out as a cause, but the alternative reasons were just as bizarre, with hypnotic induction attributed to metals, magnets and the transference of energies.

Dr. Franz Mesmer (1734-1815) formulated a method of rapidly inducing people into a trance state through the use of, magnets, hand movements and metal rods .   He attributed his ability to hypnotize people due to the stronger animal magnetism that resided inside himself over his subjects.

Mesmer accounts were soon to be discredited by the likes of Abe Faria, a Portuguese monk who put forth that a state of hypnosis was caused not by animal magnetism but by the intense concentration of the mind.  Abbe Faria thought the power of hypnotism worked by the cooperation of the patient and the use of suggestion.   Dr James Braid (1795-1860) from Scotland was the first to use the word hypnosis and put forward that hypnotism was induced by concentration.  He used bright shiny objects to focus the mind and sleep inducing words such as “sleep” to induce a hypnotic sleep. Dr Braid used hypnosis to perfrom hundreds of surgeries upon people, to diminish pain.

While the skills Dr James Braid developed may have been were tinkering on the brink of bringing a major advance to anesthesia in the medical world, penicillin also came about at the same time, and the use of hypnosis for pain control was sidelined.

As science has progressed so has our understanding of the hypnosis.  No longer do we believe that mystical spirits, magnets or unusual energies cause hypnosis, but that it is a natural state that can be induced by a hypnosis practitioner or by oneself with a little practise. And as the understanding of hypnosis increases so will its application in dealing with pain, self improvement and uses in a therapeutic environment.