Use Hypnosis to Lose Weight
by Randi Botnick, CHT

This culture is awash in images of stick-thin models and buff athletes. At times, it can feel overwhelming to try to match up to what is thought of as physical perfection, when really these people make up a small minority of the population. However, it is true that maintaining a healthy weight and staying fit can help make your life easier and more enjoyable. Depending on your size, weight loss may also ease illnesses such as diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease, and could possibly add years to your life.

Of course, losing weight is no picnic. You may have tried every diet you have ever heard of. You may have felt deprived and hungry while you’re losing, only to gain a good portion of the lost weight back again within months. Sometimes it all feels hopeless.

It is most often the case that overeating is an emotional issue, not a dieting issue. This means that the underlying causes of your desire to overeat or choose the wrong foods is based on a painful emotional memory that has gotten used to being stuffed down, or snuffed out, with food. Uncovering the memory allows your subconscious mind to find alternative ways of responding and handling the pain.

Hypnosis is a technique proven to help people lose weight without feelings of deprivation. This makes changing how you eat feel natural. Clinical Hypnotherapy uses direct-suggestion scripts, guided imagery, and regression sessions. Direct Suggestions allow your subconscious mind to develop new eating patterns. This part of the process is taped onto an audiotape for you to listen to every day.

Guided imagery includes using visualization to: increase metabolism; increase your energy; extinguish cravings; and create an image of a healthy, slim, attractive new you.

Regression allows you to return to the initial events in your life that created the beliefs that cause stress and the subsequent eating behaviors, and release them.

With hypnosis, the goal is to change your relationship to food for the rest of your life. Since it works with the subconscious mind, changes often go unnoticed by the conscious mind. For instance, if one suggestion is to quit snacking after dinner, it is likely that you will stop snacking after dinner, but not even notice it until asked about it at the next appointment. It may even be that you have no memory of the suggestion ever being posed in the first place!

It takes 30 days to change a habit. How much time are you willing to put in to create a new relationship to food, eating, and your body?

December 2004