10 Hypnotic Ways To Lose Weight

When I talk to people about how I make much of my living, as a hypnotist helping people to think themselves slim, they often ask me: Does it work? My answer usually brightens their eyes with something between excitement and incredulity.

Most people, including many of the physicians and trainers that I work with, don't realize that adding trance to your weight loss efforts can help you lose more weight and keep it off longer.

Hypnosis predates carb and calorie counting by a few centuries, but this age-old attention-focusing technique has yet to be embraced wholeheartedly as an effective weight loss strategy.

Until recently, there has been only a small amount of scientific evidence to support the legitimate claims of respected hypnotists, and an influx of fad diets and unrealistic promises from companies and celebrities hasn't helped.

In the mid-nineties, a reanalysis of 18 hypnotic studies showed that psychotherapy clients who learned self-hypnosis lost twice as much weight as those who didn't. In one study, those participants kept the weight off two years after treatment ended. Still, hypnotherapy seems to have been a well-kept weight loss secret. Until now...

Unless hypnosis has helped you or someone you know to buy a new, smaller wardrobe, it may be hard to believe that this mind-over-body approach could help you get a handle on eating. The fact is that hypnosis has helped thousands of people to improve their quality of life.

See for yourself. You don't have to be in a hypnotic trance to learn some of the valuable lessons and tools that hypnosis has to teach about weight loss. The ten mini-concepts that follow contain some of the diet-altering suggestions my weight management clients receive in group and individual hypnotherapy sessions.

1. The answer lies within. Hypnosis supports the belief that you already have everything you need to succeed. You don't really need another crash diet or the latest appetite suppressant. Slimming is about trusting your natural abilities, as you do when you ride a bicycle. You may not remember how scary it was the first time you tried to bike, but you kept practicing until you could ride automatically, without thought or effort. Losing weight may seem similarly scary or foreign to you, but it's just a matter of finding your balance.

2. Believing is seeing. You have heard me say it before, You are what you say you are. In that same way of thinking, people tend to achieve what they think they can achieve. The expectation of being helped is essential. Let me suggest that you expect your weight loss plan to work.

3. Accentuate the positive. Negative, or aversive, suggestions, like "Doughnuts will sicken you," work for a while, but if you want lasting change, you'll want to think positive. The most popular positive hypnotic suggestion was devised by doctors Herbert Spiegel and David Spiegel, a father- son hypnotherapy team: "For my body, too much food is damaging. I need my body to live. I owe my body respect and protection." I encourage clients to write their own upbeat suggestions. One 50-year-old mother who lost 50-plus pounds repeats daily: "Unnecessary food is a burden on my body. I'm going to shed what I don't need." as part of her self-hypnosis routine.

4. If you imagine it, it will happen. Like athletes preparing for competition, visualizing victory prepares you for a successful reality. Imagining a day of healthy eating helps you effortlessly envision the necessary steps to becoming that healthy eater. A woman in her 60’s wanted to lost 10 pounds for her daughter’s wedding in less than two weeks. She changed nothing about her diet and exercise. She simply visualized herself stepping on the scale and seeing the number she desired each day and met her goal weight.

Too tough to picture? Find an old photograph of yourself at a comfortable weight and remember what you were doing differently then. Remember how you felt at that comfortable weight, and imagine resurrecting those routines. You can even visualize yourself getting advice from a future, older, wiser version of you after she or he has reached your desired weight.

5.  Send food cravings flying. hypnotists routinely harness the power of symbolic imagery, inviting clients to put food cravings on fluffy white clouds or in hot air balloons and send them up, up, and away. If McDonald's golden arches have the power to steer you off your diet, hypnotists understand that a counter-symbol can steer you back. Invite your mind to flip through its catalog of images until one emerges as a symbol for casting out cravings.

6.  Two strategies are better than one. When it comes to losing weight and keeping it off, a winning combination is hypnosis and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), which helps revamp counterproductive thoughts and behaviors. Clients who learn both lose twice as much weight without falling into the trap of “lose-some, regain-more.” You've already tried CBT if you've ever kept a food diary. Raising awareness, every good hypnotist knows, is a key step toward lasting change.

7.  Modify, modify, modify. The late hypnosis innovator Milton Erickson, MD, emphasized the importance of using our existing patterns. To alter one client's lose-regain, lose-regain pattern, Erickson suggested she first gain weight before losing it. This would be a hard sell nowadays, but you can easily modify your existing patterns in a way that makes sense to you. Instead of a pint of ice cream, how about a cup of frozen yogurt?

8.  Like it or not, it's survival of the fattest. No suggestion is powerful enough to override that very basic and primal survival instinct. Much as we would like to think it's survival of the fittest, we are still programmed to have our bodies prepared for survival in case of famine. A personal trainer on a starvation diet wanted me to give her a suggestion to eliminate her gummy bear addiction. I explained that her mind and body believed her life depended on the chewy candies and wouldn't give them up until she got enough calories from more nutritious foods. She insisted that a suggestion was all she needed. Ultimately, her desire to live won out and her gummy bear cravings continued.

9.  Practice makes perfect. One Pilates class does not produce washboard abs, and one hypnosis session cannot shape up your diet. But reinforcing and repeating a positive suggestion 15 to 20 minutes daily can transform your eating, especially when combined with a state of focus and slow, natural breaths.

10.  Congratulate yourself on the relapse. When clients find themselves overindulging, even in spite of all their practice and their healthiest intentions, I congratulate them. Hypnosis views a relapse as an opportunity, not a failure. If you can learn from a real or imagined relapse why it happened and how to handle it differently, you will be better prepared for life's inevitable temptations.

Research show that hypnosis works in weight loss and exercise programs by revealing the subconscious motivations that keep you trapped in unhealthy behaviors, such as eating in response to emotional distress. These hidden traps are why willpower alone is so ineffective.

Using hypnosis not only helps you understand why you want to eat when you’re not hungry, but also helps you to create healthy changes intuitively and effortlessly.∎