The benefits of using hypnosis for weight loss sound almost too good to be true for most people who want to lose some weight. People have a difficult time understanding how hypnosis works and how it can help you lose weight.
In the following article, we’re going to examine the benefits of using hypnotherapy for weight loss, and explain how you can get the most out of hypnosis when you’re trying to lose weight.
How Does Hypnosis Work?
Hypnosis is defined as a state of consciousness which involves enhanced concentration and attention while experiencing a decreased awareness of your surroundings. When you’re hypnotized, you respond favorably to suggestion.
Most people make the mistake of believing hypnosis works as they see in movies. One moment you’re awake, the next one you’re clucking like a chicken because the hypnotist told you to do so. This could not be further from the truth.
In reality, you’re always conscious and aware during a hypnosis session. Furthermore, the hypnotist explains how hypnosis works and discusses your personal weight goals, eating habits, and eating triggers.
Once you establish your goals, the therapist will help you relax and enter a state of hypnosis. When you’re hypnotized, you respond favorably to suggestions, which will help you achieve your goals.
Does hypnosis work for weight loss? Can hypnosis help you overcome your food addiction?
Read on to find out the answers
Hypnosis Is Effective At Changing Behaviors
Hypnosis is effective at changing certain behaviors and has a reputation for helping people quit smoking or quit drugs.
A study which enrolled 286 smokers showed that hypnotherapy is more effective than counseling for those who want to quit smoking. 20% of those who participated in hypnosis sessions abstained from smoking for an entire year, as opposed to only 14% of those who participated in counseling sessions.
You might be wondering how this could be helpful for those who want to lose weight. Well, the answer is very simple. Hypnosis helps you overcome your cravings. Smokers crave for nicotine, while people on diets crave for food.
One of the great things about using hypnosis for weight loss is that it helps you overcome your unhealthy cravings by reducing the frequency of your triggers. Some might associate food with feelings. It’s no secret that many people rely on unhealthy food to comfort stress.
With the help of hypnosis, you will be able to overcome your urge to eat when you’re facing a stressful situation and you will discover better, healthier ways to cope with stress.
Hypnosis is also very good at helping people overcome their anxiety and improving their self-esteem, both of which being helpful for those who want to lose weight.
Hypnosis Helps People Overcome Their Anxiety
Hypnosis is better than relaxation music for treating your anxiety. Anxiety has many triggers. Some people feel anxious about what they’ve done, others feel anxious about what they’re about to do. Sleep deprivation and insomnia can worsen our anxiety, and thinking negatively about ourselves can spike our anxiety levels.
Now, people react differently when they’re anxious, but many of us will seek something capable of improving our mood quickly. So most of us turn to food when we’re anxious, and food becomes our go-to response to anxiety.
Unfortunately, most of us live stressful lives. We have to balance school or work with our family and social lives, and our time is limited. We feel pressured to do something or another, and that can make us feel anxious. Food makes us feel better about ourselves, but eating every time we feel anxious makes us gain weight.
With the help of hypnosis, we can learn how to overcome our anxiety naturally, without relying on food every time we’re anxious.
Hypnosis Helps People Improve Their Self-Esteem
One of the problems overweight people have is a lack of confidence. And that doesn’t come as a surprise. Weight discrimination is a real thing, and overweight people might face more stress than the rest of the population.
And the worst thing about having a low self-esteem as an overweight person is that it’s a self-perpetuating problem. Stressful situations make us feel anxious or even depressed, and our response it to eat away our problems. This makes us gain weight, which increases the stress we are facing, which leads to more eating and a greater weight increase.
Overweight people may feel angry, upset, or frustrated without even being aware of it. They may worry about what those around them think, and that might harm their self-esteem.
We admire self-confident people, and thankfully, with the help of hypnosis, we can become one ourselves. Using hypnosis for self-confidence can make us feel better about ourselves, which will facilitate our weight loss.
Hypnosis boosts our self-esteem and improves our chances of losing weight
How Hypnotherapy For Weight Loss Works
The best way to achieve long-term weight loss is to identify all the triggers that encourage us to eat unhealthy food and remove them. We should also remove all the unconscious barriers we set for ourselves and replace them with thoughts that can help us thrive.
Hypnotherapy helps us identify our negative associations and replace them with positive ones. Hypnosis can guide us in creating new associations that will make long-term weight-loss possible.
Let’s say you’re unhappy with your current weight and decide you should go on a diet. Everything works out well, and you manage to shed off the troublesome fat on your belly. You’re feeling great about yourself, and you start replacing some of the things in your wardrobe.
But something happens. You might change your job, or you might move in another apartment. You have so much to do, you don’t have time to diet and exercise any longer. You’re tired, and you have cravings. After all, a pizza never hurt anyone, right?
So you start indulging, and the next thing you know, you’re heavier than you were when you started dieting.
Does this scenario seem familiar? Most people who struggle to lose weight have experienced something similar to this at some point in their lives.
What happened? You had such a strong start, but you weren’t able to stay on track. Why is that?
Well, you might find it surprising, but humans are creatures of habit.
Why Humans Develop Poor Eating Habits
Eating junk food triggers a dopamine release in our body
Everything we do, we do out of habit. Some people wake up and drink a large cup of coffee, and some drink tea. Others wake up, drink a glass of water and start exercising first thing in the morning. We take our favorite route to work, even though we’re aware we could take others. We listen to a certain type of music. Not that there’s something wrong with the rest of it, but we enjoy a certain genre.
Habit patterns form over time through repetition. When enough time passes, every behavior becomes an unconscious response to a certain stimulus or environment.
So what actually happened in the previous scenario? Why did you get off track and gained weight?
Well, several things might have come into play.
First off, and this is usually the case, eating unhealthy food had become your unconscious response to stress. Even though it’s unhealthy, junk food is very effective at making us feel good. This happens because eating junk food causes a release of dopamine into our bloodstream. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter our brain uses to reward us when we do something good. Eating an apple will also cause a release a dopamine, but a much smaller one.
Think of it this way. Eating an apple is still eating, so our brains will reward our behavior. But our ancestors had to run, hunt, and cook their meals. Their diet was poor in nutrients, and the ancient parts of our brains remember that. Junk food is full of sugars, fats, and carbohydrates our body can use as fuel.
So when our brain detects we’re eating this rich source of food, it will quickly reward our behavior. Our brain is great at optimizing its resources, so eating something so nutritive is definitely a plus for it.
But eating junk food can quickly become addictive. You don’t feel like cooking when you’re tired, and you definitely don’t want to eat an apple or a salad. You want to eat something nutritious that tastes awesome. So you’ll have something like a pizza or a burger because they’re delicious.
Doing this for a while will make the pattern an unconscious behavior. But you won’t only order junk food when you’re tired. You will start ordering whenever your brain needs energy. Soon, that behavior might lead to another one, and so on. After a while, you cannot enjoy a healthy meal, but you can eat junk food without any problems.
You might have gained weight, so you want to lose some of it. You start dieting and exercising. But you don’t have the will to go through with it. As soon as you hit a rough patch, your eating habit kicks in.
Your brain remembers the times when you used to eat junk food when you felt tired. Exercising and dieting take their toll, and you fall back on your old habits. Deep in your unconscious mind, you see eating junk food as a coping mechanism.
Comfort eating is only one of the eating associations people develop. Other notable ones are
Using food as a source of entertainment. People will snack when they’re bored, even though they might not be hungry.
Eating junk food as a reward. People will associate eating junk food with celebrations, so they eat unhealthy food whenever they want to celebrate something.
Eating distracts you from your feelings. Eating helps you feel better, so you no longer feel anxious, angry, or sad.
Achieving long-term weight-loss is not possible if you retain these unhealthy associations regarding food.
Using Hypnosis To Reframe Your Eating Habits
The first thing you do at the beginning of a hypnosis session is identifying what’s stopping you from achieving your goals. Usually, the therapist will ask you some questions regarding your goals and weight loss attempts so he or she will have a better understanding of your eating habits and triggers.
This should be the first step you take, even if you’re using self-hypnosis for weight loss instead of going to a therapist. Be honest with yourself and identify your eating triggers. Do you eat more when you’re sad? Do you feel like eating junk food when you’re tired? Being honest with yourself and identifying your eating habits will help you during your weight-loss process.
After the introduction is done, you will be guided through the hypnosis process. Your mind will relax and your conscious mind will be open to suggestions. The hypnotherapist or the audio track will provide positive suggestions. These suggestions will help you reframe your eating habits.
Suggestions Used In Hypnosis For Weight Loss
The suggestions used in hypnosis will help change your mental framework. With the help of hypnosis, you will be able to overcome your cravings and eliminate your emotional eating triggers. Here are some suggestions commonly used in weight loss hypnosis.
Identifying Unconscious Eating Patterns – Hypnosis can help you identify unconscious eating patterns. You can become aware of what makes you eat unhealthy food and establish sound tactics to improve your decision while you’re hypnotized.
Inner Voice Reframing – Hypnosis can help you “speak” with the inner voice that’s telling you to eat junk food. Not only does hypnosis allow you to “communicate” with your inner voice, but it can turn your inner voice into an ally who will make rational and positive suggestions.
Developing Healthy Coping Mechanisms – Hypnosis helps you develop healthy ways of coping with stress. During hypnosis, you realize that snaking is not the only way to deal with stress and anxiety, and find better ways to deal with stressful situations.
Improve Your Food Choices – You might love eating junk food, but hypnosis can help you develop a love for healthier food choices.
Encourage Healthy Eating – Hypnosis encourages healthy eating by helping you reduce the portion sizes you choose. You can rehearse certain healthy eating choices such as taking food home when you’re at a restaurant under hypnosis.
Visualizing Success – Hypnosis encourages you to visualize achieving your weight goals. Once you know how good achieving your weight loss feels like, you have higher chances of actually achieving them.
Improving Confidence – Hypnosis uses positive suggestions to empower your self-confidence. Feeling more confident in yourself will help you achieve your goals.
Identifying Unconscious Indicators – Hypnosis helps you identify the signals your body is sending you. This will help you understand when your body feels full and it will help you learn the difference between feeling thirsty and feeling hungry.
Hypnosis uses these suggestions and more to help you overcome your poor eating habits. Of course, not all of the suggestions will apply to everyone. The goal is to develop a hypnotherapy plan – either with the help of a hypnotherapist or by yourself – that will include suggestions which are relevant to you.
Hypnosis can help you perceive healthy food as tasty
What To Expect From Weight Loss Hypnosis
Hypnosis helps you teach your mind how to think differently about food. The suggestions we talked about in the previous section will help you
Modify Your Behavior – With the help of hypnosis, you will learn that big goals are achieved through small steps. Instead of making big sacrifices for the sake of big results, hypnosis will help you take small but secure steps towards achieving your goal.
Positivity – Nobody likes a downer, and your brain is no different. Negativity often spoils weight loss. With the help of hypnotherapy, you will learn that there are no foods you “can’t eat”. There are only foods you don’t “want” to eat because they will not help you in your process. You’re not punishing yourself by abstaining from eating something, you’re just excluding what you don’t need.
Expect Success – Weight loss hypnosis helps you embrace your expectation of success. When we expect to succeed, we are more likely to make the right steps in achieving it. Weight loss hypnotherapy acts as a motivator in your road towards success.
Overcome Your Cravings – Weight loss hypnosis helps you identify and overcome your cravings. Hypnosis helps you reframe your cravings so you can manage them effectively.
Visualize Your Success – Hypnosis helps you visualize your success. It enables you to “experience” your results and see how that feels like. This is a powerful motivator, as it demonstrates that everything you want to achieve is not only possible but doable in the long run.
How To Start With Hypnosis For Weight Loss
You might be ready to embark on your weight loss journey, but you might not know how to do it. There are different options you can choose from. You can always find a certified therapist in your area and have one-on-one hypnosis sessions. You can use guided hypnosis sessions, or you can choose self-hypnosis sessions to overcome your eating problems.
One-On-One Hypnosis Sessions – One-On-One hypnosis sessions offer certain advantages. The hypnotherapist will help you identify the unconscious mental barriers you’ve set for yourself. Once you identify your mental barriers, the hypnotherapist will develop a strategy of overcoming them.
Guided Hypnosis Sessions – Guided hypnosis sessions offer the advantage of mobility. You can start the sessions whenever you want, and you can use them when you’re at home or when you’re on vacation. The recorded hypnosis sessions will walk you through the process and provide valuable suggestions along the way.
Self–Hypnosis Sessions – Self-hypnosis has the advantage of being free of charge. However, the main disadvantage of self-hypnosis is that you’re playing the role of hypnotherapist and patient at the same time. Not only can this be confusing at times, but you might not know exactly what you are doing and the effects of the entire process might not meet your expectations.
Weight loss hypnosis is effective at changing your mind frame and helping you overcome your cravings, but it works best when it’s combined with diet and exercise. Exercise is great at boosting your self-confidence and helping you get rid of belly fat. Moreover, regular exercise will strengthen your muscles and it can improve your posture, which can make you feel better about yourself.
Dieting might not be a pleasant activity, but it’s a healthy one. Hypnosis will help you overcome your cravings for junk food and develop a taste for healthy food, but dieting will help you determine which healthy foods work for you and which don’t.
Combining hypnosis with a healthy diet and regular exercise is the best way of achieving and maintaining your weight goal.
The Advantages Of Using Hypnosis For Weight Loss
Using hypnosis for weight loss can help you achieve your weight goal. Hypnosis helps you understand your body’s signals, which will increase your self-consciousness. You will no longer mistake your thirst or boredom for hunger.
With the help of hypnosis, you will learn how to think positively about your weight loss process and how to visualize its success.
Mark Bowden is a Solution Focused Hypnotherapist & Mental Performance Consultant. He is a best selling author and works with Premier League Football players on mental performance.
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