Looking to lose weight? Whether it’s just a few pounds or a large percentage of your body weight, it can be a dispiriting business trying to get slimmer, especially these days when we’re swamped with media images of perfect bodies in skimpy clothes. Alternatively, you may need to put on weight or have other issues with food, such as bulimia or an obsession with a particular food such as chocolate.
Most of you, especially if you’re a woman, will have tried diets of every description. The problem with many of them is they don’t work. What’s more, by focusing on food control or replacement as the key issue, they can be counter-productive – and that’s before the dieter has to contend with the sense of failure when the diet fails to make a permanent impact on their weight.
Hypnotherapy, by focusing on the underlying subconscious issues behind eating, helps you get your mind in the right shape to deal with food. It also concentrates on the positive changes you’ll make to your life by losing weight, whether it be confidence, self esteem, good health, vitality or simply the ability to relax. This can be a tremendous aid in achieving your dreams.
Hypnotherapy strengthens your determination and many clients find it an exhilarating journey.
There’s no set diet plan, however there are a number of simple tips that you can follow to make the process easier.
- Savour your food – Shovelling your dinner down without thought is a sure way to pile on the pounds – MAKE time to enjoy it.
- Concentrate on the meal – eating in front of the TV or at your desk while the computer is on means that your conscious mind is distracted and your subconscious does not tell you when you are full.
- Don’t skip meals, especially breakfast – this will only make you hungrier later and encourage you to stuff.
- Eat earlier – We tend to reserve our biggest meal for late in the day. Not only does it mean that your body has less time to burn off the calories before going to bed, but it can also make it more difficult to sleep. Instead, have a bigger breakfast (not full English every day, though), a lighter lunch and smaller dinner. An additional benefit is that it gives you more energy during the day when you need it most.
- Exercise regularly – We’re not talking marathon running here; what we are talking about is regular activity. This can be as simple as using the stairs at work or parking the car farther away from the front door at the supermarket. Don’t forget, an additional 100 calories of activity per day works out at a whopping 36,500 in a year.
- Chill out – getting worked up about your weight is often counterproductive for those who want to shed excess weight. Instead, you should focus on what is good about your life and what’s going to be better when you start losing weight.
Let’s look at the statistics:
It may interest you to know that In a well-known study published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology in 1996, Professor Irving Kirsch, a psychologist at the University of Connecticut, and a leading authority on hypnosis, carried out a review which looked at statistical data from six independent studies on the use of hypnosis to help weight-loss with a total of 227 subjects. He found that the average short-term weight-loss was 6.00 Ibs. (2.72 kg) for dieters without hypnosis and 11.83 Ibs. (5.37 kg) with hypnosis. At follow-up the average weight loss was 6.03 Ibs. (2.74 kg) without hypnosis and 14.88 Ibs. (6.75 kg) with hypnosis.
So hypnosis not only helped people to lose more weight than dieting alone, but they continued to lose weight over the longer-term. Kirsch concluded that over the long-term, hypnosis made dieting 147% more effective as a means of weight loss.
This intriguing article shows the influence of the mind over matter ie ‘What we believe, the body achieves’.
This study, for me, merely confirms what many of us already know to be true, namely, that for the majority of people diets simply don’t work.
This article illustrates the mind-body connection when it comes to weight.