Hypnosis And Weight Loss: Overcoming The Psychological Barriers To Weight Loss
As a hypnotherapist living and working out of Miami Beach, Florida, I certainly know that hypnosis and weight loss go together like bacon and eggs. Or rather exercising and stretching.
I also understand that from a factual standpoint losing weight is simple. Replace poor foods with healthier choices, and exercise. Thats it, all there is to it. Simply making those adjustments for just a few weeks can cause substantial shifts. The formula for losing weight is as easy as saying if you want your car to work you need to have gas in the tank. In other words, the means to losing weight is not a mystery.
So then that begs the questions, why are so many overweight? According to the CDC 45% of Americans are effected by obesity. 45%!
As someone who is both an expert on Hypnosis and weight loss, I understand there are many psychological barriers standing in the way of those looking to be healthier.
Clients seeking hypnosis and weight loss remedies often see the quickest results, because hypnosis allows for a reprogramming of the subconscious mind where the clients beliefs and habits are stored.
While in hypnosis, clients seeking hypnosis and weight loss solutions are easily about to shift the way they live, and also the way the view food. Emotional adjustments are also made leading to enhanced mindsets and the subsequent behaviors. In the following text I will share some of the most common roadblocks clients seeking hypnosis and weight loss sessions experience. I will also share how and why hypnosis provides the quickest and most effect breakthroughs leading to immediate change.
Our Modern World
In an attempt to clarify why those seeking hypnosis and weight loss sessions find it so difficult, it helps to first discuss the real-life, or rather practical reasons why so many struggle with their weight in the first place.
It’s important to note that the modern world is not set up for our health.
Throughout history our main goal as a species was to solve the dilemma of food. Meaning, each day many of us were tasked with going out into the world and finding the food. This needed to be accomplished daily otherwise starvation would ensue.
Well, its safe to say we have solved the food problem, and we solved it drastically. Most of us can eat whatever we want every day, and in whichever amounts without thinking twice. We could walk outside right now, spin in a circle and more than likely encounter 4 locations that would be willing to serve us food. Gas stations, coffee shops, grocery stores, and restaurants line our streets. For the first time in history, food is in abundance, leaving us with the unimagined scenario of trying to eat less.
Furthermore, those seeking hypnosis and weight loss remedies have yet to learn and absorb the knowledge that most of what they are consuming are not actually food. Real foods come from the earth and have been around for thousands of years. Actual food either swam, had parents, or is grown from the earth.
What most of my clients seeking hypnosis and weight loss solutions are doing as part of their normal everyday lifestyle, is partaking in the regular consumption of products. Products are not food. Such examples of products would be chips, frozen items, and fast foods. Many assume that just because something can be in fact eaten, that it is actually food. This is not the case.
Just imagine for a moment, what trees do diet coke grow on?
Diet Coke is simply a product made in mass designed to keep those who consume regularly triggers and hooked.
Beyond simply making poor food choices, those seeking hypnosis and weight loss solutions also eat those products in large amounts. As in, they simply do not realize or don’t care to realize how much food should be consumed in one single serving. Portion sizes are out of control in this country, and have more than doubled in the past 50 years.
And lastly, our modern world is very demanding. We have more available to us than any civilization throughout history. This does however come with a price. Having so much requires constant attention.
To prove my point, try not answering emails for a week. Or a day. Or even a couple hours. Doing so would likely cause many areas of your life to come unglued rather quickly. To have so much requires attention leading to a lack of time and stress.
A lack of time available combined with anxious and stressful dispositions is a ripe breaking ground for making the wrong food choices in the improper amounts.
Many have an infinite of tasks that need to be accomplished during the day, and a common trait that clients seeking hypnosis and weight loss solutions all share is that the one area of their life they choose to sacrifice is their health. Meaning, that exercise routine they know they should do is often put to the back of the line while other more pressing demands are met.
Poor food choices, a lack of time, and the abundance of products contribute greatly to our nations obesity crisis.
Check out this video to learn more about the consumption of food vs products:
Distracting Behavior
Clients seeking hypnosis and weight loss often use food to cope with life. Eating becomes a behavior that is chosen with regularity during times of anguish, dilemmas, or even joy.
In this sense, eating is then becomes what is known as a distracting behavior.
Distracting behaviors are the result of trying to satisfy a need (or needs). The problem with distracting behaviors is that they can never satisfy the needs of the client, they only allow for a temporary relief.
Let me explain:
If a client seeking hypnosis and weight loss is feeling lonely, they are in need of connection in the form of relationships. Many experiencing this loneliness with choose food and overreacting as a means to cope. The problem with this strategy is that the distracting behavior of eating can never satisfy the primary emotion of loneliness. The need for connection will be left unmet.
I will ask you this, how many chocolate chip cookies does one have to eat before they can fall in love?
There is on answer because the question doesn’t make sense.
Distracting behaviors can never satisfy the need, they only lead to more distracting. This is when the compulsion and pattern to overeat is formed. Feel bad, distract. Feel lonely, eat.
Food Addiction
Once the distracting behavior is performed long enough, an addiction to food is formed leading to tremendous amounts of weight gain, as well as mental anguish.
Much like any other drug, those clients seeking hypnosis and weight loss who are addicted to food obsess mentally about meals and eating. They expend ample mental energies thinking and daydreaming about when they are going to get their next meal, regardless of their biological requirements for nourishment.
Furthermore, clients seeking hypnosis and weight loss who are addicted to food often report elevated levels in their mood while eating, and significant levels of despair when the meal is complete. Much like any other addiction, while partaking there are good feelings. Once that drug has run out, there is a drastic come down.
Please watch this video for further clarification:
Food Equals
Those seeking hypnosis and weight loss often tie in other emotions to food and the act of eating.
Imagine a typical scenario if you will:
A young child is walking through the park with their father. The day is beautiful and life is good. The child and the father are having an amazing afternoon. In one fowl swoop, the child trips on a rock sticking out of the ground and skins her knee. The immediate reaction is of course tears.
In an attempt to soothe the child the father offers a sweet treat. This tender offer soothes the child and they are on the way to the ice cream stand.
This compassionate and loving gesture from the father has just paired sweets with safety. Food with security. Unknowingly and of course without cause, the father may have just set a pattern that the the child may partake in for the rest of her life. Feeling bad or pain, reach for sweets.
Clients seeking hypnosis and weight loss can often recall many memories where food was served in an attempt to feel good emotionally, as opposed to merely satisfying hunger.
Hypnosis & The Subconscious
Hypnosis is a powerful tool for allowing clients to lose weight and manage their intake properly for a lifetime. These dramatic effects are due to the fact that hypnosis allows for the rewiring of the subconscious mind.
The subconscious mind is where all of our beliefs, behaviors, emotions, and memories are stored. Who and what we are lies in the deepest levels of the subconscious. When patterns for dealing with life such as overheating are developed and stored in the subconscious, those seeking hypnosis and weight loss solutions will ultimately struggle then fail to reach their health and fitness goals.
Consciously the client may want to lose weight and know they would prefer to exercise, but subconsciously patterns and behaviors are set causing them to distract with food repeatedly.
For more information about the model of the mind and the subconscious, please watch this video:
Negative Beliefs
Those seeking hypnosis and weight loss solutions often have negative beliefs stored in their subconscious that are keeping them from changing habits and choosing health. Such common beliefs are:
“I am not good enough”
“I was meant to be overweight”
“Nobody will ever love me”
“I don’t deserve to be here”
Those negative beliefs held in the subconscious are often reinforced consciously by the client causing them to self sabotage. Eating in excess is a common strategy for keeping oneself unhappy and reinforcing the fact that they are “undeserving”.
Hypnosis allows for such beliefs to be completely removed, altered, and enhanced leading to more productive strategies for dealing with life.
“Nobody will ever love me” can turn into “I am a great person with value and have a lot to offer.”
“I don’t deserve to be here” changes to “I enjoy my life and create my unlimited future”.
Replacing the old with the new and the dark with the light turns the limited to the truly empowered unlimited.
Clients seeking hypnosis and weight loss often change their habits instantly by removing and upgrading damaging beliefs held deep within the subconscious.
Secondary Gain
One of the reasons many keep themselves overweight is because they actually experience a benefit to keeping themselves unhealthy. For example, someone who believes they will never experience love, leading to self sabotage and overheating, will never have to truly go out and experience the dating world. In essence, they are keeping themselves safe and secure and free of the possibility of rejection and heartache by staying trapped in their distracting cycle of overeating.
Hypnosis allows for clarity with regard to secondary gain. Many clients do not even realize consciously that they are behaving in these disastrous ways because they are receiving benefits from them.
The best part about working with clients who are experiencing secondary gain, is simply by making them aware they are immediately able to see clearly and change behaviors and patterns instantly.
Conclusion
Hypnosis and weight loss go together like fruits and vegetables. By working directly with the subconscious mind habits and beliefs are remedied in mere minutes. Furthermore, clients seeking hypnosis and weight loss are educated fully with regard to their current issues. Often times all it takes is a little education of the self to begin a new path.
If you are struggling with weight loss and would like to find out more about how you can start your change today, please contact me as I would love so speak with you and be a part of your weight loss journey.
Thank you for reading, and I’ll speak to you soon, feeling well.
Brad Plotkin
305.778.9236
