Hypnosis for Weight Loss: Understanding The Subconscious Mind-Body Connection
Hypnosis for Weight Loss: Understanding The Subconscious Mind-Body Connection
As I sit here comfortably reflecting on my day as a hypnotist in South Florida, I’m amazed at how many of my clients are able to utilize the amazing power of hypnosis for weight loss. Today in-particular was dense with clients who are either just starting their hypnosis for weight loss journey, or well on their way.
I am pondering in this moment why so many are in need of this valuable service. Why are so many unhealthy and continuously engaging in behaviors that lead to weight gain and obesity?
As a practitioner of hypnosis and somebody who provides the healing power of hypnosis for weight loss, I understand that there are many factors contributing to emotional eating, poor exercise habits, and attachments to certain types of foods that are detrimental to ones health.
Causes such as low self worth, habits learned from parents or authority figures at a young age, as well as the inabilities to satisfy personal needs in other areas of life.
Hypnosis is an incredible strategy for allowing clients to create better habits and a healthier emotional relationship with food. Hypnosis for weight loss allows clients to access the power of their subconscious mind. While working with the subconscious, the client is able to shift and upgrade beliefs about the self as well as upgrade habits leading to a healthier life. When clients utilize hypnosis for weight loss, they are finally able to free themselves emotionally from addictions to food and create their healthiest life. The life they were always meant to live.
Weight Gain In Our Modern World
It's safe to say that their has never been a time in history where so many struggle with their weight. The term “obesity epidemic” is one that most of us have heard with regularity.
According to the CDC, the center for disease control and prevention, an estimated 40% of Americans are considered obese.
In our modern world we have a lot. In fact, we have more recourses and opportunities than any civilization that came before us. However, having a lot requires attention and demand. In order to have so much in our society it requires a lot of upkeep. Upkeep leading to stress.
In other words, we trade comfort and opportunities for stress and anxiety. The demands of the day can sometimes seem never ending. Work, family, errands and all the rest consume our day leaving us little time for ourselves. A commonality between the clients that utilize hypnosis for weight loss is that they are overworked and stressed.
Furthermore, our busy lifestyles lead to poor choices with regards to our overall health. A peculiar aspect of most humans is they will accomplish and take care of most of life’s demands, and for some reason sacrifice their health for the sake of time. If their are 10 things on the list to accomplish for the day, exercise is often the task that is left unchecked.
A busy lifestyle also leads to making quick decisions with regard to food choices. On-the-go meals in the form of fast food satisfy our time dilemmas and free us up to be productive. The problem however is those low-cost high calorie quick meals are terrible for our overall health as they are typically loaded with unhealthy ingredients.
Adding to the obesity epidemic is the issue of abundance. Throughout history food was scarce. It had to be earned. A main duty of the day was seeking and preparing food which was not an easy task.
Nowadays we could spin in a circle and see 5 different places that offer food(s). Gas stations, coffee shops, grocery stores and the like. Through 1000’s of years of hard work, trial and error, we have solved the food dilemma. Food is more abundant than it ever has been, and most of us get to eat whatever we want (within reason) each and every day without a second thought.
The abundance of food combined with stress of our daily lives are overwhelmingly the contributing factors leading my clients to seek hypnosis for weight loss.
Emotional Eating
All of my clients seeking hypnosis for weight loss have emotional ties to food that lead them to either make poor food choices, or eat in excess. Or both!
Emotional eating is the result of certain needs being unmet. For example, when the need for connection from an intimate partner isn’t being satisfied in ones life, loneliness ensues.
As a means to deal with the loneliness present clients may seek out food for comfort.
If a client is feeling stressed and overwhelmed, the need for safety and freedom are being unmet. As a means to cope clients seek out food.
Emotional eating is defined as using food to deal with emotions as opposed to hunger.
The problem with emotional eating can be explained by asking one simple question:
How much food do you have to eat in order to feel connection towards your partner?
There is no answer because the question doesn’t make sense. There-in lies the problem. The emotional eating cycle will always continue and strengthen since there is no means to satisfy.
A Learned Strategy
Clients seeking hypnosis for weight loss share many commonalities. None more prevalent then the fact that most of them started using food as a means to deal with life at a very young age.
Often between the ages of 8 and 14, clients sought out the comfort of food as a strategy for coping. Food became an outlet for dealing with negative emotions and stress. Self doubt, shame and guilt are the most common contributors causing clients seeking hypnosis for weight loss to turn to food as a means to cope.
When food becomes an outlet for life at a very young age, this can cause poor health and excessive weight gain leading well into adulthood.
Food Addiction
As a hypnotherapist I work with many clients who are seeking relief from addictions. When most of us think of addictions, we think of drugs or alcohol. Even gambling, work, and shopping make the list.
Food addiction however is more common than people assume.
It is very easy for me to tell which clients seeking hypnosis for weight loss are addicted to food. They report obsessive thoughts about food, and an elevation in mood while eating.
Food addiction works like any other addiction. Ruminating and obsessive thoughts lead to cravings which eventually cause the habit or behavior.
Many of my clients seeking hypnosis for weight loss report intense feelings of pleasure while eating, combined with a “come down” when the meal is finished. Many client seeking hypnosis for weight loss report avoiding that come down for as long as possible leading to overrating.
The Food Dilemma
Food addiction is unlike any other addiction for one simple reason; we need to eat.
We don’t have to drink alcohol, cocaine is not required to sustain life. Sure we need to be clothed, however shopping if we’re being honest really may only need to be accomplished every few months (if that).
It goes without saying that eating food can be a pleasurable experience. In fact, it should be. However the problem with clients seeking hypnosis for weight loss is the pleasure extends far beyond what the average person experiences while eating.
Combine that intense pleasure with the fact that food must be consumed multiple times a day to ensure survival, that the addiction to food combined with weight loss can pose quite the dilemma for clients seeking hypnosis for weight loss.
Hypnosis & The Subconscious
Clients seeking hypnosis for weight loss experience dramatic and instantaneous change for one simple reason; hypnosis allows clients to access and then rewire their subconscious.
Clients seeking hypnosis for weight loss learn that the subconscious mind holds our identities. Who and what we are resides in the subconscious mind. The subconscious holds belief systems about ourselves and the world, our emotional responses, long term memories and behaviors.
When most attempt to lose weight by implementing proper eating habits and exercise routines, they do so consciously. Meaning, they use the willpower of the conscious mind to embark on life changes.
The problems that clients seeking hypnosis for weight loss have experienced in the past is that they aren’t addressing the inner workings of their mind. They aren’t providing change at the deepest root levels of the mind.
Conscious willpower can be effective in the short term. This is why most can start a workout routine and nail the first week. Some can even make the second week successful. However before to long the conscious willpower has run out and old patterns resume. Behaviors that are stored in the subconscious will always win out leading to frustration and more weight gain.
If a strategy for dealing with life is formed on the subconscious level at a very young age then clients seeking hypnosis for weight loss are in a sense “hard wired” to overeat.
Hypnosis allows for the subconscious to be addressed directly removing any need for conscious willpower, leading to far more effective and healthier eating and exercise habits and behaviors.
Belief Systems
Beyond food addiction, those seeking hypnosis for weight loss often times have negative beliefs systems stored in their subconscious causing them to overeat.
Beliefs such as “I am not good enough” or “I am unlovable” can cause clients seeking hypnosis for weight loss to sabotage. Undermining belief systems held in the subconscious can cause clients to act out those limiting beliefs. As a means to satisfy inherent beliefs systems of “not being good enough” clients will unintentionally keep weight on to reinforce what they already “know”.
Often times clients seeking hypnosis for weight loss have a belief that has been originated through the dynamic and teaching of the family; “food equals love”.
Often times parents use food to show how much they care about their children. Also, food can be used to “calm the waters” and show affection.
Imagine a 5 year old who scrapes his knee and is brought to tears. A mother may soothe them and give them a treat to eat and say “see, it’s all better now”. In that moment food equals assurance, safety, healing, warmth, and love.
Emotional Triggers
One of the most amazing results of hypnosis is reducing or diminishing emotions from ones life. Furthermore, not only does hypnosis serve to reduce sensitivity to emotions, but it always for a change in behaviors when certain emotions are felt.
For example, many clients seeking hypnosis for weight loss report feeling stressed our anxious throughout the day. Those feelings in turn lead them to seek out food in order to simply feel better.
Hypnosis allows for negative emotions to be drastically reduced, replacing stress and worry with ease and satisfaction. Once the emotion leading to food consumption is no longer present, clients no longer feel the need to overeat.
In addition to reducing negative emotions, hypnosis allows for new strategies to be inserted when those emotions are felt.
Instead of reaching for the candy drawer when feeling alone, journaling and self soothing become the new “go-to”.
Binge eating to deal with stress is replaced by problem solving and empowerment.
Experiencing Hunger
When clients seeking hypnosis for weight loss remove old unwanted and detrimental behaviors and strategies, they report something quite amazing. Something they have never experienced before.
They are actually able to notice their real hunger. It’s almost as if for the first time in a long time biological cravings for food are experienced and listened to.
Clients who have experienced hypnosis for weight loss also report finally being able to leave food on their plate, something that they were never able to do in the past.
For them, that is true freedom.
A Connection To Mind & Body
Having experienced hypnosis for weight loss, the client is able to achieve much more than just fitting into that old pair of jeans.
Their awareness of hunger and the ability to eat as a means to be satisfied becomes ever-present.
They get to experience a sense of greater worth, and a greater ability to feel emotions properly. No longer are emotions masked and stuffed away through emotional eating.
They in a sense have a greater alignment with their emotional guidance system. When clients who have experienced hypnosis for weight loss are truly able to feel their emotions and be ok in their presence, the freedom to be lean and happy is the result.
If you would like to find the fastest way out of emotional eating and start your weight loss journey today, please click the link below to schedule a call with me and you and I can get started on the new you, today.
https://www.bradplotkin.com/client-application
Thank you for reading, see you next time feeling well :). - Brad
BradPlotkin.com
305.778.9236
