OVERCOME EMOTIONAL EATING WITH HYPNOSIS
It should come as no surprise that in our modern world, there is what I would call an eating dilemma. Or perhaps, a crisis may be a better word.
For the first time in human history, we have access to every type of food there is, in any quantity. Want to eat nothing but fish? You can. Only vegetables? They’re yours.
While this abundance of nourishment has always been the goal since mankind began, the result comes with consequences.
I am a Certified Hypnotherapist as well as NLP Practitioner. As a hypnotist in my hypnosis practice located in Miami Beach, I use the amazing power of hypnosis to provide relief for my clients. Hypnosis allows clients to shift negative thought patterns, upgrade emotional responses, and break free of addictions while improving their lifestyle.
One of the most common forms of treatment I provide for my clients while in hypnosis is to release them from the grip of emotional eating. The Mayo Clinic defines emotional eating as a way to suppress or soothe negative emotions, such as stress, fear, anger, sadness, boredom, and loneliness. Major life events or the hassles of daily life can trigger negative emotions that lead to emotional eating and disrupt weight loss efforts.
Hypnosis is a powerful tool for releasing clients from the habit and grip of emotional eating. Using hypnosis, there is a fountain of techniques and remedies that allow clients to shift this destructive habit. Hypnosis allows clients to reduce the pull of negative emotion, learn new ways of coping at the subconscious level, and provide feelings of safety and sturdiness even in the face of life issues, allowing for the triggers that typically lead to emotional eating to be completely distinguished.
MY STORY
In my early years, way before I became a hypnotist or even knew what hypnosis was, I struggled with my weight. More specifically, I struggled with food addiction and emotional eating.
As a means to cope with my insecurities, depression, and anxieties, I turned to food. Food was my escape, and I loved to escape. When I wasn’t eating, I was thinking about food. As soon as the last bite was eaten, I became depressed once again. In this sense eating for me was a drug. A drug I used to get by.
This addiction led to years of obsession, weight gain/dieting, and frustration.
At the age of 34, I found myself in a hypnotist’s office. I’ll spare you the backstory, but I was simply invited to receive hypnosis as a business networking opportunity. A sort of “meet and greet, this is what I do” scenario.
Not knowing at all what a hypnotist did, or how hypnosis worked, I can admit I was extremely nervous. The hypnotist asked me “do you have any addictions or insecurities that you struggle with?”
I explained to him that I have been addicted to food since the age of 12.
He sat me in his chair and administered hypnosis, and 30 minutes later my food addiction was gone. And I knew it! It was like a 30-pound block had been removed from me, and to this day I can still feel that lightness.
For the past 8 years, I have been able to leave food on my plate when I’m full. When I eat, I am actually able to enjoy the meal, as opposed to having a rush of endorphins overtaking me that inevitably shadow the simple and pleasurable act. I eat when I want, or don’t. Hypnosis gave me the power of choice.
Hypnosis gave me freedom, my version of freedom.
A LEARNED STRATEGY
I share my journey of eating struggles remedied through hypnosis for many reasons. First, to let you know why I love what I do. Giving the gift of hypnosis and freedom to those who have been stuck.
Second, to provide a typical scenario of how those suffering from emotional eating often arrive in my office.
In 90% of situations, the act of emotional eating is simply a learned strategy to cope with life. Typically around the ages of 11-14, when children first branch out from their parents. These formative years are when we stop looking to our parents and family for all of our emotional needs and seek to find them in the world.
It goes without saying, that this process can be difficult and daunting.
We all know what it’s like to be this age, to be rejected, ridiculed, overlooked, and to realize that we are not as good in certain areas of competency as others. As a means to deal with all the hardships of adolescents, many seek the comfort of food as a means to cope.
FOOD AS THE PREFERRED METHOD OF COPING
Food is often the most popular strategy for youngsters to cope with life for a few reasons. First, they don’t have access to other vices. This in a sense, is a good thing. A 12-year-old who suffers from anxiety and depression simply does not have access to alcohol or drugs (typically). Without control over their own lives and monetary means, they cannot choose a compulsion such as gambling or shopping.
Furthermore, food is readily available. Mom makes breakfast and packs the cupboards, off to school where there are snacks and lunchtime. After school the fridge is full and their “drug of choice” is always ready and waiting.
WE HAVE TO EAT
Food addiction and emotional eating have a barrier to healing, unlike any other issue when it comes to providing relief using hypnosis.
The simple reason? We have to eat.
Compare this reality to other addictions and habits rectified by hypnosis:
We don’t have to do drugs.
We don’t have to shop.
We don’t have to gamble.
We don’t have to feel insecure.
We don’t have to drink alcohol.
Food is a benefit for us, provides us with life and nourishment. For this reason, emotional eating and food addiction are one of the most gripping and powerful for my clients seeking relief with hypnosis.
FOOD EQUALS…
Remember when you were young and were having a difficult time? Maybe you were scared or sad. Mom would fix you a treat or a snack in an attempt to comfort you and feel safe once again.
Or quite possibly you watched mom take care of the household by always preparing food. The day’s activities were centered around meals. You knew mom cared because she kept everyone fed.
Oftentimes, clients report their favorite memories from childhood that are centered around food. Magical Holidays and celebrations where food is the center of focus.
In all of these scenarios, food was viewed as something special. Beliefs are formed such as “food makes me feel better” or “Food is how I experience love.” Furthermore, a self-hypnosis process is inserted, as an emotional trigger response to food becomes apparent. Feel a negative emotion, food can soothe.
This triggered response combined with the belief(s) is inserted into the subconscious. This is the birth of the emotional eating pattern.
OUR MODERN TIMES
While giving my clients the gift of hypnosis to receive them from the grip of emotional eating, one of the barriers to success is availability. As stated earlier, our advancements in agriculture and distribution have made food options overly abundant.
For most of us, we can walk outside, spin in a circle and see 4 places we can purchase something to eat. Gas stations, coffee shops, grocery stores, restaurants, fast food chains, and the like.
Imagine having an addiction, and everywhere you look they are not only offering it but it’s socially acceptable.
Using hypnosis, I can easily reduce the emotional triggers from the client creating a healthy indifference towards all of the stimuli presented by food advertisements and availability.
HYPNOSIS CLEARS THE WAY
AGE PARTS
The healing remedies hypnosis provides for the removal of food addiction are grand. There are many avenues that I take with my clients while using hypnosis to free them of this grip.
The majority of clients suffering from food addiction are able to remove the chains from the following simple hypnosis technique. Hypnosis allows me to take the client back to that first time, or around that time when they first picked up the habit of using food to cope. In their mind, they simply allow the subconscious to provide a representation of themselves in their younger days gripped by the affliction.
At this point, I enable my client using hypnosis to speak directly to that younger part of them. Provide “themselves” with wisdom, guidance, and accurate perspectives. Everything they needed to know then, but didn’t realize, they receive.
For example, once that younger part of them learns they have value, understands are good enough, or realizes that it doesn’t matter what other people think, the need for food to soothe is eliminated.
MEMORY RECODING
Clients who romanticize the past and bind all their joyous moments around meals are great candidates for memory recoding. Hypnosis allows us to “change the recipe” (pun) so to speak.
Using hypnosis my client can view their favorite memories, and learn that it wasn’t the food that made it special, but the people and time. After that, we can simply remove or change aspects of the memory.
To use a food analogy, their memory is like a recipe. A recipe for food addiction. Hypnosis allows us to simply change that recipe using sub-modalities. Notice a song that’s playing? Remove the song and insert a different one. Is your father wearing a green shirt? Make it blue.
By simply changing the recipe of the memory, the outcome shifts. Think of it like this, if you were baking a cake, and you removed the sugar and added salt, the final product is completely different. Hypnosis simply shifts the food addiction recipe leading to instant relief.
THE REDUCTION OF NEGATIVE EMOTION
Hypnosis is a powerful tool for reducing negative emotions. Learned emotional responses are simply unlearned in an instant. If negative emotion leads one to eat, then the reduction of those emotions leads to immediate change.
Using hypnosis, the fix is very simple with regard to reducing negative emotion. Feeling stressed while at work? Hypnosis allows us to insert any emotion we desire.
Lonely and afraid at night? Insert hypnosis, and insert ease.
Hypnosis is able to do this so easily because it allows for the transfer of emotions from a positive state to a negative.
Feel good while riding your bike? Take those feelings and attach them to that meeting with your boss.
Feel connected and free while with your best friend? Hypnosis allows you to take that recipe with you while alone at night.
The result? Those cupboards and fridge doors stay closed. Hypnosis changes the responses and subsequent actions instantly.
CONCLUSION
Food addiction and emotional eating can cause frustration, despair, and even worse, depression. To feel consumed and out of control in your thoughts and actions is nothing more than confinement.
Hypnosis can simply alleviate symptoms, and shift toward freedom within minutes.
The reason I am a hypnotist is because I’ve experienced the freedom.
If you would like to schedule a time to speak with me directly and find the fastest way out of emotional eating and food addiction, please go to BradPlotkin.Com and click on any of the scheduling links provided.
Thank you for reading, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Until then, feel well :).
For link to why Hypnosis is so effective in creating change, please click this link:
