A journey - weight loss hypnotherapy
Tammy (not her real name) is about to turn 30 and her increased weight gain, difficulty with losing weight and her fear for her long term health made her come to see me for my weight loss package.
She said her main reason of wanting to live a healthy long life was becoming more real.
I set a programme of sessions for her as I found after the consultation that she needed some help in ‘reprogramming’ her instinct to eat poor food as a comfort/reward.
First of all, to all of you seeking help - you are not alone in finding you use food as a reward for a hard day or various other things.
We all do this. And I really hear you when you say that this is no longer serving you.
My approach with all of my clients is to help them quieten the voice inside that is constantly tearing ourselves down. Hypnotherapy can assist you to reframe your way of seeing food and body image prior, during and after eating. Self-compassion exercises and breath-work are a key aspect of all my sessions.
I volunteer as a hypnotherapist at a hospital with people undergoing cancer treatment. Many people I see there are undergoing quite a few medical procedures, diagnoses, doctor’s visits, and explaining to families and friends about their health. They are often simply overwhelmed with too much information about where to turn to get unstuck from physical pain and worry.
Hypnotherapy (by a good evidence-based practitioner) cuts through a lot of that overwhelm quite quickly and helps people to find a place of peace and moving forward that stays and sticks with them very well – in a short amount of time. The best results happen when individuals actually do some of the work themselves of course in between sessions and really want to change.
My approach with weight loss and body image is to at least in the pre-talk that we have together, help women in particular discern when we go into overwhelm, and discern which part of our busy lives are helping us and where it is hindering us. The busy-ness and rushing around is not only meaning that we are less conscious about when we eat and how we eat, but it’s also keeping us in constant adrenaline, or fight and flight , which hinders us from metabolising carbohydrates properly. As an example, poor sleep is another area I help people with and this can hinder weight loss as well as our circadian rhythm gets right out of whack, and our systems think we need to load on food for the winter with lower amount of sunlight at the proper times of day.
In the first year of my hypnotherapy with weight loss and body image I discovered that people will “do anything to lose weight” but it often wasn’t working because of one thing:
The need to avoid (emotional) pain is much greater than the appeal of pleasure.
Once I realised this, I restructured the way I do hypnotherapy. That is why in hypnotherapy I do my best to work with each individual to address their own individual patterns of thought that make the pain seem so great of not eating on impulse, or in an unconscious way.
There is a lot to be explained here but I would rather have a session with you and listen to you before to customise the hypnotherapy - rather than just talk at my clients. That way I can formulate the hypnotherapy specifically for you. As I said, unlike a lot of hypnotherapists, I do NOT work of weight loss hypnotherapy scripts. It is customised to you and your patterns of thought.
Take the emotional basis of eating and what we “think” will be the outcome if we don’t eat junk food for example.
In the sessions (and three sessions is the magic number I believe) I help people to get back in touch with how precious they are and help them to act accordingly.
In my experience one aspect of hypnotherapy helping people is the short circuiting of the usual response of eating in an unconscious way whilst thinking critical and un-loving thoughts about ourselves. Which then leads to the next bout of unhelpful thoughts and behaviours.
Hypnotherapy can stop the habitual self-denigration and remorse and replace it with a sense of curiosity about why we are reaching for the second pack of Tim-tams or chips. We are short circuiting the usual way of behaving. Hypnotherapy works with the plasticity of our mind and helps us to reframe our thoughts, even down to a molecular level in our brain physiology. I am guessing that you have heard of “neuro-plasticity” and if not we can talk further about this prior to your hypnotherapy if you choose to go ahead.
For example:
The second pack of biscuits is accompanied by two thoughts.
I have just opened the second pack of biscuits -= true
I am disgusting and a failure - = false
The “Curious Mind” that is developed during hypnotic trance: Perhaps I just ate the wrong things because I did not have a fulfilling, satiating lunch, and it was the time of day when I normally need a top up snack to keep me going, or perhaps I really needed to reward myself but just didn’t have on hand some other options because I didn’t make time to do a proper shop yesterday.
Now the lady from the school is looking at me in a way that is not usual – could be true
She thinks these bad things about me (rather than she is just having a bad day) – probably false
Curious Mind that is developed during hypnotic trance: “Perhaps she is having a really bad day because she has a huge pimple on her face and she feels embarrassed.”
I guess you can see here, it’s what we are telling ourself that is the problem. Not what is happening.
In those moments that we are being self-critical we are not seeing ourselves as the precious beings that we are, and this spills over into other areas of our life of course as you know, such as body image, self-esteem, and peace with ourselves and others.
Life is precious
You are precious
You can treat yourself accordingly.