I am often asked if hypnosis really works for weight management. Can it help the person asking eat better, exercise more, create better habits? I can assure you it does, but not through any kind of miracle or mind control. Hypnosis is effective for creating healthy new habits when diets alone just don’t seem to work.
Some of the issues we face when working on shedding those ugly extra pounds of fat may be a result of the bad habits we developed along the way. Our eating habits from our youth may have served a growing body, but now the growth is in the wrong direction. It might be time to learn new, good habits.
Perhaps you were from a large family and needed to grab food fast if you were going to get your share. School lunchtimes are short and so often a child learns to eat quickly if they are going to get the lunch in before the bell. Parents who are tired after a long workday and children who are “hangry” might result in many fast food meals eaten in the car.
What Is A Habit?
Whatever the habit is that is no longer serving you, it can be changed. Willpower is a great asset, but you may repeat a bad habit even though your rational mind objects. The problem is, people think that they need willpower and feel like a failure when they don’t perceive themselves as having enough strength. This can lead to a deterioration of self-esteem and self-sabotaging.
A habit is simply something you do without thinking about it. You don’t set out to over eat, eat too fast or eat the wrong types of foods, it just sort of happens. If you see the donut drive through on your way to work, the one you have stopped for your daily coffee and donut, it seems as if the car turns into it all on its own. Maybe it is that you sit down to eat a meal and manage to finish it before everyone else has been served.
Through the deep focus of hypnosis habits can be changed and improved, because it helps to make the change at the subconscious level. The subconscious mind is responsible for holding our beliefs about life, love, ourselves, other people, other cultures, religion, ethics, etc. It takes care of everything we ever learned consciously.
We’ve had to learn everything since we were born–how to eat, walk, talk, dress ourselves, brush our teeth, etc. While all of this began at a conscious level, eventually it became automatic and was taken over by the subconscious part of the mind. If we had to think through every little action that is required to do every little thing we do, we would go crazy.
Subconscious Mind Is Important
This makes the subconscious the most important part of who we are. It is like a computer program that maintains anything we have experienced, everything ever said to us, done to us, everything we ever learned. It houses our emotions, all the various parts of our personality, all of the roles we play in life and most importantly to this subject, our habits.
Because hypnosis reaches the “hard drive” of the mind, the subconscious, clients often end negative patterns of behavior after receiving strong, direct suggestions. Then you can build healthy and energizing habits that don’t control you. Sometimes it is as simple as the allowing the mind to understand through story telling that there is another, healthier way to behave and it creates new habits all on its own. Unlike the stereotype from old movies, hypnotherapy does not put people to sleep and old pocket watches are not involved. Instead, the client, with closed eyes, is guided through a series of relaxing imagery and ideas. Everyone responds slightly differently to hypnosis, with some slipping into a deep, sleep-like trance and others not feeling much different than having their eyes closed. Every person is different, but most of my clients are able to eradicate bad habits, changing them into good habits.
The hypnosis sessions include figuring out the problem behind the bad habits and symptoms, then improving eating and exercising habits, insuring you are drinking enough water, and encouraging a healthy functioning of the body. Improving self-confidence, motivation and having the courage and ability to change can help you release protective layers.
So, if you are ready to shed that burden of extra weight and create healthy new habits, give hypnosis a try. You will be glad you did!
