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Hypnosis for Weight Loss

Sunday, February 26, 2012

The three most popular assisted techniques for shedding those extra pounds are pills, hypnosis, and surgery. The problem with the first is that using pills for weight reduction means that most people must needlessly rely upon them if they are to keep their weight off. And, don’t forget the side effects. People react differently. Some medications even come with warnings of death through heart failure and change in personality. Yet, pills are still very popular in our quick-fix culture.

Surgery, such as fatty tissue removal or lap-band operations, is another alternative. For those people who are extremely obese, their doctors may determine that this radical measure is the best of alternative. However, like pills, surgery comes with great dangers. In fact, if you are considering this alternative, you will be presented with numerous disclosures, which make you aware that risks include disability and death. And, even with surgery, there is no guarantee that your weight loss will be permanent. Ironically, surgeons recommend that you also see a dietitian, who should advise you on the best eating habits. However, had you been following this all along, you most likely wouldn’t have a weight problem. Nevertheless, in extreme cases surgical weight reduction may actually save lives.

Hypnosis for weight loss is also another popular alternative. Hypnosis does not magically cause your weight to disappear. However, it directly addresses the mental component of excessive weight gain. Even though there may be underlying medical reasons for your overweight condition, hypnosis can be used to change your mind in a way that can influence your behaviors and steadily lead you to a thinner version of yourself.

When inquiring how weight loss hypnosis works, you must consider the role of the mind in maintaining your ideal weight. The first two things that come to mind are habits and body image. Essentially, the human brain is a habit-forming device. Even before birth, you develop mental maps which help you understand your environment and develop habitual behaviors and reactions that allow cope. Sometimes these habits, many of which are acquired while your brain is in its early, formative years, are not in your best interest. However, as habits are learned, when necessary, they can be un-learned. Hypnosis plays a major role in that process.

Secondly, along with your habit-forming tendencies, you have developed a “thermostat” in your mind, which regulates most aspects of your physical being. This includes staying healthy as well as the size, shape, and your body’s fitness. Homeostasis is a term, which medical doctors use when referring to your body’s natural tendency to always return to a state of perfect health. For instance, when you are tired, you body craves rest; when you are thirsty, it desires liquids. These are just a few examples of homeostasis at work.

Many health problems – to include being overweight – stem from a disruption of your natural healthy state. When this poor health condition becomes part of your habitual thinking, your self-awareness of your body – which I also call body image – becomes rather permanently fixated on maintaining a pattern of poor health. In fact, some say that this image is hard-coded deep within an ancient part of the brain called the insula. So, if weight must be reduced, you must use a technique, which addresses your bad habits and your mind’s natural desire to cling to an overweight body condition. All weight reduction programs should focus on empowering new habits – such as getting the right amounts of physical exercise and proper eating – and creating a new body image that is a model of health.

Before I get back to hypnosis, I want to again address pills and surgery. Essentially, pills do one or two things. They change your metabolism so that calories are burned thus reducing weight and/or suppressing your appetite. Of course, getting the right amount of healthy exercise and eating the right foods can help boost your metabolism. Your appetite, which is generally controlled by another ancient piece of your brain called the hypothalamus, can become unstable due to problems such as chemical imbalances or may function to maintain an unhealthy body image. Maintaining reduced weight requires you to stay on your pills forever – and increasingly risk side effects occurring. Actually, all medications consist of non-natural, man-made ingredients that risk harming your health in addition to increasing the probability of positive results. Your medical doctor is charged with determining whether the benefit outweighs the risk. Surgery, which either cuts away fatty disuse or restricts stomach capacity, does nothing to address the underlying mental conditions such as bad habits and poor body image.

Hypnotherapy is an excellent tool when the fundamental issues are behavior and body image. This is due to the fact that by definition hypnosis reduces the brain’s resistance to change. This weakens the mind’s obsession to hold on to bad habits and a poor body image. Secondly, as these blockages are pretty much temporarily out of the way, there is an opportunity for a person to establish new habits and to create a more compelling positive self-image. While some people will experience rapid progress using hypnotherapy, when used regularly, this is a process that begins a journey of steady advancement toward a desired goal. Furthermore, those who suffer from severe obesity or have a genuine eating disorder, both of which are conditions for which proper medical or psychological care is necessary, can also benefit from hypnotherapy – under direction of their caregiver.

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Keywords: hypnosis, hypnotherapy, dieting, diet pills, lap band surgery

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