Can You Really Lose Weight With Hypnotherapy?
Hypnosis can help in weight loss, but just like any other weight loss tool, it will require some effort on your part. It helps you focus on your goals (to be thinner), and it can help you use the power of visualization to see yourself doing what you must to get to your goal. Here, you will learn how you can shed pounds with the power of hypnosis.
How does it help? When you’re hypnotized, you’re helped in opening new avenues of communication between your mind and body. With a practitioner’s help, you’re guided into a state of intense concentration, where you’re totally relaxed and your level of suggestibility is heightened. When in this state, your subconscious mind (the part that controls habits) is more open to suggestions on changing the way you exercise and eat.
You are given in-office hypnotherapy sessions, but you’re also taught how to achieve the same effect at home. The hypnotherapist typically makes you an audio recording that you’re to listen to at least once per day, usually for months on end. By listening to the recording repeatedly, your therapist’s messages make their way to your subconscious and your eating & exercise habits are effectively reprogrammed. You’ll also be taught how to hypnotize yourself so that you can enter the state of heightened concentration on your own.
Hypnotherapy is a tool for the discovery of underlying factors which may cause you to make bad food choices; many people overeat when they’re depressed, bored, anxious or stressed. Once you’ve pinpointed these factors, hypnotherapy can help you change them into more positive motivators- and you’ll learn how to make more appropriate choices.
When hypnotherapy is combined with a behavioral program, it’s been proven effective for moderate weight loss. Even as successful as it is, there are still some variables that need to be considered. Hypnotherapy programs must be custom-fit to the individual; there’s no “one size fits all” solution. Most programs are time-intensive, requiring great responsibility and effort on the part of the patient. The Internet is full of programs of dubious quality- these programs aren’t backed by scientific evidence, and should be used with caution.
As we said, hypnosis is a way for a person to enter a state of increased suggestibility, relaxation and focus. When a person is hypnotized by a practitioner, it’s called heterohypnosis. When that patient is taught how to achieve the same effect at home, it’s called self hypnosis. Both approaches are necessary in hypnotherapy for weight loss.
Most of the studies on weight loss hypnosis don’t show much about its effectiveness in men, and it hasn’t received substantial attention from researchers. To better understand how hypnosis can help us lose weight, we need more studies, done with larger subject pools and control groups.
As in any other weight loss program, the biggest obstacle comes when it’s time to maintain. The highest chances of success come when a person is committed and has the right tools to cope with stress and anxiety. A weight loss program can’t be successful if a person has no self control, motivation or knowledge on exercise and diet, and hypnotherapy is no exception.
Hypnosis should be looked at not as a cure-all for instant weight loss, but as a tool to be used in conjunction with other types of treatment, such as cognitive behavioral and psychotherapies, group counseling, and appropriate nutritional and workout programs. In short, it CAN work- but you’ll still need to put in a great deal of effort yourself.
Wayne Barker writes for Slimming.com, a one stop shop for all your weight loss products. If you are looking for a healthier lifestyle or to improve your fitness they have the information and products that you need.
