Can Hypnosis Really Help Me Suppress My Appetite?

Posthypnotic suggestion, thanks to TV and movies, the very word conjures up the image of a beady-eyed hypno-therapist swinging a watch and chanting, "You are getting sleepy."

Do a Google search, and you will find hundreds of thousands of web pages devoted to the subject, especially weight loss hypnosis. Unfortunately, many websites that sell hypnosis tapes for weight loss make ridiculous claims. I've been a hypnotherapist since 1978. So I think that I'm knowledgeable enough to set the record straight on weight loss hypnosis.

First of all, posthypnotic suggestion is a tool, just like a scalpel is a tool. Just as novel surgeons have different skill levels in the use of a scalpel, novel hypnotists have varying skill levels in the use of hypnotism for weight loss. And to complicate the matter, there are many remarkable forms and types of hypnotherapy.

Here are some of the wild postulations about weight loss hypnosis that I've seen on websites, along with the truth of the matter:

"Hypnosis for weight loss will speed up your metabolism." If you want to know the total truth, the fact of the matter is that weight loss hypnosis can't speed up your metabolism. But it can be very functional at helping to program your subconscious with increased motivation to exercise, and that exercise will increase your metabolic rate. Similarly, hypnotic sleep to speed up the metabolism for quick weight loss can be effected by programming the subconscious to motivate the intake of increased amounts of protein, because that intake will step up your metabolism.

"Hypnosis will make you lose some weight." This is false. But weight loss hypnosis can be used to help erase your appetite, so that you eat less, and eating less can help you to lose a few pounds.

Your appetite and urges are triggered by two unconscious programs:
A. When you pair eating with any other behavior, the other behavior will trigger cravings for food and a strong desire to eat. This is called a conditioned response. For example, if you eat when you talk on the phone, you will automatically get an urge to eat each time you pick up the phone.

B. When you feel tense, you feel a strong desire to put food into your mouth for relaxation. This is because of programming that you received as a baby. When you got cranky, your mom put a bottle in your mouth. You got distracted, relaxed, and probably fell asleep. Now when you get cranky (anxious or tense), you feel compelled to put something into your mouth for relaxation and pleasure.

C. There is a third subconscious program that is present for some people. It's called emotional eating. Emotional eating takes place when a hypnotic subject is motivated to make him or herself fat, because by being fat they will protect themselves in some way.

For example, if someone got their heart broken in a relationship, their unconscious will force them into an action that would prevent them from getting their heart broken again. Example: They are motivated to gain weight to keep them out of another relationship, because that will cut out the possibility of another broken heart.

D. I have written several articles on hypnosis for weight loss and emotional eating that are available on my website.

There are some effective and powerful ways to use self-hypnosis to overcome emotional eating. So just how can weight loss hypnotherapy fix the above problems? Let's cover them one at a time.

In paragraph "A" above: Conditioned responses can be "obliterated" easily and quickly using a modality that I call the "Flash." The flash trains the unconscious mind to setup a new set of triggers. In the above example, the subject had unconsciously joined the depiction of food in the hand, with the TV. Each time he / she sat down to watch the TV, the subconscious mind filled in the missing part of the visualization: It "Flashed" the picture of the food in the hand, and the subject felt a craving, and an urge to eat.

The Flash is a way of doing things that helps us program the unconscious to use the depiction of the TV as a trigger for a mental picture of yourself watching TV without eating. When we lose the visualization of the food, we lose the cravings.

When we momentarily disassociate (see ourselves from the point of view that someone else would), we are not able to sense our feelings (cravings and urges).

When we see ourselves in an action (watching TV without eating), we feel a strong compulsion to generate that behavior. So the subject loses the cravings, and actually gets a compulsion to reject food.

In paragraph "B" above: The subject is eating and drinking for relaxation and pleasure. We teach the subject self-hypnosis for weight loss, because the very essence of the hypnotic state is deep relaxation.

And we utilize the "Flash" to program the unconscious to use the mental images and thoughts that are triggering feelings of frustration and nervous strain, as triggers for secondary mental images that will trigger relaxation instead. When the subject feels greater relaxation overall, oral cravings are drastically reduced.

In paragraph "C" above: We discussed emotional eating which makes the person overweight. The "behavior" of being overweight then provides some sort of emotional protection. So we use a modality called an NLP reframe which programs the unconscious to be responsible for making the subject automatically substitute some other more acceptable behavior that will provide the same emotional protection, in place of being overweight. And that reframe will discard the urge to eat for emotional purposes.

Self-hypnosis for weight loss can be a very powerful method. I can only uncover the tip of the iceberg in this short story. Please see my website for more comprehensive articles and information.

(c) 2007 by Alan B. Densky, CH. This article may be reproduced on your website as long as you retain all clickable links contained within.

Alan B. Densky, CH established his professional practice of hypnosis and NLP in Feb. 1978. He is the creator of Neuro-VISION appetite control & stop smoking video hypnosis, which received a United States Patent because of its effectiveness.

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