Weight Loss and Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy has been around for centuries and it is no wonder why more and more people are looking into it to see if it can really help them get control of their behaviour around food and exercise. When you go to the doctor with a problem, they treat whatever symptom you present with whether it’s medication or something else. When you visit a Hypnotherapist, they look for the root cause of your symptom.

Emotional Eating:

So, when someone has been suffering with emotional eating (symptom), although programming them to eat better foods and increase their desire to move more and drink more water can help them (treating the symptom also), a highly trained hypnotherapist will work with them in addressing the root cause to their emotional eating. If we just programme them with positive suggestions around eating healthily and exercising regularly, it’s like a band-aid. It doesn’t help them achieve permanent weight loss.

Addiction and food:

No matter what the addiction is, whether it’s food, drink, gaming, gambling or sex, a hypnotherapist recognises that their client is using these things to numb some sort of pain they have been experiencing in life. Food addiction is one of the most cruel addictions because it is obvious in someone’s appearance that they are numbing their emotional pain with food. They cannot hide it no matter how hard they try.

Case study:

From experience as a Clinical Hypnotherapist, the root cause of emotional eating of my clients has never been related to food itself. A recent client of mine which we will name Dave for confidentiality reasons, came into the clinic with 26 stone. We used hypnosis to find out why he had gained so much weight. The root cause of his pain (anxiety) was being knocked off his bike at the age of 4. He learned how to feel scared (fear) at that moment, and anytime he experienced that same fear from then on, he turned to food to numb it and throughout his teenage years and up his 40s, he used other substances to take away the pain. Once we desensitised the emotions attached to these earlier events, I was able to help him programme his mind easily with suggestions around chewing his food, recognising when he was full (with much less food!), increasing desire for exercise and drinking water, etc.

Taking away the pain:

When Dave was in Hypnosis, we were able to go back to these earlier memories and make him feel safe in his subconscious mind (where he stores his feelings/emotions, habits, beliefs, long-term memory and protector).

Think of our subconscious mind as being our hard drive. It has been programmed every day since birth and it learns feelings and behaviours and once we reach the age of 8/9, this hard drive continues to operate in whatever way it was programmed in those earlier years.

How Hypnosis helps:

Hypnosis is used to change these feelings and patterns at a deep subconscious level so that we can remove emotional pain from the mind and give people back the power of their own mind. When we are feeling safe and content there is no need to use food or anything else to silence any negative emotions anymore.

This is why Hypnosis is very powerful in helping people with weight loss. Visit: https://www.weightlossclinic.ie/

Article by:

Rosie Callaghan

Advanced Diploma Hypnotherapy

Higher Diploma in Education