Does Hypnotherapy Work for Weight Loss?

Clinical studies have pointed out that hypnosis has a success rate of over 90%.

Hypnosis is a state of inner immersion and elevated focus. By examining the principles of hypnosis to solve issues people have with weight loss, we’ll discover that the hypnotic state is still a state of consciousness that we don’t normally access. 

Hypnotherapy is a treatment based on hypnotizing someone into a highly relaxed state. By accessing this different level of awareness, therapists will use suggestions to access the subconscious mind.

What’s interesting about hypnosis for weight loss is that it’s designed to solve weight issues from the root cause. Toxic eating patterns, unresponsiveness to exercise, aversion to fruit and vegetables. Hypnotherapy can dramatically alter weight-wise choices.

The conversation around sensible weight loss should tackle everything weight loss-related. The body’s physical aspect, sensible eating, and motivation to exercise are just a few.

This article will explain the hidden obstacles holding you back from losing weight and identify how hypnotherapy is an indispensable treatment for helping people lose weight and lead healthy lives.

Why Do We Surrender to Food Temptations?

Cravings are temporary internal displays of agitation or worry. They are typically attached to processed foods high in sugar, salt, and unhealthy fats.

Specific smells, images, or the mere mention of food can immediately induce cravings. The impromptu thought or encounter with foods that delight you agitate your natural state, making you want to submit to them.

Deeply rooted habits can support cravings, such as walking past your favorite pastry shop on your way to work or rewarding yourself with a box of chocolates to make up for a stressful day at work. The brain surrenders to cravings, no matter how full we are..

 

An excellent alternative to avoid cravings is to ensure you adopt a diet filled with key nutrients. Our bodies need to receive the necessary vitamins and minerals to function properly. A balanced diet should include starchy carbs, fruits and vegetables, protein, dairy, and healthy fats.

Picture this. When an urge drives us, it’s like having a ticking bomb inside our minds. A kind of now-or-never effect is activated, and we conform to it.

But is it possible to make sensible weight choices after a long period of being stuck in a maze of temptations?

Firstly, we need to understand how our neurocircuitry reacts in relation to food that’s a feast for the eyes and a payoff for the brain.

Cravings, Urges, and Binging

What do they all have in common? Cravings, urges, and binging are all stocked up in the same part of your brain - the limbic system. The same place that hosts our memories and where a connection with the memory of palatable foods is formed. Foods that we have previously tasted and enjoyed.

The vicious circle of reciprocating your temptations means you're finding fulfillment in them, which induces a false sense of completion. This then unlocks the need for the next phase of completion. After the initial adrenaline rush, we experience two types of heaviness. First comes the physical one because we feel uncomfortable with our bellies stuffed. This is typically when we start to make ourselves promises to stop giving in to cravings. Shortly after comes the emotional heaviness. We're faced with the guilt of our acts. But we tend to dismiss it with words of self-love and ¨We only live once¨ expressions. When the sensation of fullness and guilt disappears, we're inclined to forget everything, and we become susceptible again to submitting to cravings. That’s when we falsely enjoy another phase of completion.

Carbs, sugars, and fats are all foods that the brain finds pleasure in consuming. This is because junk food stirs up the brain's reward centers, encouraging dopamine release. The brain can then be confused by the avalanche of pleasure these foods provide to such an extent that it can develop more dopamine receptors. This explains the enigma around junk food and the catch-22 we must overcome to make better food choices.

Even if it feels like you're rewarding yourself, you're giving up on better options.

What Keeps Us From Reaching Our Ideal Weight?

1. Dehydration

Our metabolism is influenced by dehydration.

We lose water through sweat and urine, which a higher amount of water must replace to fully serve the body's needs. Hydrating our body generates a thermogenic response that activates our metabolism. This helps burn fat and supports us in maintaining the right weight.

Dehydration can be one of the reasons we struggle to lose weight. A dehydrated body leads to a slow metabolism that can't burn calories. Nor can it turn fat into energy, which makes us hungrier than usual. Drinking water before meals influences the way we ration food and helps us avoid overeating.

Moreover, not drinking enough water creates muscle fatigue, making us unwilling to exercise.

2. Lack of Sleep

Poor sleep can lead to weight gain, especially if you sleep less than seven hours a night. When we’re sleep-deprived, our body’s metabolism does not operate at its topmost function. In addition to this, insufficient sleep generates a spike in a hormone called ghrelin, an appetite maximizer. This hormone sends signals to the brain that we’re hungry. Even if we’re full, we feel an inexplicable desire to eat, and we don’t question our bodies’ signals.

And it doesn’t end here. Leptin, the hormone that tells our bodies when we’ve had enough food, experiences a decrease. So, sleep deprivation prevents leptin from suppressing hunger and ruins the balance between our food consumption and energy use. Which, again, makes us prone to hunger.

Also, sleep modulates glucose metabolism, so it’s worth remembering that when sacrificing rest.

Frustration with Minimal Results If you’re used to operating on an instant gratification model and find it hard to resist temptations, you’ll probably hit a wall when trying to maintain a sustainable weight loss routine. Embarking on the weight loss venture requires ignoring immediate satisfaction - the culprit that downplays progress.

When the results aren’t proportional to the amount of effort invested, we forget that it’s a compounding effect. The mind doesn’t have the consistency reservoirs fully filled. It becomes difficult to sustain the effort in the long run. The result? We probably end up bulldozing all the backbreaking work we’ve put into losing weight.

4. The Too-Many-Choices Contradiction

In a culture where there’s no guarantee that sugar-free also means risk-free, it’s easy to make poor choices. Confusion is the zapper of action.

The constant debate around meat, lactose, and gluten allows the confusion to continue while we’re overwhelmed with loads of information we can’t process.

To simplify this process, our brains look for a shortcut. Taste, convenience, and cost make the gunpowder that sets the brain’s explosive reaction in motion. Again, all roads lead to junk food.

When the body sends the signal of a metabolism that has gone wild, the brain has a different blueprint to refer to. This is where hypnotherapy’s role gains more significance. The old modus operandi goes out of the window as the brain willingly submits to a healthier approach.

Seven Striking Benefits of Hypnotherapy for Weight Loss

Hypnotherapy for weight loss is much more than a unilateral matter. It addresses our subconscious mind. All food beliefs and behaviors that don’t serve us are stored in this place. With different methods and techniques, a hypnotherapist can help you break unhealthy eating patterns, such as overeating, and food addictions, such as junk food, sugar, and carbs. You’ll then develop a mindful relationship with healthy food.

Below, we’ll explore seven benefits hypnotherapy provides for weight loss.

1. Elevates Self-belief

You disappoint yourself when you’re not matching your intentions with your behavior. In time, this can morph into a sensation of self-betrayal that is challenging to tackle.

Hypnotherapy for weight loss acts as a guardian of self-respect and self-esteem. It helps you honor your commitment to your weight loss journey. Don’t expect a magic fix. Expect a sensible, long-term approach to healthy living. Sticking to a nutritious diet, and exercising, will boost your self-image. Plus, the physical changes your body will experience will make you proud of your consistency.

The benefits of addressing emotional control go beyond increasing self-esteem. We’re talking about guilt -  the number one enemy that makes you not stick to a plan, succumb to rushed decisions and justify them with pleasure-based actions.

2. Provides Long-term Motivation

If you've tried losing weight before, you’re used to blowing hot and cold. 

Motivation can come and go, especially when we’re not used to sustaining an active lifestyle. Or worse, physical activity was never even part of the picture. Laziness is the main issue here. 

Hypnotherapy can provide the understanding that laziness is more of a physical state than a character trait. Just like any state, it can be intentionally altered. The suggestions your subconscious mind receives make it easy to defeat laziness and the false reward it promises. 

This new sense of motivation will not only support you during physical activity but also before, by setting sustainable weight loss goals, and after, by rewarding yourself for your endeavor.

3. Replaces Self-Sabotage with Self-Control 

The idea that cravings dominate you is replaced by the belief that you are in control of your choices. Suppose your sweet tooth has always driven you. You developed a conviction that sweets are your weakness. Hypnotherapy for weight loss can swap that belief with a new one, where sweets are an occasional treat, not a way of living.

Often, self-sabotage shows up after a breakthrough, reclaiming the initial body weight with which the body was so familiar.

Hypnotherapy won’t provide a brainwash that will prevent eye-candy distractions from sabotaging your progress. However, hypnosis can help you deal with them in better ways, using common sense and future-minded objectives. Think of it more as a recalibration of your emotional ecosystem. While distractions won’t become invisible, you’ll effortlessly deal with them

4. Provides Balance and Reliance

Hypnotherapy can set an entire cycle of healthy choices in motion. Like a domino effect, the only option is to follow suit once the first domino falls. This sets the scene for choosing the best food for you and treating your body differently. With balance and reliance, it can recover from the cravings rut.

The healthier you eat, the more energized you wake up. Physical activity becomes a natural habit rather than a problem. With its powerful suggestions, hypnotherapy will make it easy to redefine your relationship with exercise and look forward to moving your body. Before you know it, you’ll be counting the hours until your next workout.

5. Cancels Extreme Behaviors

Dieting is one of the extreme behaviors people who want to lose weight face.

The problem with dieting appears when we can’t stick to a single plan. Dieting can indeed backfire. Losing weight and gaining weight becomes a back-and-forth game. Similar to the ping pong moving pattern, only that no fun is involved. The yo-yo dieting catapults us into an evergreen cycle of frustration. And it comes at a high cost our bodies have to pay: slowed metabolism, dehydration, loss of muscular strength, and risk of heart disease. 

Hypnosis for weight loss can provide clarity of action. It instills practical considerations into our subconscious, where patience and consistency are key. 

Sensibly-sized meals loaded with the proper nutrients, attention to fruit and vegetables, and drinking plenty of water. These are just some changes you can expect after hypnosis for weight loss.

6. Charts a Clear Map to Follow

By eradicating old attachments to unhealthy lifestyle choices, hypnotherapy can change the entire conversation around weight loss.

It can deactivate the narrative you use to tell yourself and tackle the false sympathy for instant gratification eating. It can also remove the feelings of guilt and self-contempt acquired through poor food choices. This future-oriented perspective that hypnotherapy for weight loss provides can make amends with the past and fill the present with purpose.

Past errors don’t have to weigh you down, as an attachment-free scenario can unfold in front of your eyes. This way, you won’t underestimate the future based on past predictions. Sticking to a forward-thinking weight loss plan will support your progress.

7. Neutralizes Society-Imposed Standards

A healthy body means making responsible decisions. This translates into receptiveness toward an active lifestyle rather than daydreaming about flawless bodies.

A healthy and alluring body can have antagonistic meanings. A thin body is not necessarily healthy, and a healthy body is not necessarily thin. It’s worth paying attention to this duality when embarking on a weight loss journey.

Suppose you’re used to throwing in the towel whenever you scroll on social media or watch a reality show filmed in an exotic place. In that case, you’re allowing unrealistic beauty standards to minimize your efforts.

Hypnosis can increase self-assurance and create better standards and rational expectations. You’ll see yourself differently once guilt is out of the way. 

This leaves a clean canvas for natural motivation to arise. Motivation is a self-confidence powerhouse. The more committed you are to your diet plan, the clearer your discernment between the right and wrong food choices. 

Did You Know That Sensible Weight Loss Is Not a Far-Fetched Dream?

  Understanding how to accurately tread on the weight track starts with accepting that managing your weight means managing your health.

The same level of commitment you invest in honoring instant gratification can be channeled into long-term willpower that makes healthy living easy and exciting.

The Sensible Weight Loss Audio is an inspiring audio that helps you embrace mindful eating and make effortless choices that support a long-term healthy lifestyle.

 

I’ve made it my life’s mission to make peace of mind and the ability to reach your potential available to everyone
- and that includes you!

 

Here’s to true freedom, happiness and health! - Jamie Clarke