Hypnotherapy: A Proven Solution for Stress Eating and Weight Loss

Hypnotherapy: A Proven Solution for Stress Eating and Weight Loss

by | May 8, 2023 | Hypnosis, Hypnotherapy, Weight Loss

Hypnotherapy: A Proven Solution for Stress Eating and Weight Loss

In today’s fast-paced world, stress eating has become a common issue, leading to undesired weight gain and health problems. Traditional weight loss methods like diet and exercise are effective, but they might not always address the root cause. Hypnotherapy has emerged as a powerful tool for tackling stress eating and weight loss by targeting the underlying psychological triggers. In this blog post, we will explore the science behind hypnotherapy and how it can help you manage stress eating and lose weight effectively.

What is Hypnotherapy?

Hypnotherapy is a therapeutic technique that uses the power of suggestion to help individuals make positive changes in their lives. By inducing a state of deep relaxation, a hypnotherapist can help clients access their subconscious mind, where long-held beliefs and habits reside (American Psychological Association, 2021). Through the use of carefully crafted suggestions, the therapist can help clients modify negative thought patterns and replace them with healthier ones, making lasting changes in their behavior.

Hypnotherapy for Stress Eating

Stress eating, or emotional eating, is the act of consuming food to cope with negative emotions, such as stress, anxiety, and sadness. It can lead to weight gain and a host of health issues, including heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure (Harvard Health Publishing, 2020). Hypnotherapy addresses stress eating by targeting the emotional triggers that lead to overeating.

A study published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology found that individuals who underwent hypnotherapy for weight loss were able to reduce their stress levels, which subsequently led to a reduction in emotional eating (Kirsch, Montgomery, & Sapirstein, 1995). Hypnotherapy can help individuals develop healthier coping mechanisms for dealing with stress and negative emotions, such as deep breathing exercises or mindfulness techniques, thereby reducing their reliance on food as a source of comfort.

Hypnotherapy for Weight Loss

Hypnotherapy has proven to be an effective weight loss tool by targeting the subconscious beliefs and habits that contribute to overeating and poor food choices. A meta-analysis published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology found that, on average, individuals who underwent hypnotherapy for weight loss lost more than twice as much weight as those who used other methods, such as diet and exercise alone (Kirsch, 1996).

One way hypnotherapy can aid in weight loss is by altering an individual’s perceptions of food. In a study published in the International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, participants who underwent hypnotherapy were more likely to choose healthier food options and reduce their portion sizes (Allison, 1999). By changing the subconscious associations with food, hypnotherapy can help individuals make better choices and feel more satisfied with smaller portions.

Additionally, hypnotherapy can improve motivation and self-confidence, which can positively impact an individual’s ability to stick to a weight loss plan. A study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology found that participants who received hypnotherapy were more likely to maintain their weight loss over time than those who did not (Stradling, Roberts, Wilson, & Lovelock, 1998).

How to Get Started with Hypnotherapy

If you’re interested in trying hypnotherapy for stress eating and weight loss, it’s essential to find a qualified practitioner. Look for a certified hypnotherapist with experience in weight loss and stress management. The National Guild of Hypnotists and the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis are reputable organizations that can help you find a certified hypnotherapist in your area.

Hypnotherapy is a proven, effective solution for managing stress eating and promoting weight loss by addressing the underlying emotional and psychological triggers. It can help individuals develop healthier coping mechanisms, make better food choices, and improve motivation and self-confidence. If you’re struggling with stress eating or weight loss, consider giving hypnotherapy a try. With the guidance of a certified hypnotherapist, you may find that this powerful tool can unlock your potential for lasting change and set you on the path to a healthier, happier life.

References

Allison, D. B. (1999). Hypnosis in the treatment of obesity: A review of the literature and a new perspective. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 47(1), 29-42.

American Psychological Association. (2021). Hypnosis. Retrieved from https://www.apa.org/topics/hypnosis

Harvard Health Publishing. (2020). Why stress causes people to overeat. Retrieved from https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/why-stress-causes-people-to-overeat

Kirsch, I. (1996). Hypnotic enhancement of cognitive-behavioral weight loss treatments: Another meta-reanalysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64(3), 517-519.

Kirsch, I., Montgomery, G., & Sapirstein, G. (1995). Hypnosis as an adjunct to cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy: A meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 63(2), 214-220.

National Guild of Hypnotists. (n.d.). Find a certified hypnotist. Retrieved from https://www.ngh.net/find-a-qualified-hypnotist/

Stradling, J., Roberts, D., Wilson, A., & Lovelock, F. (1998). Controlled trial of hypnotherapy for weight loss in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea. International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders, 22(3), 278-281.

American Society of Clinical Hypnosis. (n.d.). Find a clinician. Retrieved from https://www.asch.net/Public/FindaClinician.aspx

Why Hypnotherapy?

Hypnotherapy works with the subconscious mind to remove self-sabotaging behaviors, limiting beliefs, and blocks that prevent you from leading your best life – in love, career, finance, health, and so much more.

Hypnotherapy is a powerful therapeutic technique that accesses your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is 90% of the mind and is where all of your feelings, emotions, long-term memory, habits, patterns, beliefs, and behaviors are stored – which makes hypnotherapy so effective. We have direct access to heal your issue at its core.

How Does Hypnotherapy Work?

With hypnotherapy, we have direct access to your subconscious mind and are able to go to the root of your issue and heal it. Through the process of hypnotherapy, we are able to go to the exact origin of your issue, identify how it is affecting you in your present life, and heal it.

From there, you will learn new tools, resources, and practices to use in your everyday life. You will leave the hypnotherapy session feeling lighter, empowered, and ready to create active change in your life.

How is Hypnotherapy Different from Talk Therapy?

Hypnotherapy is different than talk therapy because in hypnotherapy we access your subconscious mind – which is 90% of your brain. Talk therapy works with your conscious mind – the other 10% part of your brain that analyzes, computes, and discerns.

Hypnotherapy goes both deeper and faster than talk therapy. For this reason, it is my preferred method of therapy.

What Happens During a Hypnotherapy Session?

The hypnotherapy session begins with soft, relaxing music and relaxation techniques to take you deep into a state of relaxation. Your eyes will be closed for the majority of the session. You can choose to lie down or sit up, whichever feels most comfortable to you.

You and I will then dialogue about your issue from your subconscious mind and very much like a guided meditation or a relaxing visualization, we will go through the process of accessing the root of your issue.

Once we discover that, we will remove the old, negative block and replace it with new, healthy ways of being in your life.

Hypnotherapy sessions can be held at my office in Boulder, Colorado or you can schedule an online session.

Schedule a Consultation Here
Hypnotherapy for Weight Loss: The Power of the Mind

Hypnotherapy for Weight Loss: The Power of the Mind

by | Feb 6, 2023 | Hypnosis, Hypnotherapy, Weight Loss

Hypnotherapy for Weight Loss: The Power of the Mind

If you are struggling with weight loss, you are not alone. Obesity is a growing problem around the world, and many people struggle with diet and exercise programs that simply don’t work for them. However, there is a solution that has proven to be effective for many people: hypnotherapy.

Hypnotherapy is a form of psychotherapy that uses hypnotic techniques to help people achieve their goals. It is based on the idea that the mind has the power to influence our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. When used for weight loss, hypnotherapy can help people change their attitudes towards food and exercise, overcome cravings, and build healthier habits.

One of the benefits of hypnotherapy for weight loss is that it addresses the underlying psychological and emotional factors that contribute to obesity. For example, many people overeat to cope with stress or to comfort themselves. Hypnotherapy can help them identify these triggers and find alternative, healthier ways to manage their emotions.

Another advantage of hypnotherapy for weight loss is that it can help people overcome the unconscious habits and behaviors that prevent them from losing weight. For example, many people eat in response to unconscious cues, such as when they watch TV or sit down at the dinner table. Hypnotherapy can help them break these patterns and establish new habits that support their weight loss goals.

Finally, hypnotherapy for weight loss is a safe and non-invasive solution that is available to everyone. Unlike weight loss surgery or other medical interventions, hypnotherapy does not involve any incisions or anesthesia. It is a natural and gentle way to help people lose weight and improve their overall health.

Hypnotherapy for weight loss is an important tool for people who struggle with obesity. By addressing the underlying psychological and emotional factors that contribute to weight gain, hypnotherapy can help people change their attitudes and behaviors, and achieve their weight loss goals. Whether you are just starting your weight loss journey or you have been struggling for years, hypnotherapy can help you find the success you deserve.

What is Hypnotherapy?

Hypnotherapy works with the subconscious mind to remove self-sabotaging behaviors, limiting beliefs, and blocks that prevent you from leading your best life – in love, career, finance, health, and so much more.

Hypnotherapy is a powerful therapeutic technique that accesses your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is 90% of the mind and is where all of your feelings, emotions, long-term memory, habits, patterns, beliefs, and behaviors are stored – which makes hypnotherapy so effective. We have direct access to heal your issue at its core.

How Does Hypnotherapy Work?

With hypnotherapy, we have direct access to your subconscious mind and are able to go to the root of your issue and heal it. Through the process of hypnotherapy, we are able to go to the exact origin of your issue, identify how it is affecting you in your present life, and heal it.

From there, you will learn new tools, resources, and practices to use in your everyday life. You will leave the hypnotherapy session feeling lighter, empowered, and ready to create active change in your life.

How is Hypnotherapy Different from Talk Therapy?

Hypnotherapy is different than talk therapy because in hypnotherapy we access your subconscious mind – which is 90% of your brain. Talk therapy works with your conscious mind – the other 10% part of your brain that analyzes, computes, and discerns.

Hypnotherapy goes both deeper and faster than talk therapy. For this reason, it is my preferred method of therapy.

What Happens During a Hypnotherapy Session?

The hypnotherapy session begins with soft, relaxing music and relaxation techniques to take you deep into a state of relaxation. Your eyes will be closed for the majority of the session. You can choose to lie down or sit up, whichever feels most comfortable to you.

You and I will then dialogue about your issue from your subconscious mind and very much like a guided meditation or a relaxing visualization, we will go through the process of accessing the root of your issue.

Once we discover that, we will remove the old, negative block and replace it with new, healthy ways of being in your life.

If you’re ready to begin your healing journey, schedule a free 15-minute initial consultation call and learn how hypnotherapy can work for you.

Schedule Here
How to Feel Safe in Your Body

How to Feel Safe in Your Body

by | Apr 5, 2022 | Addictions, Hypnosis, Hypnotherapy, Weight Loss

All human beings need three things to survive and thrive in the world. Without them, it makes everyday living a struggle.

It’s hard to move toward your goals and dreams when you are struggling every day to feel safe in the world.

Safety, Self-Love, and Belonging

All humans need safety, self-love, and belonging to not only survive each day but to thrive and fully participate in a life worth living.

If we don’t have safety, it is very difficult to move on to the next stage of self-love and the stage beyond that, belonging.

It all starts with safety.

What do humans need to be safe?

Food, shelter, and water.

Without these things in place, it can be very difficult to focus on self-love when you’re working every day to pay the bills and put food on the table.

When we don’t feel safe, it is easy to reach outside of ourselves to help relieve that uncomfortable feeling. Maybe it’s cigarettes or alcohol or drugs. Maybe it’s even food…like sugar or bread, chips or donuts, ice cream or cakes.

As humans who need to feel safe in the world, we are brilliant at learning strategies to help meet our own needs. Even if these strategies are hurting us in the long run.

It’s easy to eat sweets and carbs when we feel sad and empty or lost and bored. And you’re not to blame. Our society promotes emotional eating through food pushing and offering sweets to “make us feel better”.

I’m here to tell you there is a better way to feel safe in your body. A way that helps you both to feel safe in your body, put an end to emotional eating, and learn the power of hypnosis to lose weight.

Hypnosis to Lose Weight

With Hypnotherapy for Weight Loss, you will discover the real reason why you aren’t losing weight, remove the blocks to your weight loss goals, and learn powerful new tools and strategies to be free in your body, mind, and soul.

Using hypnosis to lose weight is what the Trim-Life program is all about.

This 6-week program will empower you to manage your hunger and your weight through the power of mindfulness, relaxation skills, and hypnosis.

Trim-Life is offered online and uses the power of hypnosis to lose weight. All you need is an internet connection and a computer.

Need support with emotional eating?

Ready to lose weight the easy way?

Join Trim-Life: 6-Week Hypnosis for Weight Loss course and discover what it is you’re REALLY hungry for!

Join Trim-Life
Hypnotherapy in Boulder, Colorado
Hypnotherapy for Weight Loss

Hypnotherapy for Weight Loss

by | Mar 28, 2022 | Hypnotherapy, Weight Loss

Hypnotherapy for Weight Loss

Do you find yourself eating when you are stressed?

Do you ever get bored and decide it’s time to eat?

Does your nighttime snacking have a mind of its own?

This could be a case of emotional eating.

What is emotional eating?

It is eating to feed your emotions vs. your body. It is sometimes known as stress eating because many emotional eaters eat in response to stress (though stress is not the only trigger – happiness, sadness, among other emotions can be triggers too).

Emotional eating is the result of an unhealthy relationship with food. Instead of seeing food as what it is, something you consume for survival (like air and water), you misconstrue it into something else. You become attached to it, give it emotions, personify it, and make it out to be something it isn’t. Sometimes food is love. Sometimes food is a pain killer. Sometimes food is entertainment. Sometimes food fills the loneliness.

Binge eating is an aggravated form of emotional eating. It happens when (1) the original emotional eating issue is not addressed (2) the triggers for emotional eating are activated, leading to an increased need to eat to feed the emotion(s).

Given time, an emotional eater switches from merely eating in response to emotions, to massively overeating in response to emotions, since they are unable to get relief from their original consumption. While not always the case, compulsive overeating often comes with poor body image and low self-esteem.

Emotional eating is more prevalent than you might think. Believe it or not, nearly 2.5 million adults in the United States today suffer from compulsive overeating, with probably many more unreported cases. Because of how our society has wrapped itself around food, almost all of us have a skewed relationship with food, whether we acknowledge it or not.

12 Signs of Emotional Eating

There are many kinds of emotional eaters – some eat in response to a negative emotion, while some eat in response to a positive emotion. Below are 12 signs of emotional eating:

  1. You eat when you are stressed. When you have things to do (work/studies/exams), you reach out for food subconsciously. Especially when you’re up late at night and by yourself, though it can happen in the day and in front of others too.
  1. You eat as a response to your emotions. You eat when you feel sad / annoyed / disappointed / angry / lonely/ empty / anxious/ tired / bored. It’s a reaction so subconsciously embedded that you don’t even think about it. You just automatically reach out for food whenever you experience those emotions.
  1. You seek solace in food. When you feel down, you seek out “comfort food”. You bury yourself in food like ice cream, cake, chocolate, and cookies, even though they are absolute junk and have zero nutritional value. For some reason, you can’t quite explain, they provide you with comfort.
  1. You have trouble losing weight (due to the way you eat). Even though you want to lose weight and you know the technicalities behind losing weight such as the foods and quantities you should eat, you have trouble sticking to your diet. You can’t seem to stop yourself from eating as and when you want to.
  1. Your eating is out of control (You can’t stop eating). You eat even when you are not hungry, and you continue to eat even when you should have stopped long ago. Your desire to eat seems to have taken a life of its own. At times you would even go out of the way just to get food or to satisfy a particular craving, even though you may not be hungry at all.
  1. You eat to feel happy. You are emotionally dependent on food, relying on it for happiness. You derive positive emotions from eating, even though it’s nothing more than a neutral activity to help you live, just like breathing, drinking water, and passing waste. Note this is entirely different from appreciating food as you eat it, which I’m all for. This is about eating specifically to derive the feeling of happiness, which creates a lopsided relationship.
  1. You eat when you feel happy. You see eating is a necessary companion to happy emotions, just like how people eat to celebrate good news.
  1. You are fascinated with eating/food. You love food. You love to eat. When you’re not eating, you can’t help but think about food. You long and crave for it. When you’re eating, it’s like you’re in a wonderland. Eating and food draw an intense level of interest from you. Interestingly, none of your fascinations is reciprocated by food or eating.
  1. You use emotionally-charged words to describe food/eating, like “sinful”, “decadent”, “guilt-ridden”, “love”, “lust”, “indulgent”, “enticing”, “craving”, “tempting”, etc, even though food is a non-living thing, incapable of feelings nor returning your love/hate.
  1. You eat even though you are rightfully full. No matter how much you eat, no matter how full you feel, you never feel quite satisfied. Whatever satisfaction you get from eating is momentary, and you return to eating after a while to recapture that emotion.
  1. You think of eating even though you are rightfully full. Even after you’ve had your fill, you continue to think of food. You think about what to eat for the next meal right after you’ve finished eating. You obsess about X, Y, Z food, and when you can eat it. You can’t wait till it’s time to eat again. You think about how satisfied you’ll be when you finally get to eat. You count down to the next mealtime.
  1. You have random food cravings out of the blue. Sometimes, you get urges to eat a certain food, which you can’t explain yourself. And it’s not even that you’re hungry. It’s just a craving which you must satisfy, else you’ll feel unhappy for the day.

Need support with emotional eating?

Click here to schedule a hypnotherapy session at Boulder Hypnotherapy.

Schedule Appointment
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