Success Hypnosis

Studies have shown that obesity is more often the result of an attempt to satisfy an emotional hunger rather than a overzealous attempt to satisfy a genuine nutritional need.  Behaviors taught during childhood that food is a salve for everything from anxiety to shame and distress can have devastating effects on adults as the metabolism slows and the pressures of adult life increase.  What’s more, this tendency can also have an accelerative effect as a person gains weight and then turn to food as a way of soothing the shame and distress they feel by being overweight.

The reason 95% of people attempting a diet based weight loss program fail is because, although popular diets uniformly instruct the user on portion control as well as food selection, they don’t address this root cause of the weight gain. According to Margot Miles CHT, president of Focus on Fulfillment and developer of the popular Hypnotize Your Body self-hypnosis weight loss program, “Giving a person different foods to eat and suggesting portion control without addressing the ingrained behavior behind a person’s eating habits is about as effective as cutting your hair in order to keep your hair from growing.”

The genesis of this problem lies in our culture where food is anything but a strict nutritional component of life.  Food is traditionally used as a celebrant and a tonic. It’s served at weddings and wakes and encouraged by American mothers in a wide variety of non-nutritional settings. Is it any wonder then that a pint of ice cream is metaphorically used as a source of comfort for a broken heart and the term “stress eating” is more commonplace in our vernacular than “proper nutrition”?

As a person gains weight, the problem compounds as feelings of shame, loneliness and self loathing begin to emerge.  The subconscious, unaware that it is the non-nutritional eating that is causing the weight gain in the first place, responds by encouraging the consumption of comfort foods as a way to soothe these negative feelings, thereby triggering another round of weight gain. The dieter finds themselves caught in a downward spiral that is extremely difficult to break without intervention at the psychological or subconscious level.

For over 50 years, science has acknowledged that hypnosis is a safe and effective method for reprogramming behavior of the subconscious mind. Whether in conjunction with a healthy diet plan or alone, by focusing on reprogramming the subconscious, a person can realize permanent weight loss  without an overabundance of will power and can accomplish it in a natural and comfortable way.   In our next blog we will discuss the other non-nutritional reason people eat, “stuffing.”

The Subconscious Controls Behavior

Most, some say 95%, of people who attempt to lose weight using diet based weight loss programs, eventually regain the weight and often gain more as their bodies try to compensate for the perceived deprivation.  Still, perhaps out of desperation, people try diet after diet, as if food is to blame for their failure to lose weight.  Most people understand that diets alone aren’t the answer, so why do they continue to attempt traditional diets to create permanent weight loss?   The answer is simple:

Your subconscious doesn’t realize it’s making you fat.

As human beings, our DNA is programmed to pack in food when there is abundance, so we can survive during lean times.  Additionally, as Americans, we are culturally and subconsciously programmed to consume in large quantities.  From the size of our cars and houses, to super-sized portions and all-you-can-eat buffets, we consume in abundance for a variety of reasons unrelated to our physical needs.  From childhood, we have been programmed to clean our plates, to eat to be sociable, to use food for comfort and for many other reasons.

Think of all the times on TV when you’ve seen your favorite character eat a pint of ice cream to soothe a broken heart.  This demonstrates the phenomenon of food messages we receive every day throughout our lives.  Your subconscious is continuously being programmed to make you eat (and to eat unhealthy foods), for reasons other than nutritional needs.

Your subconscious fails to make the connection between the good it thinks it’s doing (comforting you, giving you pleasure, etc) and the weight you are gaining. The fact that your conscious mind is painfully aware of this connection has no bearing on the subconscious at all. At the same time, since the subconscious is the part of your mind outside your normal awareness, it’s difficult for you to recognize that it’s your subconscious that’s inadvertently putting on the pounds.  In fact, if you get distressed over your weight gain, the subconscious is likely to try to bring you comfort by making you eat even more.  Since the subconscious mind controls most of your behavior, it’s far more effective to reprogram your subconscious mind than to consciously try to control your diet in order to create permanent weight loss.

Science has confirmed that the easiest, most effective way to change behavior and reprogram the subconscious is through hypnosis. By directly communicating with your subconscious mind, positive and permanent new behaviors can be learned that naturally alter your eating habits.  Once you’ve changed your behavior at a subconscious level, eating right and losing weight can seem effortless.

Obesity isn’t just an appearance issue; it’s a serious health problem and a national epidemic. Distracted by diet plans that don’t work, Americans spend millions of dollars in a futile attempt to get healthy while neglecting the source of the problem:  the subconscious mind.  To lose weight permanently, reprogram your subconscious.  It’s the most natural and effective way to achieve permanent weight loss for a healthier you.

Although the incredible power of the subconscious mind has yet to be fully understood, the more science learns, the more amazing it becomes.  One thing that has been particularly clear for quite some time however is that as powerful as it is, most people haven’t the ability to control it or train it.  Even people who are experts in the field understand that the ability to modify the behavior or responses of the subconscious mind is primarily limited to the narrow but effective practice of hypnosis and a limited variety of related therapeutic strategies such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

Richard Bandler, the developer of Neuro-Linguistic Programming, pointed out that “your brain is like a machine without an ‘off’ switch.  If you don’t give it something to do, it just runs on and on until it gets bored.  If you put someone in a sensory deprivation tank where there’s no external experience, they’ll start generating internal experience.  If your brain is sitting around without anything to do, it’s going to start doing something, and it doesn’t seem to care what it is.  You may care, but it doesn’t.”  You only have to remember all those unexpected thoughts, ideas or pictures that have “popped” into your mind to realize this is true.

Since childhood, your subconscious mind has been busy learning things and creating behaviors and responses to all kinds of situations, without any input from your conscious mind.  Once learned, these responses and behaviors don’t require any conscious thought to occur, they simply happen.  What’s more, in most cases, these behaviors were learned almost instantaneously.  Here are a couple of examples of just how powerful and amazing the brain is:

Right now, take a moment to recall a happy memory from your childhood.  In the time it took you to picture that moment, your subconscious reviewed every single childhood memory you have had, categorized, analyzed and then selected that particular memory; yet all you were aware of was an almost instantaneous display of the memory.

Let’s try this: most people are afraid of something; what are you afraid of? Spiders? Snakes? How about clowns?  Phobias aren’t something that are learned over time; they usually occur as a result of a single incident.  Imagine, in a single moment, the brain learns a response, a behavior that could last a lifetime.  A person who is afraid of spiders doesn’t have to consciously think, “Oh, it’s a spider… now I need to feel afraid” every time they see a spider; they simply feel afraid.  How’s that for fast and powerful learning?

If the brain is such a powerful instrument, and so capable of quickly learning responses, why is it so darned difficult to unlearn behaviors or to change them when they no longer work for us?  It’s simple: because we spend all our time trying to teach our conscious mind, since that’s the part we can control. The problem is, that’s not the part of our brain that needs teaching, and it’s nearly impossible for you to communicate effectively with your subconscious mind via conscious thought; you need special tools.  That’s where hypnosis comes in.

Properly trained Hypnotherapists are adept at communicating with the subconscious mind; that’s what hypnotherapy is, working with the subconscious mind to create positive changes within the client.

Hypnotherapy consists of two distinct activities: opening the door to the subconscious mind, then communicating with it effectively.   It takes considerable skill to accomplish both: first to guide the client into a relaxed state where the subconscious is at its most receptive, then communicating with the subconscious mind and carefully crafting the language so the subconscious understands and learns what is needed.

To demonstrate the importance of knowing exactly how to communicate effectively with the subconscious mind, I am going to give you a very simple instruction:  Do not create a mental image of an elephant.  Despite the fact that your conscious mind understood the instruction perfectly, your subconscious mind only got the “create a mental image of an elephant” part, and executed it perfectly.  Was it an African elephant with the big ears or an Indian one with the smaller ears?  Oops, that pesky subconscious had to picture it again to make sure.

As you have seen, the subconscious mind is powerful and a quick learner and the best part is that change, once effected, requires very little effort to maintain.  In fact, changes (even profound ones) can take place in a person yet feel so normal that the client is unaware that change has occurred.

One of my most memorable clients was a woman, I’ll call her Sue, who was in her late 40’s and about 40 lbs overweight.  She also was not particularly active.  Her doctor had advised her to lose weight and to start walking for exercise.  She told me she couldn’t get much further than around the block without getting winded.  We had one session and I gave her a CD recording to take home for reinforcement.  I suggested she listen to it daily for at least a week, then maybe once or twice a week until she had reached her goals.

I didn’t hear from Sue for about two months, so I called her just to follow up.  I like hearing feedback from my clients; their success is important to me.  I asked her how she was doing and in a very kind way, she informed me that the session hadn’t really accomplished anything; that she really didn’t feel any differently.  I was surprised to hear this because I’ve grown accustomed to hearing only positive feedback, so I asked Sue if she would consider stopping by so we could discuss her situation.  If I had left something out, I wanted to learn what it was so I could adjust it and improve my skills.

Imagine my surprise when Sue walked in, 21 lbs lighter and looking great.  As it turns out, Sue had an expectation that she was going to “feel” very differently after her hypnosis session; yet she didn’t “feel” hypnotized or different.  The changes she experienced, as profound as they were, felt so natural that they seemed totally normal for the “new” Sue.  She didn’t feel like eating less, she just ate less.  She didn’t feel more capable of resisting temptations, she just wasn’t tempted anymore.  She didn’t feel like exercising more, she just took more walks.  She was up to one mile, three times a week by then.  Once we talked and Sue looked back at her progress, we both had a good laugh and I realized my only “mistake” was not instructing her subconscious that she would be consciously aware of the changes she experienced.

Trying to consciously overpower the subconscious mind, to wrestle it into submission, is frustrating and usually a losing battle.  But research has shown over the last 50 years that hypnosis is effective and safe in creating change in the subconscious.  A growing number of studies show that Hypnotherapy can treat headaches, ease the pain of childbirth, aid in smoking cessation and weight loss, enhance sexual enjoyment and performance, improve concentration and study habits, relieve fears, and serve as anesthesia–all without drugs or negative side effects.  What can you accomplish through the power of hypnosis? All you need to do is imagine yourself…….