Transform Your Life with Hypnosis at Positive-Hypnosis
Weight loss & eating disorders
At Positive-Hypnosis, we use hypnosis to help clients overcome various challenges relating to weight. Our approach is safe, natural, and effective.
Weight issues and eating disorders can happen as a result of disturbances in our eating behaviour, such as unhealthy reduction of food intake or extreme overeating. These patterns can be caused by feelings of distress or concern about our body shape or weight which can harm our normal body composition and function. An eating disorder may have started out just eating smaller or larger amounts of food than usual, but which then changed to an urge to eat less.
Clinical hypnotherapy can be an effective way to losing weight and maintaining a healthy approach toeating and weight management in the longer term. The majority of overweight problems arise from over eating and lack of exercise and may result in multiple physical, social, psychological issues including low self-esteem.
The most common response to overweight issues is the use of diets which require following an eating regime which is not our normal one. However, eventually life returns to normal and nothing has been done to change our unconscious habits, and not surprisingly, the previous eating patterns return.
Effective weight control requires permanent and healthy changes to our lifestyle. Clinical hypnosis can enable you to use your unconscious mind to change eating habits into healthy ones and attain lasting benefits. All our weight loss treatment plans will be tailored to your personal goals.
a. Comfort (or emotional) eating
Some people may eat too much and/or too often as a ‘protective’ mechanism in order to cope with other issues and emotions that are suppressed. When the emotional attachments to food and underlying issues have been resolved, the comfort eating will reduce or disappear. Clinical hypnotherapy can help us deal with these feelings and the result means that there will no longer be the desire to comfort eat when we are feeling unhappy and, after a while, weight loss will happen naturally and without even thinking about it.
b. Binge eating
Bingeing represents a lack of control in eating specific foods and a binge eater will eat large amounts of foods that they enjoy often aligned to certain patterns (ie when watching TV). Binge eating may be managed as part of a wider weight control programme using clinical hypnotherapy, highlighting eating patterns and behaviours whilst looking at the underlying issues that may provoke the need to binge. If you regularly overeat or indulge in binge eating, you know what it feels like being out of control, physically uncomfortable and controlling these eating urges will enable you to feel more relaxed around food and more in control of your eating. Once your emotional attachment to food has been resolved you will no longer feel the need to overeat or binge eat.
Some binge eaters may be bulimic whereby extreme measures are taken (vomiting, use of laxatives, enemas, etc) to purge the food often resulting in the individual having a normal weight. Symptoms for bulimia can be helped with the use of clinical hypnotherapy but, as a serious eating disorder, treatment must be undertaken in consultation with your doctor.
c. Anorexia
Anorexia is a serious eating disorder which is typically seen in patients who show a drastic and intentional loss of weight accompanied with acute issues around physical self-perception and self-esteem. Whilst clinical hypnotherapy can be useful in aiding recovering anorexics, treatment for anorexia should be through a specialist and only on referral.
d. Body image
There is an increasing societal pressure to meet what are perceived as social ‘norms’ of what we should look like. Often these are unreal as has been highlighted in media debates about the use of superthin models or ‘ripped’ male stereotypes. Clinical hypnosis can help you to manage your expectations of what is a reasonable goal for how you see yourself and how you can improve self-esteem as well as manage your weight and overall physical health - feeling better inside will help you feel good when you look at yourself in the mirror.