Use any Internet search engine and you will find hundreds of thousands of web pages devoted to the subject. Unfortunately, many websites that sell self-hypnosis programs make crazy, unsubstantiated claims. I've been a hypnotherapist since 1978. So I think that I'm more than able to set the record straight on weight loss hypnosis.



First of all, self-hypnosis is a tool, just like a scalpel is a tool. Just as different surgeons have diversified skill levels in the use of a scalpel, different hypnotists have varying skill levels in the use of self-hypnosis. And to complicate the matter, there are many different types of self-hypnosis.

Here are just a couple of the wild claims about weight loss hypnosis that I've read on the Internet, along with the facts of reality:

"Hypnosis will speed up your metabolism." If you want a dose of reality, the fact is that self-hypnosis can't directly speed up your metabolism. But it can be very useful at helping to re-program your subconscious mind with increased motivation to exercise. And that exercise will dramatically increase your metabolism. Similarly, self-hypnosis to speed up the metabolism for quick weight loss can be effected by re-programming the subconscious mind to motivate the intake of increased amounts of protein, because that intake will step up the metabolism.

"Hypnosis will make you lose some weight." This is false. But self-hypnosis can be used to help annihilate your appetite, so that you eat less. And eating less can help you to lose some weight.

The average person's appetite and urges for food and compulsion to eat are triggered by two unconscious programs:

A. When you combine eating with any other behavior, the other behavior will trigger cravings for food and a strong desire to eat. This is called a conditioned response. For example, if you eat when you talk on the phone, you will experience an urge to eat every time you get on the phone.

B. When you feel stressed, you feel a desire to put something into your mouth for relaxation and pleasure. This is the result of training that you received as an infant. When you got out of sorts, your mom or dad put a bottle in your mouth. You got distracted, relaxed, and probably fell asleep. Now when you get cranky (anxious or tense), you feel compelled to put something into your mouth for relaxation and pleasure.

C. There is a third unconscious program that is present for some people. It's called emotional eating. Emotional eating takes place when a person is motivated to make him or herself fat, because by being fat they will protect themselves in some way. For example, if a person gets their heart broken in a relationship, their subconscious mind will very often motivate them into a behavior that would prevent them from getting their heart broken again. Example: They are motivated to gain weight to keep them out of another relationship, because that will eliminate the possibility of another broken heart.

I've written several articles on this complex topic that are available on my website. These articles explain some powerful and effective ways to use hypnosis for emotional compulsive eating.

So just how can weight loss hypnosis eliminate the above problems?

Let us cover them one at a time.

In paragraph "A" above: Conditioned responses can be "extinguished" quickly and easily using an NLP process that I call the "Flash." The Flash trains the mind to setup a new system of triggers and responses. In the above example, the subject had unconsciously associated the mental picture of food in the hand, with the image of a television. Each time he / she sat down to watch the television, the subconscious mind filled in the missing part of the mental image, it "Flashed" the image of the food in the hand, and the subject felt a craving, and a compulsion to eat.

The Flash is a system that allows us to program the subconscious mind to use the mental image of the television as a trigger for a mental image of the self, watching television while not eating. When we lose the mental picture of the food, we lose the urge to eat.

When we momentarily disassociate (see ourselves from the point of view that someone else would), we are not able to feel our feelings (cravings and urges).

When we see ourselves in a behavior (watching the TV without eating), we feel a strong compulsion to engage in that behavior. So the subject loses the cravings, and actually gets an urge to push food away.

In paragraph "B" above: The subject is eating and drinking for relaxation and pleasure. We teach the subject self-hypnosis for weight loss, because the very essence of the hypnotic state is deep relaxation. And we utilize the "Flash" to program the subconscious mind to use the thoughts and mental pictures that are triggering feelings of anxiety and stress, as triggers for secondary thoughts and images that will create feelings of relaxation in their place. When the subject feels more relaxed overall, oral cravings are greatly diminished.

In paragraph "C" above: We discussed impulsive eating which makes the person overweight. The "behavior" of being overweight then provides some sort of emotional protection. So we use an approach called a six-step reframe, which re-programs the subconscious mind to accept the responsibility for making the person automatically substitute some other more acceptable behavior that will provide the same emotional protection, in place of being overweight. And that reframe will get rid of the compulsion to eat for emotional purposes.

Hypnosis for appetite suppression can be a very effective modality. I can only uncover the tip of the iceberg in this short treatise. Please see my website for more comprehensive articles.