First and foremost, it must be understood that hypnosis does not work permanently for weight loss. Hypnotherapy, and its integrated set of therapeutic techniques, does.

So, why is hypnotherapy a more effective treatment option for weight loss than simple hypnosis? Thousands of people seek out a hypnotist to lose 10 or 15 pounds, perhaps because they want to fit into that wedding dress or swim suit in three months. This may be done in an individual session, a small group or a very large group. Hypnosis can be very effective in these situations. The person or group will be hypnotized, put into a light trance and given suggestions. These suggestions usually include:

• Seeing yourself at your perfect weight
• Feeling motivated to exercise
• Feeling the desire to choose healthy foods.

The problem is that this may be only temporary for a good percentage of the millions of people seeking hypnosis treatments to lose weight. A small percentage of these people are sufficiently motivated by the situation, for example, the wedding. When the situation is over and they no longer have a direct motivation to lose weight, however, they often return to their previous eating patterns and gain the weight back.

HYPNOTHERAPY IS AN EFFECTIVE TREATMENT FOR WEIGHT LOSS

Tens of millions of people around the world spend large amounts of money in attempts to lose weight. There are so many different weight loss options that are aggressively promoted and commercialized that it’s becoming more and more difficult to find a plan that actually works for you personally. For the majority of people desperately seeking to lose weight, however, issues with food typically go much deeper than any diet or exercise program will be able to address.

A certified hypnotherapist will ask a series of questions to determine how the hypnotherapy can best help a client with their weight loss goals.  It must first be determined if the seeker of hypnotherapy for weight loss has the habit pattern of emotional eating. This means that they eat for reasons other than true hunger; like when they are stressed, feeling angry, scared, guilty, unhappy, lonely, or just plain bored. Do they eat just because it is lunch or dinner time or break time? Do they use food as a reward for “good behavior”?  Most importantly, are they addicted to certain high calorie foods such as sweets, greasy fried foods, fast foods from restaurants like McDonalds, pastas, pizza and breads?

Emotional eating is just as much of an addiction as alcoholism and is often more deadly due to its direct link to obesity and the illnesses that may follow. For these tens of millions of people, hypnosis may not be the most effective method for weigh loss. They require hypnotherapy by a certified hypnotherapist who knows how to use powerful, hypnotherapeutic techniques to get down to the root causes of this stubbornly addictive relationship with food.  These deeper issues must be identified, addressed and resolved by a professional who is not just content to give simple suggestions and hope they work.

Many people are so desperate to lose weight that they will do almost anything. Many try dangerous and invasive surgeries, attend expensive in-patient eating disorders programs and use high amounts of dangerous drugs in an attempt to stop these addictive eating patterns. In fact, it is entirely possible for people to lose nearly one hundred pounds with stomach bypass surgery only to gain it all back because they have not addressed the psychological aspect of emotional eating and weight gain. If this surgery had been combined with hypnotherapy to help reverse the emotional eating patterns, it may have been a much more successful weight loss treatment in the long run.