How can I lose weight?

“How can I lose weight?”, it’s a question that men and women have been asking of themselves and of each other for centuries. In this article, Aaron Surtees of City Hypnosis looks at the real reasons that prevent people from losing weight and maintaining it.

Weight Loss, the Facts

The weight loss industry has been thriving for years. Time and again, fad diets and new supplementary diets appear in the market and why not? Its big business. During my research on this article I came across reports from both the UK and the US looking at the industry as a whole.

In February 2015, a research and markets report from the US predicted that the weight loss market, covering Weight Loss and Weight Management Market by Equipment (Fitness Equipment (Treadmill, Stair Steppers)), Surgical Equipment (Adjustable Gastric Band, Gastric Bypass), Diet (Weight Loss Meals, Diet Soft Drinks), Weight Loss Services would rise from $148.1 billion in 2014 to $206.4 billion in 2019.

This was contradicted by a report the previous year in The Metro, which reported that 29 million Britons were focused on how can I lose weight and that the industry would reach £220 billion ($288.9 billion) by 2017.

The reports are focused on different countries of course but the American report seems open to question considering there are more Americans per square foot than there are Brits and the figures there seem far lower.

However, later reports indicated that the US figures were actually inflated as people there started adopting a healthier fresh food diet over their typically processed food and fatty food diets.

Weight gain, the causes

Emotional

Quite often people that suffer from excessive weight gain or weight loss have suffered some sort of emotional distress. This can stem from abuse, both physical and mental and quite often the patient hasn’t even realized that’s the root cause of their issue. They don’t tie the relationship with food to the trauma.

Confidence

Confidence, or a lack of it can also cause excessive weight gain or weight loss and as such is a major consideration in the treatment of the relationship with food. How we perceive ourselves is very important and in many cases I’ve treated, my patients have had used food as a crutch. Others have used it as a way to punish themselves and make themselves regurgitate once they’ve consumed it.

Culturally we have become a society of “wannabes” looking up to media created stereotypes focusing on body shape, fashion and other material belongings. Trying to live up to these puts undue pressure on a number of us whilst we try to maintain lifestyles we cannot afford and often turning that upon ourselves and again creating a punishment cycle.

Relationships

Relationships are also a major cause of the development of a negative relationship with food. Quite often those in hard personal or work related relationships turn to sugary and fatty foods to provide short term relief to the environment they find themselves in.

Quite often those in abusive relationships or those feeling like there is a lack of love between a couple start to use a crutch to provide emotional support, even at a basic level, like sugar provides to get through the day.

Treatment with hypnotherapy not only looks at the issue with food, but looks to treat the other causes, which is why a hypnotherapist with an NLP qualification achieves such great results.

Mental

Mental issues with food relationships are often hard to work through. As you can tell by what you’ve already read, there are often a number of smaller issues or problems that combine to create the need to gorge or to regurgitate your foodstuff.

Mental issues are things like anxiety, the side effects of abuse, low self-esteem and the like and hypnosis can certainly help with moving the individual into a more positive mindset and the NLP to create the right subliminal messaging.

Anxiety

Anxiety is one of the main things I treat with any other associated symptom. With weight loss clients, smokers, gamblers, those with fear of flying and so on.

It affects patients both physically, mentally and emotionally and quite often leads us into behavioural patterns that have a negative effect on the body and our day-to-day lives.

Abuse

Abuse is figurative word in this discussion. We have been abused, we can self-abuse and we can abuse others around us. With a carefully assessed treatment plan, hypnotherapy can help your subconscious mind allow you to move forward progressively. This is most certainly dependent on the therapist you visit. Many of us have trained in counselling as well as NLP and hypnotherapy giving us good stead to treat a variety of symptoms at the same time

Weight gain, can be a defence

Using weight to avoid people is far more common than you think. Most of us are visually put off by extremes of weight loss or weight gain, but have no doubt this is also felt by the victims in this. They do not perceive themselves any better than you do.

So it may seem unnatural to say that some people will use weight as a defense but often abuse leaves victims feeling like they can’t be loved so they back that internal feeling up with weight gain and weight loss, dependent on the individual.

Again I want to stress that as much as counselling is a necessary part of the recovery process, using NLP and hypnotherapy tactics to further support the road to recovery is a smart choice.

Weight Loss Solutions

So in closing, whilst this has been a brief but purposeful look at the causes of weight gain or weight loss, you can come to appreciate why possibly you, or someone you love isn’t losing weight and maintaining the weight loss.

It’s about the diet, the portion size, the lifestyle and the treatment of any underlying associated issues.

Like any treatment there is a cost to hypnotherapy treatments, but if you would like to try an alternative treatment type to one to one therapy sessions, you could check out a MP3 download and see how you get on with that first.

Note that I personally record all of your sessions and pass those to you so you can revert to listening whenever you feel the need to “to up” the work we may have done. The main difference however is that with an mp3 the cost is lower, but with the therapy consultation, we can delve deeper and look for deep rooted underlying issues that may be preventing you from maintaining the weight loss.

Check out my weight loss ebook or alternatively check out my webinar session where I answer questions from people on Facebook.

Thanks for reading.