The real reasons Hypnotherapy helps with weight problems

According to Benjamin Bonnetti, the self-proclaimed inventor of The Hypnotic Gastric Band, the main reason hypnotherapy doesn’t work is because those that practice it quite often don’t take care of themselves. He feels it’s like selling a false dawn, how can someone slightly overweight or out of shape convince someone else that they can help them get over their own weight issues.

But that could be a bias as he also claims he is the specialist in weight loss hypnosis. The go-to person. I’m not sure many of you would look at his website and agree. That’s not because I don’t believe him, more because it seems like a platform designed to drive online sales, but not in an educative fashion, just purely sales. I don’t see how that can help anybody who’s trying to educate themselves?

Why I believe you must have hypnotherapy as part of your weight management programme

Quite recently I wrote a post that looked at the causes of weight gain and why prolonged weight management doesn’t work for so many people. Within that article I touched lightly on a number of issues that directly effect around 70-80% of my patients and typically at least one section will resonate with my readers.

What you will read in that post is that weight loss or weight gain in its extremes, like bulimia and obesity are often caused by emotional or physical trauma (except where medical symptoms are present). These traumas can be ongoing, delivered from an external source or can be self-inflicted, by abusing the body to try and deal with the original source.

As such most people would understand that they can lose the weight in the short term using dietary supplements and even a lifestyle change. But gradually over time the weight creeps back on because the underlying psychological or emotional issues haven’t been addressed.

To do this (address the issues) counselling and or cognitive behavioural therapy are often needed in tandem.

But how do people come to accept they need to address other issues?

Now this is a fantastic question. It’s so good because weight loss and weight gain are often linked to the emotional and mental state of the individual, that it almost takes an epiphany or you simply reach a point where you accept you need to speak to someone.

They also need to admit to themselves they are possibly over-eating (portion size), poor in the diet (sugary and fatty foods), making themselves sick after eating or breaking down and crying in private after eating (feeling guilty), drinking excessively not only brings alcoholism into this but the sugars involved in alcohol especially wine and beer add massive calories. Finally, the most obvious, is a complete lack of any exercise, even brisk walking.

Any combination of the above should lead you to develop the mindset to want to change, but then utilize your own mind to become stronger in focus and application than to find a crutch again in faddish and expensive dietary supplements or powdered drinks.

What do you know about hypnotherapists?

What most won’t know is that a lot of the very good hypnotherapists are often trained in multiple forms of therapy. They have counselling degrees, they have Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) qualifications, the hypnotherapy qualifications (obviously) and sometimes Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) certifications. It’s these combinations of qualifications that allow us to develop a far more rounded approach to the therapy sessions.

In short, we can provide the therapeutic support counselling offers and utilize the power of hypnotherapy and subliminal suggestion  to deeply embed messaging to help advance the state of mind change required for long term success.

With many of us offering comprehensive initial assessments to determine the range and of depth of treatment needed, patients are often made aware of other compelling issues that can be treated at the same time.

This is the last in a series of weight loss and management articles I’ll be writing for some time as I turn to educating you on other treatments and how hypnotherapy helps treat those symptoms.

Please check out my weight loss ebook which you can download for free, or listen to my webinar where I answer questions from Facebook on the subject. Finally, feel free to download my free relaxation mp3 which can help you unwind after hard or stressful days at home or at work.

I look forward to seeing you back on the blog in the near future, so if you need reminding please join our mailing list or download our free android app from the play store.