Can Self-Suggestion Help Control An Appetite?

Mar 10
18:39

2007

Alan B. Densky

Alan B. Densky

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Perhaps the most popular use of hypnotism today is to help people to shed some weight. But many people have the wrong ideas about weight loss hypnosis and what it can accomplish for you, and there are a lot of bald-faced lies being told about how functional it is. This article will explore what the reality of the situation is.

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Hypnotherapy,Can Self-Suggestion Help Control An Appetite? Articles thanks to movies and TV, the very word conjures up the depiction of an evil-eyed hypno-therapist swinging a pendulum repeating, "You are getting sleepy."

Use any Internet search engine, and you will find several million web pages focused on the subject, especially weight loss hypnosis. Unfortunately, many websites that sell hypnosis CD's for weight loss make crazy, unsubstantiated affirmations. I've been a hypnotherapist since 1978. So I think that I'm more than expert enough to set the record straight on weight loss hypnosis.

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

Here are some of the claims about weight loss hypnosis that I've seen on websites, along with the truth of the matter:

"Hypnosis for weight loss will speed up your metabolism." If you want to know the truth, the fact of the matter is that weight loss hypnosis cannot directly speed up your metabolism. But it can be very adequate at helping to program your subconscious with increased motivation to exercise, and exercise can increase your metabolic rate. Similarly, suggestibility to speed up the metabolism for quick weight loss can be effected by programming the unconscious to motivate the intake of increased amounts of protein, because that intake will step up your metabolism.

"Hypnotism will make you lose a few pounds." This is false. But weight loss hypnosis can be used to help annihilate your appetite, so that you eat less, and eating less can help you to become slimmer.

Your cravings and urges are triggered by two subconscious programs:

A.  When you pair eating with any other behavior, the other behavior will trigger cravings for food and a strong urge to eat.  This is called a conditioned response. For example, if you eat when you watch socialize, you will automatically get an urge to eat each time you see other people eating.

B. When you feel tense, you feel compelled to put something into your mouth for relaxation and pleasure. This is the result of programming that you received as an infant. When you got bitchy, your mom 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 someone is motivated to make him or herself fat, because by being fat they will protect themselves in some way.

For example, if a person got their heart broken in a relationship, their subconscious might force them into a behavior that would prevent them from getting their heart broken again. Example: They are motivated to become overweight to keep them out of another relationship, because that will erase the possibility of another broken heart.

D. I have written several articles on hypnosis for weight loss and emotional eating that are available on my website.

There are some powerful and effective ways to use hypnosis to reduce or overcome emotional eating. So just how can weight loss hypnotic suggestion fix the above problems? Let's cover them one at a time.

In paragraph "A" above: Conditioned responses can be "wiped out" without much effort using a method that I call the "Flash." The flash trains the unconscious mind to setup a new set of responses. In the above example, the subject had unconsciously bound the image of food in the hand, with the TV. Each time he / she sat down to watch the TV, the unconscious mind filled in the missing part of the picture: It "Flashed" the picture of the food in the hand, and the subject felt a compulsion, and an urge to eat.

The Flash is a modus that helps us to program the unconscious to use the image of the TV as a trigger for an image of yourself watching TV without eating. When we lose the mental impression of the food, we lose the cravings.

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

When we see ourselves in an activity (watching 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 reject food.

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 to use the thoughts and mental images that are triggering feelings of anguish and aggravation, as triggers for secondary thoughts and mental images that will trigger feelings of relaxation. When the subject feels more relaxed overall, oral cravings are greatly diminished.

In paragraph "C" above: We discussed obsessive eating which makes the person overweight. The "behavior" of being overweight then provides some sort of emotional protection. So we use a modus called an NLP 6-Step Reframe which programs the subconscious to take the responsibility for making the subject automatically substitute some other larger 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.

Self-hypnosis for weight loss can be a very powerful method. I can only uncover the tip of the iceberg in this short article. Please see my website for more comprehensive articles and information.

(c) 2007 by Alan B. Densky, CH. This article may be reproduced on your website as long as you retain all clickable links contained within.