Close your eyes, breath, relax. Imagine yourself resisting the urge to overindulge. Imagine you no longer crave unhealthy foods. Imagine you no longer feel the need to comfort yourself with food.
If only weight loss was that simple, you might be thinking. If only you could “turn off” your unhealthy cravings…
Well, that’s the idea of hypnosis for weight loss. Utilizing hypnotherapy, those looking to lose weight are empowered to update the automatic thoughts that trigger food cravings.
Overeating and overindulgence tend to be associated in our minds with certain feelings, relationships, and events. And our minds have convinced us that in certain situations food serves an essential purpose – i.e. using food to comfort stress.
Ultimately, to achieve long-term weight loss, we must access these unconscious barriers, remove them and replace these automatic thoughts with more helpful information. Hypnotherapy empowers us to access these automatic thoughts, delete the negative associations, and develop positive associations that can help us achieve long-term weight-loss success.
How Food Invades the Mind: Overcoming the Mental Barriers
Say Clara starts a diet. And it’s going strong. She’s two weeks or three weeks in – has lost weight and she feels great.
But then something changes. Clara starts a new job. Now, she’s finding it more difficult to lose. She’s overindulging more often, stopped counting calories, and she’s craving unhealthy foods. Her weight loss stalls, and before long, she’s fallen off the diet completely.
What went wrong? Clara started so strong, but couldn’t stay on track.
Well, if we look into this at a deeper level, we might uncover a “habit pattern” that offers an explanation.
Habit patterns form through repetition, and over time, they become unconscious responses to stimuli or environment. In this case, Clara likely developed a habit pattern of stress eating which prevented her from reaching her weight loss goals.
Food had become Clara’s unconscious, automatic response to stress.
These sorts of habits of mind are exactly why losing weight is such a challenge for many of us.
Deep in our unconscious minds we’ve developed strong ideas about unhealthy behaviors. In fact, over time, we may have trained the mind to believe that these unhealthy behaviors are essential – that they are necessary for maintaining our well-being. And if the mind believes these behaviors are necessary, long-term change is very difficult.
Stress or emotional eating is just one example. There are many associations that we develop that negatively impact our relationship to food. Some common associations that prevent weight loss include:
- Food is a comfort blanket; we use it to comfort ourselves in times of stress or sadness
- Eating helps distract us from feelings of sadness, anxiety or anger
- Overeating fatty, sugary or unhealthy foods is associated with celebrations and other good times.
- Unhealthy or sugary foods are a reward.
- Overeating helps you tamp the fear that you won’t be able to lose weight.
- Food is a source of entertainment when bored.
Ultimately, achieving long-term weight loss requires these root causes to be assessed, understood and reframed. And that’s exactly what hypnosis can help us achieve.
Reframing Your Food Addiction with Hypnosis
The first step of using hypnosis for weight loss: Identifying why you aren’t achieving your goals. How does this work? Typically, a hypnotherapist will ask you questions related to your weight loss, i.e. questions about your eating and exercise habits.
This information-gathering helps identify what you might need help working on.
You’ll then be guided through an induction, a process to relax the mind and body and enter into a state of hypnosis. While in hypnosis, your mind is highly suggestible. You’ve shed your critical, conscious mind – and the hypnotherapist can speak directly to your unconscious thoughts.
In hypnosis, the hypnotherapist will provide you with positive suggestions, affirmations and may ask you to visualize changes. You can try it right now with our many weight loss hypnosis recordings! Positive suggestions for weight loss hypnosis might include:
- Improving Confidence. Positive suggestions will empower your feelings of confidence through encouraging language.
- Visualizing Success. During hypnosis, you may be asked to visualize meeting your weight loss goals and to visualize the way it makes you feel.
- Reframing Your Inner Voice. Hypnosis can help you tame an inner voice who “doesn’t want” to give up unhealthy foods, and turn it into an ally in your weight loss journey who’s quick with positive suggestions and is more rational.
- Tapping the Unconscious. In the hypnotic state, you can begin to identify the unconscious patterns that lead to unhealthy eating. In other words, you can become more aware of why we are making unhealthy food choices and portion control and establish more mindful strategies for making food choices.
- Fending Off Fear. Hypnotic suggestions can help you tame your fear of not achieving weight loss success. Fear is a No. 1 reasons people might never get started in the first place.
- Identifying and Reframing Habit Patterns. Once in hypnosis, you can examine and explore ways you use eating and “turn off” these automatic responses. Through repeated positive affirmations, we can begin to slow and ultimately completely remove automatic, unconscious thought.
- Developing New Coping Mechanisms. Through hypnosis, you can establish more healthy ways to cope with stress, emotions and relationships. For example, you might be asked to visualize a stressful situation and then visualize yourself responding with a healthy snack.
- Rehearsing Healthy Eating. During hypnosis, you may be asked to rehearse making healthy eating choices, i.e. being OK with taking food home at a restaurant. This helps these healthy choices become more automatic. Rehearsal is also helpful for controlling cravings.
- Making Better Food Choices. You may desire and love unhealthy foods. Hypnosis can help you start to develop a taste or preference for healthier options, as well as influence the portion sizes you choose.
- Increasing Unconscious Indicators. Through repetition, you may have learned to drown out the signals your body sends when you feel full. Hypnotherapy helps you become more aware of these indicators.
Of course, not every suggestion will apply to you. Your hypnotherapy plan – whether you’re working with a hypnotherapist or self-hypnosis – will include suggestions relevant to your relationship with food. For example, Clara (from the example above) might work on teaching the unconscious to slow its automatic responses, as well as providing the unconscious with new, more helpful ways to manage stress.
Working with a certified hypnotherapist can help you refine your strategy to be specific to your needs.
How Hypnotherapy Helps You Achieve Weight Loss
In the hypnotic state, your mind is much more open to suggestion. In fact, research has shown that some interesting changes take place in your brain during hypnosis, which allow you to learn without thinking critically about the information you’re receiving.
In other words, you’re detached from the critical mind. Therefore, when you receive hypnotic suggestions, the critical conscious mind doesn’t step into question what you’re hearing. And that, in a nutshell, is how hypnosis can help you break down the barriers that prevent you from losing weight.
But repetition is critical for success. That’s why most hypnotherapists send you home with self-hypnosis recordings after an initial visit. The barriers in your mind are strong. Only through repeated work can you successful untangle and reframe these convictions.
Yet, hearing repeated affirmations and positive suggestions regarding healthy eating is a first step in the weight loss journey. You’re teaching your mind to think different. But these affirmations can help you to:
Control Cravings
What if you could detach from your cravings? Isolate them and send them away? Some weight loss hypnosis techniques help you do this. For example, you might be asked to visualize sending away your cravings – say on a ship out to sea. Suggestions can also help you reframe your cravings, and learn to manage them more effectively.
Expect Success
Expectation dictates reality. When we have an expectation of success, we are naturally more apt to take the steps necessary to achieve that success. Weight loss hypnotherapy can plant the seed of success in your mind, which can be a powerful unconscious motivator to keep you on course.
Practice Positivity
Weight loss is so frequently spoiled by negativity. There are foods you “can’t” eat. Unhealthy foods are “killing” you. Hypnotherapy empowers us to reframe these suggestions with in a more positive light – you’re not depriving yourself; you’re shedding what you don’t need.
Prepare for Relapse
We’ve been trained to think that relapses are shameful – reasons to give up. But hypnosis asks us to think about relapse differently. A relapse becomes an opportunity to examine what went wrong, to learn from it, and be better prepared for temptation.
Modify Your Behavior
Big goals are achieved one small step at a time. Hypnotherapy empowers us to make small changes that feed into to bigger goals. Say you reward yourself with sugary, high-calorie foods; through hypnosis you might work on choosing a healthier reward.
Visualize Success
Finally, hypnotic visualization is a powerful motivator. Visualization enables you to “see” results and explore how that makes you feel. You might also visualize your future-self telling you that you have what it takes to succeed.
Research Review: Hypnosis for Weight Loss
Does hypnosis work? That’s a question anyone considering hypnotherapy has – and it’s a question that’s interested researchers for decades.
The research tends to paints a positive picture of hypnotherapy’s effectiveness. A variety of studies have shown that hypnosis can lead to long-term weight loss, and that compared to traditional weight loss methods, hypnosis experiences higher success rates.
- A study conducted in 1985 – one of the first to look at weight loss hypnosis – compared two groups. One group made diet changes and started exercising; the other did the same but also received hypnotherapy. After 8 months and 2 years, the hypnosis group had maintained or increased weight loss – the other group had gained most of the weight back.
- Similarly, a 1986 study looked at 60 women who were 20 percent overweight. After 6 months, the hypnosis group had lost 17 pounds, while the non-hypnosis group had lost just a half pound.
- A 1996 meta-analysis examined the effect of adding hypnosis to weight loss treatments. What the researchers found was compelling: During treatment, hypnosis almost doubled the weight loss. And after treatment, hypnosis increased effectiveness by 146 percent.
- More recently, a 2014 study found that hypnosis had a variety of positive effects in weight loss. Participants who received hypnosis reduced weight and BMI, as well as improved their eating habits. Improved body image was another benefit found in the study.
Getting Started with Weight Loss Hypnosis
Are you ready to start your weight loss journey? To get started, you have many different options. You can visit a certified hypnotherapist for face-to-face sessions. You can schedule a virtual conference with a hypnotherapist. Recorded hypnosis or self-hypnosis are other options. All methods have shown promise for weight loss.
- One-on-One Hypnosis — A hypnotherapist can help you recognize the unconscious barriers that are holding you back. Plus, a hypnotherapist will guide you in hypnosis sessions to address those barriers. These can be conducted in office or via video conferencing.
- Guided Hypnosis — A guided hypnosis recording can help you get started quickly and learn hypnosis techniques at home or on the go. Essentially, these are recordings from certified hypnotherapists that walk you through induction and then provide positive suggestions via the recording.
- Self-Hypnosis — In self-hypnosis, individuals take on the role of hypnotherapist, using a memorized script to induce hypnosis and to deliver positive suggestions.
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This article so wonderfully explains how powerful hypnotherapy is and how it can help improve weight loss efforts through addressing the root cause of why people are not always able to lose or maintain their weight. I truly believe that hypnosis should be part of any weight loss plan in order to help people overcome any limiting beliefs and patterns that may be hindering their success and help sustain lasting lifestyle change.
How can I just order the hypnosis tape on quitting sugar and how to lose weight! Is there a list and price that I can order tapes that interest me!
I loved this article. As a health coach that focuses on the mind-body-spirit connection, I love the idea of using hypnosis to heal one’s relationship with food in such a calming, empowering way. In my work with clients, I focus on mindset and self-love, empowering my clients to take small, manageable steps on their weight loss journey. I am definitely going to encourage them to incorporate the gentle, but powerful tool of hypnosis to make that process easier. By using the relaxing state of hypnosis, they can rewire their belief systems about food, their bodies, and their weight loss journey. I will encourage them to start using hypnosis that is focused on weight loss and a healthy relationship with food in their morning and/or evening routines as an added tool on their weight loss journeys.
Like so many women, weight loss and weight gain have been close companions in life. I wonder what life would have been like if this was a subject that I never had to think about?
I wonder how not having to every concern myself with weight loss would have impacted so many areas of my life. It is quite possible I might have become a completely different person…for the better!
The opportunity of a solution, that once and for all cuts through to the real motivations behind this ongoing dilemma is something hypnosis provides. I will be trying out the Grace Space recording for this subject!
I really love the 21-day hypnosis challenges that goes along with this blog. I highly recommend starting today. I was thinner and felt amazing at the end. And what I learned I am still applying and it’s been about 4 months. Also, I think that women think of themselves as needing to be thin and small. Changing our thoughts to healthy, confident, and strong – such as Brene Brown talks about in Daring Greatly goes along with this post and the challenge!
I’ve always been made to think that sugar and/or an over indulging is a ‘treat.’ even though it makes me feel sick sometimes and i don’t wake up feeling energized.. Rather lethargic from yesterday’s sugar high / turn crash. As i read this, i see that habit patterns form through repetition, and over time, they become unconscious responses to stimuli or environment. Geez! ‘Over time’ and ‘environment’ are my keys phrases here. The environment is my home and it definitely has happened over time in my adult life. Food is my, like Clara’s in the story, unconscious and automatic response to stress. But ONLY in the comfort of my home. And ONLY alone. Major take away.. Expectation dictates reality. This is almost exactly what Grace’s book said ‘Your frequency of thought determines the lens through which you view your life, and this impacts the actions you take.’
I love that hypnosis takes the shame out of weight issues. I lost just over 100 pounds a few years ago, but put it all back on. I’ve been terrified to take off the weight again for fear that I would just lapse back into unhealthy habits again. Hypnosis sounds like the best way to retrain my brain so that I learn new and awesome habits…and not just rely on will power. I can’t wait to get started!
thank you for sharing with us this information
I downloaded the 21 day Challenge and can’t wait to get started!!
This article explains well how hypnotherapy can be a wonderful tool in the quest for weight loss through addressing the root cause. It is about changing perspectives, disassociation, reframing and having a complete awareness of the clients needs and wants. Weight won’t stay off with willpower alone but by overcoming those limiting beliefs, patterns and habits that have continually thwarted ones efforts to lose weight, hypnosis can enable amazing transformations.
There is a lot of great information in this article. I feel like I have been dieting my entire adult life. It will be nice to end that cycle. First, by learning to love myself no matter what I weigh, and second, by not dieting – but having my cravings and bad habits managed by hypnotherapy.
Thank you
The benefits of using hypnosis for weight loss is amazing. People are gaining control over their weight and breaking the “yo-yo diet” cycle once and for all.
As always, very helpful article. It’s great to understand the underlying reasons people might be struggling with regarding their weight. There’s a lot of guilt associated with the cravings and not being able to stay on track in the diet, but the reason the person is failing is so much deeper. And the good news is that they can easily be reframed and transformed with hypnosis!
I’m sick of seeing so many people suffering with their habits and addictions and not knowing about the powers of hypnosis.
“Habit patterns form through repetition, and over time, they become unconscious responses to stimuli or environment. In this case, Clara likely developed a habit pattern of stress eating which prevented her from reaching her weight loss goals.”
I love that this post takes it down to the habit – not the morals or character of a person. It is, again, another habit that is simply no longer/never serving someone and the ability given by hypnotherapy is to replace that habit with one that serves them so much more.
I enjoyed reading this and how specific examples were given of what you can expect during a hypnotherapy session such as the various techniques provided to help you lose weight. It’s very true that diets don’t tend to last especially if we’re not addressing the root issue. It can turn into a cycle of guilt which can unconsciously lead us to continue making decisions that we don’t want to make anymore. Hypnotherapy can help us develop a new relationship with food while also providing us with the tools to nurture new habits.
Hypnosis provides the best solution to weight loss. I have tackled both using Graces amazing tools. We have look very hard at ourselves, be truthful with ourselves and then act. I did and list nearly 2 stone and 4 inches off my waist. The weight loss Challenge was the best thing I ever did.
I absolutely love that hypnosis can help with weight loss, and it actually addresses the root of the issue! It frustrates me to no end that the diet industry in the US is a billion dollar industry of basically selling false dreams to people. I’ve heard grace say before that if the bad habits aren’t replaced with good ones, it’ll manifest in another way. How cool that hypnosis can help people not only lose weight, but even be at peace with the root cause.
I personally have not worked with hypnosis for weight loss, however since starting a ritual of self-hypnosis daily for other things in my life I have loss 45 lbs without trying. So maybe food was a crutch all I know I feel great! Every day in every way I am becoming a better person.
I love this blog. It explains perfectly the challenges we face attempting weight loss and gives us the knowledge on how we may address them. I LOVE the 21 day weight loss challenge. Its my go-to. It helps me feel confident, lighter, and helps keep my cravings at bay. I also love how if nothing else, it keeps me aware of my daily choices so that I can stay in line with my weight loss goal. If that wasn’t enough, the recordings are nice and short in length allowing for a quick listen in the midst of busy days.
I love this blog. It explains perfectly the challenges we face attempting weight loss and gives us the knowledge on how we may address them. I LOVE the 21 day weight loss challenge. Its my go-to. It helps me feel confident, lighter, and helps keep my cravings at bay. I also love how if nothing else, it keeps me aware of my daily choices so that I can stay in line with my weight loss goal. If that wasn’t enough, the recordings are nice and short in length allowing for a quick listen in the midst of busy days.
I love this blog. It explains perfectly the challenges we face attempting weight loss and gives us the knowledge on how we may address them. I LOVE the 21 day weight loss challenge. Its my go-to. It helps me feel confident, lighter, and helps keep my cravings at bay. I also love how if nothing else, it keeps me aware of my daily choices so that I can stay in line with my weight loss goal. If that wasn’t enough, the recordings are nice and short in length allowing for a quick listen in the midst of busy days.
I started the “Quit Craving Carbs” hypnosis recording on March 17 this year. I am a diabetic and I was looking for help and I was so fortunate to find this recording. I was amazed about how fast it worked for me. I was having breakfast and could not eat any bread that was on the table. I had to drink two glasses of water just for one bite of a gluten free english muffin to get rid of the dry sensation in my mouth. I have lost 12 pounds since then. I listen to “Quit Craving Carbs” every other week. Thank you Grace Smith for your astounding knowledge and help.
this is such a helpful article. what a tool hypnosis is for helping and changing peoples lives.
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I actually find as I worked on other issues in my life that I thougth were unrelated to weight gain helped me to lose over 40 pounds without trying. I now very have more positive attitude and able to maintain my weight with healthy eating effortlessly.
This article is another good piece to read. It shows again how hypnotherapy is so powerful and this time for weight loss. Hypnosis can really help people overcome their bad habits and beliefs. It can improve by going directly to the source of why people cannot lose weight or maintain their weight. We have to access the critical mind under hypnosis because it is more suggestible to receive new information in helping them loose or maintain their weight. By reaching out to the subconscious the life will be changing and they will have success in their new journey… let’s do this! Hypnotherapy is so powerful!!!