Mr and Mrs Fieldsend believe that their son James’ battle with anorexia started as a result of a healthy eating class he took at school when he was seven years old.

Before the class, James appeared to follow a healthy, balanced diet, but it soon became apparent that he was suffering from an eating disorder. He became increasingly fussy and would often skip meals.

In October 2010, his weight plummeted to below five stone and his parents were forced to seek medical help.

With a body mass index of only 14, James was well below the healthy average for his age.

Mrs Fieldsend said: “He took part in an exercise in which pupils had to talk about the food they ate at home. They were given a star if healthy meals and a cross for junk food.”

Since the class, James would refuse to eat anything deemed unhealthy and his parents assumed it was simply a passing fad.

Over time, James began to develop worrying symptoms such as anaemia, heart palpitations and aching joints.

He is now being treated with the help of a dietician. According to his parents, James refuses to socialise or leave the house when he is not attending college. They have since called for more public awareness and understanding of anorexia in males.

Some hypnotherapists deal with eating disorders. It is used to find the route of the problem by viewing it from an emotional perspective. Hypnotherapy can be used to improve self-confidence and help sufferers to view themselves in a more positive light. Find a hynotherapist dealing with eating disorders.

View and comment on the original Mail Online article.

Previous ‘world’s fattest man’ Paul Mason went from a staggering 70 stone to 30 stone in the last year- but the dramatic loss has left him with bags of excess skin.

The weight loss began when he underwent gastric bypass surgery in 2010. Now the 50 year old wants to have surgery to remove the hanging flesh he claims is hindering his goal to reach 17 stone.

Mr Mason’s weight began to pile on during a stressful period as a young man. His partner of four years left him in the mid-eighties and soon after, his father died, leaving him to care for his arthritic mother.

Soon enough he stopped leaving his Ipswich home and began consuming an average of 20,000 calories a day (10 x the daily recommendation), which came at a cost of £75 a day in food deliveries. The troubled man stopped sleeping, choosing instead to binge on Chinese take-aways, kebabs and fish and chips right through the night.

Mr Mason has, for the last decade, relied on carers for survival.

Mason told the BBC: “Anyone can come up to me and argue about ‘why should you get that help and why have you got that?’ We live in a free country. When I talk to them and explain what my problems are they are more understanding. It’s an illness.”

Illness or not, Mr Mason is costing the tax payers thousands for his food addiction.

The skin-removal surgery is not as simple a snipping off a few bits of skin, it involves complex plastic surgery and will prove costly for the NHS.

Doctors have decided that Mr Mason must lose more weight to qualify for the costly surgery, as patients must reach a sustainable weight before undergoing the procedure.

If you are suffering from weight problems or food addictions, you may wish to consider Gastric Band Hypnotherapy. It is far cheaper, far less intrusive and less risky than surgery and has proven results. To find out more about how it could help you, please visit our Gastric Band Hypnotherapy page.

View and comment on the original BBC article.

At the age of 25, Helena Cameron weighed 20 stone and couldn’t walk to the car without her feet throbbing.

Helena first started piling on the pounds as a teenager. Anxiety problems caused her to binge eat junk food and gorge constantly on chocolate, crisps and fizzy drinks. She admits that she’d often eat a large pizza to herself during the night.

She would often feel reluctant to go out in public in case people stared or laughed at her.

Helena’s life changed in December 2008 when her grandmother became concerned and took action by contacting a personal trainer called David.

Along with David’s personal training regime, Helena went to psychotherapy and hypnotherapy sessions to help stop her binging.

By December 2010, Helena had lost a staggering 5 stone and quit her job as a child support worker in order to concentrate on losing weight.

Helena now works full time for David’s fitness firm Rapid Hypno Fitness and says: “Thanks to my grandmother, I feel amazing.”

If you would like to find out more about how hypnotherapy could help you to lose weight, please visit our page on Weight Loss.

View and comment on the original Daily Record article. 

Obesity has been a huge global problem for a long time now, and it is one which does not seem to be improving. In fact, the levels are now described as epidemic, and are increasing year on year.

Jamie Oliver has been involved in raising awareness of obesity and healthy eating for several years now, starting with his strategy to make school dinners more nutritional. Jamie will join up with nutrition and health experts at a major debate at a UN medical conference, which will be held in New York. This will involve speaking to western unions, to try and get them to make raising awareness a key focus and to highlight it as a human rights issue.

The importance of this should not be understated. Shocking statistics show that diet related diseases are the reason for 2 out of 5 premature deaths, in those aged under 60 years of age. If this continues, the statistics will not make for pleasant reading. People need to be educated on healthy eating and the importance of a healthy lifestyle. The reasons for the obesity epidemic are down to the rise in convenience foods, and meals which are full of salt and sugar. A lack of exercise also contributes to obesity.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) have spoken about their concern over obesity and the possible life threatening dangers of it.

If you are worried about the effects of your over eating, you may want to look into hypnotherapy as a ways of dealing with these issues. To find out more about how it could help you, please visit our fact sheets on losing weight and gastric band hypnotherapy. 

View the original Guardian article.

According to figures from the Royal College of General Practitioners, the number of males suffering from eating disorders is increasing.

Though it is true that a larger proportion of eating disorder sufferers are female, the charity beat estimates that of the 1.6 million sufferers in the UK, one in every five are male.

Because the Department of Health only keeps records of hospital admissions and not the exact amount of sufferers there are in England, it is difficult to judge the exact scale of the problem. However, NHS hospital admission figures for England show that during the past 10 years, the number of male sufferers admitted to hospital has increased by 66 per cent.

As it stands, men of a low weight who visit the doctors may find that they are wrongly diagnosed with depression as the majority of diagnosis methods for eating disorders are based around females. In response to these findings the Royal College of General Practitioners are calling for a review of diagnosis procedures and have stressed that changes need to be made.

According to GO Claire Gerada, men are now much more aware of their bodies and how they look.

20 year old Ben porter from Kent has suffered with bulimia and anorexia since he was just 14 years old.

He told BBC’s Newsbeat that he was unaware of the damage he was doing to his body at the time and that he was more concerned with looking good and pursuing the perfect body image.

After receiving private treatment for his conditions Ben is now on the road to recovery, but stresses that he would like to see schools addressing the issue of eating disorders and body confidence in boys as well as in girls.

He said: “Male anorexia and male eating disorders are a severe problem and it needs to be addressed as not just being a female disorder but something that can affect anybody,”.

If you think you may be suffering from an eating disorder then please contact your GP who will be able to diagnose and help to treat your condition. Eating disorder treatment will often involve two parts, getting you back to physically good health and also helping you to overcome the psychological side of the illness. Sufferers are commonly referred to qualified counsellors and psychotherapists who will help them with the latter aspect, but another effective though lesser known treatment is that of hypnotherapy.

Hypnotherapy can be used to identify the root cause of an eating disorder so that it can be dealt with. In addition to this it is also a very effective treatment for eliminating negative behaviour patterns and improving confidence and self-image. To find out more please visit our hypnotherapy for eating disorders fact-sheet.

View the original BBC News article.

Between 2008 – 2009 1,447 females between the ages of ten and 30 sought help and advice from their GP or practice nurse for help with eating disorders such as anorexia or bulimia.

The above figure included 222 girls aged from ten to 16, 759 aged 17 to 23 and 450 aged 24 – 30, a figure which has risen from 1,279 the previous year.

If you or anyone you know are suffering with an eating disorder then it is essential you visit your GP who will discuss treatment options with you. If you are also looking for alternative options then hypnotherapy is an option that many people find effective.

Those who are suffering with an eating disorder are likely to try and keep it to themselves or in fact have difficulty even realising they have an illness. Hypnotherapy can be used to help individuals suffering from eating disorders by identifying the root cause of the problems so the emotional aspects can be addressed.

Hypnosis will also help to to reprogramme the mind, changing negative patterns of behaviour into more positive ones, helping to improve self confidence and self image.

Read more here.

If this is the first you’ve heard of NES then this is because awareness is only now increasing as the research pile grows.

The research we already have has found that there are three hormones at the centre of this eating disorder. The first of which is melatonin. Melatonin is the hormone that helps us to fall and stay asleep and levels of this hormones are significantly lacking in NES patients. The second hormone is known as the appetite suppression hormone, leptin. Researchers found that the leptin levels in NES patients did not rise as it should during sleep, meaning that the hunger pains felt may be extreme enough to actually disturb sleep. Lastly is the stress hormone cortisol which usually rears its head in tense situations. This hormone increased at night in NES patients, subsequently causing them to wake up and head to the fridge.

Though hormonal imbalances are thought to play a key roles in this eating disorder, researches also believe it could be hereditary. However, with so much still unknown about NES the treatment is difficult. Currently hormone supplements, antidepressants and sleeping tablets are being trialled as are special diets.

If you feel you may be suffering from an eating disorder then it is important that you seek professional medical advice. You may also want to consider a number of complementary therapies such as talking therapies and hypnotherapy. Hypnotherapy can help to improve self confidence and self image so that the individual is able to view themselves differently and will also help to identify the root cause of a problem before using certain techniques to eliminate it.

To contact a hypnotherapist please visit the homepage of this site.

Read the original article here.

A recent study in the Archives of General Psychiatry looked into the risks of having in binge eating disorder in comparison to those with no health disorders. The study looked at 52 women with a binge eating disorder, 102 women with bulimia nervosa, 102 women with a psychiatric disorder and 104 without any disorder . It was found that those suffering with a binge eating disorder were the most likely to have weight vulnerabilities, parental depression, and frequently received criticism for their weight from others. Those with bulimia were found to have a negative body image, perfectionistic tendencies, and were vulnerable to obesity.

Due to the fact bulimia nervosa has many psychological factors involved, hypnotherapy has been found to be a successful treatment. Hypnosis is renowned for techniques that involve relaxation, imagery and positive suggestions which target the subconscious mind of the patient. Hypnosis is able to retrain the subconscious mind to diminish the negative thoughts and associations which led to the disorder in the first place.

Although much more research is needed to evaluate further benefits, hypnotherapy is a safe, side effect free, natural treatment to be considered.

If you are suffering from an eating disorder and would like to discuss it in confidence with a qualified professional you can find a counsellor in your local area using the Counselling Directory. If you would like to contact a hypnotherapist for treatment of an eating disorder then please visit the homepage of this site.

Read the original article here.

We have all been guilty of emotional eating at some point. Who hasn’t come home from a horrible day at work or after a fight with our partners and looked to see what we can find in the fridge, our favourite ice cream perhaps or a big bar of chocolate. This is of course fine but only as long as we don’t get into the habit of doing it all the time.

It isn’t just emotional eating that is habit based, boredom also causes eating trends as many of us tend to eat because we have nothing else to do as opposed to eating when we are hungry.

However, if these little eating trends turn into habits, eating to cope with stress or to relax will soon start to make you feel guilty as we can see ourselves gorging on certain foods. This is what cause yo yo dieting and is the beginning of us depriving ourselves of certain foods.

In all these examples, it is the act of eating itself that becomes important, rather than thinking about enjoying the food we are eating. Habits of eating like this are negative and over time can lead to weight gain and other problems. This is why weight loss hypnotherapy can be so effective.

Hypnosis can help to break these habitual eating behaviours by retraining your mind to recognise what it really wants and by looking into reason why you could be eating this way. A hypnotherapist will help you to build up a positive set of habits and eating patterns and will also help you to use your imagination to visualise a happy, confident you who has a healthy relationship with food.

A common catch 22 situation among the parents of fussy eaters is that they would rather see their child eat junk as opposed to letting them go hungry. This is understandable but if the habit continues for a long period of time it will only result in the child becoming more demanding about the foods they eat.

If your child’s nutrition is a taboo in your household then it is time to take action. Hypnotherapy for fussy eaters has been found to be extremely effective. The idea is that the hypnotherapist will help your child to retrain their subconscious mind in the same way hypnosis can erase a smoking or chocolate habit.

Hypnotherapy in this case can be great fun as children have huge imaginations and can picture any given scenario with far more ease than an adult.

The hynotherapist will introduce the child to some sort of imaginative scenario, for instance the child adventures into the woods and to visit all the towns people. Whilst there he is treated to a number of different and diverse feasts. Because he felt like he should be a polite guest he tried each of the foods and was surprised to find that he enjoyed most of them.

This is a similar sort of process to that of treating children with IBS, where often the children are told to imagine locking up their bladder behind a huge gate and locking it with a beautiful rainbow coloured key.

If you are concerned about your child’s eating habits and are fed up of cooking the same few meals in rotation then hypnotherapy could be the answer.

To contact a qualified professional in your area please visit the homepage of this site.