Hypnotherapy for weight loss: A way to loose lbs or £s?

If you are on a weight loss journey then hypnotherapy could support you in making changes to live a healthier lifestyle and help you create new habits to support your health goals. It will help you to understand harmful eating patterns and help you change them for the better. It can work for those seeking to shift a few pounds or those wanting to lose a couple of stones. 

We gain weight when we eat more calories than our body needs. Calories are units of energy, and if we don’t need all the energy we’re putting into our body, then it gets stored up for a time when we might be running low on power. In other words when we eat more calories than we burn the body turns the surplus calories into fat and stores it in case we fall into a period of starvation. Therefore, weight loss can only be achieved through a healthy diet and lifestyle choices.

You will still need to burn more calories than you consume (otherwise known as a calorie deficit) in order to lose weight.  However, hypnotherapy can be a very effective tool that you can use to help you with motivation, focus and creating new habits to support a healthier lifestyle.

Emotional problems are often masked and we manage them through our relationship with food. Eating is often used as one of the coping mechanisms that we employ to deal with unresolved issues. Hypnotherapy can help you understand the emotional trigger that causes you to overeat or sabotage your weight loss journey. It can be very effective at helping those who:

Eat to mask unpleasant experiences. This is a learnt behaviour from childhood, often if we hurt ourselves we were given a sweet treat to stop us feeling pain.

Use food as a reward or for entertainment. This is a learnt behaviour and is often due to being offered treats for good deeds as a child, such as sweets for tidying your bedroom or cake if you behaved well. 

Food for fear. This is when we use food to help deal with fear. This can be a fear of many different things such as our sexuality, failure, success or even the fear of losing weight.  

Replacement for love. Some of us see food as a safe partner who will not leave us. As babies we are held close to the person feeding us and feel safe and secure, we may then feel a need to recreate this in adult life may lead to this behaviour around food.

During an initial consultation with your hypnotherapist, they’ll review these emotional responses to food with you, and you’ll be able to identify which one(s) apply to you. This will be the foundation of your treatment plan and will determine how your hypnotherapist will approach your sessions with them.

During the initial assessment, your hypnotherapist will also ask about your historic relationship with food, especially in childhood. These early experiences can have a big impact on our eating habits as an adult and may need to be unlearnt or adjusted through hypnosis.

Hypnotherapy can be very successful at supporting weight loss because:

It is not based on deprivation. We don’t focus on avoiding things, we focus on reprogramming your mind to make healthier choices and taking pride in your body.

It helps you understand why you’ve not reached your goal. We identify any past experiences, learnt behaviours or thoughts that are holding you back and decide together whether we change or embrace them.

It supports you in understanding the reasons for your situation. You’ll understand yourself and your relationship with food and how this has been shaped by your subconscious so you stop blaming yourself and focus on moving forward.