San Diego Hypnotist
Advocating Mental, Physical, Emotional, Spiritual FitnessArchive for Hypnosis CDs
Weight Loss and Hypnosis…What the Research is Indicating.
Many studies have been conducted to understand the effect hypnotherapy has on a person’s ability to lose weight and their ability to keep it off in the long-term. In 1998, a study involved 60 obese participants. The patients were randomly divided into one of three groups. One group received hypnosis for stress reduction; another group received hypnosis for limiting portion sizes, and the third group received only conscious dietary advice.
Researchers studied the percent of body weight lost at 7 different follow-ups from 1-month to 18-months after the treatment. At the 3-month follow-up, all participants in the three groups had lost 2-3% of their baseline body weight. However, at the 18-month follow-up, the group receiving stress reduction hypnotherapy reported continued significant weight loss compared to no change in the other two groups. This study shows that when hypnotherapy is used in combination with stress management suggestions, weight loss is significant in the long-term (Stradling, Roberts, Wilson, & Lovelock, 1998).
In a meta-analysis of two studies involving hypnotherapy and weight loss, Kirsch (1996) found a significant difference in amount of pounds lost comparing participants who received hypnosis and those who did not receive hypnosis. The initial follow-up showed the average weight loss to be 6.00 pounds in the non-hypnosis group and 11.83 pounds in the hypnosis group. The last follow-up conducted with the studies showed that the non-hypnosis group lost an average of 6.03 pounds and the hypnosis group lost an average of 14.88 pounds. This meta-analysis showed that use of hypnotherapy more than doubles the pounds lost over time.
These studies indicate that hypnotherapy is a valid form of weight loss treatment and has lasting effects in the long-term. Hypnosis is an effective, natural method of losing weight with improved likelihood of keeping it off.
Sources:
Kirsch, I. (1996). Hypnotic enhancement of cognitive-behavioral weight loss treatments: Another meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64(3), 517-519.
Stradling, J., Roberts, D., Wilson, A., & Lovelock, F. (1998). Controlled trial of hypnotherapy for weight loss in patients with obstructive sleep apnoea. International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorder, 22(3), 278-281.
Hypnosis Weight Loss CDs Instructions
For those of you who are listening to the hypnosis CD tapes, here are some instructions: Listen 1-3 times daily for thirty days.Basically, using a Do-It-Yourself hypnosis CD is very easy, convenient, and effective. All you need is a weight loss plan you want to stick to, a pair of headphones, a CD player, and a comfortable place to recline. Here are some important listening instructions for those of you who have already purchased the CD and for those of you who are going to:
LISTENING TIPS
Listening Instructions:
1.) Put the CD into a player. Put your headphones on. Close your eyes.
2.) Listen and follow hypnotist’s instructions. There are suggestions at the end of the CD to return to full awareness, however you can bring yourself back up as needed.3.) Listen to your CD in a quiet, SAFE, comfortable place, where you can relax and not worry about someone barging in and causing a distraction.4.) SINCE LISTENING TO THE CD WILL PUT YOU INTO A VERY RELAXED, INTERNAL FOCUS, (AND YOUR EYES WILL BE CLOSED) NEVER LISTEN WHILE DRIVING A AUTOMOBILE, OR RESPONSIBLE FOR RUNNING HAZARDOUS EQUIPMENT, OR WHILE CARING FOR SMALL CHILDREN, OR DOING ANYTHNG THAT REQUIRES YOUR FULL FOCUS AND ATTENTION.5.) LISTEN TO YOUR CD EVERY DAY, AT LEAST ONCE. Commit to a time for daily listening. I personally find it works best for me around five in the afternoon. This is the time I generally get so hungry I could eat a bear. It’s a dangerous time because I try to keep dinner light, since I don’t engage in much activity after work. After I listen to my CD it calms my appetite, and I am satisfied with small portions. For others, they get the most benefit by listening to it in the morning, while others only find time at night. Some listen to it several times a day. That’s great!
6.) Check into this BLOG at least once a week for continued support. Together, with the aid of self-hypnosis, we’ll get fitter, and trimmer, with a self-confident, positive attitude to boot!
7.) If you have any additional questions or comments, or you’d like to order some weight loss CDs, email me at: HYPNOPC@aol.com
Here is some information about me, your Home Hypnotist:
Gina Fox, Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist
My Journey
Thanks to hypnosis I’m 200 pounds thinner, and 200 times happier. I would like to share my story with you.I was at the end of my rope when I decided to try hypnosis for weight loss. I was in a high stress social services job. I was extremely obese, addicted to ice cream and that’s a bad combination. My health was at risk. Needless to say, I was miserable.I wanted to lose weight, but I didn’t want to do pills, or surgery. I was burned out on dieting, and knew from experience that diets were not my long-term answer. What excited me about hypnosis is how I would be changing from the inside out.And the changes occurred from the very beginning. I literally started craving healthy foods. I lost ten pounds my first week. As my energy level increased, I joined a gym, and actually found myself getting excited about exercise. I had always loved the beauty of belly dancing so I signed up to take some classes!I’ve started hiking and am able to play basketball with friends. I love going to the gym at least 3 times a week. I’m active, my body is energetic, my mind is clearer, sharper. My self-confidence has improved drastically. I feel physically stronger than ever.
When people see my “before” pictures they ask, “Is that your mother?” I have to laugh. My mom wouldn’t laugh though. She keeps her weight in a healthy range and always has. Yes, I used hypnosis to overcome my own compulsive overeating, and obsession with food. I’ve lost nearly 200 pounds, but more important than that, for the first time in my life I know the changes are permanent. My weight loss hasn’t been speedy, but it has been consistent and healthy. If you have a weight problem or have been struggling with bad eating habits, what was good news for me, can be good news for you, too.Your Journey
I know that from where you stand, it might be hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It has been suggested that curing cancer is easier than curing obesity. If you have been struggling with poor eating habits for awhile, then you’ve probably tried various methods to get resolve, only to find lasting results elusive.Historically it’s understandable. Traditional methods of weight loss demand a person go on a deprivation diet, which no one likes. And while some people may stay on it long enough to lose the weight, they have done nothing about their weight problem but get smaller. The actual problem part – you know, the bad eating habits, and sedentary lifestyle – almost always remains behind, rearing its ugly head almost immediately after the person stops doing whatever weird things they were doing to lose the weight.And as you probably know, just like a horsefly almost always lands back on the nag after a tail swat, so does the lost weight almost always return to the poor dieter.
If you’ve been seeking a key to weight loss, most probably my hypnosis CDs will not only open the door, but encourage you to step through and into a world of weight loss success. Together, we will play in that healthy world.
Yours truly,
Gina Fox, Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist
The Power Of HypnoTherapy!
Is listening to a CD as powerful as having a one-on-one session with a present therapist? Note the purposeful use of the word Present. There is nothing worse than having a session with a therapist whose mind is elsewhere. That said…today I’ll talk about one-on-one, interactive sessions. That means that you and your hypnotherapist are in intentional communication with the goal of resolving some obstacle holding you back somehow. I typically use interactive sessions with clients who’ve been overweight since childhood, have more than sixty pounds to lose, and/or are running self-sabotage systems. In these populations there can oftentimes be found deeper underlying issues to get past, before they can embark successfully on the transformational journey of weight loss.
The first two are self-explanatory, but let me illustrate the third – The Self-Saboteurs. This is the gal (or guy) who says she wants to lose weight but can’t give up cookies – NO MATTER WHAT. Now I actually had a client tell me that, about chocolate chip cookies. She started our first session with this statement, “I’ve been through loads of counseling, and even had fights with my therapists – no one is going to make me give up chocolate chip cookies. No one!” This gal was in her fifties, an educated woman (most of our clients are professional people – this lady was a teacher), she had about seventy pounds to lose, and she had emotional strings to cookies. In her case, as it was rather severe, I didn’t believe listening to CDs alone was going to cut it. I DID have her listen to CDs, mostly (at first) for the repeated hypnosis conditioning, creating that supportive cheerleading section in her head, and continued positive reinforcement for the work we were going to be doing.
In our one-on-one hypnosis work, we found out that when she was a child – it almost always goes back to childhood – her mom was manic-depressive. Back then (1940’s-1950’s) people didn’t get on psych medication so easily as they do now. Since her mom was not on any medication her vicious mood swings posed a real threat to her five children. For example, on several occasions when fighting with dad, this mom threatened to kill the kids – IN FRONT OF THE KIDS! She was almost always mean to everyone, except for once in awhile, when she was feeling good, and during those times she showed her motherly love by baking…(sing out in unison) Chocolate Chip Cookies.
My poor client cried hysterically as she dug up a good portion of her emotional damage. As a result of her mom’s strange behavior (well not so strange for a manic-depressive) my client had emotionally associated chocolate chip cookies with all kinds of warm and fuzzies – love, calmness, kindness, acceptance, safety, security. Scary stuff, huh? You might wonder if my job entails hearing scary stuff like this all the time – YES. More often than you’d think.
Back to the client. By revisiting the cause of her obsession, we were able to dissolve the hold it had on her. Imagine the hidden cause as a an angry BOIL, festering like an evil abscess inside her psyche, making her behave in ways that made no sense to the outside world. Nor even to herself, for that matter, for she had no conscious recollection of what was leading her to obsess on cookies. She thought she was born a cookie monster. Now, imagine the work we did was equivalent to lancing that boil. We went through a lot of muck and mire but you have to squeeze it clean. Then it can heal, good as new. That day, after the tears were dried up, I gave her a particularly powerful CD to rebuild her self-esteem and raise her feelings of self-worth. Now cleansed, the CD would be the ointment to strengthen ego, and quicken healing.
She returned the following week and happily reported she hadn’t had a cookie all week! We have a saying, You can’t un-see something until you’ve seen it. I hope you’ve read enough so that the saying makes sense to you. She didn’t know what was there, then she understood, and that transformed the thing into gold. I call it turning lemons into lemonade. I should know. I myself had to go through intense one-on-one sessions. I’m not going to get into my core issues right now, but suffice it to say I was unconsciously holding on to my fat. I had massive hidden fears about becoming smaller, more vulnerable in an unpredictable, threatening world.
Now, would listening to CDs alone have helped lance the boils? Maybe, but it’s unlikely. One- on-one intervention speeds up the process so people like me and my client can get past the ”rewards” of overweight behaviors and get busy losing weight.
There, you have a clue to the difference between listening to CDs and interactive therapy sessions. Hope it moves you closer to your weight loss goals.
Till Later!
Hypnotically yours,
Gina Fox, CHT
Tapes or Live Hypno-Therapy?
Hypnosis sessions: Tapes or Live Hypnotist?
There are different types of hypnosis sessions. I’ll be talking about two types: Power Programming Sessions and Interactive Sessions. Because this blog is about weight loss, all my references will revolve around that particular topic.
Power Programming – This is where (mostly), the hypnotist does the talking. This can be done effectively via live session, or through a CD. The goal of this type of session is to have the client be supercharged with powerful suggestions for changing core thinking systems, which obviously leads to a modification of behavior. Anyone who has listened to hypnotic weight loss tapes (or CDs) knows they are filled with positive suggestions for making healthy food choices, drinking sufficient water, getting exercise, reconnecting with the body, eating in a relaxed manner, chewing food thoroughly, portion management, etc.etc.etc. Sometimes (usually unbeknownst to the listener) they contain some type of NLP – NeuroLinguistic Programming – technique to facilitate the assimilation of these suggestions into the unconscious.
So, what is NLP, you might ask. The answer to that is rather complex, but suffice it here to say that back in the sixties two brilliant guys (Richard Bandler and John Grinder) got together and came up with the concept. One guy was a linguist (Grinder), and the other (Bandler) an information scientist. One thing they found was that there are basically “recipes” for success and that anyone could have the same success as another simply by following the recipe. Of course, sometimes getting the secret ingredients posed a challenge, but they also researched how to uncover pretty much any information they wanted. But that’s another story.
They also noticed that human brains and computers have a lot of similarities in how they use language to process, organize and categorize information, and thereby produce results. Anyway, these brilliant guys boiled it down to a science, and devised various techniques to help us upgrade our “bio-computers”, if you will, so we can live more efficiently, more effectively. Simple stuff really. In fact, it’s all common sense techniques – like role modeling after people close to us. What we’re doing anyway. They just tied it up neatly, and labeled it, so we could do it on demand, instead of haphazardly.
A question I get a lot is, “Is listening to a CD as powerful as having a one on one session?” I’d have to say, “Possibly.” Listening to a tape or CD does several things.
1) Have you seen those commercials where the guy wakes up, and there’s a cheering section saying, “Thataboy Bobby, you are amazing. You are what makes the sun come up every morning. Even the moon hated having to retreat from your presence. You are awesome!…” Then he goes to the car and the cheering section is out there, “Bobby, we are so proud of you! You’re the best driver in the world…” Then he gets to work and the cheering section is there with more accolades. Well, listening to the CDs will create a cheering section for you, in your head. You’ll be at breakfast and the voice in your head will say, “Gee Mandy, you’ve been so great this week, choosing the right foods…You’ve lost three pounds…make sure to get some protein with that toast…you are so awesome staying on track…” Now that voice sounds like your hypnotist at first, but eventually it starts sounding like YOU, and You are proud of yourself…You are taking responsibility for making good choices…Then you’re at lunch and the voice in your head says, “Are you sure you want that Coke? Water would be better for you. You’d feel better if you drank water instead, whaddoya think?…” Then another voice in your head says, “Yeah, You’re right. I should have water.” And you order water and life is good.
2.) Listening daily to your CDs will magnify your commitment, keep you focused, cement your self-confidence, raise your feelings of self-worth, reinforce and compound prior suggestions inside your unconscious mind, fortify your determination, and keep you solidly on track.
I always ask my clients, “Is there a noticeable difference between listening and not listening to your tapes?” Every single time the answer has been YES. My clients know that when they are being supported emotionally and mentally by their tapes that they make better choices, feel stronger, exercise more, and eat less. Isn’t it nice to know you can reduce feelings of stress, deprivation, and anxiety around weight reduction simply by LISTENING TO A THIRTY MINUTE CD OR TAPE! Stop reading this and GO put your headphones on.
I have to go now. I’ll finish this post tomorrow. Beginning with Interactive Therapy Sessions.
Hasta La Vista, Baby! Gina
San Diego Hypnotist 