How Hypnotherapy works for Weight Loss

If I had a euro for every time someone asked this question, I would be experiencing my lockdown in a villa in Barbados right now!!! Hypnotherapy has been around for centuries and has been a very useful tool dating back to times of the Vietnam war when soldiers used Hypnotherapy for pain control when amputating legs etc. It’s about taking control back of your own mind. We have the power to heal ourselves enormously. We just need some guidance in doing this as you don’t learn how to do this in our mainstream educational system for sure!

So in relation to weight loss, we can use hypnotherapy to identify the root cause of abnormal eating patterns like mindless eating, eating when already full, constant sugar cravings, weakness for all things fatty and sugary and most significantly…the reason why someone is using food to numb some sort of pain that very often they aren’t even aware of. We use Hypnotherapy for weight loss to remove old negative habits and patterns that are getting in the way of living healthily and replacing them with new habits and patterns that will enable us to lose weight. For instance, when we convince the subconscious mind that it LOVES drinking water, then you will find yourself drinking lots of water after being hypnotised. That’s only one small piece of the puzzle! We are basically hitting the reset button in our subconscious minds.

People are not born overweight, we are all a product of our own environment…our family situation, the town/city we live in, the culture, our teachers, our schools and society and so on. Very often you may see an overweight parent with an overweight child. A lot of the child’s weight problem can be directly linked with poor eating habits which is understandable as they have been subjected to a poor diet.

The interesting link that I find consistent in the clinic, is when I look at the adult’s mental wellness, very often I can see that they are addicted to food and the pain they are numbing dates well back into early childhood. When an adult has children, they are still living with this food addiction and sometimes it intensifies as they no longer have the same ‘free’ time that they used to have to help themselves deal with the issue in the best way they knew how and was appropriate at a time of pre-parenthood! Bring a child or two or four or six into the picture and it almost feels like ‘lights out’ and when I say that, its not in the way you may think! It’s like all control goes out the window. Main focus now is keeping kids alive and as educated as you can in most cases!
When the grown up is having difficulty keeping himself or herself afloat, it’s only natural that the child is going to suffer in some way also, mentally and sometimes physically.

A parent may tell their child over and over again how much they love them etc and give them everything they need, but unfortunately if the kid is overweight, the parent can’t do much more for them as they too are eating the wrong type of food and too much of it. The child’s own mental health can continue to suffer for as long as the parent continues on this journey of self-sabotage.

During my time in Canada (2018-2020) I had the pleasure of working with numerous ladies who had been through hell, mentally and physically. They had been gaining weight for years and had no idea how to get off the ‘hamster wheel’ as they called it. Taking Stephanie as an example. I’ve changed her name for confidentiality reasons.

Stephanie is 45, and she has a 12 year old boy and 8 year old girl. She moved from Europe to Canada with her mother when she was 8 years old to escape the toxic environment she had been subjected to since birth. She had been subjected to sexual abuse from her father and an older cousin. When Stephanie came into the clinic for her consultation we identified that she had approximately 5 stone (70 lbs) to lose. Consciously she could remember some of the traumatic events from her childhood. I explained how hypnosis works and that we would be going on an emotional journey together and reassured her that she is safe. Our subconscious mind stores everything since the day we are born and for obvious reasons Stephanie has been using food to numb the pain she learned as a child and she could not control herself around food. Her relationships have always been ‘unlucky’ as she said herself, but understandably difficult considering her circumstances.

Stephanie agreed to give Hypnotherapy a go and she committed to coming in for her 3 visits to get to the root cause of her pain, and so we did. During her first visit, we were able to identify an event as early as 2 years old where she learned her fear for the first time (non-sexual related). Together, we were able to desensitise other events significant as to why she was seeking help.

When we remove negative programming we need to replace it with positive programming. Through years of being abused Stephanie was repeatedly told she wasn’t good enough so we needed to convince her subconscious mind that she is actually good enough. Her self-value was on the floor. Even though she ‘escaped’ when she was 8, the damage to her self esteem was done at this stage because her conscious mind wouldn’t have been active until around the time she left. She is a fantastic mother to those two kids. She went to such effort to take back control of her life. She knew her own mental state was having a knock on effect on her childrens’ mental wellness. Even though on the outside we could all see how amazing she is, she needed to feel it herself and that’s where hypnotherapy comes into play, because when you are in hypnosis you can convince your subconscious mind to operate and feel any way you want.
In the clinic, we use hypnosis to benefit the client for weight loss and emotional issues as opposed to using it for entertainment purposes! For the record, no one leaves my clinic barking like a dog! Unless they ask for that specifically!

Stephanie used the first 3 sessions for her emotional reset and then she had 4 one to one weight loss sessions to change her habits and relationship with food. She lost 75 pounds within 8 months and hasn’t looked back. She has been oozing with confidence since clearing out all the negative programming from her head. Losing weight seemed effortless for her once she had resolved her conflict with the past. It is essential to do this work with clients who have more than 50 pounds to lose in order to make their weight loss permanent. It is important to eliminate the triggers that cause negative eating habits and patterns. We cannot change what has happened to us in the past but we can absolutely change our perception of what has happened and remove the negative emotions attached to negative events.

After our first Emotional Reset visit people can expect to feel like a big weight has been lifted off their shoulders. We fine tune things in the 2nd and 3rd visits, add to the positive programming and lock it all in so that it becomes their absolute reality.

When people come to the Weight Loss Clinic we tailor the programme to suit the individual needs of each client. In Stephanie’s case, we approached the emotional side of her issues first as that was her priority. When we decluttered her mind of all the negative programming, this left us with a clean and positive canvas to work with for her weight loss programming.

Sometimes it may seem more appropriate to start with the weight loss part of the programme (eating patterns) until they build up a rapport with myself or Karl Anthony Curtis, my co-pilot! We work with the individual and go on the journey with them. It’s a very personal journey and I feel privileged to be able to help people take back control of their minds as they have been imprisoned for years for a crime they didn’t even commit and they are looking for chapter 2 of their lives to commence.

If you would like to find out more information about how Hypnotherapy can help you lose weight and check if this is a suitable programme for you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Rosie Callaghan
Professional Clinical Hypnotherapist