Are you constantly thinking about food or your next opportunity to eat?
Do you see yourself as thinner or heavier than others see you?
Have you tried several weight loss/food control methods?
Do you feel shame about your eating or not eating?
Are you juggling multiple roles in your life?

As you take in these statements, are there any that resonate with you?  Perhaps you are a mother coordinating the schedules of your children while managing the title of wife and business woman.  Maybe you are a businessman traveling and you miss your family, so you reach for another serving of cake, at least it allows you to feel some sweetness while you are on the road?  Or maybe you are so stressed out from trying to people please that all you can think about is devouring your next meal?  Maybe you’ve gotten to a point in your life where food is love.  Your food or drink of choice might represent a substitute for emotional satisfaction.  Perhaps it helps you to drown out the pain of loneliness, fear, guilt, or shame?  Maybe you are stressed out and can’t quite put your finger on the ‘why’ of it?

Per Melanie Greenberg (2017) from Psychology Today, “Overeating or eating unhealthy foods in response to stress or as a way to calm down is a very common response. In the most recent American Psychological Association’s “Stress in America:” survey, a whopping 40% of respondents reported dealing with stress in this way, while 42% reported watching television for more than 2 hours a day to deal with stress.”

If you have been struggling with weight loss, then keep reading my friends.  How can hypnotherapy help you to lose weight?

The Wellness Institute has developed a model in which the practitioner can work with the client and identify crucial elements that lead to disordered eating.  Often a cyclical pattern is identified where the client binges and then restricts as they move through ‘needs shock’ and ‘needs shame.’

According to The Wellness Institute, “Shock is a form of dissociation to avoid physical or emotional pain.  The fight/flight response is a natural survival instinct.  The freeze response is meant to protect us, like the “deer in the headlight,” when we can’t fight or flee.  If we stay in this primitive state too long, all our bodily functions shut down, causing stress, anxiety, and difficulty digesting.”   

Recognizing needs shock

• Parasympathetic/numbed out eating/drinking
  1. Not tasting anything, not paying attention
  2. Staring out into space, eating while reading a book, driving, watching television, on the computer or other eye fixation activities
  3. Not remembering what or how much was eaten
  4. Taking uppers, diet pills, etc.
  5. Drinking hot drinks such as coffee, chocolate, caffeinated tea
  6. No experience of tasting, chewing or swallowing. 

• Sympathetic/ frantic eating/drinking
  1. Eating very fast, shoving food down without tasting it
  2. Eating while doing several other activities, on the run (multi-tasking)
  3. Treating the shock with downers such as alcohol to calm down, slow down.
  4. Or alternating between caffeine to keep up the fast pace then alcohol to treat the sympathetic shock
  5. Drinking cold drinks such as Frappuccino’s, iced coffees, sweet fruit drinks

Treatment Plan

• Disrupt the disordered eating cycle
• Change irrational thoughts
• Change ineffective coping skills through expression of feelings
• Create healthy nutritional habits
• Develop realistic attitudes related to self-image, especially body size, shape, and acceptability.
• Eliminate the emotional charge from the source events.

Areas addressed in Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy

• Control Issues
  • Fear of being out of control
  • Feelings when others try to control you or your eating
• Perfectionism Issues
  • Feeling flawed and imperfect
  • Black-and-white thinking
• Chronic Emptiness
  • Connecting with the Inner Child
  • Strengthening the spiritual connection
• Focusing on External Image (Need for Approval)
  • Codependency issues of ‘family secrets’: looking good vs. the real self and expressing true feelings
  • Conditional vs. Unconditional Love
• Fear of being deprived
  • Identify what the real needs are
• Lying and sneaking
  • Usually refers to the need for approval and the fear of needs not being met

Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy to identify underlying feelings

As Susan David from Harvard Medical School reminds us, “It is really important that as human beings we develop our capacity to deal with our thoughts and emotions in a way that isn’t a struggle, in a way that embraces them and is with them and is able to learn from them.”  This quote highlights the importance of hypnotherapy in the journey towards weight loss.  As The Wellness Institute has identified throughout their work, REPRESSING emotions results in:

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Low Energy
• Addictive behaviors to numb
• Stress- Related Illness
• Passive aggression
• Conflict in Relationships
• Dis-ease

However EXPRESSING emotions results in:

• Releasing intense energy first
• Checking out assumptions
• Clearing directly
• Clearly stating what we want

Which in turn creates more JOY, LOVE, SPIRITUAL CONNECTION, SENSE OF FULFILLMENT, & MORE INTIMACY

By working with a Heart-Centered Hypnotherapist you’ll be able to identify new conclusions and new behaviors that truly support the fullest expression of your life.  Working with the unconscious brings in limitless healing.   Lean in my friends and prepare yourself as this work will change your life.  Begin affirming, “I trust my ability to recognize my needs and to have them met in healthy ways.”  If you are tired of trying all the unhealthy ways of being YOU, then reach out to The Wellness Institute.  We are ready to help you release the weight that has been holding you back in your life. 

“Counting calories is not the answer, because eating is not the problem.”

~Anita Johnston