As the weather starts to warm up, people across the UK are turning their attention towards summer socialising and shedding their layers. After so many months of not socialising, people want to look and feel their best as restrictions ease, however over winter and the prolonged periods of lockdown many of us have put on some extra weight.
Of course, this has led to the usual spring glut of articles about celebs who have gone on extreme diets and lost a load of weight. Everyone from Katie Price’s son to Alan Carr is talking about what they’re doing. Even the PM Boris Johnson is weighing in to the conversation, talking about his low carb diet and how it’s helped him shed some pounds. Gemma Collins, of TOWIE fame, is spruiking her latest range of fat dissolving injections.
Hidden by all this advertising and promotion are the facts about dieting. 95% of people who lose weight by dieting will regain it within 1-5 years. Fad diets can be harmful. They often lack essential nutrients and they teach you nothing about healthy eating. Extended periods of low calorie eating can permanently slow your metabolism, making you more likely to gain weight in the future. There’s a large amount of research that points to low fat and low calorie dieting leading to depression and other mental health problems.
So it’s clear that we need to rethink our drive to diet. Long term, sustainable diet change leads to long term and sustainable weight loss. Hypnotherapy can help manage weight over the long term. The National Council for Hypnotherapy (NCH) believes that hypnotherapy is particularly effective for weight loss and weight control. Rather than simply focusing on food, hypnotherapy takes a holistic approach, helping people to resolve the issues that have made them gain weight in the first place.
For example, when you’re stressed your body produces higher levels of cortisol and adrenaline, our ‘stress hormones’, and puts us into a fight or flight mode. This hike in cortisol and adrenaline means we often crave sugary foods, as the body needs a quick fix of glucose. Stress hormones also change the way we metabolise food, making us more likely to gain fat even if we have iron discipline and don’t indulge or ‘eat our feelings’.
Learning effective stress management tools and techniques can take away the need to battle with your willpower. Hypnotherapy can also help you pinpoint the reasons why you unconsciously eat. It doesn’t matter if your weakness is sweet, salty or a combo, hypnotherapy can help you gain an understanding of the motivations that lie underneath your eating when you’re not hungry, helping you to choose to do things differently.
A goal of hypnotherapy is to make you feel good about yourself, improving your self-esteem and self-confidence, meaning that you feel able to enjoy life, regardless of your size. The changes that come easily and naturally help boost your new healthy lifestyle.
Successful hypnotherapy for weight loss can help you change lifelong negative habits around food and body image; by committing to a course of sessions with a qualified practitioner you can have the body and the wardrobe that you desire. To find an insured and registered hypnotherapist use the NCH therapist finder.
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