With obesity being described as the biggest threat to women’s health and the health of future generations by England’s chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies, the focus is on ways this can be treated. 
In her annual report, which focuses on women this year, she said tackling obesity should be a national priority to avert a ‘growing health catastrophe’.
Besides saying the food industry needed to do more or it should face a sugar tax, Dame Sally also said obesity was so serious it should be a priority for the whole population, but particularly for women because too often it shortened their lives.
In England in 2013, 56.4% of women aged 34-44 and 62% of women aged 45-54 were classified as overweight or obese, the BBC reported.
She told the BBC: “I think it is inevitable that manufacturing has to reformulate and resize, that supermarkets and others need to stop cheap promotions on unhealthy food and putting unhealthy food at the check-out, and limit advertising dramatically.”
Weight management through hypnotherapy has a proven track record and the National Council for Hypnotherapy (NCH), with more than 1800 highly-trained therapists across the UK, is ideally placed to help.
“As well as stopping compulsive eating, hypnosis can increase your motivation for exercise,” says the NCH. “It can also help you reduce portion sizes so you lose weight healthily, steadily and for the long term. Losing weight with hypnosis is essentially about teaching you to feel good about yourself, whatever size you are.”
Dame Sally also said that if a woman is obese during pregnancy, research indicated there is an increased chance of miscarriage and premature birth.
A woman’s overall health during pregnancy also has an impact on the health of the child in later life. A pregnant woman’s health affects the conditions inside the womb which in turn can have life-long consequences for the health of the child including the risk of obesity or type 2 diabetes.
In her report, Dame Sally also highlighted the need for early diagnosis and treatment of eating disorders, such as anorexia, bulimia and binge-eating, which are more common in women than men.
She recommended that everyone with an eating disorder should have access to a new and enhanced form of psychological therapy, called CBT-E Enhanced Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) , which is specifically designed to treat eating disorders.
CBT-E, she said, is a one-to-one psychological therapy which focuses on changing the patient’s views on body image and helping them to accept their bodies as they are. The ‘E’ signifies that the therapy is tailored to the individual, with the aim of helping them to learn more productive ways of thinking, feeling and behaving, said the BBC.
But hypnotherapists can also use CBT alongside hypnosis to achieve last weight control and to treat a variety of eating disorders while all therapy is tailored to suit the individual as it is always one-on-one.
Professor Nick Finer, from University College London’s Institute of Cardiovascular Science, said obesity was now ‘the most pressing health issue for the nation’.
He said: “Estimates of the economic costs of obesity suggest they will bankrupt the NHS.”
NCH-registered therapists can be found across the UK by using the NCH directory.