A lot of us are overweight to some degree, or simply unhappy with our bodies.
Social media is the place where we compare our lives and bodies to those of strangers, and cashing in on this dissatisfaction, the diet industry is an ever growing mega-billion pound industry. We all know the basic equation for weight loss goes a little something like this: eating less food + more exercise = lose weight but it’s difficult to keep the weight off and it’s now been documented now that diets often don’t work in the long term. In Weight Watchers’ own studies, the average person will reduce their body weight by around 5% after six months, but within two years a third of that will return. And while the exercise part still stands, a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests weight loss actually has a lot less to do with smaller portion sizes and reduced calorie intake than we first thought.
The study, published this week in the academic journal JAMA, showed that dieting individuals who reduced their consumption of added sugars, highly processed foods and refined grains while focusing on increasing their vegetables and whole foods, lost significant amounts of weight over the course of a year without counting calories or limiting the size of portions.
The National Council for Hypnotherapy says hypnotherapy has a proven track record in helping people manage weight through creating healthy self-management techniques by changing negative habits. Rather than just reducing calories with a diet plan that you are unlikely to stick to long term, hypnosis gets you in touch with the reasons why you unconsciously eat. If you are the type of person that struggles to stop after a small piece of chocolate and feels compelled to finish the packet then working with a hypnotherapist can help you understand why, and help you create new healthy self-management techniques.
Healthy and sustainable weight loss takes time and sustained habit changes. By sticking to their eating plans for a year both groups from the study demonstrated significant weight loss even though they didn’t worry about their calorie intake. Those in the low-fat group lost about 11.7 pounds on average, while the members of the low-carb group lost a little more than 13 pounds. Individuals in both groups also showed improvements in other important health markers such as reduced body fat, lower blood sugar, improved blood pressure levels and decreased waist size.
“Hypnotherapy for weight loss is about changing your habit with food for the rest of your life, so unlike crash diets it changes the root of your compulsive eating or lack of interest in exercise so you are free to enjoy the rest of your life – eating and exercising sensibly without having to think about it,” adds the NCH.
“After a session you may feel uplifted, lighter and very relaxed. Often change is very subtle, as your hypnotherapist will be working with you subconscious mind, and you may just notice a very positive shift in how you are feeling,” says the NCH.
Search for a qualified hypnotherapist near you now and take control of your eating habits.
