To think hypnosis would solve my weight loss problems?

[Starborn]

Yes, I know - eat less, move more. If I could follow that advice, I'd already BE losing weight!

I don't binge eat, but I nibble all day long and hate most fruits and vegetables.

I live a very sedentary life and hate exercise. I've also hurt my leg and can't go running to lose weight.

Have you ever tried hypnosis for weight loss and did it help?

YABU = Hypnosis won't help/didn't help me
YANBU = Hypnosis might help you to stick to a diet/helped me

Unless it’s going to make you start enjoying healthier food and exercise then no it won’t work.

Unless it convinces you to eat less it won't work so yabu. Exercise makes fuck all difference to weight loss.

I was fool enough to try this

First thing was a real life session. I spoke to a very nice lady on the phone.

When I arrived at the office, she was morbidly obese. Some might say that's irrelevant I guess.

She addressed it and offered me a second session free. I went, it was free and down the road from work. I think she was maybe good but I am not very suggestible.

Since then I have tried online free hypno stuff for insomnia but that didn't work for me either. That said, some people are more responsive to stuff like this.

I mean, it depends how suggestable you are and how much will power you have. Hypnotism isnt 'real' as such, but if you're the type that will play along and believe it has an effect, then it might help you muster additional willpower.

It helped me give up smoking and it can probably help with giving up drinking alcohol but eating is something that you need to do, so you can't just quit it, it needs actual work.

It won't work for all the other reasons listed. Buy colouring books, read, knit, get yourself busy with distraction, there is no magic cure.
You can do stretches from the comfort of your chair.
You need to either burn or avoid the calories.

Bookmarking as I shall be following this with great interest! Hasn't worked for me but I did give up smoking almost overnight thanks to it.

Oh and by the way being able to be hypnotised has nothing to do with being 'suggestible' (inference - weak). It's more to do with having an imagination and a level of intelligence. I'm very easily hypnotised and I'm the least malleable woman I know. I do almost nothing without a decent reason anc certainly don't follow whatever the prevailing opinion is at the time.

Oh and btw the 'eat less move more' advice trotted out on weight loss has long since been debunked. Don't get sucked into that. It's very complex and the hypnosis would need to be targeted to your specific problem(s).

I have a number of skinny friends and they just don't care about food. They quite like certain things but won't touch most carbs or any sugar. They simply don't want to either. They are just not that into food. So they have in effect hypnotised themselves to simply not want the goods that will put weight on. Or even to want much food at all. And all skinny, all healthy, none overly or even at reliant on exercise to keep weight off. Exercise can make you very hungry indeed - not good on a diet.

I've had hypnotherapy for various issues, with varying degrees of success.

The first lot of sessions were to help me pass my driving test. I had previously failed 3 times. I was/am a good, confident driver outside the tests but I just kept getting nervous during tests and failing on one major. Hypnotherapy worked amazingly for this. It helped me develop a really strong visualisation of the whole day of the driving test and this in turn changed my mindset going into the test - and I passed. Hurray!

I then went back to the same hypnotherapist for some rather less defined problems to do with general anxiety disorder, vaguely wanting to stop antidepressants, kind of wanting to lose weight or maybe just find a new direction in life and... didn't really help. I didn't have a proper goal in mind and I think the general dissatisfaction I felt with life at that time could have been better addressed with talking therapy. I don't think hypnotherapy is a great tool for helping you find out what's wrong. (At least not the kind I did).

I then did a hypnobirthing course when I was pregnant, which was quite a nice way to relax and certainly helped me prepare calmly for birth. However, in my experience, no amount of visualisations and affirmations can dull the pain (PAIN, not "sensations") and panic of a back to back labour with baby's head stuck and heart rate dropping and forceps being discussed.

So I would say, hypnotherapy can be really helpful for a well-defined, discrete problem whose solution is within your control. Is weight loss like that for you? For some people it is, but for other people it's more all encompassing. If you have deep, emotional issues with food I can imagine hypnotherapy not working for weight loss.

I think a bit of hypnotism (Paul McKenna) definitely helped me to get to that "I'm not that bothered about food" mindset, which enabled me to embrace 18:6 intermittent fasting. I eat my calories in the 'window' and hardly think about food the rest of the time. Quite something as I used to be a grazer too. I didn't follow the programme rigidly, just listened to the cd when I was drifting off to sleep for about a week, so don't actually even know what it said. But it seems to have flipped a switch somewhere.

To be fair I do 18:6 IF without hypnotism and I find it amazing at killing cravings outside of your eating window, it's really good for that.

OP I think you need to stop looking for a quick fix or cure that stops you requiring willpower and find something that works for you. IF is the only thing that works for me, you need to find what can suit your lifestyle and stick to for the very long term :)

I had gastric band hypnosis and it was utterly useless. I was desperate for it to work. I tried 2 different people and one of them was the basic hypnosis without the gastric band and honestly it was the biggest waste of money ever. Such a shame, it really, really was.

You don't need breakfast. That's 100% true. Coffee is fine. However having said that I'm much heavier now thanks to emotional eating and don't have breakfast. So if the rest isn't right then skipping breakfast won't work - good habit to get into though.

@YouWereGr8InLittleMenstruators which Paul McKenna track did you listen to?? I gave up smoking to him and that 'not bothered about food' is exactly what I want to get to!!!!

Hypnosis does work but you need to be specific. Very specific.

Oh I tried the gastric band one too. Waste of time. I'm convinced it's the emotions around food that get us. It does have a chemical effect, raising serotonin and dopamine and it's hard to get past that especially at the moment. Lettuce doesn't do the same and exercise only works if you actually do it. Even then you've still got to diet to a degree.

I used to do huge amounts (cardio and proper weights) and was starving and eating things like 3 muffins after a gruelling 90 minute class with the guys. Not skinny. At all. It's detaching from muffins and crisps and chocolate and chips. That's what loses weight.

But you need to do proper exercises like heavy deadlifts and squats. No pink 5kg dumbbells.

Patronising and incorrect. Telling someone who’s overweight and unfit to do heavy deadlifts and squats will end in injury.

OP - to build muscle and therefore increase metabolism you need to repeat a strength exercise until you feel you can’t do it anymore. Doing the same exercise multiple times with a lighter weight will achieve this, you just need to do more repetitions. Build up slowly.

As people have pointed out on this thread exercise can make you more hungry. I often find the opposite is true - exercise makes me want to eat less junk as I feel happier in my body and also I don’t want to ruin the effects of the exercise.

Oh and btw the 'eat less move more' advice trotted out on weight loss has long since been debunked. Don't get sucked into that.
Emotional psychological reasons for over eating aside, it truly is calories in vs calories burnt.
The stomach shrinks to the portions offered just as it stretches when filled too much.

@johannahc you can not 'boost' your metabolism what nonsense inews.co.uk/news/health/metabolism-myth-why-exercise-wont-make-you-thinner-burn-author-herman-pontzer-894794

@emeraldshamrock you can not 'shrink' your stomach. Utter bobbins. www.healthline.com/health/how-long-does-it-take-for-your-stomach-to-shrink

You can get used to eating less. But the amount we eat is down to what's in our heads - I hear people talking about feeling faint if they haven't eaten for a few hours and it's usually nonsense (apart from with medical conditions). It's all because we panic when there's no food and we need to get away from that. It's all in our heads. I think hypnosis could be very useful for changing these beliefs. We do NOT need to eat every few hours unless we are very active.

Minty, it was the cd that came with a paperback copy of I Can Make You Thin.