Holiday’s & Summer Come & Go
Many of us may have overindulged, my daughter and husband certainly did! Struggling with the extra weight put on during extensive, food-filled celebrations with family and friends can be difficult to release. The question is: Can clinical hypnotherapy and mindfulness techniques come to our aid in getting rid of those extra pounds?
New evidence confirms that Hypnosis Weight Loss and eating mindfully can help with maintaining a healthy weight.
According to anecdotal evidence from UCLA, mindfulness techniques can help a person maintain or improve their physical and mental well-being.
For example, according to this research from the National Institute of health, mindfulness can reduce symptoms of anxiety and enhance cognitive functioning, and it may even improve a person’s immune response.
The classic understanding of mindfulness is very simple: a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.
Thus, learning mindfulness techniques can help us tone down the effects of stress and regain more enjoyment in present experiences.
Recently, researchers have suggested that mindfulness can also aid a person in their weight loss efforts.
A new study from the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire National Health Services Trust in the United Kingdom — in collaboration with other clinical and research institutions — confirms these and similar findings.
“This research is significant, as we have shown that problematic eating behavior can be improved with mindfulness application.”
~ Petra Hanson
Says the study’s first author, Petra Hanson, a research fellow and doctoral student at the Warwickshire Institute for the Study of Diabetes Endocrinology and Metabolism at University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire.”
Hanson and the team report their findings in The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, which is an Endocrine Society publication.
Clinical Hypnotherapy and weight-loss.
We know from the research that hypnosis pairs well with other weight-loss and stress reduction strategies, such as mindfulness as we have shown above.
How Hypnosis Can Change Your Mind and Body
Hypnosis can help you understand unconscious barriers to weight loss and enhance your chances of success via a variety of types of positive suggestion. Some examples include:
- Development of an “inner ally” to help support you in making potentially challenging, but necessary changes.
- Enhancing competence and confidence via encouraging, affirming language.
- Visualization of already having achieved your goal and feeling good about it.
- Accessing and partnering with the part of your unconscious that wants to make change.
- Comforting the part of you that may be afraid of change.
- Understanding why you have needed to use weight as a tool.
- Reframing the previous “use” of eating as a tool that can now be safely retired.
- Visualization of the new, healthier “tools” for coping, navigating personal relationships, and communicating effectively.
- Mental rehearsal to make using healthy tools more automatic.
Mindfulness has huge potential as a strategy for achieving and maintaining good health and well-being.
“In the context of holiday eating and eating-related behaviors the focus should be on enabling the people to make appropriate lifestyle decisions and empowering eating behavior change. I have consistently seen that mindfulness techniques combined with my form of story centered coaching can do just that.”
~ Rochelle L. Cook MA., CHt.