Hypnosis for Weight Loss – Does it Work?

Transcript

Today I’m going to talk about hypnosis for weight loss. 

Now, this is a topic that everybody wants to know about. It is a big topic. “Does it work?” is the biggest question that I get. I’m here to tell you that yes, it does, but with a few cautions.

The first time I did this was actually for a friend. He was going in for bariatric surgery, and he was getting the sleeve put in. He knew that if he didn’t change his eating habits and his emotional eating, he was facing complications. People eat their way through the sleeve. They have horrible complications, actually, from that. He asked me to do hypnosis for changing those lifestyle patterns. I said, “Sure, absolutely. I’ll do it.” It was incredibly successful for him. He listened to it for months. It helped him fall asleep, it helped him be healthier, and it helped change those emotional eating patterns so that they weren’t present anymore, as much.

I was like, “Oh my God. This really works.” That was an exciting moment for me. I began to research some. Is there a research base for this? That’s important to me in my practice. I found that, absolutely, there is. There was a journal of clinical consulting psychology, this was put out in 1996… I know that’s a while ago, but as human beings, we don’t change that much. That study found that people that used hypnosis for weight loss, lost on average, 15 pounds… It was 14.88 pounds. Then they maintained that weight loss. People that didn’t use hypnosis, lost about six pounds.

What they found is that hypnosis is really effective to enhance cognitive behavior therapy. It’s not just like, “Oh, listen to the hypnosis, you’ll lose weight, everything will be fine.” No, it is like, “All right, let’s do cognitive behavior therapy, let’s look at the patterns that are going on, the thought process that you have. Let’s change some of those, and then enhance those changes with hypnosis. And then enhance the lifestyle changes with hypnosis.” 

That, combined, is really effective. What they found is, that’s effective for longer and longer periods of time. It’s not just a quick weight loss, and then you’re done. That weight loss is maintained, the patterns are maintained, and health is maintained. 

That’s what’s really important. 

That’s it for today about hypnosis for weight loss. I hope that’s helpful for you.