Maintaining a healthy weight has become increasingly challenging in recent years, yet awareness of its importance is growing. Over 30% of adults are overweight, and more than 40% are obese, as measured by Body Mass Index (BMI). This rise in overweight prevalence is due to factors like increased caloric intake, larger food portions, and decreased physical activity. Sedentary lifestyles, driven by technological advancements and less physically demanding jobs, also contribute to weight management difficulties. All these factors are related to behaviors that we could change with the help of hypnosis.
How Hypnosis Works for Weight Management
Hypnosis can help change behaviors that interfere with managing your weight, and improve your relationship with your body and food. The effectiveness of hypnosis in changing behaviors works with the brain and body, delivering hypnotic suggestions to address behaviors impacting weight management. The effectiveness of hypnosis in changing our behaviors works with the brain and body.
A recent study demonstrated that hypnosis assists with weight management by increasing food awareness, limiting emotional eating, reducing food cravings, and improving self-acceptance of body image. Dr. David Spiegel, Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and Reveri’s cofounder, offers these suggestions in each self-hypnosis session in Reveri.
Self-Hypnosis for Healthy Eating
Self-hypnosis can lead to healthier habits regarding what one eats and how much one eats. Reveri's Eat Well exercise, for example, is designed to help people treat their bodies well via their food intake. Adam, a success story, lost 33 pounds in six months using Reveri and began exercising regularly due to increased energy from healthier eating.
Clinical Hypnosis: What to Expect
Clinical hypnosis, facilitated by a medical professional, differs significantly from stage hypnosis. It aims to guide patients into a relaxed state using techniques like deep breathing and visualization. In this trance state, the "hamster brain" stops spinning, allowing individuals to focus on their desires for change. Contrary to popular belief, a trance won’t have you trudging around like The Walking Dead. In fact, most of us enter a trance when we are daydreaming or doing a routine task. In these moments, our “hamster brain” stops spinning and we become less focused on our to-do list or daily stressors. Once in that trance state, Dr. Gaies walks her patients through series of exercises to help them get in tune with their desires to change.
Read also: Exercise for Sleep Apnea
Motivating the Brain for Change
Hypnosis can help people tap into their subconscious brain, which largely influences our habits. It allows people the opportunity to slow down the analytical and intellectual chatter in their minds to more easily access and focus on what is deeper down and most important to them. Hypnosis is “used to allow modification of behavior by suggestion,” says Amanda Holtzer, M.S., R.D., a dietitian at Culina Health, explaining that weight loss requires behavior change.
The Role of Hypnosis in Weight Loss
Hypnosis is not a magic bullet for instant weight loss. Instead, it's a tool to help break patterns of thinking that prevent someone from developing healthier routines. Most people who approach hypnotherapy are already preparing themselves to make lifestyle adjustments, such as altering their food choices or buying a gym membership. It’s those lifestyle shifts that will lead to weight loss over time.
Addressing Emotional Eating
Hypnosis can help address the cycle of overindulging followed by self-blame and shame. This type of pattern is usually fueled by other emotions or experiences, so we [my patients and I] tend to explore those aspects of their life within the context of a session. Diet and exercise then tend to come more easily to those who engage in hypnosis since they have shifted their underlying thoughts and feelings to more helpful patterns of thinking.
Hypnosis Alone is Not Enough
While hypnosis can be a valuable tool, it won't induce weight loss on its own. Weight loss is a scientific equation based on caloric intake vs caloric burn. It is the action that follows the hypnosis that will induce weight loss. Pairing it with a healthy eating plan and an exercise regimen tailored to your lifestyle is the most effective strategy for weight loss.
The Mental and Emotional Battle
The journey of trying to lose weight is not just physical-it takes a great deal of mental and emotional strength as well. Hypnosis can help with that emotional battle, fostering an attitude of confidence and optimism. We want to have positive thoughts: ‘I can do this. I am strong enough to do this. I am worth it. I deserve to feel happy and strong in my body.
Read also: Benefits of Sleep Hypnosis for Weight Loss
Who Can Benefit from Hypnosis?
While some studies suggest that some people are less “suggestible”, or more resistant to hypnosis, everyone has the potential to benefit from this type of therapy. Hypnotherapy can be helpful not only for people who want to those weight, but also for those who want to quit smoking, ease chronic pain, treat mental illness, or overcome phobias.
Dietitians' Perspectives on Hypnosis for Weight Loss
Dietitians say hypnosis might be helpful for weight loss-if it’s just one of many tools in your toolkit. Research suggests that it might be more effective when associated with psychological therapies, diet, and physical activity. The scientific evidence on hypnosis solely and weight loss at this point is inconclusive.
Potential Side Effects
For most people, there are no negative side effects. However, some doctors warn that hypnosis can be dangerous if you’re suffering from a serious psychiatric condition. If you are suffering from psychosis, an organic psychiatric condition, or an antisocial personality disorder, it’s best to consult with a psychiatrist before trying hypnotherapy.
Research on Hypnosis and Weight Loss
Multiple studies show that hypnosis has helped people achieve moderate weight loss. In 1996, researchers at Oxford found that patients who received stress reduction hypnotherapy lost more weight than a control group that only received dietary advice. In 2014, scientists in Italy studied the effects of hypnobehavioral and hypnoenergetic therapy on women suffering from obesity. Both treatments improved their weight, BMI, and eating behaviors.
A 3-Week Randomized Controlled Trial
However, a 3-week randomized double-blinded parallel controlled trial among adults who have overweight or obesity showed no association between self-hypnosis and progression in the TTM’s stages of change or with weight loss. This pilot study did not show an effect of audio self-hypnosis on the TTM’s stages of change or weight loss at 3 weeks.
Read also: Cortisol's Role in Sleep Apnea
Hypnosis as Part of a Wellness Strategy
Sleep hypnosis can be part of an overall wellness strategy to losing weight. People are considered overweight if they have a body mass index, or BMI of 25 to 29.9. This puts them at increased risk for illness. If their waist measurement is above normal, there is a high risk for diseases. As the BMI increases, so does risk for diseases and the need for more severe methods of weight loss.
Lifestyle Changes and Hypnosis
Physicians often recommend a team approach that includes medical treatment, dietitians, exercise coaches, and counseling. Hypnosis can be a useful adjunct to behavioral therapy to help you lose weight.
How Sleep Hypnosis and Weight Loss Intertwine
Getting too much or too little sleep is correlated with a 3-to-5-pound weight gain, compared to those who regularly get eight hours of sleep. This might be because of the disruption of hormones that affect appetite with the irregular sleep. Hypnotic relaxation, in addition to Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for weight loss, can help improve treatment outcomes for teens with diabetes mellitus. Hypnosis can help facilitate sleep and compliance with weight loss strategies in adolescents as well as with adults. In addition, hypnosis can help people learn to fall asleep and stay asleep for longer periods of time.
Direct and Indirect Suggestions
Direct and indirect suggestions can help individuals recognize the need for other changes that would contribute to their success. A combination of direct and indirect suggestions seemed to help this man reach his goal, and it also helped him recognize the need for other changes that would contribute to his success. While he did not specifically ask for weight loss hypnosis, it became a main part of his snoring cessation.
Co-creating the Hypnotic Treatment for Sleep
Throughout their work together, the hypnotist and the client collaborated to make the sleep hypnosis sessions increasingly effective by adjusting it according to the client's current needs. The hypnotherapist trusted that the man would find ways in his subconscious mind to achieve that goal. He used the motivation of wanting to rejoin his wife in the marital bed to help him solidify his resolve to lose weight.
Boosting the Effectiveness of Weight Loss Therapy
Hypnosis led to significant weight loss during the treatment and prolonged maintenance of the weight loss over the course of two years. Combining losses with behavioral changes resulted in significant weight loss, and suggested that hypnosis should be part of a total treatment regimen. These authors suggest that hypnosis facilitates more adaptive behaviors. Additionally, hypnosis helped people find continued motivation and commitment to weight loss and maintenance of their goal weight.
Addressing Underlying Issues
Hypnosis can bypass blockages to success and address anxiety and depression, which often go hand-in-hand with compulsive overeating.
The Importance of Professional Guidance
When considering hypnotherapy, it's crucial to do your research and work with a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist. Few studies suggest the use of hypnosis in weight loss may be beneficial, especially when in conjunction with other lifestyle modifications or cognitive behavioral therapy.
What is Hypnotherapy?
Hypnosis is a tool some therapists use to help individuals reach a state of total relaxation. During a session, practitioners believe that the conscious and unconscious mind are able to focus and concentrate on verbal repetition and mental imagery. The mind, as a result, becomes open to suggestion and open to change with regard to behaviors, emotions, and habits.
How Hypnotherapy Works
During hypnotherapy, your therapist will likely begin your session by explaining how hypnosis works. They’ll then go over your personal goals. From there, your therapist may begin speaking in a soothing, gentle voice to help you relax and to establish a feeling of safety.
The Hypnotic State
Once you’ve reached a more receptive state of mind, your therapist may suggest ways to help you change your eating or exercise habits or other ways to reach your weight loss goals. Certain words or repetition of certain phrases may help with this stage. Your therapist may also help you visualize yourself reaching goals through sharing vivid mental imagery.
Session Structure
To close the session, your therapist will help bring you out of hypnosis and back to your starting state. The length of the hypnosis session and the number of total sessions you may need will depend on your individual goals. Some people may see results in as few as one to three sessions.
Types of Hypnotherapy
Suggestion therapy is more commonly used for habits like smoking, nail-biting, and eating disorders. Your therapist may also use hypnotherapy together with other treatments, like nutrition advice or CBT.
Cost and Coverage
Cost of hypnotherapy varies depending on where you live and which therapist you choose. Your insurance company may cover between 50 and 80 percent of therapy provided by licensed professionals.
Finding a Therapist
You can find certified therapists by asking your primary doctor for a referral or by searching the American Society for Clinical Hypnosis database of providers.
Benefits of Hypnosis
The main benefit of hypnosis is that it allows people to enter a relaxed state of mind where they may be more open to suggestion to help change certain habits. Studies show that some people may be more responsive to the effects of hypnosis and thus more likely to benefit from it.
Factors Influencing Hypnotizability
Certain personality traits, such as selflessness and openness, may make a person more susceptible to hypnosis. Studies also found that susceptibility to hypnosis increases after age 40, and women, regardless of age, are more likely to be receptive.
Safety and Risks
Hypnosis is considered safe for most people if practiced under the guidance of a trained therapist. It isn’t a means for brainwashing or mind control. A therapist can’t control a person to the point of doing something embarrassing or something against their will.
Potential Adverse Reactions
Potential risks include:
- Headache
- Dizziness
- Drowsiness
- Anxiety
- Distress
- False memory creation
People who experience hallucinations or delusions should speak to their doctor before trying hypnotherapy. Also, hypnosis should not be performed on an individual under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
Home Strategies for Weight Loss
Here are some things you can do at home to help your weight loss efforts:
- Move your body most days of the week.
- Keep a food diary.
- Eat fruit and vegetables.
- Drink six to eight glasses of water daily.
- Resist the urge to skip meals.