We tend to think of losing weight as a set of things we should physically change - eat less and move more, without really understanding the important role of our mindset.
When we decide to lose weight it’s a conscious decision because you want to be healthier, look better or feel better and to make it happen we need to control of our behaviour.
So to what extent do we have conscious control of our behaviour? Do we choose who we fall in love with? Do we choose when to be angry? Do we choose when we want to eat?
Eating, like sleeping and managing our moods is mainly outside of our conscious control.
Nearly everything we think, say or do is the result of unconsciously learned habits and emotional responses.
Learned Habits
Think about driving, cycling and swimming. Initially, we learn consciously by having lessons to memorise the skills required, then we repeat the processes many times until they become familiar and eventually they sink into our unconscious mind and we’re able to repeat them on autopilot.
Unconscious Emotional responses
Eating can be a very emotional experience. We learn to connect eating with feeling pain if as a child we were given food to make us feel better when we hurt ourselves. We learn to connect food to good feelings if it’s used as a reward for success or we learn to use food as a distraction when we’re bored.
So we unconsciously learn from young age that we can numb negative feelings or emotions such as boredom, loneliness, sadness, shame or stress by eating.
If we eat to control emotions we put on weight and then we start to dislike ourselves for the way we look, feel and for our lack of self-control and soon we’re on a merry-go-round of eating to stop negative emotions and then feeling negative emotions because we’re over-eating.
Trying to consciously diet without resolving these uncomfortable feelings and emotional habits is a challenge and is why dieting is so hard. Your powerful unconscious mind overwhelms your conscious thoughts and intentions.
This is why I use Cognitive Hypnotherapy to help with weight loss because it can break up the unconscious merry-go-round of negative emotions = eating = negative emotions!
Using a large variety of therapeutic techniques that are bespoke to each individual client, I can help you to lose weight by identifying and releasing the negative thought patterns, feelings and emotions that make dieting and exercising so difficult. Then build confidence, self-worth and self-esteem and then eating can return to being a normal experience.
Using gentle Coaching skills I guide you to eat more healthily and to build your activity levels at your own pace so that you can enjoy the right exercise for you.
I create custom-made recordings using hypnotherapy that accelerate and consolidate our work between sessions.
If you’d like to talk with me about how my 3 month 1-2-1 Intensive Tailor-Made Weight Loss Programme can work for you, please contact me below.
