by Rena Greenberg
Motivational weight loss hypnosis is about gaining empowerment and self-control—not losing it!
On a daily basis, we are continuously controlled by the thoughts and images that flow through our mind. Most of our thoughts repeat themselves and that’s why, for the most part, our lives stay the same and change feels so difficult. It’s because we are not getting any new input. Hypnosis can turn the tide here because it guides a person within, beyond the limited, reactive, automatic thoughts, to a more creative intelligence in a deeper part of the mind that allows us to create new behaviors and responses to our environment.
Instead of listening to the reactive, autopilot mind in the subconscious, we can use hypnosis to create new positive beliefs about ourselves and our potential.
To do that, we have to bypass old programs and connect to our greater resources and intelligence. The hypnotic state allows us to implant new thoughts and images into the subconscious mind. Each suggestion is like a seed, which can be watered with intention, emotion, and repetition.
We’ve all heard that we are only using 10 percent of our mental potential. Hypnosis helps us to tap into and activate a higher potential within ourselves so we can end self-sabotage and achieve our heart’s desires and greater destiny.
Some people say they can’t be hypnotized—but we are all influenced by words and images. Advertisers understand this, and that’s why they spend millions of dollars to get their images in front of us. They know that even if we try to ignore them, the repetitive images and messages will penetrate into the subconscious when they are delivered with emotional associations. Hence, all products are associated with feel-good images and, like it or not, they influence our subconscious and create desire.
To change our eating patterns, we simply have to use the same technique as advertisers. We have to associate healthy, nutritious foods that sustain us with pleasurable associations, like looking and feeling our best, and harmful foods with the actual pain that they cause—the physical, mental, and emotional disturbances they create in our lives.
Unfortunately, we often sabotage ourselves by associating harmful foods with pleasure by focusing on the brief taste sensation and social connection, and associate pain with healthy food by thinking in terms of dieting.
We have to learn to associate healthy food with feel-good images and junk food with feel-bad images.
We are being hypnotized all day long, by the media, advertising, and the thoughts in our mind—including voices from the past, perhaps parents or siblings, etc. It’s amazing how suggestible we all are. Someone could have made a remark to you back when you were in the 4th grade, and it could stick in your mind 50 years later. We are susceptible to suggestion and it influences our destiny!
Hypnosis is used to take advantage of this fact and reprogram the mind to create new positive, more productive images that are aligned with your life goals. The mind is like a computer. It runs on programming. It doesn’t stop to decide if the programming makes sense. The subconscious keeps feeding us the same program (internal pictures), unless we consciously install a new program.
We are using our imagination all the time. We may think it’s random that we go home and plop ourselves down on the sofa and reach for a can of soda and a bag of chips, but before we ever do that, we make a mental picture of doing that exact thing, and if we get a feel-good response internally, we go ahead and do it.
Hypnosis can reprogram us to take a completely different action, like coming home from work, putting on some jogging clothes, and going for a walk or jumping on a trampoline. We may believe we are too tired to exercise, but when the images of movement are associated with pleasure we become driven to move and exercise, and doing so becomes automatic.
You can discover your own hidden potential, which is often clouded by limiting beliefs about yourself.
In the 22 years I’ve been teaching weight loss in over 75 hospitals, I’ve seen people achieve things they never thought possible. I’ve seen 300-pound people who could barely walk up a flight of stairs lose 100-plus pounds and run a marathon. People who couldn’t go a day without chips, soda, or fast food eliminate them completely. Molly Everett, who was featured on ABC-TV Nightline after successfully going through my Gastric Bypass Hypnosis program and losing 100 pounds, came to me for hypnosis for the first time about eight years ago and never ate chocolate again after that first session. The good news is that our thoughts and actions can change, and when they do they become the new normal. Any behavior repeated over time and reinforced with reward can become second nature.
We are driven by our perceptions of pleasure and pain. People often say they could never give up a certain food. But that’s because their whole mentality and language pattern conveys the idea of “giving up something” and feeling deprived. Rather than “dieting,” we can change internal images so we naturally prefer the foods that nourish and sustain life and are turned off to foods that drain us and make us sick mentally, physically, and emotionally.
Dieting is a psychologically temporary situation. The minute we go on the diet, our only thought is of when we are going to get off the diet. We have to stay away from this whole mentality. Dieting leads to deprivation. The key to success with hypnosis is linking positive feelings to new, productive behaviors. Random thoughts are generally harmless, but those that we repeat coupled with strong emotion create our destiny.
With hypnosis, we are building a new neural pathway, breaking old habits and creating new, positive responses.
Our subconscious reactions are like a stimulus-response mechanism. A trigger in the environment happens, like passing a fast food restaurant or being offered a cupcake. Or the trigger could be an emotion—feeling bored, happy, or upset. This trigger is like a bell going off. The thought of food comes in and you respond with overeating, binging, snacking, and emotional eating.
After hypnosis, the bells still go off—you may get upset or feel bored—but when the thought of food comes in the response is blocked. The hypnosis gives you an opportunity to make a new choice. You remember, “Oh, I don’t want to eat that food. That was the old me.”
We train ourselves to not want bad foods because we connect to the fact that they ultimately make us feel bad.
The old program says:
Finish everything on your plate.
Eat when you are upset or bored.
You must eat to please people.
The new program becomes:
I eat only when I am physically hungry.
My relationships don’t depend on what I put in my mouth.
I can handle all my emotions.
The problem and the solution are both in the subconscious. When we relax and focus, the subconscious mind becomes more available to suggestion. We go in and out of a light state of hypnosis throughout the day and don’t even realize it—when we are driving and miss our exit, or get lost in a movie or a book. Hypnosis is a natural state that we can all achieve. It’s also a powerful state that is used for anesthesia and by athletes all over the world.
Hypnosis helps you to become aware of your internal dialogue and keep it aligned with what you consciously desire, helping you to live a happy, fulfilling life!
Rena Greenberg is the author of The Right Weigh: Six Steps to Permanent Weight Loss, which is used by over 100,000 People (Hay House Publishing) and The Craving Cure: Break the Hold Carbs and Sweets Have on Your Life (McGraw-Hill). She conducts weight loss seminars using hypnosis at hospitals throughout the country and has a private hypnosis practice specializing in gastric bypass hypnosis in Sarasota. She can be reached online at www.EasyWillpower.com or at 800-848-2822.