Weight-loss and eating habits – working in tune with how our brains work

If you are anything like me, then you have had at least some bad eating habits in your life…

  • …snacking all evening?
  • …eating faaar too much at an all-you-can-eat buffet?
  • Or perhaps just putting on weight and not understanding how it has happened?

And you might have heard that lots of diets work – until they don’t – and then the person puts back on all the weight they lost, sometimes more?

This confused me a lot as well.

But last month I was fortunate enough to attend a training course on “Weight-loss – a Mindset Approach”. This explained how we have got into habits of eating – sometimes inherited from our stone-age ancestors – othertimes, it is childhood experiences that have linked eating in general, and sweet foods in particular, with other comforting memories.

It is these habits that take over, when we are distracted, or when our rational minds have run out of energy. (There is strong evidence that rational thinking is such an intensive activity, that we can only do it a limited number of times each day.)

So, this “Mindset Approach” to weight-loss is all about understanding how these habits form, using our conscious mind to design new desired habits, and then using a variety of techniques – including hypnosis of course – to teach these new habits to our subconsious. This is fantastic, of course, because we then don’t need to use any “willpower” to “resist” any bad habits – a futile activity, since we all get tired and/or distracted eventually – but instead, we have over-written our bad habits with better ones. And then, when our habits kick in – when we are tired, frustrated, or at the end of a long day – then it is these new, better, habits with engage, and we do the right thing!

I’ve just started running these sessions with initial subjects, but am now able to take bookings – the program is 3 sessions, each 2 weeks apart, and includes a meditation/hypnosis MP3, reminder notes, and some simple “homework”, just to bring conscious awareness to your goals and strategies.

(When there is a lot of interest, I’ll be able to run this as a group session for up to 6 clients, since it is a common goal and set of techniques for everyone involved.)