Thursday 03 OCTOBER 2002 (THE SUN) by Julian Aloysius Leicester Julian A. Leicester tells you why most diets are doomed to fail, and how hypnosis can help.
Even the person without a weight problem has to take care to stay slim as they get older. So be wary the way you eyes those satay sticks. A good diet and plennty of exercise is essential and not too difficult to a normal balanced eater. But for a person with weight problem. But for a person with weight problem, those simple tasks can be a nightmare.
Eating become phobic, constantly causing conflicts in the mind. Energy is wasted with stress and the more the person worries about it, the greater the problem. Diets can only be kept for a short time and then a big binge destroys the programme.
The key to an ideal weight is correct exercise and lifestyle, healthy food intake and a directed mind. Fortunes are spent on diets and pills, but they rarely resolve the problem. Actually the person is programmed to eat for an alternative and has nothing to do with normal eating satisfactios for extra satisfaction.
To change this programme, the subconscious needs to be persuaded that this strategy no longer serves a useful purpose. To change the behaviour pattern, it is necessary to regress the person back to the first time they started eating for a reason other then to nourish their bodies. Any kind of eating that overrides that satisfied feeling is for extra satisfaction.
We have heard a lot about the mind-body connection, but how does it work in losing weight? The subconscious puts the urge on eating so that the person will nourish the body.
The natural satisfaction for eating in a normal person is eating only for survival. Then the subconscious operates a feeling of satisfaction so the person no longer needs to eat. They have no desire for any other food. If the feelings of satisfaction is overridden, it is because of a different of satisfaction that needs dealing with.
This satisfaction is due to either comfort or protection which started with a thought or sometime in their life. There are many other extra satisfaction reasons such as fear, impatience and hidden traumas. In order to alter this programme, we have to find the source of the thought.
With hypnosis, we have two advantages that we don't have in normal consciousness. Firstly while in hypnosis, the subconscious can bring forward any memory on request as every memory is recorded. So we can request information from the past and bring this new information to the attention of the conscious.
Secondly, because the person in hypnosis is still aware, the conscious is checking it out and thinking " Ah Yes, that's why I am acting like this and can't lose weight easily". We can use hypnosis to access this connection to help reach our golas in health, well-being, success and mental edge. We all respond to emotional urges. Say for example, you are watching someone bite into a satay. This produces a feeling which turns into a physical sensation. In this case you get taste in your mouth and your mouth waters.
This is one way hypnosis produces a physical sensation. Your imagination allowed you to process the information which gave you some sort of reaction. Thus, with hypnosis you can suggest to the subconscious mind to eat more rationaly, eating lower calorie, healthier food and be fully satisfied on smaller amounts of food.
You can enjoy and drink more water, enjoy a new eating habit to always leave food on the plate, only think of the bite that is in your mouth and not on the plate and also visualise your stomach getting smaller each day.
Hypnosis complements all other weight-loss programmes as it focuses on the directed mind. Without dealing with the underlying issues, the next time you diet, your mind will probably say 'if you diet, you will starve, If you starve, you will die and I can't let that happen to you'. Now you know why most diets fail.
- Julian A. Leicester
