Create Lifestyle Changes to Achieve Your Weight Loss Goals with hypnotherapy

 

There are good calories and bad calories, good carbs and bad carbs, good sugar and bad sugar, healthy foods that are unhealthy, unhealthy foods that are healthy, low fat but high sugar, no sugar but high fat… confused already? I’m writing this and I am! If you’re like many people, all you know is we’re a week into January, you’re feeling a bit over the rain and grey skies and ready to start looking ahead to brighter days, less clothes to wash, and quite frankly, summer.

 

January is a time when many people feel motivated for the year ahead. Although us Brits often feel a bit fed up with the lack of daylight, there is a feeling of positivity. Transformation feels possible as you think of personal aims. It’s evident from the packed gyms up and down the country that weight loss is a common goal. Exercise is a great start, but what can you do to make your weight loss goal easier, and how can hypnotherapy help? As always, I need to add my caveat that I do not believe in ‘weight loss’. My blog post here explains more about that.

 

Exercise for gain rather than loss

 

No matter how much effort you put into your workout, the results are never staggering. Take this morning for example, I went for a swim and managed 50 lengths in around thirty minutes. At one point, instead of letting my thoughts drift, as they tend to when I exercise, I committed to focusing on the task at hand. Although my coordination problems meander into my swimming technique, I tried to kick my hardest and use the full strength of my arms simultaneously. I worked hard! At the end of the swim, my exercise app told me I achieved a calorie burn of 200. Hardly mind blowing!

 

Exercise is a powerful tool for mental wellbeing. It gives your body time to move as it expects, it’s certainly something I want in my life every day. However, a daily 30 – 60-minute workout is unlikely to make huge changes to your body fat percentage unless you view it as exercise for gain rather than loss. But what do I mean by that? Did you know, the more muscle you have on your body, the more calories your body requires at rest? So, when you exercise to build muscle rather than use energy, you will burn more calories throughout the rest of the day.

 

A personal trainer or fitness instructor will help you with a plan designed personally for you, and your hypnotherapist will help you stick to this plan, focusing on what you can gain and achieve, rather than what you need to lose.

 

Choose what you want to eat

 

To lose weight, unless there is something physiological going on, you probably need to change what you eat. The change is personal to you. Due to different life restraints, it definitely isn’t, shouldn’t be, and can’t be the same for everyone. Diet plans create the mindset that to change the shape of your body, you need to restrict yourself or forego certain things. You can take that view, or you can think differently and consider what you want to bring into your diet. Your body has specific nutritional requirements, I write more about it here, and a nutritional therapist will help you personally. Dr. Chattergee has helpful resources on his website, including the rainbow and alphabet charts.

 

My article on willpower here explains that to improve your self-control, you must first establish your motivation for change and set clear goals. In this situation, you might feel improving your health is your motivation for change, with a goal of eating the rainbow every day. The next step in self control is to monitor your behaviour in relation to this goal. You’ll need to regularly check whether your actions align with your goal. When you reach for food, think about what foods you want to eat in relation to your goal. The final step is resisting short-term desire to meet a long-term goal.

 

Your hypnotherapist will help you design your goal and plan to achieve it in a way that feels positive. Hypnosis sessions will help you resist the short-term temptations with techniques to keep the foods you want to eat at the forefront of your mind. Your hypnotherapist will also help you with the sneaky devil on your shoulder, reducing its strength so it no longer inhibits your route to success.

 

How Hypnotherapy Helps

 

Hypnotherapy is a therapeutic modality that combines therapy with hypnosis. Hypnotherapists subscribe to various therapies, so check first that the hypnotherapist you choose resonates with you. In your hypnotherapy sessions, you’ll speak about what you want to achieve and why. Hypnosis will generate a calm, clear mind and help you focus when you cannot see the wood for the trees. Your hypnotherapist will ask you questions designed to help you find the best plan for your lifestyle. If you feel you need to make lifestyle changes, they will help you work out how to do this and use hypnosis to cement the new ideas. Hypnosis is not always the answer, but a hypnotherapist will offer the therapy you might need and enhance it with hypnosis whenever they can.