The Truth About Weight Loss & How Hypnotherapy Can Help
Do you find it difficult to lose weight?
Many of my clients have been struggling to lose weight when we first start to work together and the typical advice of eating fewer calories and doing more exercise isn’t having any effect at all.
It’s easy to feel like a failure when you have been trying hard to do the “right” things but you’re still seeing no rewards in terms of weight loss.
If this is true for you too, I want you to realise that it isn’t your fault. There can be many reasons why weight loss is hard and very often, it’s not a matter of needing more willpower. As you’ll see as you read this blog, some of the factors can be outside of your control, especially if you experience chronic stress all or most of the time.
Stress and Weight Gain
One of these factors is the amount of stress that you’re dealing with on a day-to-day basis.
A little bit of stress may not have a big impact on your weight but chronic stress can be a very different story.
Chronic stress can lead to physical changes that encourage weight gain and make it harder to lose weight. You do everything else “right” and still find your weight loss efforts derailed by chronic stress.
Here’s why:
Cortisol is heavily involved in this. Whenever you are stressed, your body produces stress hormones in the form of cortisol and adrenaline and releases glucose into the bloodstream. This is part of the “fight or flight” response and it’s intended to give you a burst of energy so you can escape from danger.
It also lowers blood sugar levels, which is why you’ll often crave sugar when you’re under stress. The extra calories are often stored as fat, typically abdominal fat. And if that isn’t cruel enough, cortisol also helps slow down your metabolism, making it much harder to lose weight.
If stress affects your ability to sleep well, it’s another factor in weight gain. Under normal circumstances, ghrelin and leptin (your hunger hormones) are nicely balanced and keep the appetite in check.
But poor sleep throws this delicate balance off track. Ghrelin production rises in response to stress and increases the appetite, especially for high-fat and high-sugar foods. At the same time, leptin levels decrease and you’re less satisfied with the food you eat. The combination is perfect for weight gain.
It may seem like a vicious cycle but getting your stress levels under control and working on your sleep patterns can help you to manage your weight.
Solution Focused Hypnotherapy can be a very effective way to do this and encourage lasting changes.
How Hypnotherapy Can Support Healthy Weight Loss
Hypnotherapy can encourage healthy, sustainable weight loss in several ways.
Reduce the impact of stress: Hypnotherapy can change how you respond to stress and manage the impact of cortisol. Because cortisol can have such an effect on your weight, bringing stress levels under control can change your relationship with food and avoid stubborn weight gain that feels impossible to shift.
Improving sleep patterns: Hypnotherapy can also help you to improve your sleep levels and balance hunger hormones and appetite. If you’re no longer overeating or craving high-fat and high-sugar foods because of poor sleep, it’s much easier to break the vicious cycle and maintain a healthy weight. Through hypnotherapy, we can quite literally retrain your brain to sleep better so you can reap the many wellbeing rewards that this brings – not just for weight loss!
Increasing motivation: If you currently struggle with motivation to eat well and/or exercise regularly, hypnotherapy can replace your current thoughts and beliefs around this with positive alternatives that support healthy weight loss. We can look at why you have been struggling with motivation and how to replace existing thoughts and patterns with positive motivation.
Changing your habits: Together we can change patterns and habits that are contributing to weight gain or preventing you from losing weight. If you’re unknowingly sabotaging your weight loss efforts through your thoughts and behaviours, hypnotherapy can address these and encourage positive change. I can help you to understand why you’ve become stuck in these repetitive habits and behaviours and why you have found it so difficult to move away from them, and how to replace them with positive alternatives.
If you would like to have a chat about how I could help you to lose weight and change your relationship with food and your body, please feel free to get in touch with me. Here’s to expect from Hypnotherapy with me.
I would love to help you to feel in control of your weight and feel more confident about your body, both now and in the long-term.
Caron Iley
Clinical Hypnotherapist & Solution Focused Practitioner
Havisham Hypnotherapy
T: 07580 041394