2. ADDRESSING THE UNDERLYING CAUSES OF OUR EATING HABITS
Over 65% of Americans are overweight. According to researchers, Americans are getting fatter at the rate of ten pounds per decade despite a weight loss industry that is costing billions every year. As a hypnotherapist and hypnosis trainer for more than thirty years, I’ve dedicated myself to finding a solution. It seems to me that our approach to weight needs to address the underlying causes of our eating habits, rather than simply adding more superficial strategies which are not producing for many of my clients the long term results they deserve. While many weight programs seem to work in the short run, they frequently lead to cycles of weight fluctuation. Even if I help a client lose fifty pounds now, should the client still be counting calories, struggling with new diet plans, and obsessing about their weight ten years from now? Would that be considered a therapeutic success? No, I believe we can do better. Let’s deal with the sources of the problem.
Most of us know friends whose lives do not revolve around efforts to manage and control their eating. They just naturally seem to eat the types and the quantities of food that keep their bodies slender and energized. We can learn how to match our subconscious eating habits and metabolic patterns with theirs, and experience the same freedom and energy they so naturally enjoy.
There are two primary elements of this challenge. First, there is the client’s tendency to eat too much of the wrong foods, and at the wrong time (eating at night, for example.) These eating habits are not simply random errors, easily correctable by education or self-discipline. They are based on “emotional eating habits” we learned as children. We will learn to recognize these eating patterns and, more importantly, how to change these habits in the subconscious mind, so that our weight loss is easy and natural. A second and equally important element is to explore the metabolic programming to keep fat on the body.
Most of us know friends whose lives do not revolve around efforts to manage and control their eating. They just naturally seem to eat the types and the quantities of food that keep their bodies slender and energized. We can learn how to match our subconscious eating habits and metabolic patterns with theirs, and experience the same freedom and energy they so naturally enjoy.
There are two primary elements of this challenge. First, there is the client’s tendency to eat too much of the wrong foods, and at the wrong time (eating at night, for example.) These eating habits are not simply random errors, easily correctable by education or self-discipline. They are based on “emotional eating habits” we learned as children. We will learn to recognize these eating patterns and, more importantly, how to change these habits in the subconscious mind, so that our weight loss is easy and natural. A second and equally important element is to explore the metabolic programming to keep fat on the body.
Infantile Eating
An “emotional eating habit” is a way of using eating as a mood-altering behaviour. This behaviour is unrelated to the body’s natural hunger, and for many of us produces not only excessive body fat, but can lead to such proven health consequences as diabetes and heart disease. With advanced hypnotic techniques we can heal these patterns.
The first of these emotional eating habits is called infantile eating. Overweight clients are asked these questions in the first interview.
If you answered yes to any of the questions above, then infantile emotional eating habits may be challenging your efforts to lose weight. Most of us have completely forgotten where these patterns began. But hypnotherapists know that as infants at our mother’s breast, or on the bottle in our lonely crib, we begin to develop the emotional eating habits of a lifetime. So the choice that our caregivers made: Breast or bottle--has enormous implications for a lifetime of overeating.
Let’s examine the ideal experience of the infant at the breast: The infant sucks hard and works hard to get the milk, while experiencing lots of affection, cuddling and play with mother. The child is nourished in body and soul, while taking a long time to fill his stomach with the warm liquid that is synonymous with love. This ritual is especially important at night, so the baby can sleep through the night, or for at least a few hours free of hunger.
Bottle-fed babies, in contrast, when the caregiver ignores the child’s needs for attention, can discover that it’s easy to guzzle the milk from the bottle. So this poor infant learns that the only way to experience nurturing is to wolf down the proffered meal as quickly as possible, trying hard to ignore the body’s feelings of loneliness and abandonment, until his tummy is so full that he can drift off to sleep. Filling up with food quickly, therefore, becomes a substitute for our basic needs for love and affection. This we learn very early to become “compulsive eaters”, eating sweet foods, eating too fast, filling up too full, and eating at night or when we are lonely, depressed or sad.
An “emotional eating habit” is a way of using eating as a mood-altering behaviour. This behaviour is unrelated to the body’s natural hunger, and for many of us produces not only excessive body fat, but can lead to such proven health consequences as diabetes and heart disease. With advanced hypnotic techniques we can heal these patterns.
The first of these emotional eating habits is called infantile eating. Overweight clients are asked these questions in the first interview.
- Do you crave sweet foods or dairy products frequently, especially at night?
- Do you feel a deep emptiness when you eat these foods, or a sense of grief, or despair?
- Do you tend to wolf down meals without tasting them, craving the satiety of a full belly?
- Do you experience dieting as a source of despair or a kind of self-punishment, an empty stomach that says nobody loves me?
If you answered yes to any of the questions above, then infantile emotional eating habits may be challenging your efforts to lose weight. Most of us have completely forgotten where these patterns began. But hypnotherapists know that as infants at our mother’s breast, or on the bottle in our lonely crib, we begin to develop the emotional eating habits of a lifetime. So the choice that our caregivers made: Breast or bottle--has enormous implications for a lifetime of overeating.
Let’s examine the ideal experience of the infant at the breast: The infant sucks hard and works hard to get the milk, while experiencing lots of affection, cuddling and play with mother. The child is nourished in body and soul, while taking a long time to fill his stomach with the warm liquid that is synonymous with love. This ritual is especially important at night, so the baby can sleep through the night, or for at least a few hours free of hunger.
Bottle-fed babies, in contrast, when the caregiver ignores the child’s needs for attention, can discover that it’s easy to guzzle the milk from the bottle. So this poor infant learns that the only way to experience nurturing is to wolf down the proffered meal as quickly as possible, trying hard to ignore the body’s feelings of loneliness and abandonment, until his tummy is so full that he can drift off to sleep. Filling up with food quickly, therefore, becomes a substitute for our basic needs for love and affection. This we learn very early to become “compulsive eaters”, eating sweet foods, eating too fast, filling up too full, and eating at night or when we are lonely, depressed or sad.
Some clients with this pattern protest, “I was nursed!” I suggest that their nursing experience was very likely troubled or too brief if they show all the signs of infantile emotional eating. It is highly unlikely that they received the two to five years of healthy nursing on demand characteristic of all “primitive” cultures. One client remembered after a bit of prodding, “My mother told me she was a heavy smoker when I was a baby. She said I became allergic to her milk, so she had to stop nursing me.” Problems like this are all too common among overweight clients. If a client shows the symptoms described, they probably have this conditioning. The body does not lie.
By taking our clients back to infancy in a hypnotic trance they experience and understand all the pain and hurt that the body has been running from all these years. And far more importantly, they’ll have the chance to experience through hypnotic suggestion (as that infant) the real love and nurturing that comes from an ideal mother. We implant these blissful experiences in the subconscious mind. We embed these suggestions in the mouth, in the stomach, and in the heart of the client. Then we implant these blissful bodily feelings into those times, usually at night, when the client is craving sweets or feeling that familiar ache of loneliness. Every act of eating can be infused with these happy feelings. Clients can then experience the sheer joy of eating slowly, chewing thoroughly and eating much less while actually enjoying eating far more…the way humans are supposed to enjoy eating. Or they may discover that they aren’t really hungry and simply close the refrigerator, perhaps choosing a hypnotic nap in the arms of their inner mother instead for a few minutes. In just a few sessions, lifelong habits can be changed, as the client learns to access this mother/child bond on their own. Other addictive patterns, notably cigarette and drug cravings, can also be reduced or eliminated through this technique. Often food allergies also will vanish, as food assumes different roles in our emotional lives.
By taking our clients back to infancy in a hypnotic trance they experience and understand all the pain and hurt that the body has been running from all these years. And far more importantly, they’ll have the chance to experience through hypnotic suggestion (as that infant) the real love and nurturing that comes from an ideal mother. We implant these blissful experiences in the subconscious mind. We embed these suggestions in the mouth, in the stomach, and in the heart of the client. Then we implant these blissful bodily feelings into those times, usually at night, when the client is craving sweets or feeling that familiar ache of loneliness. Every act of eating can be infused with these happy feelings. Clients can then experience the sheer joy of eating slowly, chewing thoroughly and eating much less while actually enjoying eating far more…the way humans are supposed to enjoy eating. Or they may discover that they aren’t really hungry and simply close the refrigerator, perhaps choosing a hypnotic nap in the arms of their inner mother instead for a few minutes. In just a few sessions, lifelong habits can be changed, as the client learns to access this mother/child bond on their own. Other addictive patterns, notably cigarette and drug cravings, can also be reduced or eliminated through this technique. Often food allergies also will vanish, as food assumes different roles in our emotional lives.
Go to Chapter 1: Understanding Metabolic Programming
Go to Chapter 3: Understanding How Food Is Used To Suppress Emotions
Go to Chapter 4: Losing Weight Through Creative Expression
Dieting Leads to Weight Gain: Achieve Permanent Weight Loss with Alchemical Hypnosis
Go to Chapter 3: Understanding How Food Is Used To Suppress Emotions
Go to Chapter 4: Losing Weight Through Creative Expression
Dieting Leads to Weight Gain: Achieve Permanent Weight Loss with Alchemical Hypnosis
