Ron van der Holt

On August 17th, the BBC “Breakfast” program carried a story of research from Taiwan that suggested that just 15 minutes of exercise a day could add 3 years to a person’s life. The story was presented in such a way as to contrast the prevailing view that a person needs to exercise vigorously, and frequently, to enhance one’s life expectancy. Certainly the prevailing view isn’t fundamentally incorrect, but it often prevents a person from beginning an exercise regime. It seems daunting to even begin, but the Taiwanese research asserts that a modest beginning, just 15 minutes a day of accelerated heart rate is not only a good beginning, but in itself provides health benefits.

Through hypnosis and hypnotherapy, I frequently help people begin a healthy exercise regime as an overall approach to weight management. I encourage people to start modestly, just 15 minutes a day of walking. With hypnotherapy,I embed the positive suggestions so that a person is empowered to begin and sustain a regime of exercise. The weight management hypnotherapy also encourages eating less, enjoying healthy regular meals and avoiding snacking. Add moderate exercise to healthy eating habits and a person finds their weight gradually reducing. Hypnotherapy at the Clevedon Hypnotherapy Centre for weight loss and weight management really works.

Over the last 5 years, I’ve helped literally scores of people lose weight through weight management. So many people, particularly women, have tried several dieting systems even before their teens. These dieting systems, either established or “fad diets”, often emphasise dramatic weight loss but with little or no support or guidance as to how to sustain the weight loss. The result is often that the person gains back the weight they’ve lost and some. This simultaneously generates an emotional cycle of anger, frustration, humiliation and resignation.

I’ve been frequently asked over the last year if I provide weight loss hypnosis therapy known as a “gastric band”. This form of hypnosis therapy has several names, but the fundamental concept is the same. Usually provided to people who are already clinically obese, the person genuinely believes they have been fitted with a “virtual” gastric band that prevents them overeating and thus ensuring they lose weight. It seems like a drastic approach but perhaps being obese requires drastic measures.

I can help people manage their weight long before they become obese or even if they are obese. With hypnosis I help a person to eat less (smaller portions), avoid unhealthy snacks, avoid over eating , and binging. I help a person to reorientate their relationship to food by imparting control and at the same time making food far less of a preoccupation. For many people on conventional diets, thinking about food they can’t have is still thinking about food. I help a person to eat less, enjoy their healthy meals more, begin to exercise or accelerate their exercise regime, lose weight gradually and keep the weight off for the rest of their lives. I’m not helping a person to constructively change their habits for a few weeks but permanently. I help a person to feel good about their decisions. A person learns to give their body the care it deserves. Sometimes will power is necessary and that too can be imparted with hypnotherapy.

As recently as June of this year, The BBC morning news program “Breakfast” carried a story that the NHS felt anxiety based disorders could be treated with hypnotherapy. While NHS wanted to convey the information as a cost saving measure, to the NHS, it highlights the fact that while anxiety based disorders from Irritable Bowel Syndrome, to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, even anorexia and bulimia can be treated in safe a non-medical, ie non prescription, manner.

Many clients I’ve successful treated for these specific issues have readily confessed to having gone down the prescription path with very temporary relief from their symptoms. Frequently clients described the side effects from prescription medication as nearly as bad as the symptoms themselves. The result of these factors meant some clients then went on to suffer from varying degrees of depression. I’m pleased that the NHS is finally declaring that some people with anxiety based disorders would benefit from hypnotherapy.

There has been considerable media coverage about obesity and that a high proportion of the general populace is overweight. Everyone knows the importance of a healthy diet and exercise but frequently, the first recourse to losing weight, particularly for women, is dieting. Dieting in principle seems sensible, but often a women finds herself in a frustrating cycle of fad dieting, minimal or even significant weight loss, ending the diet and then putting on more weight than the diet promised to reduce. This cycle causes anxiety followed quickly by guilt, shame and even humiliation. The weight fluctuations and even the emotions associated with the fluctuations can do real harm.

I know people can live beyond dieting. How? I help a person to reorient and redefine their relationship to food not for a week or two , but for a lifetime. I help remove the shame and guilt often associated with eating and gradually shift those feelings towards self control. By appealling to a person’s emotional “self” with hypnotherapy, I help a person to stop snacking, to stop eating when they’re full, to enjoy food more by enjoying smaller portions. In tandem with these positive changes I help a person to eat healthy and enjoy eating healthy, to be in control of their eating habits anywhere and everywhere, and to have more energy that finds expression in more exercise. I will help a person to eat slower, to drink less calorie laden alcohol, and to be conscious of where they eat, what they eat and how they eat. The hypnotherapy that I provide will not only make food less of a preoccupation, but will even constructively change your purchasing habits. Imagine: If there’s no chocolate hidden in the cupboard there’s none to have.