September | 2008 | | Cheap Weight Loss, My Way

Hypnosis and Weight Loss

Self-imposed restrictive diets that produce quick and dramatic results have a tendency to boomerang with a subsequent weight gain. Instead of merely a diet or exercise plan for a set number of weeks, permanent weight loss occurs only with long-term lifestyle changes. According to many people, hypnosis can help you make those changes, quickly and more easily than you ever imagined possible.

Hypnosis refers to a procedure that induces a sleep like state in which the subject acts only on external suggestions. The rationale behind hypnotherapy is that the mind and body are intimately interlinked and influencing one never fails to affect the other. If you suggest to the subconscious mind that the body is free of pain or disease, it will actually bring about that change. In a hypnotic state, you are awake and alert, but you tune out most of the stimuli around you and focus intently on the subject at hand, to the near exclusion of any other thought.

Overeating often occurs because of the cravings and impulses we have about certain foods, on certain occasions. By reeducating the part of your brain responsible for creating cravings and impulses, hypnosis is believed to give you back choice in what you eat.

In a typical hypnotherapy weight loss session, you are first put into a relaxed state. You feel that tingly feeling like you are floating on air. It doesn’t feel heavy, and you feel like you can’t even move because you can’t even lift your finger all the way. This is also where you will start moving into the hypnotic trance progressively using imagery, non-verbal induction, or verbal induction, depending on which training the therapist actually has. Then you go through a deep breathing technique which allows you to go into a deeper level of trance. The next thing after that is what is known as the suggestion phase. That is where the therapist tunes into the food trap that gets in the way of your weight loss, be it sugar, comfort eating, boredom eating, or TV snacks (“Imagine your favorite apple pie covered with flies.”) The final step is awakening, where you will be brought out of hypnosis slowly.

Since hypnotism does not involve drugs, it is touted as natural and risk-free by many advertisers on the Internet. Critics argue, however, that many of the claims about weight loss through hypnosis are overly optimistic at best and openly deceptive at worst.

How to Cook for the Ideal Body Weight

Nowadays, even a kindergartener can tell you that healthy eating comes in the form of a pyramid.

source: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/pyramid/

According to the Healthy Eating Pyramid, you should eat a variety of foods. A balanced diet is one that includes all the food groups. More importantly, the Pyramid shows that not all foods are created equal. You should eat more foods from the bottom part of the pyramid (vegetables, whole grains) than the top (red meat, refined grains).

In general, home-cooked meals are preferred over processed foods because with the former, you have more control over what’s put into your mouth. For many people trying to eat a healthy diet, this presents special challenges. How can you eat home-cooked meals when you don’t particularly enjoy cooking yourself? What options do you have rather than to hire someone to do the cooking for you?

I am not much of a cook myself. But over the years, I have found ways to make the cooking experience more pleasant. Cooking home-made meals doesn’t have to involve long hours of slaving away in the kitchen, as I found out.

First, you need to make sure you’re properly equipped. Three cooking utensils are indispensable to a kitchen and worth every penny you spend on them: a deep stainless pot that is sturdy enough for daily stir-frying, a slow cooker, and a pressure cooker.

Vegetables are probably the only food group in the pyramid that you can take in as much as you want. Many people know that vegetables are good for them, but they shy away from vegetables simply because they don’t like the taste. Nutritionists will tell you that the most healthy way to prepare veggies is to steam them, but those seldom taste very good. Is there a way to make veggies more appetizing and still relatively healthy to eat? The answer is yes. You can, for instance, stir-fry them with canola oil. At our house, we serve 2 kinds of stir-fried veggies at every meal.

By the way, eating veggies in the form of a salad isn’t necessarily the best practice for weight control, contrary to popular belief. Unless you prepare the salad dressing yourself, you have no control over what goes into your mouth.

A slow cooker is a big help to people running hectic lives. It is convenient in that you can just throw in the ingredients, set the timer, and walk way. You don’t need to watch it cook—it will cook on its own. Using a slow cooker, you can stew veggies with meats. When cooked this way, veggies will take on the flavor of the meats and appeal to the pickiest eater around.

A pressure cooker can also come in handy when you are into healthy eating and cooking. Foods such as beans and brown rice are excellent food choices, but the sheer amount of time it takes to cook them can turn people away. Do not worry. If you pre-soak them in advance, and cook them with a pressure cooker, you can whip up a meal in no time at all.

Losing Weight the Right Way

The Ideal Body Weight

There are many ways to determine one’s ideal body weight. Without going into complicated mathematics, the ideal weight can be calculated using the following method:

100 lbs (for the first 5 feet) + 5lbs for each additional inch for women

110 lbs (for the first 5 feet) + 5 lbs for each additional inch for men.

The ideal weight for a woman at 5 feet 5.5 inches, for example, would be

100 lbs + 5.5 * 5 lbs = 127.5 lbs.

Myths

When it comes to maintaining an ideal weight, myths abound. Many people believe in sweating their pants off in a gym, others starving themselves with purely low fat, low carb menus. Still others swear by fad diet plans. Maintaining an ideal weight isn’t about any of the above. It is about making relatively healthy choices in life, with the focus on relative. Often, the choices come at low or no cost to you.

You are what you eat. If you eat a lot of junk food, fat will creep up on you. There is no mistake about that. Does that mean, though, that you should strictly adhere to a low fat, low calorie, low carb diet and cut everything else out? Not necessarily.

Red meat, such as beef, has a high content of saturated fat, which is associated with cardiovascular diseases. Regular consumption of red meat can be unhealthy. However, those trying to eat a leaner diet should also keep in mind that red meat is a good source of complete protein and iron. Abstaining from it could cause serious conditions such as iron deficiency and anemia.

The trick then, is not to fight the “absolute” evil, but rather, to pick the relatively less evil option whenever you can.

Your weight is influenced by how active you are throughout the day. Generally, the more active you are, the less likely you are overweight. Finding an exercise routine that works for you—one you can stick to long term—is vital. Obviously, if you signed up for power work-outs in a gym but pushed yourself so hard that you got fed up with it and never went there again, gym membership is not going to do you any good. If you find it easier to commit to a brisk 20-minute walk in your neighborhood, by all means do just that. You may actually end up losing more weight if you can do it every day.

Again, there is no absolute right. You just pick whatever is the lesser evil, as long as it comes natural to you: when you can sit, do not lie; when you can stand, do not sit; when you can walk around, do not sit still; when you can take the stairs, do not use the escalator or elevator. The list goes on and on.

Thirdly, losing weight and/or maintaining a healthy diet does not have to be costly. You can, for instance, cut down on your food costs by making it a habit to never buy meat except when it’s on sale. Every grocery chain will have weekly meat sales to draw people into the store. Watch the ad circulars for sales. If sales info is not available, talk to the meat clerk and ask if he knows what cuts will be on sale the following week and what time they mark down the day’s meat. Stop by at that time. And finally, when you can get a good deal on lean cuts of meat, buy in bulk, and freeze what you won’t be using right away.

More tips on eating healthy later.