Can You Be Hypnotized to Lose Weight?

No matter how hard some people try, they just can’t seem to lose weight. People who have difficulty shedding extra pounds may be more susceptible to fads and gimmicks to help them lose weight. Alternative health and weight-loss methods, such as acupuncture and hypnotism, are gaining in popularity, but can these methods actually result in weight loss? Hypnosis has been used successfully to help people stop smoking and nail biting. There is science behind hypnosis and the results that can be achieved.

Hypnosis involves putting you in a mindset so that you can be influenced. The practitioner will place you in a state of suggestibility and then suggest positive ideas in your mind. While under the influence of hypnosis, you may experience greater focus and concentration. Your mind is honed in on one idea. The hypnotherapist will make suggestions to you to help improve the odds you will achieve your weight-loss goal.

The hypnotherapist uses the power of suggestion to convince you that you will lose weight. The mind is powerful. If you believe it, you can achieve it. Positive affirmations and belief in yourself combined with a healthy diet and exercise can help you to lose weight. Self-confidence is one aspect of success in any area. Just as those who are most successful in matters of business and money, people who start with a positive attitude and a belief in themselves are more likely to achieve their goal of losing weight.

Hypnosis can help you to visualize yourself thinner and healthier. The hypnotherapist can help you to visualize yourself wearing that dress or suit you haven’t worn in years because you gained weight. Seeing yourself thinner and healthier can help to establish a goal that you can achieve. When you do achieve that goal and zip up that dress or button that sport coat, your self-esteem will soar. Be careful not to set yourself up for failure. It is not possible to safely lose 50 pounds in 30 days. Rapid weight loss can be dangerous, too. A healthy diet and exercise are the most effective and safest ways to lose weight.

Approach hypnosis like you would any other weight loss or medical option. Speak to your doctor and do some research. Talk to friends and family and others who may have experience using hypnosis. Ask a potential hypnotherapist for references. It’s perfectly okay to check out a hypnotherapist before you give him or her money. Make sure you find a certified hypnotherapist who understands your limitations and goals. Hypnosis won’t make you lose weight, but it may help to improve your attitude and self-confidence so that you can achieve your weight loss goal.

How Volunteering Can Help You Lose Weight and Get Healthier

Photo credit: Win Henderson (This image is from the FEMA Photo Library.) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Working in a food pantry is an ideal way to squeeze in some strength training while helping the less fortunate. You will get plenty of exercise walking from place to place collecting donations. Someone has to unload the trucks, stock the shelves and help carry heavy bags of food. You can get a good workout lifting cans of food from boxes to shelves, and then from shelves to bags for those who utilize the pantry. You will feel good about yourself after working in the food pantry, because you helped provide a much-needed community service, as well as working up a sweat.

Join a walk-a-thon to help raise money for your favorite charity. Every year, organizations dedicated to finding a cure for cancer, diabetes, or to raise money for homeless or veterans, use the walk-a-thon to help raise money. These walks often require you to find sponsors who will donate a sum for every mile you walk. Many walk-a-thons can be up to 5 miles long, so do the best you can and don’t push yourself beyond your limit. Try to get ready for the big day by walking every day until you can go the distance.

Volunteer to a kids’ sports program. Many communities provide summer sports programs for children. These programs almost always need volunteers. Parents often volunteer to carry balls and other sports equipment, participate as coaches and umpires, or stand in the concession stands and sell refreshments. As long as you aren’t sneaking the popcorn and soda, working concession will keep you busy and physically active for a couple of hours. You will be surprised at the number of calories you can burn just by passing out popcorn, peanuts and drinks in the stands.

Volunteer to collect names for a petition for your favorite charity or cause. Collecting signatures requires you to walk from door to door or from business to business to get those signatures. You can cover a lot of ground by walking for an hour every day after work or on a Saturday. You can also get a good workout by volunteering to set up and tear down displays at job fairs and fundraising booths at local events. Volunteering not only benefits your body, it can benefit your heart and mind too.

Motivation – 3 Top Tips To Successful Weight Loss

Photo credit: Public Domain

The best decision that you have made is to choose a better way of life for yourself. This may have been a choice that you came to on your own or on the advice of your doctor. However you have come to this point, you need to find all the ways that will help you to get the weight loss success that you want to achieve.

To keep you motivated, here are 3 top tips to successful weight loss.

Do Not Deny Yourself

It took a while for you to put on the weight and it will take a while to take it off. If you remove all the things that you enjoy from your diet, then you will only make the journey harder and this could end up causing you to fail. The idea of a balanced diet and weight loss program is to reduce your calorie intake while increasing your level of activity.

You’ll also find that if you eat more whole foods, calorie counting will become a thing of the past because you’ll get rid of your unhealthy cravings, balance your blood sugar and hormones, and have a lot more energy to do things you want to do. When you give your body what it needs, such as nutrient-dense leafy green vegetables, fiber-rich fruits, fish, lean meats, nuts, seeds, legumes and beans, your body will balance itself out and the weight will start to come off. And, you can still enjoy your treats as long as it is within reason.

Write Everything Down

A good way to track your journey is to write down everything you eat. You will be able to identify which types of food you are consuming and where you need to make adjustments. The great thing is that as the weeks go by you will notice a difference in the sort of foods you are eating. This is because as you start losing weight, you will begin to feel better about yourself and you will have more faith in your ability to succeed. This will spur you on to alter the things that you eat. You will be able to logically and routinely decide to replace that portion of French fries with a portion of salad and vegetables. It is a great feeling when you realize that the changes that you are making in your eating habits are happening naturally and without any pressure.

Gain Strength from the Experience of Others

There are so many people who have been in the same position as you and you should take some inspiration from their experiences and their success. If you love to read books, you will discover that there are lots of authors who have written on this subject. You will find plenty of celebrities who have also written about their own personal struggles with diet and weight.

If you are not a fan of books, you can choose to pick up one of the many slimming magazines, or research on the Internet, which feature stories about real people like yourself. Gather together information about people who have succeeded, then look at yourself in the mirror and repeat the words “I can do this”. If you can build up your strength and confidence and keep a positive attitude, then there is no reason why you shouldn’t succeed.

Failure to Lose Weight – Are These the Reasons You Lack Motivation?

Photo credit: Alan Cleaver CC-BY-2.0

Motivation is the desire to get things done and to set targets that you want to achieve. However, maintaining that level of motivation can be difficult and the end result can leave you feeling like a failure. Here are some reasons why you lack motivation and ways in which you can turn things around to get you back on track.

You Can’t See Immediate Results

A perfect example of this is if you decide that you want to lose weight. You know exactly what you have to do in order to reach your desired weight. You need to eat less and exercise more. The first few days of your weight loss and healthy eating program go very well and you are happy. At the end of the week, you step on the scales and find that you haven’t lost any weight or you have lost less than you expected. You are disappointed and even though you know that if you continue on this path, you will eventually see the results you want, you give up. The thing about motivation is that if you do not see the results that you are after, it is pretty difficult to carry on.

Procrastination and Using Excuses

You are not motivated because you waste a lot of time procrastinating. You know that logically regular exercise and a healthy, balanced eating plan will result in weight loss. However, the procrastinator in you may decide that you can’t work on losing weight until you have signed up to a gym or have enough money to buy the right type of exercise clothes. With regards to food, well you decide that you can’t start cooking healthy meals until you have emptied your cupboards of all the bad foods. You are just putting off the starting date to changing your way of lifestyle and the more excuses you find, the less motivated you become.

Lack of Support from Others

It is a sad fact that a person’s level of motivation can be affected by the people around them and their attitude. It only takes one negative comment for self-doubt to creep in and for you to give up on the goals you have set for yourself. The solution is to find people that share your feelings and can help to keep you motivated. A good way is to either find the right friend or family member who will give you the support you need or you can look at support groups within your community or online. By getting the positive support you need, your motivation level will be right where it needs to be in order for you to start on target.

Important note:  If you’re not reaching your weight loss goals through diet and exercise, then you may want to look at other possible reasons such as lack of sleep, blood-sugar imbalance, too much stress, thyroid issues, or maybe a *hormone imbalance. As you can see, there is a lot more to weight loss than just eating less and exercising more. So, when you feel like giving up, remember the reasons WHY you want to lose weight and get healthier. Is it to avoid expensive medical bills down the road? To live a better quality life? Is it to live long enough to see your grandchildren? Whatever the reason, make it stick so you can stay consistent and focused until you reach your goals.

Weight gain: Are your emotions to blame?

Photo Credit: Bill Branson

What is Emotional Eating?

We all know the feeling of eating just because we are feeling a certain way and not necessarily because we are hungry. Eating to fill a void or to make us feel better is the simplest way to explain emotional eating.

Emotional eating happens to all of us, at one time or another. Emotional eating is a double-edged sword. We may initially eat something unhealthy because we are feeling blue and then feel doubly guilty afterward.

Emotional eating feels good while we are doing it, but may wreak havoc on our diets, our health, and our minds. As the underlying problem goes unresolved, we simply cannot undo the overeating. There are deep underlying feelings behind emotional eating. Without delving into what is behind those emotional feelings, the continuous pattern of eating to feel better will continue.

How Emotional Eating Can Affect Your Weight

Eating can be a distraction to what you have on your mind. Emotional eating can occur for various reasons:

* Stress

* Emotional Upset

* Boredom

* Guilt

For some, the only way to relieve stress is by eating. Have you ever noticed that you are really stressed about something and you turn to comfort food for soothing? A comfort food may be in the form of a favorite childhood dessert or a really gooey bowl of macaroni and cheese. In any event, soothing stress by eating is all too common and can be the cause of some serious weight gain if this becomes an all too familiar habit.

Many individuals that turn to comfort food for support never learn to trust themselves to get the help and support they need whether in the form of family or friends or even the help of a professional. Therefore, their only means of support is food, which can start an emotional overeating cycle.

Emotional eating also has an adverse effect on your health. More often than not, emotional eating includes choosing mostly foods that are not good for you such as fast foods, desserts or foods that are high in carbohydrates. What makes it even worse is the fact that once you have gone into emotional eating mode, and then feeling guilty, a vicious cycle begins. Weight gain will only compound the problem and contribute to it further, leaving you in a lose/lose situation.

If you feel you are caught in the emotional eating cycle, then it is important to reach out and get the help you need and deserve.

Want to Lose Weight? Eat More!

If you have been on the diet roller coaster, you know how difficult it can be to lose weight and keep it off. There is no magic pill. You might think cutting calories alone is enough, but it isn’t. A healthy diet combined with exercise is the best recipe  for permanent weight loss. You should not sacrifice nutrition for weight loss. The average person needs about 2000 calories per day, but what are you getting from those calories? Don’t deprive yourself of nutrition or energy, but change your eating habits for weight loss.  You can eat more food without packing on the pounds — if you eat the right foods. In addition to eating more fruits and vegetables, eat more often. Instead of 3 big meals each day, eat 5 smaller meals. More frequent eating stimulates your metabolism to keep your body burning calories all day long.

Fruits and vegetables are powerhouses of nutrition. These delicious foods contain vitamins, trace minerals and fiber, which helps you feel fuller faster and longer.  An apple contains about 4 grams of fiber, as well as vitamin C and potassium. Green beans are loaded with fiber and vitamin C, too. Sweet potatoes can help satisfy a sweet tooth while providing your body with more than 200% of the daily recommended amount of vitamin A. You’ll also get some vitamin C, vitamin E and the trace elements iron and magnesium. You get all this nutrition (not to mention delicious flavor) at the cost of about 100 calories. Strawberries have 3 grams of fiber and a full day’s dose of vitamin C. Eat more whole grains, too, and switch from white flour processed pasta and bread to whole grains. You can eat more of your favorite grain foods without adding more calories. You’ll enjoy the benefits of more fiber, too.

When snacking between meals causes you to add the pounds, trade your chocolate, cookies and cheese crackers for fresh or dried fruits. Avoid canned fruits which are often packed in high-calorie syrup. Grapes, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries and blueberries contain plenty of fiber, vitamins and cell-saving antioxidants.  You can also take fresh or dried fruits to work for a snack during breaks. Check the labels on dried fruits to make sure that they are natural without sugar and preservatives.

Beware of liquid calories! You probably don’t realize how many calories you add to your day in beverages. Plain coffee has only 2 calories but adding only one teaspoon of whipping cream adds more than 50 calories. One teaspoon of table sugar has 49 calories. Half and half is an addition 20 calories. Even fat free milk adds 5 calories. Have a look at the WebMD website to see how many calories your favorite beverage adds to your diet. Opt for flavored drinks, unsweetened tea and plain coffee instead of sweet drinks and soft drinks.