How To Be A Healthy Weight For Life

“How to lose weight” is the fourth most searched “how to” on Google (after “how to kiss” and before “how to make money”)!

There are a million ways to lose weight but how do you do it without extreme diets and super willpower and then stay at a healthy weight for life?

With hypnosis. And it’s not hard.

I’ve been hypnotizing people for weight problems for 18 years. I didn’t intend to focus so much on weight but the rooms where I began my practice happened to be in the obesity clinic and I quickly found out what worked. I’ll always remember my first binge eater who used to buy $100 worth of cake then just sit and eat all of it. She couldn’t move for a few days and then she’d do it again. We worked out a process together to neutralize her “tsunami of desire” into just a ripple. She completely stopped bingeing, lost the weight, and started living her life.

First, you need to know what’s driving you to override your body’s in-built wisdom and eat more than your body needs. In women, this is predominantly emotional. And this is also the case for some men. There are also biochemical drivers for specific cravings. And, of course, there’s “see one, want one” greed (that we all have) and some people are strongly hooked by their taste sense, real “foodies”.

It’s easy with hypnosis to take away the desire for the snacks, junk, or whatever but before I do that, I take people through a simple process to uncover and neutralize the subconscious drivers that sabotage the conscious efforts to lose weight.

It’s amazing what ancient programs come up after 20, 30, 40, 50 years! In this first post on weight I’ll share with you the kind of childhood causes I’ve found over and over. Memories from childhood very often arise that are directly linked to the current eating behaviour.

Photo: Annie Spratt

The family are overeaters

People remember mealtimes where they were made to eat everything on the plate.

Often the family of origin had one or both parents eating junk food, or binge-eating or emotional eating. It can be that the response to every sad, difficult, anxious time is to eat. “Poor me, poor you, poor us, let’s eat!” Lots of us are taught to use food to soothe and reward.

And it can become a family identity. “We’re all sweet tooths”, “We’re all big people”, “I take after Mum, Dad”. For many families over-eating was their bond. Keeping that togetherness required them to stay overweight.

The family are restrictors

With this it’s usually, but not always, mum who is trying to keep the family healthy by controlling what everyone eats. So many times, I have heard from people, “We weren’t allowed to have sweets”, and then as soon as they had opportunity, pocket money, went to the grandparents or the local shop it was on! Not only the allure of the treats, but freedom from control, beckoned. That wonderful feeling of autonomy associated with lollies sticks for years, forever. And many who were restricted, began the habit of sneaking food and hiding it. Even with their partner in adult life the need to have a secret stash remains.

There are even whole groups of people with similar food issues. Years ago, I saw quite a few bingeing teenagers (with thin well-dressed mothers) from the same year at a girls’ school.

What they said

Lurking in the back of most over-eaters’ minds is something someone said in their early years that cut deep and stayed. I’ve had so many people remember being teased (or bullied) “You’re fat” “You’re a pig” “You’re chunky just like your father” “Don’t eat that; you’re chubby already” etc and much worse. When someone, especially a child, is in a trance of humiliation these words are received as commands.

Photo: Tracey Hocking

The lost and lonely kids

Another theme that comes up over and over is the child/children who came home to an empty house after school or during weekends or holidays. Without anchor or connection, they quickly turned to food for comfort and continue to do so whenever that lonely feeling re-emerges.

Trauma

There are many awful stories of childhood trauma and abuse associated with the need to soothe with food.

The good news is that it’s all workable. By that I mean, that even if something has been running you for fifty years, it can be healed. You can be freed to make different choices. Once that’s done it’s easy to change the habits with hypnosis.

In my next blog about weight I’ll talk about the thoughts, emotions and self-hatred that drive some people to overeat and how to heal them.

Find out more about Dr. Julie Kidd and sign up to receive an excerpt of her new book, The Mind of Healing, by visiting her website — MindofHealing.com.au

Dr. Julie Kidd is a GP and hypnotherapist in Canberra, Australia. For over forty years, she has been practicing medicine in public hospitals, as a country GP, holistic GP, in heart disease prevention and in medical hypnosis. For the past twenty of those years, she’s been helping people with their minds – breaking the cycles of anxiety, fears, depression, insomnia, addictive behaviors, and weight problems. Just over ten years ago, she was diagnosed with a hemorrhaging malignant brain tumor that required drastic surgery and caused severe disabilities. She has recovered and rebuilt her mind and body so that she now lives a happy, healthy life.