Slim While You Sleep
Men's Fitness Magazine
Can hypnotherapy help you lose weight?
MF gets on the couch to find out.
What’s the claim?
You lose weight by gaining a better understanding of your relationship with food by tapping into your subconscious and by retraining your brain (with the help of a hypnotherapist) to get into healthier habits.
How does it work?
In simple terms, hypnotherapy can help you snap out of bad eating habits – such as rewarding yourself with chocolate biscuit whenever you feel stressed or bored – by suggesting other more positive behaviour patterns. ‘We do this by getting the individual to enter a state of relaxation where their mind has a heightened suggestibility,’ say hypnotherapist Jennie Francis. Once you’re suitably chilled, the hypnotherapist can address your particular issues. ‘If, for example, you always eat biscuits with your eyes, we can suggest to your subconscious that this behaviour is no longer appropriate for helping you to ditch the bad habit. That helps you to identify actual hunger rather than the emotional kind. And you’re back in the room.
What does it feel like?
‘Really relaxed,’ says MF staffer Lucy Miller, who has four-hour-long session with Francis. ‘I can’t quite remember what Jennie said to me but it was very soothing. I was quite sceptical but when I was surrounded by chocolate, strangely for me, didn’t fancy it at all.’
MF verdict
Could be a very useful fat-fighting tool. And they didn’t me make me say that, by the way, honest.