Hypnotherapy to lose weight 

Hypnotherapy is a very effective method of managing weight, especially weight loss.

There are many approaches we can use including quick-fix, surface approaches where we can manage symptoms quickly, and in-depth, and usually, more sustainable approaches that tackle root causes of issues rather than symptom management.  

Let’s take the example of a client who wants to lose weight to demonstrate the different approaches to hypnotherapy:  

One approach is to launch into hypnosis without any assessment and simply suggest to the client that they will lose weight. This can work effectively to begin with to get some movement and will be done through a ‘one size fits all' ‘treatment plan. This approach might not be sustainable if the causes of overweight are left unaddressed.

Hypnotherapists graduating from a very short training might use this kind of hypnotherapy because there is insufficient time for training in proper assessment skills, analysing the finer details of client’s thinking, feeling, and behaving, effective questioning, etc.  

Hypnotherapists with longer and more substantial training will typically opt for a more in-depth approach, working at the root of problems. The person who is overweight may be so because they are stressed. And they are stressed because they have too much work to do or they are ruminating and not sleeping well. This, in turn, comes from an inability to be assertive and say “No” to people. They are unable to say “No” because they worry that they might be disliked for doing so. The therapist ascertains that this feeling originally came from rejection and bullying at school – a feeling so powerful that it continues to affect the client’s adult life.  

If this is left unaddressed, the client could return to putting on weight or fail to lose anymore only to find the stress results in a new problematic habit such as smoking or drinking. By assessing clients in a more holistic way, and getting to the root of the problem, the hypnotherapists who are well trained in this approach are more likely to obtain a lasting result (and a happy client is a good advert because they recommend the therapist to other people).  

A sophisticated hypnotherapist with good training will also treat each client as unique rather than putting everyone on the same plan. People who need to lose weight, for example, eat different amounts, have varied reasons for wanting to lose weight, including health, cost, social undesirability, wanting to start a new relationship, emotional problems such as depression, etc., and have different levels of faith in their abilities to lose weight.  

Hypnotherapy training is also located within different ‘schools of thought’. Some are humanistic, some psychodynamic, some cognitive, and so on. An ‘eclectic’ or ‘integrative’ style of thinking, taking on board different approaches, enables a therapist to have many different skills at their disposal. This means taking what is best about all the different approaches and applying whatever is best for each individual client.    

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