Did you know that keeping a healthy weight is often down to how you think?
Some people naturally have healthy thought patterns around food and will seemingly have no trouble at all keeping to a healthy weight. Others find themselves turning to ‘quick fix’ diets and exercising a lot in hopes of finally getting down to their goal weight. Sadly, neither of these approaches are likely to result in long term weight loss.
How many times have you started a new diet to finally lose the weight? Has weight loss frequently been your new year’s resolution? How much money have you thrown at diet companies for weigh-in meetings, online subscriptions or ‘special’ food? Juice diets? ‘Detoxes’? Weight loss pills? Milkshakes and powders? These companies rely on people continually paying them to make money – it’s ingrained in their business model. Diets are temporary and by their very nature, imply that you eventually come off them!
Why diets don’t work
Many diets work by severely restricting calorie intake. Your body’s natural response to severe calorie restriction (i.e. famine!) will be to hold onto fat, as it won’t know where your next meal is coming from, and to invoke cravings to make you eat. This often results in a dangerous binge/diet cycle that messes with your metabolism and your mental state. Willpower is often no match for these cravings and before you know it, you’ve binged and you feel like a failure. You’ve ‘fallen off the wagon’. And because you’ve fallen off the wagon and it’s now Friday, you might as well start again on Monday. Monday will be the day you stick to it. Right? There’s no need to live like this! Some people may find that diets work for them but what you have to ask yourself is ‘am I happy doing this?’ Can I carry on with this diet for the rest of my life? This is what it takes to manage your weight for the long term and if you don’t think you’ll be able to keep it up forever, it’s not going to be a sustainable way to lose weight and keep it off.
Exercise and weight loss
There’s also no doubt that exercise is very important for overall health and wellbeing, boosting immunity, increasing strength and flexibility, and helping prevent cardiovascular-related diseases. But what you eat (and how much) will make much more of a difference to your weight than exercise alone, especially if you have a lot to lose to get yourself into the healthy weight range.
The science around weight loss is really quite simple. There are no hidden ‘secrets’. It’s a simple case of using up more calories than you consume. Your body needs a certain number of calories just to function (this is called your basal metabolic rate (BMR)) and it’s really important to feed your body what it needs to function optimally. Any activity you do above ‘rest’ requires more energy on top of your BMR. If you consistently consume more than your body needs, this results in weight gain over the long term. (Note ‘long term’ – a bit of overconsumption now and again won’t make much difference over the long term and it’s important to accept that overconsumption will happen!)
Exercise alone sadly won’t outrun a bad diet. For example, jogging a couple of miles might burn 200 or so calories. That’s about the same as 2 slices of bread so it’s going to take a lot of jogging to exercise off excess weight, especially if you’re consistently eating more than your body needs. But this needn’t mean that you turn straight to salad and starvation diets. Deprivation is a sure fire way of your body making you crave whatever you’re denying yourself! Moderation and consistency are the keys to long term success when it comes to maintaining a healthy weight.
How hypnotherapy can help with weight loss
So how does this relate to weight loss hypnotherapy? Hypnotherapy can help with weight loss by helping you understand your eating habits and any negative thoughts you may have around food, exercise, weight and body image. The aim of hypnotherapy for weight loss is to help you feel more confident, change negative thoughts about eating, and help you lose weight responsibly without impacting your emotional wellbeing. Hypnotherapy can help you develop a positive relationship with food and exercise, which are both key to healthy weight loss and long term weight management. To change your body, you first have to change your mind.
Are you ready?