I had a conversation the other evening with a group of people who all work in the same firm and in which several colleagues had all lost significant amounts of weight and had kept it off. I asked how they had got started on this course of action. The answer, which everyone was in agreement with, was that one particular person had started to lose weight and was about 20 pounds lighter than before; everyone began to comment upon how good he looked and then one colleague said he would do it too…then the other’s said “if you’re doing it, I’ll do it too”. A reference was made to the “herd instinct”. That’s how it all began. Everyone who joined this group has lost weight and kept if off – EVERYONE. Now that is, I have to say, unusual. Clearly the first person, the leader, inspired a great deal of confidence within the group. I do not know them well enough to know what dynamics were at work, but it is interesting to conjecture what might have happened… Perhaps this “weight loss leader” was someone who was particularly well respected in general, someone who everybody looked up to and tried to emulate. Perhaps this was not the case; maybe this “weight loss leader” was actually a REALLY overweight person, who had tried every diet under the sun and failed in the past, and in losing weight now made everyone think “If he can do it, I DEFINITELY can”. You can see now how diverse the underlying dynamics could be, but whatever they were, they worked. What is also demonstrated is how suggestible we all are, provided we are given the right suggestion. A stage hypnotist knows only too well how to put the human instinct for suggestibility to work. A stage hypnotist will pick the most highly suggestible subject to perform the first “trick” and then work in order from one person to another in accordance with their initial levels of suggestibility. As each person is seen responding to the hypnotist’s suggestion the following person’s suggestibility is raised. And so by the end, the least suggestible subject will become as suggestible as the first subject to be picked. That person’s belief in the hypnotist’s ability is raised, bit by bit, simply by observing the others reactions. The bottom line is that we are all suggestible, given the correct stimulus. I wish I had a dollar for every person who over the years has booked a hypnotherapy session and upon arrival their opening announcement was “I don’t know if this will work as I know I’m not suggestible”. As a hypnotherapist, my job is to work out what is the right “hook” for each person. This job is quite often done before the client arrives; for example, if a heavy smoker has been for a hypnotherapy session and stopped easily, then everyone they tell expects it to work for them, just as if a “larger” person has lost a lot of weight encourages everyone else to think that they can do it too. And so when asked the question of how suggestible you are, the answer is that you are as suggestible as you want to be. It boils down to expectation and desire. We are all inherently suggestible which is witnessed in the way in which we pick up our native tongue, and learn so many things simply by imitating and copying. We are suggestible in things such as clothing fashion, hair style, and choice of career. Every human being is extraordinarily suggestible! Roseanna Leaton, specialist in hypnosis mp3 downloads for hypnosis weight loss, stop smoking hypnosis, health, well-being and success.   With a degree in psychology and qualifications in hypnotherapy, NLP and sports psychology, Roseanna Leaton is one of the leading practitioners of self-improvement. You can get a free hypnosis download from http://www.RoseannaLeaton.com and peruse her extensive library of hypnosis downloads .Free WP Autoposter Plugins

As a therapist, I have found weight loss treatments by far the most challenging in empowering my clients to resolve. I believe that this is partly due to the delicacy with which the leverage must be applied. With smoker for example you can tell them the awful things that smoking does to their body. You can tell them to totally stop, but people cannot stop eating. They have to first explore the challenges they are having with food. This could consist of one or more of the following:
Eating the wrong kind of food – e.g. sweet or fatty foods.
Eating the wrong amount of food – Binging or having large portions.
Eating at the wrong times – Eating before bed, snacking in between meals or using food for a substitute, for example when bored.
Not exercising enough.
Do they know what they should be doing instead?
This is interesting as the people who tell me “I know I should exercise more” often don’t know how much exercise they should be doing or how often. They might have only tried one kind of exercise, such as swimming and found they dislike it. Well of course it’s very difficult to motivate yourself to do something you do not like. When you do something you enjoy it’s much more motivating to get up and go. When you’ve got up and gone you’ll find that you had more energy than you did to begin with.
I also hear a lot of “I should eat more fruit and veg…” That’s five portions to me and you, about as much as you can fit in your own hand is one portion, and it needs to be 5 different F&V each day in a variety of colours.
Ideally avoid man made food such as pasta, bread and pastries, but eat as much F&V as you want. Some fruit and nuts get bad press about their fat or sugar content but remember that natural sugars and fats are good for your body and are used up much quicker that refined sugars and hydrogenated fats. Just ensure you have balance and variety.
What stops them from doing what they should be doing?
There are a variety of reasons here. It could be addiction to certain food, negative associations from the past, sabotage, low self esteem, ignorance, poor routine, over indulgence- There’s a long list and we need to know what is going on for this person. Again there will probably be more than one area covered.
What do they lie to themselves about?
Just one more won’t hurt…I’ll exercise tomorrow….I don’t care anyway…There’s no point in wasting it…I haven’t got time….
What do they want instead, what are their goals?
This is important. It’s vital here to really find out what people are focusing on. Some people will spend their dieting day thinking about all of the things that they want and cannot have. This makes them crave it and feel lack or punishment if they do not permit themselves to have it. If they do have it, they feel guilty. The focus should be on what they can have. Losing weight should not be seen as a punishment, but as a reward. They are doing this because they care about their body. They are going to reward their body by keeping it healthy and helping it to stay alive.
“How fat/ill do you have to get before you get motivated to change this?”
This is a thought provoking question. They might know the answer, in which case send them on their way. Tell them there is no point in treating them as they have already decided not to change until they are “20 stone” or whatever their response is. Hopefully, doing this might give them a shock and accelerate their motivation levels somewhat. They’ll suddenly see you, as their last chance slipping away and having to face the prospect of meeting their worst fear. If they don’t know the answer, push them for one. “So you’re 5 ft 2 and 16 stones and you haven’t yet changed. Would you change if you were 17 stones? Or not until 18?” The ideal client will tell you that they are already at that limit. You then need to test how their motivation will last when they begin to lose the weight. Most dieters have dieted more than once, their weight fluctuates because they forget to stay motivated once the weight has gone. “How motivated are you now on a scale of 1-10? Now imagine having lost half of the weight you desire, how motivated are you on scale of 1-10? Now imagine having lost all of the weight. As you get a feel for that, how motivated are you there on a scale of 1-10? If you find that their motivation is diminishing as you ask these questions, you know that they will probably lose the weight but will need your support to keep it off. This could help you to design a session plan for them. You may not need to direct your sessions towards weight loss but towards maintenance of consistency, motivation and self respect. Never let your clients think of weight loss as changing that one aspect of their lives, they need to understand that it is a total change in lifestyle.
Once these points (and others) have been explored you can begin your weight loss sessions- and the contents of that are a whole other article! Mortgages in Spain

Have you tried to lose weight in the past but failed? You may have been fighting yourself to do it. I’ll explain. There are two main parts to our mind: the conscious and the subconscious. The conscious part of you wants to lose weight and look good this upcoming season. Meanwhile, the subconscious wants you to continue to eat all the foods that make you feel comfortable and happy. Unfortunately for you, those tend to be composed of sugar and carbohydrates which only make your waist line grow. In a scenario like this one, the person ends up yo-yo-dieting because their “Will Power” can only last so long – literally. Will Power only gives you a short burst of energy. Once it’s gone. It’s just gone. The only thing left behind is your emotional stress and frustration which can lead to a vicious cycle of weight rebounding. That is the reason why the problem of losing weight needs to be tackled at the source of where the mental conflict is – in your subconscious. The subconscious is where all your habits and patterns lie such as not eating healthy, not liking to exercise and drinking only soda. Once you get this part of your mind in sink with your goals, change becomes easy because you’re no longer fighting with yourself. Hypnosis Has Been Scientifically Proven To Work For Weight Loss. Setting your mind to lose weight and motivating yourself to enjoy healthy habits is possible with Hypnosis. A significant number of studies (several of which are listed below), have demonstrated that adding hypnosis to a weight loss program significantly increases its success. A 1996 study conducted at the University of Connecticut published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology found that, on average, people who used Hypnosis were able to lose 2.5 times more weight than a person not using Hypnosis. The authors went a step further by stating, “The correlation analysis indicated that the benefits of Hypnosis increased substantially over time.” As someone who previously battled with keeping extra pounds off, I know that you need to have the correct frame of mind in order to be successful. You may have experienced occasions when you’ve dieted and exercised but then your will power wore off. In the end, you slipped back to your old patterns and rebounded in weight. This continuous vicious cycle affects you not just physically but emotionally because as your self-esteem spirals downwards you start to overeat; you start eating calorie laden comfort foods again and you get stuck in the same pattern. This scenario happens to countless of Americans who fuel the diet industry with their purchases of diet pills and other fads in hope of achieving their weight loss goals. The problem, however, is that the more you rebound, the more you set yourself up for failure for the next time you try to diet. In reality, the perfect equation for most people to lose weight is simple. It’s: Weight Loss = The Right Mind Set + Healthy Eating + Exercise That’s it. In life as in science, the simplest answer is often the correct answer. Hypnosis can help you achieve the right state of mind by “cleaning up the mental clutter” that prevents you from holding a determined course to lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle. It gives you the ability to naturally chose to eat healthy foods, to want to exercise and to be focused on achieving your weight loss goals. For some, it’s as simple as one session, while others see benefit from a series of sessions. In a research article titled, Hypnotherapy in weight loss treatment, a group of researchers found that in a test group of 60 participants, those that did not use Hypnosis only lost .5 lbs while the group using Hypnosis lost 17lbs. Why? Because the people who had access to Hypnosis sessions were able to achieve that weight loss combination that eludes most people today. More proof of the ability of Hypnosis to boost a person’s weight loss was shown in January of 2004, when Dateline aired “Losing it: Dateline ultimate diet challenge.” The show compared some of the most well known methods known to losing weight including the Atkin’s diet, Slim Fast, Weight Watchers, extreme exercise with calorie restrictions, working with a diet coach and Hypnosis. The top two weight loss techniques that worked were Hypnosis and the Atkins diet. Unfortunately for the man who used the Atkin’s diet (Rick Burns), while he lost weight, he also became sick. “Rick developed a painful case of gout, a condition he’d had before, that he suspected was a result of the diet.” His diet had to be modified. Marc Merlis, the man who did Hypnosis along with exercising and eating healthy continued to happily lose weight. “After three months under Hypnosis, his wife had a nickname for him. Incredibly, “droopy drawers” had lost the most so far, a staggering 40 pounds. That’s when droopy’s wife got in on the action. She went to the hypnotist to quit smoking. And guess what? Smoke free, fat free. Five months in, for the Merlis’s things couldn’t be better. And at their son’s bar mitzvah this May, lifting Marc was a piece of cake.” As long as Marc continued his Hypnosis routine, he was able to continue his path of losing weight. One of the things that I noticed about this weight loss challenge was how much the other contestants suffered by the calorie restrictions that they had to undergo. It’s hard to focus if you feel that you are starving. Hypnosis helps program your mind to think thin – this includes wanting to exercise and wanting to eat healthy so you’re not constantly struggling about what choices you have to make. An added plus to Hypnosis is that it helps you control your stress levels. This in turn helps you to lose weight. Even highly respected consumer advocate John Stossel of ABC’s 20/20, who is known for debunking fraudulent claims, agrees that Hypnosis is no sham. In his best-selling book, “Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidty”, he makes a bold take on Hypnosis: “Just when my skeptic’s antennae convince me I always know bunk when I see it, I get fooled. I assumed hypnosis in medicine was one more con game… “Hypnotherapy will help you lose weight!” C’mon, if it worked, there wouldn’t be all those overweight people around. Truth: Hypnosis works — if you let it!” Smokers can also reap the benefits of Hypnosis for weight loss. A two-fold study stated that both nonsmokers and smokers alike experienced significant weight loss as well as decline in their Body Mass Index compared to the group who did not practice Hypnosis. In fact, the group who used Hypnosis continued to show lower post treatment weights. Non-invasive and relaxing, Hypnosis makes achieving your goals easy. Hypnosis simply allows you to have better motivation and self control as well as a positive emotional association with your diet and exercise. You don’t just lose weight, you gain control of your own life, so that you can go out there and achieve all the other things that are on your list of goals. Sasha Carrion, CHT Helping You Achieve Your Goals To Read A Deeper Explanation Of How My Hypnosis Program Works To Help You Lose Weight and Keep It Off, Go to: www.sashacarrion.com/WeightLossProgram.htm Sasha Carrion is a Certified Hypnotherapist in the Los Angeles area. Her credentials include:
Certified Master Hypnotist
HypnoAnesthesia Specialist
Certified in Single Session Stop Smoking Hypnosis
Certified in Single Session Weight Control Specialist
Certified Pain Control Specialist
Certified to Working with Children
Certified in Phobia Removal
Sasha is a trained expert in:
Eliminating Sugar Addiction
Eliminating Alcoholism
Sasha holds a BA in history from UCLA (Univ. of California Los Angeles).
Sasha Carrion is a registered member of the International Hypnosis Federation”Having once been a Hypnotherapist’s client myself, I know first hand how life changing Hypnotherapy can be. The changes I experienced in my own life were so uplifting that I decided that I needed to share Hypnotherapy with others. This isn’t just a job for me but a true passion for helping people.”
Sasha Carrion, CHTProvillus Hair Treatment