Am I surprised that many of my weight-loss clients don’t know how much they weigh, or indeed own a set of scales? Well no, I’m not really. They are overweight and have been putting on weight for quite a while. They have dodged the issue and there’s a bit of that in all of us!

What does worry me is this. Very few of my weight loss clients have seen their Doctor recently. This is not a scaremongering exercise, but they may well have high blood pressure, high blood sugar levels, high cholesterol levels – need I go on.

Ok their Doctor will have a moan at them, they would expect that. He or she will do the basic tests and give them the results.

So now they have some starting points other than their weight. As their weight comes down the levels of these other vital health indicators will improve as well. That will be a good feeling. More rewards for the effort it takes to lose weight.

I’m finding that my Hypno-band weight loss clients really have to want to lose weight.  That seems a bit obvious doesn’t it.  Well saying you want something just isn’t enough!

Those of us who over-eat do so to reward or comfort themselves throughout the day.  Think of a smoker getting a fix from a cigarette x times a day.  So I’m asking clients to stop taking these fixes.  I’m asking them to give up something which is of great value to them!  The suggestions I make to them in the hypnotherapy sessions really do help, but giving up the food fixes is hard.

In the first session I discuss my clients feelings about their weight and bodies with them. Most feel pretty bad.  I need them to have that bad feeling and feel the pain deep inside them. They don’t like these feelings and want them to go.  Well they will go.  By the end of week one most will have lost 2-4 pounds and feel really good.

So the good feelings are starting and the bad feelings are not so bad.  The client feels positive, the food fixes are less of a problem and they are starting to do some exercise.  “A thing well begun is half done”!

An old school friend of mine has just died from Bowel Cancer.  This article in the Huffington Post gives you all the information you need about changing your diet.

As for being embarrassed about seeing your doctor, it certainly won’t be a big deal for him or her.  They have seen it all before.  What they would not enjoy is sending you off to the hospital when they see clear symptoms of the desease and it’s probably too late!

I’m astonished at how few people eat breakfast.  By that I mean breakfast cereal before you leave the house (who cares what time of the morning it is).  A high fibre cereal helps your digestion and gets your metabolism started.  Oh, and I believe there are vegetarians who eat no vegetables.  Funny (peculiar) old world.

In the Horizon program “The truth about fat” taught us a lot about weight loss.  The thought processes of a lady who had undergone Gastric By-pass surgery had changed dramatically.  Her reactions to high calorie fat-building foods were those of a slim person.  She had lost a lot of weight after the operation, but her mind was ahead of her body.  In her mind she was already that slim person she wanted to be.

So how could the mind of a fat person be changed to that of a thin person without surgery?  The solution was right in front of me.  One of my weight loss clients wasn’t doing too well.  He was really struggling to keep his food intake down before the Hypno-band operation.  So we went to work to change his whole attitude to food and get him to think thin and not be attracted to high calorie fat-building foods, just like the lady in the Horizon program.

I carefully designed our next session focussing on how he felt about himself (not too good)  and how proud of himself he would feel when he had lost weight and acquired the slim boddy shape he wanted so badly.

Initial feedback has been very positive.  He’s not thinking about food much at all.  This is a big change for him.  He has no cravings for fat-building, unhealthy food and has started to lose some weight.  So he now thinks slim and is becoming slimmer…..