If you are reading this article, you have likely tried to lose weight countless times only to fail or gain back your losses. Most diets and weight loss plans or supplements do help you lose... if your emotions are steady or you have adequate outlets for emotional eating. Let's face it. We all know that losing weight and keeping it off is hard. It's so hard people are willing to try anything without any solid scientific basis.
I try to be different for my patients. I want products or techniques that will help the patient lose weight rapidly with minimal to no return to previous weight. However in the maze of products out there, there are hundreds of diets available, thousands of solutions, and very poor results, and almost negligible maintenance results. With the usual core of weight loss methods out there, most people end up yo-yoing their weight again. I'm different in that I only recommend products with sound scientific bases and medical-doctor accepted research to back it up.
I have realized that the missing factor in lots of weight loss programs is the lack of insight into emotional and stress eating. There is so little insight that it is just overlooked, even though some studies say 75% of all diet failures are related to emotional eating. Elevated stress hormones can cause weight gain as well in the absence of overeating. We have to deal with the emotions and stress if we are going to get anywhere with 75% of the people trying to lose weight.
Since 75% of overeating is caused by emotional eating it makes no sense to help someone lose weight without addressing this factor. This high percentage also means that a lot of us are using food to suppress the stressors and anxious moments in our lives.
In today's high-stress society, many of us, adults and children, eat high fat or high sugar foods to soothe our emotions or relieve our stress and anxiety. One reason why there's more emotional eating today is that people are crunched for time and under a lot of pressure. When we eat, we sit down and allow the pressures of the day to disappear for that short moment, and our autonomic nervous system, the one that we don't think about, winds down and allows digestion to occur. For many people this is their ONLY break in the day and they equate eating with stress relief.
As a physician, I know countless other, better ways of dealing with stress; but for someone who has only used food to relieve stress, they don't see it and they eat as if they are taking a pill for anxiety or drinking alcohol to reduce pain and stress. My methods are 100-200 times more effective than food, but if the patient is never offered the alternative, they return RIGHT to food after losing any weight. This cause of yo-yo dieting must be dealt with.
I use hypnotherapy, emotional freedom technique (EFT), and biofeedback for my patients losing weight. Hypnotherapy is the most powerful method, EFT is the most rapid, and biofeedback is the best for sustained results. Also I use deep breathing exercises, Neurolinguistic programming, progressive muscle relaxation, and mental imaging as my core of stress-reducing methods since they all have firm scientific evidence of their ability to reduce stress.
Many times the first thing a patient needs is a time-management system. I show them how to prioritize their health, family, and selves first, then put work and other issues in the times around the foundational parts of their lives. Without time management, many patients will say they aren't able to take 5-10 minutes out of their life for stress management. The funny thing is they took 1 hour out of their day to see me in my medical office proving they do have the ability.
Once time management and effective stress relief become parts of their lives, the patient now has a base point to start losing weight more effectively so emotional eating no longer sabotages their efforts. Once emotional eating is eliminated, the weight-loss client is able to move forward with more self esteem knowing their efforts will no longer be blind-sided by stress or emotional eating.
Biofeedback software and personal stress-measuring devices are the best for maintaining the results. The client can see first hand how their emotions are at times of eating, and use biofeedback to reduce their stress immediately. Once they learn this control, THIS becomes their method of stress control, and food is no longer part of that treatment.
If you were to try to lose weight, only to find yourself eating at times of stress or high emotion, I highly recommend hypnosis, EFT, NLP, and biofeedback as was of teaching you to cope with stress more effectively, safely, and with less weight fluctuation. For those trying to lose weight, imagine using these techniques and watching your hard work pay off... for the long term.
If you would like to see my techniques that allow for permanent 1-pound-per-day weight loss, visit my blog listed in my signature below.
About this Author
Arthur Apolinario, M.D., M.P.H.
Weight Loss Hypnosis
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