Are You Fat?

"Pamela" despaired of ever reducing her weight permanently. She'd tried many diets and weight-loss programs. Always lost some weight but then gained it all back -- plus a few additional pounds.

Her mistake was to focus on food.

Any diet plan will help you to lose weight in the short-term. But because the focus is on food (especially deprivation) you'll gain the fat back when the diet program ends.

To keep yourself trim and healthy,

-stop focussing on what and how much you eat
-be aware of your negative self-hypnosis
-use positive hypnosis to deal with the cause(s) of your overweight and overeating.

We are not referring to people with a glandular or other genuinely medically-caused fat condition.

There does, however, seem to be an industry dedicated to the concept that everything is controlled by your genes. But genetics is not destiny.

Therapeutic hypnosis can uncover the roots of your weight surplus and untangle you from them.

Some of the emotional or psychological reasons that might underpin your fat:
-fear
-revenge
-anger
-abuse
-trauma
-need for attention

Or a combination of such reasons. Food provides temporary comfort. That's what Priscilla learned growing up with a mother who hated her. From an early age she discovered that stuffing herself with bread while she cried alone in the cupboard where her widowed mother imprisoned her most of the time gave her a sense of being filled up.

Like Keith, who as a little boy was sexually abused by his uncle, Priscilla felt alone, unloved and confused. Both found solace in eating. Both felt safer as fat kids. Deliberately making themselves unattractive seemed an effective protection against predators.

Abuse may be subtle. The little girl who is forced to take responsibility for her younger siblings for instance. Cecilia grew up almost as a second mother to her three younger brothers and two sisters. Their parents took it for granted that Cecilia would prepare meals, do the washing-up and the laundry and make sure her siblings ate their meals, were suitably clothed and did their homework.

Cecilia's resentment solidified into an intense resentment towards both her parents and her brothers and sisters. Until she plunged into hypnotherapy, she unintentionally turned this anger onto herself. One of the ways she suffered punishment was to eat junk food -- almost exclusively.

So Cecilia grew very fat and hated herself even more.

Overeating is an ineffectual way to cope. And its variants (such as bulimia and anorexia) can lead to acute suffering after the initial comfort of ingesting food.

Not all fat arises from issues in childhood. Some adults turn to overeating in a futile attempt to deal with rejection (e.g., divorce, prejudice, losing your job.)

To focus on food as the problem is to avoid the reasons you are fat. Many fat people feel undeserving, worthless. Sadly, they compound their misery by eating even more, despite the physical discomfort they experience daily.

Some commercial diet programs are designed to make you return. Of course you gain back whatever weight you've lost when the diet program you follow is boring, restrictive, repetitive, frustrating in its requirements and avoids at all costs dealing with the underlying reasons that you're fat.

Any diet plan will allow you to lose weight initially. That's because the bottom line is, to quote my adorable little wife, "when you reduce calories in and maximise calories out" the weight will drop off.

An overeater should ask him or herself "Who benefits from my being fat?" and "Who am I punishing?"

Hypnotherapy can help a fat person change his or her life. At the simplest level, with hypnosis you can be motivated to eat well with sensible portion size, to exercise and to raise your self-respect.

On a deeper level, by dealing with the reasons you are fat, hypnotherapy can free you from self-disgust, ill-health and an unhappy existence.

Bryan Knight, MSW., PhD., used to specialise in helping adults who were sexually abused as children. Many of them turned to food in a vain attempt to feel comforted. Now Dr Knight provides hypnotherapy uniquely over the Internet. Find out more about him and hypnosis at his fact-filled site