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• Issues overview

• Emotions

• Confidence and self-esteem 1 - From self-doubt to self-belief
• Confidence and self-esteem 2 - How much do you like yourself? - a self-esteem test
• Confidence and self-esteem 3 - What causes low self-esteem?
• Confidence and self-esteem 4 - How everday-confident are you? - a quiz
• Depression 1 - How to overcome depression - key facts
• Depression 2 - The causes of depression of psychological origin
• Depression 3 - Therapy or anti-depressants?
• Depression 4 - Are you depressed? - a self-test
• Fertility and IVF
• Fertility and IVF - the evidence base
• Keys for transforming emotions
• Weight and eating 1 - Weight loss
• Weight and eating 2 - Bingeing and emotional eating
• Weight and eating 3 - "Have you got an eating disorder?" - a test

• Hypnotherapy

• Driving anxiety
• Driving anxiety - the RAC research
• Fear of flying
• Fear of flying - reassuring facts
• Fears and phobias
• IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome)
• IBS symptoms
• Insomnia
• Insomnia - great tips for a good night's sleep
• Panic attacks
• Smoking - quit forever with the right type of hypnosis
• Smoking - the truth behind bogus "85% success rate" claims
• Stress
• Stress - a test: is this you?

• Relationships

• Relationship counselling

Hypnotherapy for successful weight loss

Hypnotherapy and hypnosis are proven by medical research to be highly effective methods for controlling eating, losing weight and treating obesity. I combine these with mindful eating exercises and cognitive-behavioural self-help to make a powerful and comprehensive weight-loss programme. It includes healing for emotions driving the eating, if that is needed.

It's really important to know, and most websites don't make clear, that weight loss and unhappy eating aren't one single issue. There's a spectrum from habit overeating via comfort eating through bingeing, binge-vomiting and on all the way on to, in the far extreme, severe anorexia nervosa. These different eating issues need very different methods! To lose weight or control eating most successfully, you have to know where you are and apply the right approach.

• Habit eating needs a few sessions of simple hypnosis.
• Emotional eating, binge-eating or intermittent binge-vomiting needs hypnotherapy and other advanced tools (- and I offer far more than just standard hypnotherapy.)
• Anorexia needs specialist medical help.

Very roughly, the levels of food issue go something like this:

1. Habit over-eating (below on this page - what works for losing weight with hypnosis ) This is the general national obesity epidemic - too much of the wrong foods. Includes also can't-eat-vegetables syndrome, chocaholism (chocolate addiction), and crispaholism (crisp addiction). Commonly combined with comfort eating. Hypnosis is proven by medical research to be very helpful.

2. Comfort eating (below on this page: overcoming comfort eating with hypnosis) This is when you are eating emotionally, and the reasons are obvious - you feel stressed / down / rejected etc and turn to the chocolate biscuits. Most of us do this at times and it's perfectly OK, unless it starts to pile on weight - and that is very common.

3. Chaotic or driven over-eating / dieting, including bingeing and mild to moderate eating disorder symptoms This is when eating feels a charged issue, maybe even completely out of control, but the root causes aren't clear. (These causes are sometimes emotional, sometimes not.) This includes: • emotional eating • bingeing / binge eating disorder • food obsession • food addiction • secret gorging • compulsive overeating • overeating due to depression • over-eating due to feeling worthless • intermittent binge-vomiting and binge / purging (ie mild to moderate symptoms of bulimia nervosa) • extremist dieting and obsession with being thin (in effect, mild to moderate aspects of anorexia nervosa, but where the person is still eating enough and, if a woman, still has periods) • unrealistic body image, and excessive concern with body image • exercise addiction / obsession • obsessional calorie counting • spontaneous vomiting • orthorexia (obsession with healthy foods) • "diet trauma syndrome" (my term for when someone has yo-yo dieted so often they become afraid of eating) • ... and many other things

4. Severe eating disorders (See: "Have I got an eating disorder?" ) Severe bulimia is can be damaging to health and severe anorexia has the potential to be fatal. I can only help people with such major food issues as a component part of their medical team. Please note that in this situation I work on healing the deep underlying emotions, using advanced methods which go beyond standard hypnotherapy. I don't simply and solely "hypnotise people to make them eat."

With the right approach it can be easy to lose weight and feel happy and relaxed about food. It's completely possible, and medical research proves hypnosis can be VERY helpful for weight loss. And my programme includes much more than just hypnotherapy - mindful eating, cognitive-behavioural self-help, emotional healing if needed, and more.
To make an appointment, just ring me directly.
Leave a message and I'll call you back.
Andrew White 0845-3510604 / 0117-968-7307

Simple habit overeating and simple comfort eating - what works to lose weight?

There's a national obesity epidemic, and the cause is simple. Big portions of calorie-rich food on top of inactive lifestyle pile on the weight.

Don't put up with being weighed down by weight! There’s nothing mysterious about being slim. The French love good food, and their diet in fact contains much more fat than in the USA. But the Americans are very obese, while the French remain slim. Their secret? – small portions, eaten at family meals with ceremony and enjoyment, plus a certain self-pride.

And the Poles, for example, are shocked to see how overweight we are in the UK. In Poland they eat more vegetables, more home cooking, little convenience food, and they are happy, well-fed and SLIM. They don't feel hungry, starved or deprived. Being slim is simple and achievable - for the French, for the Poles, AND FOR YOU.

Simple comfort eating (stressful day, reach for the biscuits) is typically easily dealt with by a combination of hypnosis and easy application of mindfulness while eating. The French and the Poles have the same everyday stresses as everyone else and they don't feel driven to comfort eating. (If the emotional component is stronger, then see here for emotional eating, bingeing, and mild to moderate eating disorders.

(1) The key to weight loss is FEELING GREAT

The key to losing weight is feeling positive, and hypnotherapy is SO helpful in achieving that. It's easy to lose weight when:

• You feel you deserve to lose weight
• You're motivated by all the good things being slimmer is going to do for you - health, energy, vitality, attractiveness. You can weigh all those good things in your mind against "recreational" eating and know the recreational food just isn't worth it.
• You feel proud of yourself and in choosing food and in your eating habits.
• Sometimes, people find that contacting their spritual self in the moment of being tempted to over-eat is a key.
• You can picture yourself slim and really believe in your bones that you can achieve that.
• It's hugely liberating to learn you have the POWER TO CHOOSE whether to comfort eat or not, and that you can actually feel BETTER when you don't comfort eat than when you do.

Hypnosis and hypnotherapy have a wonderful capacity to flood the mind with bright, positive feelings and success images which can be exactly what's needed to galvanise weight loss which really works.

(2) Don't diet ... really, don't

The thing to avoid at all costs is deprivation dieting: “I really want it, but I’m going to force myself to be good and not have it.” This always fails. Again, hypnosis, hypnotherapy and the other tools I use are excellent at preventing this inner fight.

Indeed, more than deprivation dieting: don't diet at all. A diet lasts as long as the book or article you read is fresh in your mind, then it wears off. And whoosh!, the weight comes back on again. What you need is a sustainable long-term shift in your relationship with food. This is completely achievable and if you are just a habit eater it needn't take long at all. But you don't get it from one-size-fits-all suggestion hypnosis. What I do is always individualised to each person. As you need, we cover some or all of:

• Powering up your motivation: what is it that matters so much that you would rather have it than overeating? Hypnosis is great for this.
• Re-programming your eating habits and again, hypnosis is excellent at doing that.
• Distinguishing hunger eating from “recreational” eating and eating when you are hungry, stoping when you are full. For a couple of weeks you may need to do a simple, easy mindfulness exercise while eating to help you to change eating habits. I've had clients whose entire eating problem has been solved just by this simple mindfullness exercise.
• You may need to work out strategies to deal with predictably-unpredictable events such as visiting friends, eating out or going away.
• You may need to unlock your eating habits from your overall "habitweb".
• You need to stick at it all until the new habits click.
• And remember ... the key to it all ... FEELING GREAT! The key to weight control is using the power of hypnosis is to feel great, knowing that you deserve to be slim, feeling proud of your eating habits and effortless good choices.

Along with habit overeating I class things like chocaholism and crispaholism (chocolate addiction and crisp addiction). These are typically just habits, most often dealt with completely in just one or two sessions.

Finally, a lot of people can't eat vegetables. There is a small epidemic of this! It is also normally easily cured in a session or two.

Please see here for emotional eating, bingeing, and mild to moderate eating disorder symptoms.

With the right approach it can be easy to lose weight and feel happy and relaxed about food. It's completely possible and medical research proves hypnosis can be VERY helpful. And I offer much more than hypnotherapy, including also mindful eating, cognitive-behavioural self-help, and more. For an appointment or more information, just ring. Leave a message and I'll call you back.
Andrew White 0845-3510604 / 0117-968-7307

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In general, mankind, since the improvement of cookery, eats about twice as much as nature requires.

Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790)