A 66 year old woman decided to lose excess weight with hypnosis. She was an extremely capable, optimistic person who nonetheless experienced significant stresses during our time together. As a result, she had many opportunities to become aware of, and change, the ways she comforted herself with food. She was working as an executive for a non-profit religious organization when we began but retired soon after. Although she had looked forward to it, retirement proved suddenly stressful when the stock market crashed in late 2008 and her retirement income was instantly, drastically reduced. In addition, she suffered from adult-onset asthma made worse by a bout of flu, and she experienced several injuries that made it difficult or, at times, impossible for her to exercise. Finally, she was grieving for a close friend who was suffering from dementia, and this plus other events triggered her grief for her husband of 40 years who had died two years earlier. In spite of these challenges, with hypnosis she was able to change her eating habits and lose more than 30 pounds as of our last visit, planning to continue on her own. Emotional support and new coping strategies are integral to every hypnosis program I offer. This client learned how to manage her emotions in constructive ways that amazed her with their efficacy.

Because of this womans age, health issues, and inability to exercise consistently, the weight came off slowly but steadily. Therapeutic nutrition with supplementation or other physiological support would likely have been a helpful adjunct, but she was not receptive to this suggestion. She made a few significant changes to the way she ate and began to lose inches before the weight loss showed up on her scale. In fact, since it takes 6 weeks to change a fitness level, I ask clients to avoid the scale for the first 6 weeks of their hypnosis program. During this time, they often first notice that they feel more physical energy and greater emotional wellbeing. Next they notice that their clothes are becoming looser. Finally, after 6 weeks, they measure and weigh themselves. Normally, the loss in inches is more impressive than the loss in pounds in the beginning, with weight coming off more rapidly as time goes on. The hypnosis weight loss program does not involve a diet but a healthy eating plan. The weight comes off in a healthy way, by burning fat, not by simply releasing fluid or starving the body. At the six-week mark, in this clients own words, weight loss was just one of the benefits she had received: I do not have food cravings. I actually prefer to eat fruits and vegetables. In addition, I always carried a great deal of stress in the muscles of my neck and upper back. While relaxing with hypnosis, I am able to release it, and this has been a real bonus. The best is yesterday I saw my doctor, and she was thrilled with my progress. As we continued to meet once a month for about a year, she commented often on how she was making much more conscious, less impulsive, less emotional food choices, from the grocery store to her kitchen to the many social events that were part of her lifestyle.

As spring turned to summer in Massachusetts, we addressed another level of emotional healing in this clients life. Then Senator Ted Kennedy was frequently in the news as he was being diagnosed with brain cancer. Local stations even displayed pictures of his MRIs and other brain scans in vivid, repetitive detail. This coverage, along with the rapidly increasing dementia that was stealing a good friend away from her, triggered my clients dormant grief over her husbands death from brain cancer. He had suffered for six years from the time of his diagnosis, so her many happy memories of him had been overlaid with the memories of his long illness. Now the constant news updates made her feel as if she was reliving the whole painful six years with her husband. I hypnotized her to detach from the unhappy memories while keeping the positive ones, and afterward I taught her an exercise to use whenever she started to feel upset. Over the next few months, she told me several times how the simple mental technique worked almost like magic, allowing her to feel calm and in control, detaching at will from what she chose to forget while being able to bring up the happy times with her beloved husband whenever she wanted.