|
Our weight management program consists of three sessions. We are open to scheduling
your sessions to fit your needs, however we recommend that you space out your
sessions by 14 to 21 days. Many other programs you may have encountered in your
research involve as many as five to ten sessions. How is ours different?
We are very selective with our clients. When we speak on the phone I will ask you some questions
to assess your current level of commitment. If you still have feelings of ambivalence perhaps we
can work those out on the phone with a slightly more involved discussion. In either case, because
we guarantee your success in our weight management program, we must be certain that you are willing to
vehemently pursue your weight management goals. Knowing how motivated our clientele are from
the onset, I am supremely confident that a three-session program is ideal. Any less could, possibly,
not provide enough time to introduce positive weight management habits in the subconscious mind.
Any more, I feel, places too much emphasis on the hammer and not enough on the carpenter.
Remember that you are responsible for enacting this wonderful change in your life. Hypnosis is a
very effective tool in assisting you achieve your goals, but it is a tool nonetheless.
Here is exactly what this hypnosis tool will do for your weight management goals:
- Help control cravings and urges.
- Reduce negative emotions and improve self-esteem.
- Change your negative eating habits, automatically.
- Reinforce positive eating habits, subconsciously.
- Help end emotional eating.
- Help you stay motivated and visualize you goal.
- Promotes a desire for weight-managing foods.
- Reinforces the desire to exercise.
If for some reason you still haven’t decided to call by next week, that’s just fine. I can wait until
you’re 100% ready. However, I encourage you to change two more habits this week in addition
to stepping up your diet and exercise programs. Select habits that you are confident will be easy
for you to stick with. Make sure they will not be too disruptive to your daily routine. Remember
this program is designed to succeed so we will not be employing any quick fixes. Here’s a few
suggestions you might find suit you:
- Reduce your daily intake of caffeine by 25%. Caffeine is involved in chemical process in the
body which causes an increase of insulin production and reduces the bodies burning of stored
fat. Not to mention it is a diuretic, depleting your body of the water it needs.
- Drink 2 glasses of water a day. Water is essential in the metabolism of stored body fat. Drinking
a cold glass of ice water before a meal can cause your stomach to shrink slightly and make you
feel full quicker.
- Take the stairs instead of the elevator or escalator, even if only for one or two floors.
- Park in the spot furthest from the store. Not having to joust for that closer spot will lower your
anxiety and knowing you went out of your way to exercise will raise your self-esteem.
- Increase your consumption of high fiber foods. This will help you feel satiated more quickly
and it …uh…accelerates your digestion.
- Place a set of hand weights by the phone, in your workspace, or next to the computer. This is
a small step in beginning a strength-training program.
- If you want to have dessert, dive right in. But eat only half of it.
So just what is the point here? While you are preparing yourself for a 100% dedication to achieving
your desired weight, you are giving yourself something very important. Proof. With just a few small
commitments you are proving to yourself that you CAN change a habit. You are proving to yourself
that you ARE in control of your weight. But again, most importantly, you are proving to yourself that
YOU HAVE THE DESIRE AND THE DEDICATION TO ACHIEVE YOUR DESIRED WEIGHT.
If you still haven’t called by the following week, guess what? Take all of your new weight management
habits a step further. Slowly and comfortably increase the calories burned in your exercise program,
begin strength training if you haven’t already, and improve your diet. That doesn’t necessarily mean
eating less. It can mean simply eating smarter and eating healthier. Of course all of these changes
require more dedication on your part, as you must now keep very careful records of your exercise
and eating habits. But you must know that these records provide you something essential to successful
change: FEEDBACK. You simply cannot enact change in your life without feedback. You have to know
if the results you are achieving are the results you should be expecting. So a detailed account of your
daily caloric intake, caloric expenditure, and a good estimate of your basal metabolic rate are an absolute
must.
If you are not familiar with basal metabolic rate (BMR), sometimes called basal energy expenditure (BEE)
you need to make yourself familiar with them now and determine your BMR today! The Harris-Benedict Equation
is one of the most reliable estimators of BMR used today. Follow
this link
to a very well organized site that will guide you through determining your BMR. Simply, BMR is how much
energy your body uses daily just to sustain your life. It is how many calories your body consumes while
at rest. So if your BMR + Calories burned during exercise and activity = amount of calories consumed,
then you should expect your weight to remain static for that day. This is, of course, an oversimplification
of an extremely complex process that is influenced daily by a multitude of factors, but it is enough to give
you reliable expectations. And if you simply don’t want to go through the trouble of these calculations try
the rule of thumb of eating 10 times your body weight in calories each day to begin burning fat.
So we have mentioned throughout your weight-management program the terms “goals”, “expectations”,
and “results” but we have not yet defined these terms. Recalling the suggestion of carefully selecting
your words to change an outcome, what is your goal in your weight management program? Lose weight?
We know that’s not correct. Shed or cast aside unwanted pounds? Better words but I am guessing that
might not be exactly what you are really trying to achieve. You really don’t care about changing numbers
on a scale, do you?
The vast majority of persons interested in weight-management do not want to shed unwanted pounds, they
want to shed unwanted FAT! This is yet another important distinction between weight loss programs and our
weight management program. In addition to the struggle that weight loss creates in the subconscious, you
are setting yourself up for failure by making losing weight your goal. Your goal may actually be something
more like “I want to improve my generally health and well being” or “I want to fit into that bathing suit or
that favorite dress”. But it should really be more specific than that. In both of these cases it could be “I want to
control my body fat to…” . Fat is what is degrading your general health and fat is what is keeping you out
of that favorite dress.
So here is your next new habit and I think you’ll like this one. Lose the scale! You do not need it. It is not
helping you reach your goal because it cannot tell you your percent body fat. Even those hi-tech new
scales which supposedly measure body fat do not work (I know. I have the most expensive one on the
market. It is +/- 4-6% every day. I hope I’m not vacillating that much.) So how do I recommend you
receive your essential feedback? My favorite method is with photographs. Have a friend or loved one
take full body shots of you with a Polaroid camera the first of every month. You should be in the most
revealing clothes you are comfortable with, a bathing suit or your unmentionables (what my grandma calls
underwear) are ideal. Take one picture standing relaxed and one in the body-builder double bicep pose.
Flex your biceps, your chest, your stomach, and your legs during this second picture. Now you may not see
much of a difference between the two photos in terms of muscle mass if you haven’t been doing any weight
training. That is to be expected. But just wait until next month!
The second thing you can do for feedback is to actually measure your body fat. Measuring your body’s
displacement of water (hydrostatic) and air (Bod Pod) are generally considered the best methods but
both are costly and not readily available. (Actually, an autopsy is the best method but it is really
inconvenient as it requires you to be dead.) So your best option is using skinfold calipers. Used correctly,
skinfold calipers can be a highly accurate (+/- 2%), consistent, inexpensive determination of the thickness
of subcutaneous fat. You can perform the measurement yourself although it is preferable to have someone
else do it. Most reputable fitness centers will have professionals that can do this for you. There are other
methods available to you as well such as bioelectrical impedance and infra-red that you may wish to explore.
You may, at this point, be thinking this is a lot of information for a hypnosis program. Yes it is. Your average
hypnosis “weight-loss” program consists of you listening to a series of tapes that claim you can lose weight
effortlessly and without any diet. I’m sure you have realized by now that you were deceived. The good news
is I am willing to pay for your confidence in our program. Bring those tapes in for your first session and we
will give you 10% off the cost of your program. It is our way of thanking you for giving hypnosis a second
chance.
Now on to more information. Some folks have a hard time understanding why their scales are now obsolete.
I often get asked, “Isn’t losing fat going to make me lose weight?” By itself, yes, it will. But remember your
goal. (I’m assuming you are like 99% of individuals and you wish to control your body fat to promote your
general health and well-being.) Controlling body fat means burning it off and keeping it off. To keep it off and
promote general health and well-being you need to build muscle. Because muscle is more dense than fat you
will not necessarily lose weight when you begin strength training. Depending on your starting point you may
even gain weight. But you will be getting rid of unwanted inches as the denser muscle takes up less space
than unwanted fat.
Why do you need muscle to keep the fat off and promote general health and well-being?
Here’s the cycle that may have originally put on your pounds. Something happened in your life that made
you less active or possibly sedentary. Then, due to your inactivity and your natural aging you lost muscle
mass. This caused your metabolism to slow, your BMR to lower, and as a result you gained fat. Because
you gained fat you became even less active, lost more muscle mass, an’ round and round she goes. Building
muscle will break this cycle.
Increasing your overall muscle mass will make you less prone to injury and benefit your athletic performance.
Have you heard those radio commercials that claim you drink their stuff before you go to bed and you can
burn fat while you sleep? Yeah right. But get this: If you increase your muscle mass through strength
training your muscles will continue to consume calories and fight fat, even while you sleep!
Muscle keeps you active and burns calories. A pound of muscle at rest consumes 37 calories every day.
Fat keeps you inactive and burns squat. A pound of fat consumes a whopping 1 calorie every day.
Strength training will enable you to effectively manage your weight. It will promote your general health
and well-being. It is possibly the one component of our program that you have neglected in every crash
diet you have ever punished yourself with.
Remember our goal is to empower you with solutions that will fit your goals and your lifestyle. We know
you can be successful if you are able to make your program feel good, emotionally and physically. If you
find that the recommendations herein just aren’t for you, please give us a call and we can discuss other options.
Whether or not you eventually do call us, please stay active in your weight management program. Stay
positive, enjoy your diet and your exercise program. Stay focused on your goals, you do have the ability
to successfully attain them. Stay motivated, a lot of people less intelligent than you have achieved their
ideal weight. This process really is not that difficult, you have just been made to think it is. So when you
think you’re ready for help, we’ll be ready too.
Top Of Page
|
