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Alison, Weight Loss - case study 3. Half a stone per week no diet changes.

Alison came to see me for weight loss Hypnotherapy. She was in her mid twenties, had a good career and secure relationships. Her life seemed relatively stress free and she was happy with it except for the problem she felt that she had; too much fat content.
Personally I don't believe in weighing people to discover their weight, it is not particularly accurate or important. It's a persons body fat percentage that determines whether one is healthy or not. It's a high fat percentage that is responsible for problems such as heart attacks and high blood pressure not the weight of a person. Weighing someone on scales is a way of weighing their whole body, bones included. These are all variable. 'Body fat percentage' not only monitors fat but also muscle, bone and water content too, an important factor in women as they often hold water during menstrual cycles.
A vast amount of bodybuilders are over weight when related to the charts that are devised to monitor weight. In reality they have low body fat and high muscle percentages, this puts their weight up to obese standards which is mis-leading. In simple terms you cannot get away from the fact that if one looks in the mirror whilst naked, it is relatively easy to notice the saggy bits that are fat, thus determining weight control needs. This said one must be aware of people's mis-conceptions about their own bodies and the rising awareness of eating disorders clarifies the problems. There are vast differences in people's perceptions of their own bodies and how they should be. If in doubt seek professional help.
Once body fat is established one can then use scales to monitor how much they need to lose now that they are aware of the amount in pounds of body weight which is fat.
Alison was the type of client who was unhappy with her figure, but certainly not in the bracket of someone who has unconscious causes that may hinder our therapy. It was a good signal that she had a secure life with a supportive partner. People's lives often tell you much more than some realise. This is often confirmed after therapy, when every area of the persons life just seems to drop into place.
I explained to Alison the types of therapy and what I could do for her, she was happy and quite insistent to commencing suggestion therapy. I saw her for one hour a week for several weeks. This is not always the case, usually one or two sessions is good enough, but I wanted some feed back from Alison and she was happy to do so. In addition she wanted the commitment from me. Several booked sessions meant to her that I would have a duty to continue if the therapy did not work (people are very pessimistic about hypnosis- initially).
After the first session Alison lost half a stone,* which she was very pleased about. She came bounding into my office full of optimism ready for her next session. I questioned Alison about her diet in the last week and she was a little ashamed that she had changed nothing. She still ate her favourite chocolate bars and did no exercise at all. Although it's good to have the dietary assistance when practising weight loss hypnosis, I was secretly quite pleased about this occurrence. It is not always easy to monitor the effectiveness of hypnosis in areas such as weight loss because patients have this habit of trying a lot harder when they are assisted by a therapist., therefore helping the perceived effects of the hypnotherapy. Another issue is that when one is paying for any sort of therapy people tend to have a commitment to success. They don't like the idea of wasting money, and the higher the fee the stronger the will to succeed. This makes it difficult to attribute the hypnosis to the weight loss solely. Alison was one of the cases where she was not interested in 'trying', she was going to let hypnosis do all the work.
I was glad to see that Alison continued to lose the weight week after week, at smaller but significant amounts and it turned out that she has kept the weight off ever since. And certainly she was happy with the results.