There have been a number of articles in the press this week about Nigella Lawson, and the use of hypnosis to lose weight.

The story highlights that the how we think about food is critical to changing our behaviour with it.  Previously, Nigella had only mentioned exercise and portion control as the tools used to achieve this desired change.  In another article she explained that eating what she likes is important: she wanted to eat what she liked, but smaller portions and without feeling guilty!

Its now been suggested that Nigella also had a course of hypnotherapy treatments to help her reduce her portion sizes.

So assuming Nigella wanted to continue enjoying her favourite foods, but just eat less of it; hypnotherapy would have been used to recruit her unconscious mind to tell her when she had eaten enough, and sooner than once might have done…. and perhaps to eat only at mealtimes and designated snack times etc.

The key to the success of weightloss and weight management is identifying  what’s causing you to consume more than you want/need to; and how you want to think , feel and behave differently that will lead to weight loss and sustained weight management.

Cognitive Hypnotherapy then helps to re-programme the unconscious mind to change any unhelpful thinking that  lead to the unwanted behaviours.  It’s simply replacing that old thinking eg food equals comfort, food equals entertainment it with the new ‘desired’  thinking from you rational conscious mind e.g food equals fuel (even if it needs to taste nice).