Why Hypnosis Will Work (When Nothing Else Has)
Weight loss. A multibillion-dollar industry. Day in and day out you’re sold solutions. “Quick-fix” diets and supplements. Liquids and powders. Exercise mats and smart watches. Apps and smart monitors. Thigh-gap machines and detox programs. But does the multibillion-dollar weight loss industrial complex want you to lose weight and keep it off? Absolutely not! They make their money if the struggle continues, not if you finally discover a lasting solution. You already know that get-thin-quick diets don’t work in the long term. You already know hating your body doesn’t cause it to lose weight. And yet, fad diets, self-hatred, negative self-talk, and gimmicky products prevail.
If you feel duped by the weight loss industry, you’re not alone.
A body mass index (BMI) of 30 or over is considered obese, but in 2016 the average woman in the United States was 170 pounds and five foot three with a BMI of 29.6; the average man was 197 pounds and five foot seven with a BMI of 29.1.1 This puts the average American on the cusp of obesity.
While BMI, a value derived from the mass and height of a person, isn’t necessarily the best or only way to assess health, it can be a useful reference point and a potentially helpful screening tool for overweightness or obesity.
The obesity epidemic is not confined to one country. The World Health Organization has issued the following key facts:
•Worldwide obesity has nearly tripled since 1975.
•In 2016, more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, were overweight. Of these over 650 million were obese.
•39% of adults aged 18 years and over were overweight in 2016, and 13% were obese.
•Most of the world’s population live in countries where overweight and obesity kill more people than underweight.
•41 million children under the age of 5 were overweight or obese in 2016.
•Over 340 million children and adolescents aged 5–19 were overweight or obese in 2016.
•Obesity is preventable.2
How can the average American be nearly obese when there is a multibillion-dollar weight loss industrial complex?
The truth is, the vast majority of the weight loss industry doesn’t want you to lose weight, they don’t want you to look better, and they don’t want you to feel better. Not in the long run, anyway. Pushing misery and failure sells far more products than promoting happiness and long-term health does.
Literally thousands of books recommend a diet that “is the only one that works.” Every five years two dozen new books crop up telling you why those now outdated diets are toxic and disease causing and why you need this new, equally extreme diet instead. The system is rigged to keep you buying more and more.
But enough cynicism. You’re here to change your life, and that requires courage, energy, and a positive outlook! While it’s important to know what you’re up against, it’s far more important to focus on the solution rather than the problem. Rather than tackling the behemoth of contradictory and confusing information that is the “weight loss” field, we’re going to link arms together and take the road much, much less traveled.
This book will not tout any particular diet, besides eating real foods that come from the earth and weren’t made in a laboratory.
This book will not teach any particular exercise routine outside of simply making it a priority to move your body until it releases endorphins.
This book will not give you new food recommendations or exercise plans because there is already plenty of good material from doctors, dietitians, and personal trainers (although in the bonus materials available at www.CloseYourEyesLoseWeight.com, I will recommend my favorite experts from these fields, along with a certified nutritionist’s suggested meal plan and recipe ideas).
This book is different from other weight loss books out there.
This book was written for your subconscious mind, and that is the precise reason this book will have a tremendously positive impact on your life. The subconscious is “the totality of mental processes of which the individual is not aware.”3 In other words, the subconscious is where the root of your habits, beliefs, and emotional responses lives. It’s an important place. The foundations of ALL your habits. ALL your beliefs. And ALL your emotional responses. Yet no one has ever taught you how to access and upgrade this almighty place of importance—until now.
I hope you will find what follows to feel like a breath of fresh air—clean, clear, light, invigorating, energizing. In fact, take a nice, deep letting-go breath now and allow yourself to relax deeper into the realization that you are about to experience something that is likely brand new for you.
Even more important, I know you will find in these pages something we all desire yet is hard to come by—results. Lasting results.
If you want to eat differently, fall in love with your magnificent body, and release emotional weight, then you will have to access your subconscious mind directly to do it. This book teaches you how.
Allow Me to (Very Briefly) Introduce Myself
I want to share with you the most important highlights of my background so you can have confidence in this book and the results that await you.
In 2010 I was living in the Lower East Side of New York City, working in a corporate job with long hours, big quotas to reach, and crushing stress. My days of partying as a “coping mechanism” were recently behind me and I wanted to quit smoking, but nothing seemed to work. Patches, gum, cold turkey, books on how to quit, I tried them all, but months after setting my first, then second, then third “quit date” I was still a smoker, even though I desperately wanted to stop.
Someone suggested I get hypnotized to quit smoking. It was an interesting idea, but I had massive reservations. Besides conjuring up creepy mind-control images of stage hypnotists, I thought, “I am incapable of relaxing enough to get hypnotized.” Still, I had nothing to lose, so I booked a hypnotherapy session.
And it worked.
I had been smoking a pack a day, yet, despite my reservations, I managed to quit in one session even when I didn’t believe it would work. Following my first session, I had two more to seal the deal, and after that any lingering cravings were gone, too. Immediately after these hypnotherapy sessions, some questions came to mind: Why is anyone smoking who doesn’t want to smoke? Why did I think this would be creepy mind control or clucking chickens when in fact it was one of the most relaxing, reassuring, fascinating experiences I’ve ever had? Why did I think this wouldn’t work when it was the only thing that did work . . . and so quickly? What is the subconscious? Why doesn’t everyone know what hypnosis really is? Why is using hypnosis to access the subconscious so effective at making lasting change? What is going on here?!
To me, the fact that people were suffering needlessly by smoking when they didn’t want to smoke was a human rights issue. I had to learn more.
Cut to a number of months later. I’d become a certified hypnotherapist, still working in a corporate job full-time but growing more and more enthralled with my side gig. My clients’ results were taking my breath away, but it wasn’t until I met Alexandre, Alex for short (whose story I tell in full in chapter one of my book Close Your Eyes, Get Free), that I saw what hypnosis could do.
You see, Alex, who had been paralyzed by a stroke for over three months, could not move a muscle on the left side of his body. Forty-five minutes into our very first hypnotherapy session together, Alex broke through his paralysis and voluntarily moved his left hand for the first time. Needless to say, neither of our lives have been the same since.
The Wellness Institute has a medical explanation for how it was possible for Alexandre to break through his paralysis during our first hypnotherapy session:
It is now a well-known fact that we stimulate the same brain regions when we visualize an action and when we actually perform that same action. For example, when you visualize lifting your right hand, it stimulates the same part of the brain that is activated when you actually lift your right hand . . .
When a person has a stroke due to a blood clot in a brain artery, blood cannot reach the tissue that the artery once fed with oxygen and nutrients, and that tissue dies. This tissue death then spreads to the surrounding area that does not receive the blood any more. However, if a person with this stroke imagines moving the affected arm or leg, brain blood flow to the affected area increases and the surrounding brain tissue is saved. Imagining moving a limb, even after it has been paralyzed after a stroke, increases brain blood flow enough to diminish the amount of tissue death.4
Witnessing a paralyzed man break through his paralysis, along with his debilitating, all-encompassing depression, changed me at the core. That day, I gave notice at my corporate job and vowed to help ease needless suffering in the world by making hypnosis mainstream. I launched my business through LivingSocial (a flash-sale company like Groupon) and sold 952 sessions in less than twenty-four hours and conducted more than a thousand private hypnotherapy sessions my first year as a hypnotherapist.
The best personal outcome from this experience? (Yes, it gets even better!) I ended up marrying Alexandre’s son, Bernardo; Alex became my father-in-law.
Since then Bernardo and I have been building our company, Grace Space Hypnosis, together. Grace Space Hypnosis and Grace Space Hypnotherapy School are now the number one providers of hypnosis education, products, and services in the world. To date, my work has been featured in the Atlantic, Forbes, Entrepreneur, InStyle, Marie Claire, BuzzFeed, Bustle, mindbodygreen, SheKnows, and dozens of podcasts. I am also grateful to be a recurring guest on The Dr. Oz Show and CBS’s hit show The Doctors. You can visit www.gshypnosis.com/press to read all these articles and watch our TV segments.
While Bernardo and I are proud of how far we’ve come since that miraculous day with his dad, we didn’t build all this alone. We built this company with our community as much as we built it for them. In fact, from time to time you’ll notice I reference customers, clients, and hypnotherapy certification students of mine, all members of our community whom we lovingly refer to as Grace Spacers, who provided questions, testimonials, and more to support the creation of this book.
As a hypnotherapist my expertise is your subconscious mind—how it was programmed, how to upgrade it, why it’s doing what it’s doing (even if that isn’t helping you), and, most important, how to condition your subconscious to serve you.
A Brief Introduction to Hypnosis
My first book-baby was born in 2017. Her name is Close Your Eyes, Get Free: Use Self-Hypnosis to Reduce Stress, Quit Bad Habits, and Achieve Greater Relaxation and Focus. She was written as the definitive guide to mastering self-hypnosis and is meant to be the foundational book from which many topic-specific books spring, of which Close Your Eyes, Lose Weight is the first.
I know how it can feel to read a book that feels like one big, long promotion for another book because the author keeps reiterating, “You can learn about this in my other book!” On the flip side, I also know how it can feel to read the same book twice because an author duplicates so much material from one book to the next. I will do my best to strike a balance by giving you the essentials of what you need here and by only reminding you at helpful intervals of concepts you can find in greater depth in Close Your Eyes, Get Free.
In the meantime, these are some of the topics covered in great detail in Close Your Eyes, Get Free, should you find yourself craving more in-depth information:
•how our habits are formed;
•the history of hypnosis;
•the science of hypnosis;
•my four steps to mental freedom; and
•my philosophy about how subconscious issues are formed and how to solve them by always going for the root cause.
Let’s briefly review the most important aspects of what you need to know for this book to change your life.
If you were to put electrodes on your beautiful head to measure the brainwaves you are producing at various levels of consciousness, this is what you would find:
•beta brainwaves—normal talking, waking consciousness
•alpha brainwaves—daydreaming, lightly relaxed consciousness
•theta brainwaves—deeply relaxed, highly focused, subconsciousness
•delta brainwaves—sleep, unconsciousness
You access your subconscious mind by relaxing into what is called the “theta brainwave state.” Hypnosis is how you intentionally enter into the theta brainwave state. Put another way, hypnosis is simply meditation with a goal. If you’ve ever meditated, or attempted to meditate, you know that while you may be physically and mentally relaxed during the practice, you are still aware of your surroundings and, especially early on in your practice, you are likely to have thoughts running through your mind. Hypnosis feels like meditation: a gentle, deeply relaxed state. You are still aware of your surroundings, you are in control, and you will likely continue to think some (if not many) conscious thoughts during the practice. It’s important to understand that if you continue to think thoughts during hypnosis, you are still “doing it correctly,” just as you would be with meditation. There is no blackout state, no amnesia, no getting stuck, no truth serum. That’s all Hollywood and stage-show nonsense.
This book is written with hypnotic language sprinkled throughout so that you will read it from a state that will result in faster integration and greater memory retention of the key points. Phrases such as “take a nice, deep letting-go breath” aren’t there to be cute; they intentionally help you to settle down into a lovely light hypnotic state.
According to a study published in Psychotherapy, researchers found that hypnotherapy outperformed both psychoanalysis and behavior therapy in terms of number of sessions required to achieve a specific result—with 93 percent recovery after six sessions for hypnotherapy, 72 percent recovery after twenty-two sessions for behavior therapy, and 38 percent recovery after six hundred sessions for psychoanalysis.5
Other incredible findings have shown that hypnosis therapy and treatment may do the following:
•Double the survival rate of breast cancer patients. Women with metastatic breast cancer who received group hypnosis therapy were able to reduce their pain experience by 50 percent compared to a control group.6 At a ten-year follow-up study of these same women, the hypnosis treatment group had double the survival rate of the control group.7
•Help bones heal 40 percent faster. Studies from Harvard Medical School show that hypnosis significantly reduces the time it takes to heal. Six weeks after an ankle fracture, those in the hypnosis group showed the equivalent of eight and a half weeks of healing.8
•Demonstrate up to 80 percent success rates in treating irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). Out of a thousand IBS patients treated with twelve sessions of hypnotherapy, 76 percent of the patients improved from the treatment. Success rates with females was 80 percent versus 62 percent with males.9
•Lower acute and chronic pains. A study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine showed that hypnotic suggestion significantly reduced acute pain experienced by hospital patients.10 A different trial showed that adding hypnosis to pain education (PE) resulted in improved outcomes over PE alone in patients with chronic nonspecific low back pain.11
•Improve quality of life for children with chronic pain syndrome. “The aim of this study was to assess the efficacy of self-hypnosis in a therapeutic education program (TEP) for the management of chronic pain in 26 children aged 7 to 17 years. Outcomes of the study were a total or a partial (at least 1) achievement of the therapeutic goals (pain, quality of sleeping, schooling, and functional activity). Sixteen patients decreased their pain intensity, 10 reached all of their therapeutic goals, and 9 reached them partially. Self-hypnosis was the only component of the TEP associated with these improvements. The current study supports the efficacy of self-hypnosis in our TEP program for chronic pain management in children.”12
•Help fibromyalgia patients heal from traumatic life events. A recent study designed to determine whether hypnosis was more effective than clinical interviews in finding traumatic events in fibromyalgia patients found that “in the hypnotic state, the patients expressed 9.8 times more traumatic life events than in the waking state, a statistically significant difference with a large effect size.”13
These studies, among countless others, show the incredible efficacy of hypnotherapy and how life changing this modality is. But despite the evidence, some still have reservations. This is understandable, given the way hypnosis has historically been represented in the media. Let’s talk about how and why hypnosis is the most effective way for you to reprogram your subconscious.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is hypnotherapy for me?
Yes! Hypnotherapy is for just about everyone (see contraindications below). It is an effective, noninvasive way to improve your life. That said, as I am not a medical doctor, please know that I am not offering medical advice. I recommend you discuss your desire to use hypnosis with your primary care physician before practicing any of the exercises or before following along with any of the audio recordings provided in the online materials.
Are there any circumstances under which hypnosis is not recommended?
The only known contraindication for hypnosis or hypnotherapy at this time is schizophrenia. Even so, this book is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as a substitute for professional medical advice. As always, a health-care professional should be consulted regarding your specific medical situation.
When should I practice self-hypnosis?
For obvious reasons, never listen to hypnosis recordings while driving, operating machinery, or doing anything you wouldn’t normally do while deeply relaxed. I recommend practicing self-hypnosis and listening to the provided hypnosis recordings in a safe place, which means a comfortable, quiet place where you won’t be disturbed.
Is hypnosis sleep?
I realize it can be confusing when movies and stage shows employ the word sleep shouted out at the top of the hypnotist’s lungs, followed by the client slumping over. It looks like they must be sleeping, right? Nope! Hypnosis is not sleep, and the client is not sleeping during a hypnotherapy session. Is it possible for a client to fall asleep during a hypnotherapy session or while listening to a recording? Yes; however, the two are mutually exclusive, and if this happens, there tends to be a simple explanation: the client was exhausted and needed a nap!
Since hypnosis is not sleep, one does not “wake up” from hypnosis. The client simply shifts from the theta brainwave state to a regular waking state of consciousness (beta brainwave).
Is a private hypnotherapy session, a hypnosis recording, or self-hypnosis more effective?
At times I will recommend, in addition to reading this book, working with a hypnotherapist simply because the topic at hand will lend itself to deeper one-on-one work. But fear not. I, too, am tired of reading books that give you the “what” but never the “how,” that require you to purchase another program to experience the benefits of the book’s promise. I assure you this is not that. I guarantee you that you are going to be doing so much self-hypnosis and listening to hypnosis audios (available for free at www.CloseYourEyesLoseWeight.com) every day that lasting transformation will take place without spending a penny more.
That said, it would be a disservice if I didn’t let you know when private hypnotherapy sessions would make the greatest impact on any given topic. For example, someone could be listening to a weight loss hypnosis recording with the goal of losing fifteen pounds, but then as a result of the recording discovers the subconscious is resistant to losing weight because they fear receiving more sexual attention from their spouse. There could be so much to unpack here—fear of being seen, not wanting to be intimate with their spouse, fear of intimacy altogether, deep-seated marital issues, perhaps sexual trauma, or embedded fears of being sinful from a religious upbringing. I’m sure you can see how this person will heal so much more quickly by working with a private hypnotherapist and going straight to the source of their unique challenges. So while you will receive as much support as a book and recordings can give you, I do recommend keeping in mind that working privately with a certified Grace Space hypnotherapist will help you work through, heal, and clear up any deeper issues much faster than with self-hypnosis and hypnosis audio recordings alone.
How do I work with you?
I look forward to it! Please visit www.gracesmithtv.com and follow me on Instagram @gracesmithtv to learn more about my Executive HypnoCoaching program, corporate retainer options, and speaking fees. While my personal availability is limited, I have certified and trained more than two hundred (as of the writing of this book) incredible hypnotherapists whose fees and availability are much more accessible. Read on to learn how to work with a Grace Space Hypnotherapist.
How do I work with a hypnotherapist you trained and certified?
Students who graduate at the top of their class from my Grace Space Hypnotherapy School join our team and offer phone sessions to clients anywhere in the world. Phone sessions are typically more effective than in-person sessions because you can pop on your headphones, close your eyes, and relax in your pajamas from the comfort of your own home while the sound of your hypnotherapist’s voice gently upgrades your subconscious mind. Without having to rush to and from an in-person office session, the length of time you are in the theta state is extended, which means more impact for your subconscious mind. If you would like to work with a Grace Space Hypnotherapist who was personally trained by me, you can learn more and book your phone hypnotherapy sessions by visiting: www.gshypnosis.com/private-hypnotherapy-sessions.
How do I become a certified hypnotherapist?
There is no other way to say it: becoming a hypnotherapist is an incredibly rewarding career choice. Whether you would be adding the skill of hypnotherapy to an existing medical or coaching practice or are launching a brand-new career in wellness, I commend you for your interest in helping others so deeply! Grace Space Hypnotherapy School is my 250+-hour certification course that includes both online and in-person components. At the time of writing this, my students hail from all over the world, including the USA, Germany, Estonia, Costa Rica, the Cayman Islands, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Poland, and Australia. Upon successful completion of all coursework and exams, my students are certified by IACT (the International Association of Counselors and Therapists). I so look forward to your success as a certified Grace Space Hypnotherapist! For more information and to enroll, visit www.gshypnosis.com/school.
Now, let’s talk about how you can use this book to reprogram your subconscious, change your habits, and experience the lasting results you’re looking for!
How to Use This Book
Before you’re done reading this book, you will have reprogrammed twelve core subconscious areas related to successful and lasting weight loss:
1.The fundamentals (which include chewing, proper hydration, and how to stop eating when satisfied)
2.Limiting beliefs
3.Intuitive eating
4.Exercise
5.Emotional eating
6.Eating when bored
7.Rewiring “rewards”
8.People and places to avoid
9.Visualizing what you want (using the law of attraction)
10.Unwanted attention
11.Resistance
12.Self-love
This book has been written as a ninety-day plan and includes journal sections so you can track your progress in a way that feels uplifting and supportive to you. There is a homework section at the end of each chapter that will always include at least (a) your self-hypnosis practice for the week and (b) the hypnotherapy recording for you to listen to each week. You’ll notice that as this book progresses the chapters become shorter than they are in the beginning. I intentionally front-load you with information so you have everything you need to courageously dive deep into your subconscious weight loss journey knowing this will be different from any of your previous weight loss attempts. At the same time, the main promise of this book is your results, not providing you with a master’s in physiology, psychology, or any other ology. This is much more of a workbook than a textbook, and because time is your most precious commodity, it’s meant to give you what you need to experience the results you desire—nothing less, nothing more. Remember, the most important keys to your success will be sticking with your daily self-hypnosis practice and listening to your daily hypnosis recordings found in the free bonus section at www.CloseYourEyesLoseWeight.com.
How to Use Your Journal
It is important to track your development throughout this book for a number of reasons:
•The data will show you which areas would benefit from additional subconscious conditioning.
•The data will tell a story so you can begin to identify patterns in your behavior that you might desire to shift on the subconscious level.
•The data is valuable information you can share with your hypnotherapist (should you choose to work with one—visit www.CloseYourEyesLoseWeight.com for more info).
You will be tracking your progress each week and then graphing your summaries each month so that you will have a visual representation of your progress in each of the twelve key areas we will work on in this book. Consider the following ways in which you can track your weight loss success and choose the method that works best for you.
Tracking Physical Weight Loss
If you feel you’ll get the most out of this program by getting on a scale each morning and tracking your weight, this section is for you. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it is safe to lose one to two pounds per week. That means, on average, aiming for four to eight pounds of weight loss per month is a healthy goal.14 Using the CDC’s guidelines, by the end of the ninety days you can safely lose between sixteen and thirty-two pounds. In other words, it’s not helpful to declare a goal of losing forty-five pounds in the first month, since that is thirteen pounds more than the high-end figure recommended by the CDC.
If your goal is to lose more than thirty-two pounds in total, after the first ninety days are complete you can continue your journey by repeating this program and taking each one of these lessons deeper (as you’ll see in chapter two, the most powerful hypno-affirmations are achievable and believable, so set realistic goals, set yourself up for success, and keep moving toward your ultimate goal as you reach milestones). Using the CDC’s guidelines, after two rounds you can safely lose up to sixty-four pounds—and that’s only six months into a brand-new life. In one year, that’s up to 128 pounds lost!
Remember, this is not a fad diet or a race to the finish line. You’re rewiring your brain. That takes time. Happily, hypnosis rewires the brain much faster than any other means (see page 25 in chapter two for more on this), while still conditioning you for a new lifestyle for the rest of your life. We care about lasting results and forming the beliefs that will support your empowered, healthy choices in the long run. So when setting your weekly, monthly, and ninety-day goals, please keep those numbers in mind. For those with a history of disordered eating, tracking your weight every day might lead to obsessive-compulsive behavior or negativity. If that is the case, please know yourself, remember to consult with your doctor, and choose to track your progress through less triggering means—for example, through energy levels and how you feel in your clothes.
If you choose to use your daily weight as a metric for progress, please keep in mind that your weight will be affected by the amount of water you will soon be drinking. Also keep in mind that muscle weighs more than fat! So if you see the number on the scale going up a bit one week, but your measurement for how you feel in your clothes is improving, you can ascertain from the data that you are losing fat and gaining muscle mass, so you’re still headed in the direction you want. Be your own best advocate when choosing how to track your progress. Turn to page 52 to get a glimpse of how you’ll track your weight each day.
Tracking Measurements
If you prefer to track your measurements (inches lost, rather than pounds lost) keep in mind that “on average, for every 8.5 pounds lost, people dropped an inch off their waist.”15 So if you would like to lose thirty pounds over the course of ninety days, that will be approximately 3.5 inches off your waistline, and so on. You can see the simple chart below for reference.
In the journal pages, there is space for you to track the measurements of your neck, chest, arms, hip, waist, and thighs. Track the measurements of all of these areas, some of them, or none of them. Again, only use this method of tracking if it feels empowering to you. Turn to page 52 to take a look at how you’ll track each day.
Other Ways to Track Your Success
You can also track your daily energy levels and how you feel in your clothes. These are less triggering ways to notice your improvements, but they are also less concrete. Energy levels are either low, medium, or high. They are not your emotions (happy, sad, etc.) but rather how energetic you feel, regardless of your emotions. Do your clothes feel tight, comfortable, or loose? These options are typically comfortable for most and are a nice way to reassociate weight loss progress with positive emotions and feelings. Turn to page 52 to see what tracking these daily will look like.
What Is Healthy Versus What Is Helpful
This book is not here to make moral judgments. Everyone, at any size, is worthy and deserving of love and respect! In Body Positive Power, body-empowerment author Megan Jayne Crabbe writes,
The relationship between health and weight is not what we think it is, and the assumptions we currently hold are hurting us all, fat, thin, and every size in between. And most importantly, whatever we might believe about size, fitness, weight, and health doesn’t really matter when it comes to body positivity. Because physical health is not a requirement for self-love, respect, or to be treated with basic human dignity. Those are things that we all deserve, regardless of how our bodies look or how our bodies function.16
This book is for those empowered folks who’ve decided they’d like to lose weight, for the right reasons. Learning to fall in love with yourself, as you are today, is a key component in why you will experience success with this program when you haven’t before. It’s not just about learning to eat “healthy.” Yes, from time to time I might write a phrase like “eat healthy,” but the truth is, what is “healthy” can often be deceiving. I reached out to Maggie Berghoff, a world-renowned nurse practitioner specializing in functional medicine, to get her perspective on this trend I’ve noticed again and again with my clients: what’s “healthy” for one is sometimes terrible for another.
Maggie said: “We have access to some of the most cutting-edge technology and knowledge now to identify exactly what is most ‘healthy’ for your specific body. We can look at your pathways, genetics, biomarkers, and current internal health status to determine what will best get you the health and wellness results you’re looking for, in the most foolproof way . . . Gone are the days when ‘one size fits all’ diet plans are the only option.”17 Maggie used lemon water as an example. Drinking lemon water is often touted as a “healthy habit” to lose weight and detoxify, and while it may be helpful and anti-inflammatory to some people, it can cause more harm than good to others (e.g., those with heartburn or citrus allergies).
In my own personal experience of healing “leaky gut” (more about this on page 115), I went from being able to eat anything to having severe allergic reactions to celery, almonds, ginger, broccoli, and other extremely healthy foods. Being doubled over with pain and nausea doesn’t feel healthy! There were days when all I could eat was “junk food.” My body wouldn’t attack pizza. Go figure. Still, that pizza wasn’t “healthy” even though it didn’t make me instantly sick, and I gained weight as a result.
Since what’s “healthy” is more subjective than we might have once thought, more often than not, I’ll be referring to choices that are either helpful to you as they relate to your weight loss goals, or unhelpful to you, rather than what is healthy or unhealthy. Sitting on the couch and eating chips is unhelpful to anyone’s weight loss goals, full stop. My aim in this book is to be inclusive and empowering without treading so lightly on eggshells for fear of upsetting or triggering one particular kind of reader that the efficacy of the book is diminished for all other readers. It’s not the simplest line to toe because this can be such an inflammatory subject, but it’s a worthwhile and important one, so I hope what you find beyond this point will lift you up, make you think, and challenge old, unhelpful patterns. After all, the title of this book is Close Your Eyes, Lose Weight—so let’s get started helping you effectively, naturally, and noninvasively lose the weight you want to lose!
1 Cheryl D. Fryar et al., Mean Body Weight, Height, Waist Circumference, and Body Mass Index Among Adults: United States, 1999–2000 Through 2015–2016, National Health Statistics Report no. 122, December 20, 2018, https://cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr122-508.pdf.
2 “Obesity and Overweight,” World Health Organization, February 16, 2018, www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and-overweight.
3 Dictionary.com, s.v. “subconscious (n.)” accessed November 3, 2019, s.v. www.dictionary.com/browse/subconscious.
4 Diane Zimberoff, “Hypnosis and the Science of Visualization,” Wellness Institute Blog, July 17, 2014, https://web.wellness-institute.org/blog/bid/391943/Hypnosis-and-the-Science-of-Visualization.
5 Alfred A. Barrios, “Hypnotherapy: A Reappraisal,” Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice 7, no. 1 (1970): 5.
6 D. Spiegel and J. R. Bloom, “Group Therapy and Hypnosis Reduce Metastatic Breast Carcinoma Pain,” Psychosomatic Medicine 45, no. 4 (1983): 333–39.
7 D. Spiegel et al., “Effect of Psychosocial Treatment on Survival of Patients with Metastatic Breast Cancer,” Lancet 334, no. 8668 (1989): 888–91, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673689915511.
8 “Hypnosis Helps Healing,” Harvard Gazette, May 8, 2003, http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/05.08/01-hypnosis.html.
9 V. Miller et al., “Hypnotherapy for Irritable Bowel Syndrome: An Audit of One Thousand Adult Patients,” Alimentary Pharmacology & Therapeutics 41, no. 9 (2015): 844–55, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25736234.
10 University of Utah, “Mind-Body Therapies Immediately Reduce Unmanageable Pain in Hospital Patients,” ScienceDaily, July 25, 2017, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170725122228.htm.
11 Nicholas Sterkers et al., “Hypnosis as Adjunct Therapy to Conscious Sedation for Venous Access Device Implantation in Breast Cancer: A Pilot Study,” Journal of Vascular Access 19, no. 4 (2018), https://doi.org/10.1177/1129729818757975.
12 Honorine Delivet et al., “Efficacy of Self-Hypnosis on Quality of Life for Children with Chronic Pain Syndrome,” International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 66, no. 1 (2018): 43–55, https://doi.org/10.1080/00207144.2018.1396109.
13 F. X. Almeida-Marques, J. Sánchez-Blanco, and F. J. Cano-García, “Hypnosis Is More Effective than Clinical Interviews,” International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 66, no. 1 (2018): 3–18, https://doi.org/10.1080/00207144.2018.1396104.
14 Rena Goldman, “How Much Weight Can You Lose in a Month?,” Healthline, July 27, 2016, www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/weight-loss-in-a-month.
15 “What Size Will You Be After You Lose Weight?,” Decision Science News, November 14, 2014, www.decisionsciencenews.com/2014/11/14/size-will-lose-weight/.
16 Megan Jayne Crabbe, Body Positive Power (New York: Seal Press, 2018), 197–98.
17 Maggie Berghoff, email message to the author, October 26, 2019. See maggieberghoff.com for more advice from Maggie.