Jo-Ellen came to see me at age fifty for help with her weight. She had tried diet after diet and program after program with no success. At 5′4″ and 200 pounds, she was 80 pounds overweight. She told me she thought she was highly hypnotizable because she had been hypnotized as part of a stage show in Las Vegas. She said she did everything the hypnotist suggested but did not remember a thing about it, just what her friends told her. Stage hypnotists are usually very good at picking out people who are highly hypnotizable to remain on stage for their shows. Even though medical hypnosis and stage hypnosis are worlds apart from their intentions, they do share some commonalities.
Jo-Ellen easily went into a hypnotic trance, relaxed deeply, and enjoyed the experience immensely. For the first three sessions, however, she did not notice any changes in her behavior. The fourth session was pivotal for her. In this session, I brought her back to when she first started to gain weight. She had been under stress in her first marriage after she found out her husband had cheated on her. She had two small children and felt trapped. She began to eat as a way to deal with her stress. Her husband would not go to marital therapy and continued his wandering ways. Even though she divorced him several years later, her pattern of dealing with stress through eating was set into place.
“It’s one thing to tell people to watch what you eat and exercise. It’s another thing to show you how to use your brain to help you follow through and change your lifestyle.”
—Matt
After her marriage came to an end, she had several short-term relationships, but nothing that lasted. Food became her one true love. In the trance, I suggested to her that by overeating she was cheating on herself, cheating on her health, cheating on her children, and cheating on the people who would potentially be in a relationship with her. She could let go of her anger at her ex-husband and start doing a much better job at loving herself. Over the next few sessions, she began to do much better at letting go of anger and loving herself without overeating, and she started to lose the weight she wanted.
Of course, I also gave her fish oil, enhanced her vitamin D level, and did everything else in our program. She lost 80 pounds over the next year and was able to keep it off for the additional year we had contact. For many people, when you add hypnosis to a healthy weight-loss program, you can uncover the reasons for overeating and dramatically improve the outcomes. Hypnosis can also help people learn positive eating behaviors and create healthy long-term patterns of food intake.
Carissa, age forty-three, saw me for ADD, weight loss, depression, and alcohol abuse. Over time she did dramatically better, but weight still remained an issue for her. Under a hypnotic trance we discovered that she was fearful of getting thin because she had cheated on her first husband while intoxicated and hated herself so much that she never wanted to do that again. If she got thin, she imagined that she would be more likely to cheat on her new husband, whom she adored. Being overweight was her unconscious way of staying faithful. When we examined the misguided logic underlying her beliefs, she was able to lose the weight she wanted. She realized with a better body and brain, she would make better decisions overall.
Laura, thirty-six, came to see me for being overweight. She had struggled with her weight her whole adult life, but as a teenager she was thin. In a hypnotic trance we uncovered that she had been assaulted as a young woman and she unconsciously overate as a way to protect herself. When I helped her heal the trauma, it was much easier for her to lose weight. If you have suffered emotional trauma, then hypnosis, meditation, and psychotherapy can be very helpful.
In this chapter you will discover how to use hypnosis as well as other mindful techniques, including meditation, to help you lose the fat and boost your brain. I have personally been using hypnosis, meditation, and other techniques in my practice for many years and have seen these techniques help many patients in their weight-loss and mind-enhancement efforts.
To use hypnosis effectively for weight loss, it needs to be combined with a responsible weight-management program like the Amen Solution. Research dating back to the 1950s suggests that hypnosis can be a powerful, long-lasting weight-loss aid that can increase the amount of weight you lose over time. Here is a sampling of some of the most compelling evidence throughout the years:
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“I wasn’t sure if hypnosis could help me stop eating sweets, but I find that since I was hypnotized, I think twice before automatically saying yes to dessert.”
—Aman
In addition to helping you lose weight, hypnosis can also help decrease irritable bowel syndrome, stress, anxiety, insomnia, pain, and negative thinking patterns. It has also been shown to aid in diabetes control and enhance mood. All of these conditions have a negative effect on overall brain function, make you feel bad, and increase the potential for overeating and weight gain. By addressing those issues through hypnosis, you can be a more positive, happy person. Recent brain imaging studies have shown that hypnosis boosts overall blood flow to the brain, which helps to keep the brain young.
Are you concerned that you might not be able to be hypnotized? Are you afraid that you might never “come to”? Do you worry that while hypnotized you might be forced to do something embarrassing? You’re not alone. I hear these kinds of concerns from people all the time. Let me reassure you by answering some of the most common questions I hear.
Eighty-five percent of people or more can be hypnotized to some degree if you can relax and follow some simple instructions. In my experience, I have found that most people who want to be hypnotized can be hypnotized.
No! Everyone comes out of a trance. Hypnosis is a completely natural state, one that many of us experience in everyday life. For example, have you ever been driving in your car and all of a sudden realized that you missed your exit by several miles? Have you ever caught yourself daydreaming at work? Have you ever gotten so engrossed in a book that you didn’t realize how much time you’d spent reading? These are all forms of hypnotic trances.
No! You are always in control of your behavior when you are in a hypnotic trance. You will not do things that you wouldn’t normally do or that go against your core values while under hypnosis.
Hypnosis promotes deep relaxation and an altered state of perception, but it does not put you to sleep. If you sleep through a hypnotic exercise, it is not helping you with anything more than taking a nap.
Most people do, although not everyone, such as in the case of Jo-Ellen above. Hypnosis promotes a heightened sense of awareness, and most people are completely aware of what is happening at all times. After you come out of the hypnotic trance, most people will likely remember the session in vivid detail.
If you really want to know what the hypnosis experience is like, take a look at the following firsthand account from one of my researchers, an admitted “chocoholic,” who agreed to let me hypnotize her to help her overcome her addiction to sugar. We recorded her hypnosis session as part of a ten-CD audio program to go with my book Unchain Your Brain: 10 Steps to Breaking the Addictions That Steal Your Life. During the session, I made suggestions to help her and listeners curb cravings and boost self-control.
When I do hypnosis specifically for weight loss, some of the common hypnotic suggestions I give to patients include “Feel full faster,” “Eat more slowly,” “Savor and enjoy each bite of your food,” “Visualize yourself at your ideal weight and body,” and “See the behaviors you need to do to get the body you want.”
Considering that I get so many questions about what it is like to be hypnotized, I asked her to write about the experience on my blog. Here is what she had to say:
I’ve never been hypnotized before (unless you count the time I was asked to come up onstage by Pat the Hip Hypnotist who used to perform on the Sunset Strip back in the seventies and eighties), so I was a little nervous when Dr. Amen told me he wanted to hypnotize me so listeners could follow along on the Unchain Your Brain audio program.
A few ANTs started racing through my head: What if I say something embarrassing while in the hypnotic trance? What if I can’t be hypnotized and I ruin the program? What if he makes me do something stupid?
The ANTs melted away as soon as we got started with the process. I just listened to his soothing voice and let him take me on a beautiful journey.
Soon the room we were in and the chair I was sitting in disappeared, and I was walking down a long staircase toward a beautiful park and a warm healing pool. I could still feel my body, and it felt warm, relaxed, and very light as if I was floating on air. I had expected to feel sleepy, but that wasn’t the case at all. I actually felt very focused and alive, exploring this wondrous new world with all of my senses.
I had always assumed that when you were under hypnosis, you wouldn’t know what the hypnotist was saying to you or remember anything about it afterward. But during the trance, I was very aware of everything Dr. Amen was saying and remembered everything about it later.
During the session Dr. Amen gave suggestions to help me kick my personal addiction—sugar—while addressing other addictions for listeners.
After coming out of the trance, I felt a sense of calm relaxation. He asked me how long I thought the session had lasted and I told him about seven or eight minutes. He told me it was actually twenty-seven minutes! And I didn’t move a muscle the entire time! For a fidgeter like me, that’s amazing.
Overall, it was a wonderful experience! I certainly didn’t need to feel nervous about it and my ANTs were all completely unfounded. But will it help me stay away from the cookies and candy? We’ll see, but I did go home that night and toss out the M&M’s that were in the kitchen cupboard.
You can find the Unchain Your Brain CD program as well as other hypnosis CDs and downloads that I have created for you on our website (www.amenclinics.com). You can use these CDs to help you go into a hypnotic trance anytime, anywhere (just not while you are driving)!
Guided imagery and self-hypnosis are both great ways to boost your focus and self-control so you can stay on track with your weight-loss efforts. With guided imagery, like listening and following along to the hypnosis sessions on my CDs, someone else is inducing the hypnotic trance. With self-hypnosis, you are putting yourself in a hypnotic trance and can stay in the trance for as little or as long as you would like.
Learning self-hypnosis is easy. I have taught thousands of people how to do it successfully. It just takes a little practice. And the more you practice, the easier it will get. Now I’m going to show you how to do self-hypnosis to put yourself in a hypnotic trance. This exercise helps promote directed focus as well as stress relief, which are both critical to long-term weight-loss success.
Use this self-hypnosis exercise on a regular basis.
At Amen Clinics, I am blessed to work with some of the nation’s best and most innovative psychiatrists. One of them is Larry Momaya, M.D., who is a master practitioner of a powerful technique called Like to Dislike, which is a technique in neurolinguistic programming (NLP). The basic concept is simple: you take a food that you know isn’t good for you but can’t stop eating and replace the way you encode that food in your brain with something you can’t stand. Here are a few examples of how successful Like to Dislike can be.
Derek was an impulsive overeater who had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and a real problem with chocolate. He had absolutely no control over his desire to eat chocolate. For example, he would be driving down the freeway, and all of a sudden he would get an urge for chocolate so intense that he would have to pull off the highway, stop at a gas station, buy a chocolate bar, and eat it right there on the side of the road.
Derek did one Like to Dislike session during which Dr. Momaya guided him to replace all the wonderful qualities he loved so much about chocolate with the thing he hated most—celery. At the end of the very first session, Dr. Momaya presented Derek with some gourmet chocolates and asked him if he had any desire to eat them.
Derek said, “No.”
Dr. Momaya put the chocolates in Derek’s hand and asked, “What do you feel like doing?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you feel like eating this?”
“No.”
“What do you want to do with it?”
“Throw it out.”
How did Dr. Momaya know that Derek wasn’t faking it? His body language spoke volumes about what he was really thinking. When he was handed the chocolates, Derek actually recoiled from them, a telling sign that he was repulsed by it.
Dr. Momaya also did a Like to Dislike session for one of the participants in our pilot weight-loss group. He led the session in front of about fifty people as a demonstration. This guy loved cheeseburgers. I mean really loved them. And he knew he needed to stop eating them in order to get his weight under control. Dr. Momaya guided him through the steps to make him associate cheeseburgers with the food he hated most—fish. His reaction was so strong that at the end of the session, he asked for a wastebasket because he thought he might get sick. Since that time, he hasn’t eaten a single cheeseburger.
Dr. Momaya worked with one of our staff members on her love of bagels. At the end of the session, she said it had no effect on her. Three months later, however, she had not had any bagels. Other people have gone to Dr. Momaya to help them stop eating chips, candy, and frozen yogurt. He helped me with Rocky Road ice cream, which I have avoided since our work together. Dr. Momaya himself worked with another NLP practitioner to get rid of his own personal weakness: sweet potato fries. “When I went out to lunch, I just couldn’t say no to the sweet potato fries,” Dr. Momaya said. “I knew they weren’t good for me, but I felt the need to order them instead of a side salad.” The Like to Dislike process worked, and he hasn’t eaten any sweet potato fries since October 2009.
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“With my stress levels, I find that if I take the time to meditate every day in the morning, it is renewing for my mind and soul.”
—Brandi
As part of my Like to Dislike session with Dr. Momaya, I thought about a bowl of Rocky Road ice cream and then changed the image of it to have the innate qualities (look and feel) of a food I can’t stand—Brussels sprouts. It turned my desire away from Rocky Road ice cream for sure. If you are considering Like to Dislike with a therapist, look for a master practitioner of NLP like Dr. Momaya who has a lot of experience with this technique.
In addition, think carefully about the food you want to avoid and don’t choose something that’s too broad. For example, you wouldn’t want to avoid “sugar” because sugar is in so many things, including brain healthy foods like fruit and low-fat yogurt—even unsweetened yogurt contains some natural sugars—and you may have a negative reaction to all of them. This helpful technique works best if you choose something very specific and if you have a very strong negative reaction to the food that you hate.
Need a little assistance staying focused on your weight-loss plan? Meditation can help. Decades of research have shown that meditation (and prayer) benefits the brain in many ways that can make it easier for you to stick with your weight-loss program. Here’s how.
At the Amen Clinics, we performed a SPECT study on a Kundalini yoga form of meditation called Kirtan Kriya in which we scanned eleven people on one day when they didn’t meditate and then the next day during a meditation session. The brain imaging scans taken after meditation indicated significant increases in activity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), which shows that meditation helps people tune in, not out.
Researchers from other labs around the world have also demonstrated that meditation enhances activity in the brain’s PFC, even to the point of boosting the numbers of brain cells. The better your PFC functions, the more focused and energetic you feel and the less impulsive you are. That helps you stick with your brain healthy eating program, pumps you up to exercise more, and increases your self-control so you can say no to the giant tub of buttered popcorn at the movies.
Strengthening the PFC can be tremendously beneficial for all brain types but is especially helpful for Type 2 Impulsive Overeaters and Type 3 Impulsive-Compulsive Overeaters.
A 2009 brain imaging study performed at UCLA found that people who meditate on a regular basis have more gray matter in the hippocampus, orbito-frontal cortex, thalamus, and left inferior temporal gyrus than non-meditators. These areas are all involved in emotional regulation, which may explain why meditators tend to have more positive emotions and better control over their emotions. Keeping your emotions in check helps keep your eating in check, especially for Type 4 Sad or Emotional Overeaters.
Meditation improves your sense of psychological well-being and diminishes symptoms of depression. One study used EEG to show that people who meditated for eight weeks experienced changes in cerebral electrical activity that are typically associated with experiencing positive or joyful feelings.
Brain imaging studies have shown that meditation calms the anterior cingulate and basal ganglia, which diminishes worries and provides a sense of relaxation. A wealth of research indicates that people who meditate regularly have lower levels of stress, anxiety, and worry. Considering that stress is one of the most common triggers for overeating, reducing your stress levels can be vital to changing your eating patterns. The same is true for people who eat to calm anxiety, like our Type 5 Anxious Overeaters.
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“I used to eat without thinking and didn’t even realize I was eating. Now I’m more thoughtful of what I’m eating, and it tastes better. I’m eating less but enjoying it more.”
—Carmen
Being mindful means paying attention to what you are doing, thinking, and feeling in the present moment. This is especially important for those of you who camp out on the couch all evening and devour entire bags of chips, pretzels, or cookies without even realizing it. With mindless eating, it’s usually quantity over quality. You don’t necessarily enjoy what you’re eating; you just keep wanting more.
By contrast, when you eat mindfully, you meditate on each bite of food and become aware of the smells, tastes, colors, and textures of your food. You learn to savor each bite. This helps you become more aware of feeling full and stopping before you overeat. In a study on the effects of mindfulness on binge eating, a group of 18 women diagnosed with binge-eating disorder decreased their number of weekly binges from four to fewer than two. Fourteen of the women reduced their bingeing so much that they would no longer have met the criteria for binge-eating disorder.
My friend Andy Newberg, M.D., at the University of Pennsylvania, and his collaborator Mark Waldman, a therapist and associate fellow at the Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania, have teamed up to do a SPECT brain study on mindful eating. At this writing, the study is in its earliest stages, and Andy is hesitant to report any specific findings. But he did say that the initial brain scans show that “the brain is different when eating mindfully.” That doesn’t surprise me at all.
Dharma Singh Khalsa, M.D., of the Alzheimer’s Research and Prevention Foundation and Andy Newberg conducted a research study that was published in 2010 using brain SPECT imaging to evaluate the effects of meditation on memory in fifteen people with memory problems owing to normal aging or Alzheimer’s disease. The group underwent a series of tests at the study’s debut and again after meditating every day for eight weeks. The results showed that after the two months of daily meditation, the group’s cerebral blood flow had increased in areas involved in retrieving memories. They also performed better on standardized tests that evaluate memory, cognition, and attention. Having a better memory is essential to help you remember all the important things you need to do in order to reach your weight-loss goals.
If you are wondering what this has to do with helping you lose weight, remember that from my perspective, chronic overeating or bingeing is a form of substance abuse.
You don’t need to devote big chunks of time to the practice of meditation for stress relief or go to India for three months. In my clinical practice, I often recommend meditation as an integral part of a treatment plan. Many of my patients have reported back that they feel calmer and less stressed after just a few minutes of daily meditation.
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“I do the saa-taa-naa-maa meditation before I get out of bed in the morning.”
—Suzie
The following meditation exercises are effective, feel-good techniques to reset your nervous system so that you feel ever so much more relaxed. It is very powerful. You can do this whenever you feel stressed, anxious, or sad. For example, you can close your office door and take an inner journey on your lunch break. You can do this to mellow out after a hard day or after your children have gone to bed. I have even practiced guided imagery and self-hypnosis while sitting on trains, buses, and airplanes.
To help you get the most out of mediation, use the following tips and techniques.
This twelve-minute meditation involves chanting the following simple sounds—“saa” “taa” “naa” “maa”—while doing repetitive finger movements. Do this every day for maximum effect.
I realize that many people are busy and some days, you just can’t find the time to meditate for twelve minutes. Or when you are first trying meditation, you may find it difficult to focus your mind for twelve minutes. In either case, you may want to try something called the Relaxation Response developed by Herbert Benson, M.D., at Harvard Medical School. This is a very simple introduction to meditation. I have found that many of my patients have managed to see benefits with just two minutes of meditation a day.
Kirtan Kriya Fingertip Movements
This two-minute meditation will help quiet your mind.
At 6′7″ Roy was an imposing force as an offensive tackle for the San Francisco 49ers. But in his second season, a knee injury put a swift end to his football career. Although his playing days were cut short, Roy had the privilege of seeing his son and then his grandson each carry on the family football tradition as professional players. All three of them joined our football player study as our only three-generation football family.
When Roy, now age seventy-three, first came to see us, he weighed 334 pounds. When I told Roy that I wanted him to weigh 225 pounds, he told me, “My bones weight 225 pounds!” Then he started to negotiate with me. “How about 275?” he asked. We finally settled on a goal of 265.
Left: Before, 334 pounds Right: Six months later, 306 pounds
Getting Roy motivated was easy. All he needed to hear was that the more overweight you are, the smaller your brain becomes. Roy runs a highly successful firm that conducts research and supports families in the transition of wealth from one generation to the next, so having a smaller brain was not an option for him. He was very motivated to have the best brain possible.
To boost his brain and trim his waistline, Roy began measuring his food and counting his calories and discovered that he had been eating far more than he realized. To cut down on calories, he traded his usual glass of wine with dinner for green tea. He finds that he gets just as much enjoyment out of the green tea, and he has much more energy in the evenings, which allows him to be more productive.
Once an inconsistent exerciser, he committed to a daily workout regimen that includes riding the recumbent bike, three hundred crunches, strength training, and stretching. He sets the alarm for 4:30 a.m. to get to the gym by 5 a.m., which he admits his wife isn’t too happy about. Then he works out for an hour to an hour and a half and still gets to the office by about 8 a.m.
Meditation is also part of Roy’s early morning routine. Roy has been meditating for about thirty years to help him focus and be present in the moment. “It’s amazing how being present can create such a change in your whole body. The relaxation it creates in your body is magical,” he said.
Roy’s brain-boosting regimen also includes a daily handful of supplements that all of the players in our NFL study are taking. They include a high-quality multivitamin (our NeuroVite), fish oil (our Omega-3 Power), and our Brain & Memory Power Boost. He thinks these supplements are playing a major role in his sense of heightened brainpower, his weight-loss success, and his renewed vigor.
After about six months on our program, he has already lost 28 pounds and feels better than ever. “My wife complains that I have too much energy now. She says, ‘You have the energy you had when you were forty.’ ”
Roy isn’t the only one in the family who is reaping the benefits of better brain health. His son and grandson have each dropped about 40 pounds since beginning the program. And proving that a brain healthy lifestyle can be contagious, his wife is also losing weight by adopting some of Roy’s new habits.