At the annual meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA) last week they voted to classify obesity as a disease. Even though a committee of their own experts thought it should not be classified as a disease, the association’s delegates still voted to support the change.
If the UK did the same, over 20 million people would be classed as diseased.
Obesity is a health problem that started after the Second World War and has been increasing year on year. It is patently obvious that the medical fraternity simply don’t have an effective answer to preventing obesity or even stemming the flow of people growing bigger.
For Americans who went to bed last week feeling fine, they must be horrified to wake up only to discover that they have a disease.
How can obesity be a disease? We all know that in most cases obesity is something that can be controlled and completely reversed by getting the person with the “disease” to make some simple lifestyle changes. This is not the case with most diseases.
At the Surrey Institute, when people come to us for help to lose weight with hypnotherapy, we find their levels of motivation differ. For some they just want to drop a few pounds, whereas others need to lose weight because it is having profound effects on their life and perhaps the long-term outlook is not good. Some people are overweight but still fit, others (because of their size) are physically unable to exercise and some just can’t be bothered.
Why does motivation matter?
Having a high level of motivation makes the difference between success and failure. This is why so many people Yo-Yo diet because they start a diet when their motivation is high and they lose weight. Then as time passes the motivation wanes and they start to be “naughty”, and their control of their diet goes out the window and they start to put on weight again, and generally put on more than they have lost.
Motivation only really matters if you are using traditional methods of weight loss, like dieting for example, when you need to be motivated to stay in control of what you eat, or more importantly what you don’t eat. But when you lose weight with hypnotherapy it is different because what happens at the Surrey Institute is that our hypnotherapy for weight loss programme concentrates changing behaviours.
When behaviour is changed the responses become automatic (habitual) and therefore motivation is simply surplus to requirements. Motivation is needed at the beginning, just to get the new behaviours entrenched at a subconscious level. Once this is done most people find they can just go about their normal lives, making what appear to be natural and appropriate choices about food and drink.
Can motivation be increased?
In most cases, when people come to see us, the mere fact that they have booked in means they are pretty motivated. However, sometimes their motivation to make the changes they want to make needs a boost. Hypnotherapy is very effective at boosting motivation as we can help you to create a vision of how it will feel when you have lost weight, and we all know there is nothing more powerful than a vision to pull you forward, to take the action that you need, to fulfil that vision.
Lose weight with hypnotherapy
When you lose weight with hypnotherapy your eating behaviours revert back to more normal and appropriate responses. When this happens, your whole focus about food changes to a more relaxed and natural one.
No longer will you need to obsess about what foods you can and can’t eat. You forget all about counting calories because your behaviours will have changed, so will your choices without having to think about it. To find out more take a look at our hypnotherapy for weight loss page.