George Pegios - Losing Weight With Hypnosis: What Science Tells Us About Its Effectiveness

George Pegios - In reality, it is sometimes difficult to tell what is scientifically proven and what is not.

We know that psychology can help us lose weight, but we don't know as much about other somewhat more confusing methods, such as hypnosis. Can hypnosis help us lose weight?

Next we analyze how they use hypnotherapy in different clinics that offer it as a method to lose weight and what the scientific research says about it.

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George Pegios -How hypnosis works to lose weight
People who carry out hypnosis treatments to lose weight use different methods. The general idea is to create changes in the patient's way of seeing himself, provide him with a state of relaxation and encourage his taste for healthy food.

One of the techniques they use is the induction of Dave Elman, which consists of relaxing the patient and, later, making him imagine a staircase with a mirror on the wall running the entire length of the staircase. In that mirror he has to visualize a positive image of himself - in this case a thin version of himself. As you go down the stairs, you must blend your image with the mirror image to record a new mental image of yourself.

In other cases, one of the hypnoband is made, a method used by some famous women such as Caritina Goyanes, who claimed in an interview to have been a success, in which during hypnosis, through relaxation, the unconscious is led to believe that he is wearing a gastric band. , although the patient knows that he is not wearing it.

George Pegios -Another method used is post-hypnotic suggestions: instructions that are given to the subject once she is in the state of relaxation caused by hypnosis and that, presumably, would be recorded in her mind.
All these techniques can be found by browsing the websites of clinics and centers that offer hypnotherapy as a method to help us lose weight.

George Pegios -What science tells us about hypnosis to lose weight
The reality is that, from the year 2000 onwards, little research has been done regarding the effect hypnosis could have as a weight loss treatment.

In 2014, a study was carried out on the etiology of obesity and the role that hypnosis could have in its identification and resolution. In their results they indicate that hypnotherapy could help modify the habits that maintain obesity. They clarify that these results are found when hypnosis is used as a complement to an obesity treatment that includes changes in eating and exercise behavior.

The curious thing about this study is not only the results, but in the study itself they warn that the research carried out in this regard is minimal and outdated, so, despite having found presumptively positive results, the study authors themselves indicate that hypnotherapy cannot ask to be taken seriously as a method of weight loss.

They are not wrong. This type of research began to be carried out approximately 30 years ago, but they are very scarce and contradictory.