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More people turning to hypnosis for weight loss
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-06 09:22
Imagine a world where chocolate cake holds no temptation, where celery is an
indulgence and food cravings float away in a balloon.
Dr. Brian Alman,
right, has helped Cynthia Lewis, left, with weight loss through self
hypnosis. | Now open your eyes to the trancelike
world of Americans who are turning to hypnosis to drop extra poundage.
In a nation where two-thirds of the population is overweight or obese, some
dieters are hoping hypnosis will finally break food's spell over them.
It's working for Cynthia Lewis, a San Diego resident who is no longer tempted
to polish off a plate of cookies when she smells them baking.
"Now just smelling (the cookies) is enough," she said.
Despite its hokey, magic-show aura, hypnosis is used as an alternative
treatment in medical institutions to manage everything from pain to smoking to
weight loss.
And as waistlines continue to bulge, hypnotherapists say they're seeing more
patients desperate for a way to control their eating.
"The country is getting fatter and fatter, so different weight-loss methods
are getting more attention," said Jean Fain, a psychologist who uses hypnosis at
Harvard Medical School's Cambridge Hospital.
In the past five years, Fain said, the number of patients she treats for
weight loss has doubled. For many of those patients, hypnosis is a last resort.
That was the case for Lewis, who grew tired of dropping and gaining the same
30 pounds on various liquid diets.
Three months ago, she began seeing Brian Alman, who teaches self-hypnosis for
Kaiser Permanente, the Oakland, California-based health insurer. So far, Lewis
said the therapy has helped her change her lifestyle.
Generally, the hypnotic state is defined as a state of focused concentration
-- a condition akin to being so absorbed in a good book that the outside world
seems to fade away, said Guy Montgomery, president of the Society of
Psychological Hypnosis, a division of American Psychological Association.
It's during this state that patients become more open to suggestion.
For a stress eater, Montgomery might tell patients to picture themselves in a
relaxing place whenever they feel the impulse to overeat.
Whether hypnosis will bring results varies from person to person as in any
other treatment, Montgomery said. "We don't view (hypnosis) as a stand-alone
therapy, but as an additional technique," he said.
Kevin Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at
Yale, said it's probably the range of therapies that aids weight loss, not the
hypnosis alone.
"The prevailing thought is that there's really not much to hypnosis for
weight loss on its own," Brownell said. But people become so frustrated trying
to lose weight that they give anything a try -- especially something that seems
as simple as hypnosis, he said.
But for those who dreamed hypnosis might be the long-awaited magic
weight-loss bullet, practitioners and patients alike caution that it's not that
easy.
Patients often come to Fain hoping she'll snap her fingers and knock out
their impulse to overeat. In fact, she said it can take months -- sometimes
years -- to help patients get a handle on the underlying causes of their
overeating.
For Lee Hubbard of Orange County, California, who learned how to go into a
hypnotic state through Alman's tapes, hypnosis came easily.
Now whenever she feels like overeating, she takes a deep breath instead of
reaching for the bowl of Hershey's Kisses. She closes her eyes for a moment and
pictures herself walking toward the candy bowl. As she is about to grab a
fistful, she instead pictures herself walking right past the bowl.
Hubbard remains fully awake -- she is simply calmer, focused and more
relaxed.
"It's like a movie screen where you observe yourself in the situation. It
lets you control the arena of your thought," she said.
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