Better Outcomes Psychotherapy & Hypnotherapy

‘You’d better eat all the food on your plate or you won’t get any pudding!’ It seems a fairly innocuous threat, which many stressed parents will have used to cajole their children into eating. But in some cases such ‘warnings’ in childhood can lead to a lifetime of overeating, says Lois Tilbrook, who practises hypnotherapy and psychotherapy in Cambridge.

She explains that hypnotherapy can help with overeating where countless diets have failed because it gets to the root of the problem.

‘Weight control does have an emotional component and often the reasons why a person eats a lot goes back to childhood,@ she says. ‘In one case a woman was overeating and couldn’t understand why. Through hypnotherapy she discovered that she had been told as a child to ‘eat up’ or she’d die. So for the rest of her life she ‘ate up.’’.

People with weight problems often talk themselves into eating more than their body needs, Lois explains. ‘They say things like ‘I don’t each much, I’ve only have one orange all day.’ They deceived themselves at a conscious level.’ They can be helped through positive visualisation and then being encouraged towards their goal.

Lois says: ‘People know that if they want to lose weight they have to eat good things and exercise. :But if they are depressed they might not be able to do that on their own.’

I thought hypnotherapy worked by making a person feel repulsed by the sight of ‘bad foods’ such as chocolate, but it is much more subtle. ‘it’s more about recognising what your body needs, so you might find a box of chocolates unappealing. It’s about realising the connection between your body and mind.

Lois gave me a taster of hypnotherapy by putting me in a light trance....I could feel my eyelids getting heavy...I was aware of Lois’ voice , telling me I should feel warm, calm and relaxed...I felt relaxed and serene....I ‘woke’ feeling refreshed.

‘It’s absolutely wonderful to see people grow and move forward.’ She enthuses.