When Your Client Just Won’t Lose Weight

Hypnotist Celeste Hackett

by Celeste Hackett

Tears rolled down her perfectly formed face moving in little streams around her adorable upturned nose. Sliding down her chin and neck they met their final resting place in a pool in the indention formed by her collar bone. She searched for words as she told me of her dream to be a professional actress. “All the good parts go to the skinny girls and I really just want to lose the weight and get on with my dream.”

She was 25 and beautiful except for about 100 extra pounds. She had tried everything and hypnosis was her last resort. To my surprise, she was already exercising two hours a day, every day. As she saw it, her main problem was keeping away from the free catered food at the hotel where she worked part time as an events planner.

She thought if she could just get more self control around the food at work, she’d lose the weight. We embarked on the usual journey of direct suggestion, regression to uncover the cause of the overeating, and forgiveness to undo feelings of both guilt and anger, two emotions that have caused many a weight loss client to reach for the Haagen Dazs.

She was delighted and amazed at how much better she rejected the free yummies at work after only one session. She set her chin and plowed through the difficult parts of the regression with determination. She continued doing better and better in her food choices and portion size. She planned her meals and packed them with precision. She was strong, motivated and hard-working, so when she came in for session four, I was surprised to hear she hadn’t lost an ounce. She had done everything right! What happened?

A week later I learned what the problem was. My client, in her intense desire to really pull out all the stops in her weight loss efforts went to see an endocrinologist. After extensive testing the doctor gave her the news. “Actually, there is nothing wrong with your body. In reality it’s doing a fine job of being efficient. You see, once upon a time we lived in a world of feast or famine. Your ancestors learned to hold on to fat for the lean times, so they wouldn’t starve. This trait was passed down to you. You can still lose weight, but it may never be to the degree you would like and will be extremely difficult for you to both lose it and then keep it off.”

And so it is that some people have ancestry that betrays them like this. She cried upon the news then decided to get that lap band surgery she had been putting off. She was young enough and healthy enough. Also, thanks to new self–control she had gotten from the hypnosis, she felt certain she would be far less likely to be one of the statistics that put the weight back on six months after the lap band surgery was over. It was actually a relief to her to find out that it wasn’t all her fault.

So, you see, some people are indeed meant to be heavier. In many cases, it seems, these clients are perfectly healthy. Unfortunately, if clients such as these want to be happy they are going to have to go to drastic measures to lose the weight or they are going to have to simply lower their expectations for their body type and learn to love themselves as they are.

Ancestry and an efficient body is just one reason your client may not be losing weight. If you are using top level hypnotic technique, such as testing for trance depth, age regression to cause, neutralizing emotional factors held subconsciously and educating your client about how to handle feelings in the external environment your client will, in most cases, be doing fantastically well. But if you find she is not, it’s time to look at some other factors as possible reasons your client isn’t losing weight with hypnosis.

The hypnotist does not stress the necessity of the client’s effort in the process:

If you or your client thinks that hypnosis is a magic wand then you may find your client keeps “waiting” for something to happen while continuing in their usual fashion of over eating and not exercising. Make it clear to her that her effort is a necessary part of the process. I like to ask them what they will be doing. Do they have an eating plan? What about exercise? I then give them other things to do such as not eating in front of the TV or computer (which causes unconscious consumption more than anything else I’ve seen) and doing self hypnosis.

The client is fooling his or herself in some way:

Some clients may think they are cutting back on the amount they are consuming, but in reality they aren’t. For instance, I had a client who cut back on fast food, but began drinking large quantities of sugar-sweetened tea. The tea made up for the calories she had cut out from fast food and she wasn’t losing weight. It took having her write down everything she ate and drank before the tea problem was discovered.

The Client is not Calorie-wise:

Losing weight is mostly basic math. You have to take in fewer calories (units of energy) than you are spending in physical exertion. If the suggestions of eating less food, eating less often, less snacking and smaller food portions are not causing behavior change that ends up in lost pounds, you may need to ask your client to keep a good old-fashioned food diary and count calories. This usually helps them to find those areas, like the tea mentioned above, where they may be fooling themselves. Some people simply don’t realize how many calories foods have and they need to get a calorie counter and begin learning and calculating.

Sometimes it is the drink not the food that is the problem:

We tend to focus on our clients changing eating patterns and exercising as the avenue to losing weight and we forget about beverages. I’ve seen alcoholic beverages, creamy coffee drinks, and soft drinks wreck havoc on weight loss efforts, so if your client isn’t losing weight consider asking what they are drinking.

Medical factors:

There are some medical issues that make losing weight more difficult. If your client is doing everything right and still not losing weight she may need to visit her doctor for a complete health evaluation. Conditions such as hypothyroidism are known to cause problems with weight loss efforts.

Side effects of some medications:

Many medications make it extremely difficult to lose weight. Side effects such as an increase in appetite and drowsiness are often the culprit. If your client is on medications with these types of side-effects she may need to have her meds changed or re-evaluated.

High levels of toxins:

Nutritionists and some medical people point to high levels of toxins in the body as the reason from holding on to weight. These professionals site fat as one of the body’s defense mechanisms – the more chemicals and toxins in the body, the more fat the body manufactures as a natural way of protecting itself. Therefore, many dieters find a nutritional cleanse under a doctors direction, to be beneficial.

Certain foods cause weight gain in some and not others:

Some clients seem to be sensitive to specific foods such as salt, sugar, or wheat and when they eat them they may find it difficult to lose weight.

A need to increase exercise:

Some clients need to increase the length or intensity of exercise or to change to an entirely new regimen all together. For instance, clients may benefit from adding weight training, changing the type of cardio they’ve been doing to something new, or begin an interval training program. I knew one client who exercised intensely one minute out of every hour to keep her metabolism up, after learning she had hit a plateau with her weight loss and she began losing again! Clients should embark on an exercise program only upon the advice of a medical doctor.

Clients are restricting calories too much:

Sometimes, especially after prolonged weight loss efforts, clients will restrict their calories too much and after a while their body will begin to hold on to the weight as it goes into starvation/survival mode. If this happens to your client, it may be time to actually increase calories in a very organized way to get the metabolism working again. Googling “How to break a weight loss plateau” will generate a lot of fresh ideas about this subject, but clients should consider seeking a dietitian, or nutritionist for help in implementing the best ones.

The Client refuses to make needed changes:

I once had a client tell me that she would absolutely not begin an exercise program and that I was not to waste my time suggesting that to her. Upon further questioning she told me that in the past the only thing that had ever worked for her was, however, intense exercise. Since she also needed to make better food choices, I told her I’d give her suggestions for better food choices, but, I said, if that didn’t work, she may need to exercise again.

As luck would have it, all the good food choices in the world, plus additional suggestions for eating less in quantity and working through all her emotional reasons for overeating didn’t cause her to lose an ounce. Begrudgingly, after about 5 sessions and no weight loss, she did began exercising again. The good thing is, she also began losing weight and, because I helped her remember what she enjoyed about exercise she began to have fun finding ways to move her body that made her far happier than when she had worked out in the past.

Hypnosis for weight loss is not a one size fits all solution. People are overweight for many different reasons. The most common ones are due to pavlovian triggers they have developed unintentionally and using food as a way to distract from painful feelings. So it is important that these two problems are addressed with every client.

Once these are addressed and clients receive other suggestions for their specific needs, such as not over-eating in restaurants, then you should have wonderful success with most clients assuming that you have put the responsibility on them to do their best and you have done thorough work with them setting up positive expectation for using hypnosis.

I hope this article has been useful to you and if you have any further questions don’t hesitate to contact me. Thanks for reading!

About Celeste Hackett, CH, BCH, CPHI

Celeste Hackett became a hypnotist after a long and rewarding career as a major market Radio announcer. Celeste sees up to 20 clients a week in Dallas, Texas, at her hypnosis office, Family First Hypnosis where she works with a wide range of issues.

Celeste Hackett has been featured on the Kidd Kraddick Radio Show, and in Dallas Child magazine and has co-hosted a weekly Web-TV Show with Calvin Banyan called “Cal Banyan’s Hypnosis Etc with Celeste Hackett.” You can access it at www.calbanyan.com.


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