Bariatric Hypnotherapist appreciates her DS!

Jul 21, 2010

I tried to stop my daughter from having the DS by doing academic research on the risks. For two days, I read everything I could find in the medical and academic journals. Instead, I found the DS would extend my own life. So, hot on her heels, I followed her to the operating room, just two and a half months behind her. 
As a hypnotherapist, people come to me for weight loss (boy, that's fun when you're obese!).

In my own experience, hypnotizing others and receiving hypnotherapy, I have found hypnosis to be a great tool. If you have a fear or phobia, if you need to deal with traumatic experiences, if you want to develop your intuition and spirituality, exploratory hypnosis can be amazingly liberating - almost a golden ticket. Whenever we let ourselves get deep (through prayer, meditation, hypnosis), it does great things for the mind and spirit.

But the physical will not be denied. 

I am one of twelve siblings, eight of whom are (or have been) more than a hundred pounds overweight, and two more of whom are more than fifty pounds overweight.

Our mother fought her weight her entire life, and won and (ultimately) lost more times than I can count.

Like all of us, since my early teen years, I tried every diet that came along. Some of them worked for a season. The only thing that worked for me with any regularity was full out liquid fasting, which is, obviously, very hard to maintain. Five times I wrestled myself into living on Slimfast or fruit juice for six months at a time. And I cannot count my own shorter fasts of ten days or better. (When it came time for the pre-op liquids, I was a real vet.)

When I added hypnotherapy as a modality to my counseling practice, I found it also worked. In some ways it worked better, because it also changed my attitude toward and relationship with food. I used it (as the client) to explore my deep psychological and unconscious connections to food and weight and my sense of self.

That exploration led to enough behavioral change that I lost 40 pounds in 6 months. And it was staying off, sort of. 

But it also stalled and then started to drift back on.

Finally, I faced facts.

My own genetics are such that in a famine - I would have outlived all of the skinny people. 

But even with the little meals I found satisfactory after hypnosis, my body treated every attempt to lose weight as a natural disaster it was bound and determined to survive.

The work I have done in my subconscious continues to bless and strengthen me.

But I still needed surgery.

Now, when I work with clients on weight issues, if they are one of the percentage of people who have only a few pounds to lose and whose metabolism does not fight them, I can help them (through exploration and suggestion) to gain more control over their own behavior and drop those pounds.

But if they are like us, genetically geared to hold onto every calorie, I help them explore their relationship with their self and with food (very helpful for those who have an RnY and still need to modify what they eat), and support them, if/when they are ready to alter their metabolism for good -  and for the good.

I love my DS! 

Nothing else but flat-out liquid fasting has ever taken off 100 pounds in six months. 

And this time, it will stay off!     (www.Rosechild.org)

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