The past few years have brought about many unprecedented changes to our lifestyles. From the shift to remote work for millions of Australians to much greater time being spent at home in pyjamas during the seemingly endless government lockdowns, the changes to our personal lifestyles have been significant.
For many, these years have been much more sedentary and – especially when working from home – led to excessive snacking and/or irregular eating habits. Obesity and weight gain can pose serious health hazards and snacking on unhealthy foods more frequently can certainly contribute to these problems.
Bad Snacking Habits
There are many eating disorders, such as bulimia, anorexia, and binge eating. Bad snacking habits can be tied in with binge eating and for the sake of this blog entry means that you’re snacking too frequently and/or snacking on unhealthy foods, especially the latter.
Working from home is comfortable, but it also makes it far easier to cave into snack cravings since the refrigerator is only a short walk away. A few carrot and celery sticks between lunch and dinner might do your body a lot of good, but devouring an entire sack of crisps for breakfast probably won’t.
What Triggers Eating Disorders?
Generally, eating disorders come from emotional and psychological factors. Excessive snacking of unhealthy foods like ice cream or processed ‘junk food’ might come from feelings of anxiety, stress or depression, poor body image, or low self-esteem.
If this habit has been going on for quite some time, you might even feel that you’ve lost control and thus cope with your feelings by indulging in your bad habit – essentially, a vicious cycle spiralling out of your control even further.
How Does Hypnotherapy Help with Eating Disorders?
Have you ever heard that you should ‘just stop eating?’ It’s like telling a smoker to ‘just give it up,’ it’s not effective at all, even if the intentions may be good and sincere. It is true that willpower plays a big part in giving up bad habits like excessive snacking, but if you could have simply kicked your bad eating habit already then you wouldn’t be here reading this!
Hypnotherapy is a treatment that understands this fundamental truth and instead opts for digging deeper to the underlying emotional and psychological causes that trigger your eating disorder. Are you finishing off an entire tub of ice cream because you’ve got low self-esteem? Or do you do it because you’re depressed or suffering from anxiety?
By getting to the root causes, hypnotherapists can help you come face to face with the underlying factors affecting your bad eating habits and to understand how they affect your own behaviour. In doing so, you can take charge and correct these behaviours the next time you feel a craving coming on.
Is Hypnotherapy a ‘Quick Fix’ for Weight Loss?
No! Anyone claiming that hypnotherapy is a ‘quick fix’ to eating disorders or weight loss is selling you snake oil and doing a great disservice to the real, tangible benefits of hypnotherapy.
Overall, hypnotherapy has proven to be successful in dealing with eating disorders and successful weight loss, but it is not an absolute substitute for professional medical care and treatment, so listen to your GP.
Having said that, hypnotherapy is non-invasive and non-surgical, so there are many potential benefits to be had with no risk or side effects. Why not give it a try?
Melbourne Hypnotherapy Clinic
Book a consultation with us at Melbourne Hypnotherapy Clinic today. My name is Sonia Devine and I am a certified clinical hypnotherapist based in Melbourne. I’ve been working with many satisfied clients since 2003 and I think I can safely say I’ve treated just about every condition that exists. I’ll be happy to speak to you about what I do and explain how I can help you.
