Fri, 10 Sep 2010 06:38:39 +0000WeeblySun, 29 Aug 2010 12:46:02 +0000http://www.glasgowhypno.co.uk/1/post/2010/08/sit-less-and-lose-weight.htmlA study by University of Massachusetts Amherst researcher Barry Braun compared a group of volunteers who sat all day (they even used wheelchairs to visit the bathroom) to a group that didn't sit down at all. The difference in energy expenditure, he told The New York Times, was hundreds of calories – but the level of appetite hormones and hunger in the two groups remained identical. This is significant, because after a very hard workout, you feel hungry. And hundreds of calories a day - let's say 200 - means half a pound weight loss each week.

So how can we use this insight. Sit less. Stand rather than sit at work if you can. Fidget, get up and down if you are watching the telly. Even unvigorous movement uses up those calories.
]]>Sat, 28 Aug 2010 13:59:15 +0000http://www.glasgowhypno.co.uk/1/post/2010/08/special-k.htmlThere's an ad for Special K in Glasgow Central Station which has taken my notice.

A fabulously sexy woman in a red satin dress (yes, it could be you) clearly eats lots of strawberry and chocolate Special K. The word strawberry is less pronounced than CHOCOLATE.

So, here juxtaposed are the words Chocolate with the image of a sexy beautiful woman. The message is Yes, you can be beautiful and wear red figure hugging satin dresses and eat chocolate too. What a fabulous message.

But it is not true for most of us. For most of us, if we eat chocolate, we just get fat. If we are young, we can get away with it maybe. But mostly not.

Our behaviour is triggered by many tiny cues and the advertising world is able to manipulate our responses to these cues really effectively. Thus the Galaxy girl is not a size 16 sitting at home on her own feeling miserable, but a sexy slinky woman and we all want to be like her, so we better eat Galaxy.

Hypnosis can make you stop desiring chocolate, so that eating it becomes a choice.
]]>Mon, 16 Aug 2010 11:55:32 +0000http://www.glasgowhypno.co.uk/1/post/2010/08/what-is-making-us-eat-so-much.htmlEating less is clearly an important goal in losing weight. Getting a clearer idea of the reasons for eating too much will help us to regain control.

For some of us it is habit. We have got used to eating a bag of crisps with our pint, or eating a cake with our coffee. Maybe we are shopping and eating in the way we did when we were young and active.

For some of us, it is an expression of difficult feelings about ourselves. If we feel unloved, worthless, unattractive, lonely, betrayed, ashamed or guilty, or any number of complex emotions, then we might overeat in order to feel better, to feel in control.

Hypnotherapy deals with these unhelpful feelings. Once you feel comfortable again about who you are, you will have the confidence and the energy to reorganise your eating patterns. Learning to love ourselves, warts and all.
]]>Mon, 02 Aug 2010 11:29:17 +0000http://www.glasgowhypno.co.uk/1/post/2010/08/eat-your-3-meals-if-you-want-to-lose-weight.htmlIf you are hungry, you are more likely to snack or binge on unhealthy foods.

Restraining your intake takes self-control and this is managed by the part of your brain that does a great deal of other work as well. It needs glucose to function at all, and this gets used up.

So, if your weight loss strategy is to miss meals, your brain might well think otherwise.

Eat your 3 meals a day and keep your brain resourced with glucose.

And then you will have the willpower to limit what you eat for each meal, and avoid snacking during the rest of the day.

And if you want some help, give me a call!
]]>Mon, 02 Aug 2010 11:24:55 +0000http://www.glasgowhypno.co.uk/1/post/2010/08/breakfast-like-a-king.htmlThe old saying goes Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dine like a pauper.

The underlying notion is that you can work your breakfast off, but a big dinner will just get stored as fat.

Molly Bray and colleagues from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Alabama, in the International Journal of Obesity, showed that mice fed a high-fat meal at the beginning at the start of their day managed better than when they were given a high-carb breakfast. Scientists use mice because their bodies respond similar to ours (surprisingly).

But when the high-fat meal was for dinner, they gained weight and developed aspects of metabolic syndrome.

Importantly, these changes were independent of daily total or fat-derived calories.

This study adds to the growing evidence that biological rhythms profoundly influence energy balance.  When we eat certain foods may be as important as the composition of those foods.

Changing our eating habits is key to changing our weight. And if you need help, try hypnosis!]]>Fri, 30 Jul 2010 08:55:05 +0000http://www.glasgowhypno.co.uk/1/post/2010/07/why-do-most-diets-fail-us.htmlMost sorts of diets involve limiting the range of foods we can eat. Any restriction of this kind will result in weight loss. So a grapefruit and sausage diet will result in weight loss. The problem is that we can't sustain this sort of diet for a long time. It would make us miserable and eventually will make us unwell, because we need a wide range of nutrients to keep us healthy.

Once we have lost the weight we go back to our old ways, and those old ways were the cause of the increased weight. And many of us give up long before the weight has gone.

Instead of a fancy diet, we need to find a way of eating that fits our preferences and our way of life, so that we can lose weight and maintain a healthy weight for ever.

Hypnotherapy will help you identify this for you. Quickly and effectively.
]]>Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:24:59 +0000http://www.glasgowhypno.co.uk/1/post/2010/07/sitting-is-really-bad-for-you.htmlIn my blog of 18 July 2010, I noted that a link had been found between the time spent sitting and mortality. 

A new report by Alpa Patel  from the American Cancer Foundation confirms that time spent sitting is associated with cardiovascular death. They showed that those who spend more than 6 hours a day sitting compared to those who sit for less than 3 hours a day are 37% (women) or 18% (men) during the 14 year observation period. That is double the risk for women! Even when you take regular exercise.

For those who took little exercise and sat for more than 6 hours a day, the risk was doubled for both men and women.

So exercise is good. But not sitting is even better. It won't help you lose weight, but it will help you live longer.
]]>Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:37:45 +0000http://www.glasgowhypno.co.uk/1/post/2010/07/why-do-we-put-on-weight.htmlWell, as everyone knows, it is because we eat more than we use up.

This may be due to habits which need to be changed just because we are getting older. It could be that we feel unhappy and comfort eating makes us feel better. It could be that we don't allow enough time to eat properly, and we become so hungry that we eat whatever is nearest or easiest. Or we spend the weekend at a club, and get home with just enough energy to order a takeaway.

Whatever is maintaining these habits or feelings can be successfully treated with hypnotherapy.

So, once you can deal with the underlying issue, you will be able to get back in control of your weight.
]]>Sun, 25 Jul 2010 08:00:00 +0000http://www.glasgowhypno.co.uk/1/post/2010/07/small-changes-every-week.htmlWhen we go on a diet, we tend to revolutionise our eating habits. We buy special food, we eat at set times, we avoid certain foods. Whatever the diet, it is usually very different from your usual style of eating. And probably different from what everyone else in the house eats too.

As a result, once you have lost the desired weight, this revolutionary style of eating stops too. And all the weight gets back on.

Rather than making a huge change in your eating pattern, why not make just a few, small changes and stick to them till they become automatic. Small but significant.

For example, give up eating in front of the telly. Simple and effective.

Hypnotherapy can help you to find out the change that will make the biggest impact for you.
]]>Fri, 23 Jul 2010 13:23:33 +0000http://www.glasgowhypno.co.uk/1/post/2010/07/boredom-eating.htmlSome of us just for something to do, because we feel bored. The sort of food we eat at times like this is very unlikely to be a nice ham salad. More likely, a packet of biscuits. Boredom eating tends to be automatic eating. What is that then?

Automatic eating is the eating that just seems to continue till the packet is finished or while you are watching the telly. The hand to mouth continues until there is nothing left to eat.

Automatic eating makes us fat. We have no idea how much we have eaten, because we didn't really notice we were doing it. Hand, mouth, hand, mouth. So the inbuilt system that tells us we are full doesn't work. We are not paying attention to that either.

Automatic eating tends to be hand food, eaten while you are doing something else. Because you don't know you are doing it, it follows that when you kick this habit, it won't make any real difference to you.

Hypnosis can help you kick this habit! Quickly and permanently.
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