42% of all Americans are projected to be obese by 2030. Other studies suggest that 100% of all Americans will be overweight by 2050. The cost of obesity is ballooning along with our waistlines. It’s no secret that health care costs are getting higher and higher. Obesity costs account for about 9% of annual medical costs. That’s a $147 billion per year price tag, even if predictions are wrong and obesity remains at 2010 levels. We cannot afford this. What are we thinking?! At Seattle weight loss and Bainbridge Island weight loss we know that we must have healthcare reform. Healthcare reform begins with each of taking personal responsibility for our own health care. Slender For Life™ has a solution that could put an end to this preventable obesity crisis.

Obesity has been one of the biggest contributors in driving up health care spending over the past 20 years.

Read USA Today, Obesity Could Affect 42% of Americans by 2030,
May 7, 2012

Fat Future: 42% of Americans May Be Obese by 2030

20-Year Estimate Predicts 2.2-Fold Bulge in Extreme Obesity

WebMD Health News, May 7, 2012: By 2030, 42% of Americans will be obese and 11% of Americans will be severely obese, Duke University and CDC researchers predict. There’s some good news. The study suggests that adult obesity in the U.S. is leveling off, albeit at an unacceptably high level. Previous estimates had suggested that 51% of Americans would be obese in 2030. But consideration of other factors suggests that figure is too full.

Whatever comfort that good news may bring is more than made up for by the finding that severe obesity — BMI of 40 or more — is skyrocketing. Severely obese people are at the highest risk of diabetes, heart disease, and other obesity-related conditions. Once rare, severe obesity now afflicts 1 in 20 Americans. By 2030, the study suggests, more than 1 in 10 Americans will be severely obese.

This means efforts to reign in obesity can pay big dividends. Just a 1% decrease in the predicted trend would mean 2.9 million fewer obese adults in 2030, resulting in $4.7 billion annual cost savings. If Americans could become no more obese than we were in 2010, the U.S. would save $549.5 billion over the next two decades.

Read Fat Future: 42% of Americans May Be Obese by 2030

Left unchecked, we will see a 2.2 fold increase in extreme obesity. 9% of our annual medical costs are due to preventable behavior and lifestyle choices that people make. Reforming your healthcare can pay big dividends. Are you willing to to be part of the solution or are you choosing to continue to be part of the problem that is destroying your health and bankrupting America. Slender For Life™ has solutions for your healthcare reform.

Check out Seattle weight loss and Bainbridge Island weight loss.
Call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the host of “the Dr. Oz Show,”reveals the Secrets to Achieve Dramatic Weight Loss. He’s on a mission to make America healthier and for the past 8 months as part of his challenge called Transformation Nation, more than 1.2 million Americans have committed to living better. When I first watched this on the Today Show on May 8, 2012, I shouted “YES! YES! YES!” because Dr. Oz is saying exactly what I have said for years as  the director of Slender For Life™. If you are ready to put these weight loss secrets to use, my book, Becoming Slender For Life and its hypnosis CD set can help you achieve dramatic weight loss and most importantly, keep it off.

Secrets to Achieve Dramatic Weight Loss

A doctor always learns from their patients. 1.2 million people who signed up and we have a snapshot into the health of America. A huge repository of information about how we sleep, how we eat. how we exercise. How much sex we have and the stress that we have sometimes trouble coping with. When you look at all that information, people who really made a big difference here are the folks who learn to show up in their own lives. People who realized they were worth it and they were worth it to the people around them, as well. Those are the folks who made the biggest difference over the last eight months of the transformation.

Secrets to Achieve Dramatic Weight Loss with Dr. Mehmet Oz

As the owner and director of Slender For Life™ for many years now and as one who was obese most of my life, I know what it takes to achieve dramatic weight loss. Slender For Life™ clients learn to value and to give care to themselves by eating healthy, being more active, living a healthy lifestyle and by controlling stress in their life.

Are you worth it? Are you ready to give yourself the time for self-care and lose weight? If you are, then contact me at my Seattle weight loss and Bainbridge Island weight loss (no matter where you live), and together we will develop a plan to support you in uncovering the secrets to achieving dramatic weight loss.

Becoming Slender For Life and its hypnosis CD can help show up in your life.

If you are ready, check out Slender For Life™ and call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!

Control Room For Weight Loss is one of my most favorite metaphors and it is this weeks hypnosis MP3 download. Imagine actually having a control room for your body that has your book of perfect health that tells you exactly what your body needs and that you can make the necessary changes that allow for greater health and wellness. In essence, you do have such a control room with your own personalized book for perfect health. It’s your unconscious mind and it does know what you need. Trust your unconscious mind and give it what it needs for your wellness.

Control Room For Weight Loss

Welcome to the control room of your body you notice that all of the gauges seemingly go on for ever and ever. In fact, there are so many gauges and so many dials that you can’t possibly see them all consciously, but as you look at them, you notice they are each labeled individually, why, one gauge is labeled “metabolism”, and another is labeled “cholesterol”, and another labeled “blood pressure”, blood sugar, hypothalamus, pituitary, thyroid, growth hormone, bone density, immune system, Ghrelin, PYY and another labeled “body fat”. And as you gaze among the millions and million of gauges you realize you are in the control room of your body, and sitting in the middle of this control room is a wondrous leather bound book with gold gilded edges labeled “owners manual for perfect health”. And as you look at this wonderfully powerful book, you see your name, embossed in gold letters in the lower right hand corner. Now, go over to that book and look inside…and as you turn the first page, you see that it is dedicated to you.

Go to the walls with all of the gauges and dials, and begin adjusting the dials at an infinitely rapid pace to resemble the gauges in your book of perfect health.

(NOTE: If you already have the Becoming Slender For Life hypnosis CD set, Control Room For Weight Loss is one of the many excellent weight loss hypnosis tracks included).
Length: 34:13 Only $12.97

Click here for Control Room For Weight Loss

My book Becoming Slender For Life  and its hypnosis CD  set can support you and your family in achieving and maintaining your healthy ideal weight.

Visit the Hypnosis Health Info Store for
MP3 downloads, CDs, DVDs and books

Check out Slender For Life™ and call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!

That diet soda in your hand is a chemical poison. Dump it and all the ones in the fridge and in the garage down the drain. In their book “Prescription for Nutritional Healing,” James and Phyllis Balch lists aspartame under the category of “chemical poison.” Research shows that artificial sweeteners can stimulate your appetite, increase carbohydrate cravings, stimulate fat storage and weight gain and may actually double your risk of obesity! I remember when I carried that extra 100 pounds I would down a can of Diet Coke while I waited for the coffee to brew. By the end of the day, I would have finished off at least a 6 pack. I don’t share that to boast – I share because I do remember what it was like to have that craving for more diet soda. I also remember how hungry I thought I was all the time. I knew intellectually that I had consumed enough calories, but I had this drive to eat more. At that time I didn’t realize the Diet Coke was stimulating my appetite. As the director of Slender For Life™ since 1999, I have taught hypnosis for weight loss to hundreds of people who have ended their addiction to diet soda and improved their health.

Three Reasons to Rethink that Diet Coke You’re About to Drink

A fascinating article – Artificially Sweetened Beverages Cause for Concern – recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), challenges the notion that artificial sweeteners are risk free.

The article’s author, David S. Ludwig, MD, PhD, a Harvard professor and Founding Director of the Optimal Weight for Life (OWL) clinic at Children’s Hospital, Boston, makes three important points, especially in the context of artificially sweetened drinks:

1. Our body gets confused by artificial sweeteners – the dissociation between sweet taste and calorie intake may put the regulatory system that controls hunger and body weight out of sync, thus sabotaging weight loss plans. A study on rodents showed that those fed saccharin actually gained weight compared to rodents fed sucrose.

2. We’re “Infantilizing” our taste sense – Artificial sweeteners are a hundredfold sweeter than sucrose (table sugar). By getting ourselves used to so much sweet, normal sweet flavors, of fruit for example, become bland and so do other healthful foods such as grains and vegetables, thus reducing our willingness to consume them and ultimately the quality of our diet.

3. Long term effects unclear – while there have been many studies on artificial sweeteners and disease such cancer, very few focused on long term weight gain. A seven year study, (San Antonio Heart Study), showed a relationship between diet drink consumption and obesity, but the causation is not clear. Consumption of artificial sweeteners is growing yearly. According to Ludwig,

If trends in consumption continue, the nation will, in effect, have embarked on a massive, uncontrolled, and inadvertent public health experiment. Although many synthetic chemicals have been added to the food supply in recent years, artificial sweeteners in beverages stand out in their ability to interact with evolutionarily ancient sensorineural pathways at remarkably high affinity.

Read Three Reasons to Rethink that Diet Coke You’re About to Drink

All those years that I thought I was being healthy by drinking the Diet Coke rather than regular Coke I never thought much about what else that soda was doing to my body. I thought nothing of pouring cola on my cars battery terminals to clean them – that Coke just dissolved all that green stuff! I wonder what it was doing to my stomach. Fortunately, thanks to self hypnosis, I haven’t had Coke or Diet Coke for years.

Many people in my Seattle hypnosis and Bainbridge Island hypnosis offices have used weight loss hypnosis to help them to end their desire for diet beverages and to lose weight. Your body is mostly water and it needs to water to replenish. Water is refreshing and and each sip of water can be relaxing. Make water your beverage of choice.

Also read: The Beverage that is Even WORSE than
High Fructose Corn Syrup Soda

Check out Slender For Life™ and call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!

There Is No Way To Diet Perfectly

Some people try to diet perfectly and want a specific diet plan to follow. They want to get out their food scales, their measuring cups and start counting calories and grams of fat. The ultimate result of perfectionism is failure. There is no way of dieting perfectly. There is no way to follow any eating strategy perfectly. Give it up. It can’t be done. You just do the best you can. Even when you try to make healthy choices, you can’t count on what will be served when eating out. I’ve avoided dairy products for years and have gotten pretty good at easily ordering in a restaurant. Once on a road trip my wife and I stopped for lunch. I ordered a fakeegg, cheese-less veggie omelet—but it was served to me with hollandaise sauce slathered all over the top of it! I have ordered pasta with tomato sauce and veggies, only to discover there was cream in the tomato sauce. I have even ordered a veggie wrap with “no cheese and no dairy” and my first bite was a mouthful of sour cream. When I walked back to the counter, the young girl who took my order replied: “But that’s just sour cream.” Apparently she didn’t know sour cream is a dairy product! So you learn to scrape off what you don’t want and you move on.

Many of my clients are nurses. I have the greatest respect and admiration for nurses. They work long hard hours, often in hospital units that are understaffed. They seldom get a bathroom break and meal breaks are often impossible to take. When it comes to dieting, nurses are some of the most difficult perfectionists to work with. Of course, one of their skills and strengths is perfectionism. Perfectionism is essential to their job. They must be exacting in which patient they are administering medications to, giving the right medication and correct dosage. But when they turn their perfectionism on themselves, it bites them on the backside.

Joan’s story goes something like this: It’s the fourth work day of the week, she put in several hours of overtime the previous three days and today is looking no different. She’s tired, has had no time with her family and little sleep. She’s been on her feet for hours; she is seriously hungry and hasn’t had the opportunity to take a lunch break. There are M & M’s and an open bag of chips at the nurse’s station, so as she runs by, she grabs a handful of each. Though she’s only been a Slender For Life™ client just over a week, her sense of failure is overwhelming. Since she feels she’s blown the day, she gives up and eats whatever is easily available. “What’s the use? I will never be successful with weight loss anyway,” she rationalizes to herself.

In her next session we discussed her perfectionism and the places in her life where it served her and the places it did not. Over the following weeks, Joan became more loving and accepting of herself and she treated herself—and her body—with love, dignity and respect. She created a new relationship with herself, one that allowed her to obtain her ideal weight and one that allows her to maintain her ideal weight to this day.

None of us is perfect, and we need to get over it. The real challenge, certainly, is learning to love ourselves and to forgive ourselves.

Another way perfectionism sabotages us is when we set goals that are unattainable. A mental attitude of creating unreasonable and impractical expectations for yourself in both your weight release results and in any kind of program you may use or join, will only lead to heartbreak. At the first indication of not living up to your high perfectionist ideals, you may be ready to quit. Since it’s impossible for anyone to do this or any other weight release program perfectly, it’s unlikely you will be the first!

Solution for perfectionism:

Realistic, attainable goals are crucial for weight release success. Focusing on letting go of two pounds this next week is so much more imaginable than shedding 50 or 100 pounds. Exercising three or four times a week is doable, and anything more than that is a bonus. For most people, a goal of daily exercise, while beneficial, is a setup for failure.

Nobody’s perfect–not even you!

If bells are going off in your mind telling you that this is one of your issues, try journaling about your desires for perfection. Ask yourself what happens when you are less than perfect—which, let’s face it—has to be all the time! Ask yourself why you’re so hard on yourself. Wouldn’t it be nice to be more gentle with yourself by setting realistic, attainable goals? That way you can experience the joy of meeting them and end the punishing cycle of perfectionism.

Becoming Slender For Life pages 78 – 78

My book, Becoming Slender For Life can support you in your joyful and compassionate journey to lose weight. What’s more important, is that my book can guide you to remaining slender for the rest of your life. After all,  that is what its really all about.

Becoming Slender For Life ebook
is now available as an ebook.

Check out Slender For Life™ and call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!

This weeks hypnosis MP3 download is Weight Loss Social Situations, which is one of the many hypnosis recordings in the Hypnosis Health Info Store. Eating with family, friends, business associates and in other social situations can challenge anyone trying to lose weight. Weight Loss Social Situations can help you survive your tribal feast and stay on course with your weight loss goal.

Weight Loss
Social Situations

Imagine yourself sitting with your friends. Perhaps you are in a restaurant or in a home. It is a happy, festive get-together, and everyone is talking. Hear the laughter. Feel your body resting into the chair. Look around you and see and smell the fresh cut flowers decorating the table. The table is covered with all kinds of foods—some are fatty, greasy foods, while others are light and fresh. Every type of food is within your reach. And as you look up and hear the laughter, remember why you are here. You have come to enjoy yourself, to enjoy the good company and the conversation, and to laugh. It really isn’t about the food or how much and how fast can you eat.

(NOTE: If you already have the Becoming Slender For Life hypnosis CD set, Weight Loss Social Situations is one of the many excellent weight loss hypnosis tracks included).
Length: 22:37 Only $12.97

Click here for Weight Loss Social Situations

Have you purchased your copy of Becoming Slender For Life and its hypnosis CD set?

Visit the Hypnosis Health Info Store for
MP3 downloads, CDs, DVDs and books

Check out Slender For Life™ and call (206) 903-1232 or email for your free consultation.

Remember to sign up for your FREE 8-part audio course, Understanding Hypnosis, at the right side of this page NOW!