What are you stressing about?

What are you stressing about? is this weeks reading from Becoming Slender For Life. Last Sunday I posted Solutions for stress eating from Seattle weight loss and based on the conversations that it generated this week stress seems to continue to be a major challenge for most people. In fact, most people who struggle with weight loss, stress eat. It is hard to be at peace when life gets crazy. With self hypnosis for weight loss you do have the ability to change. Just as you created the habit of stress eating, you have the ability with hypnosis to change that habit. Weight loss hypnosis at Slender For Life™ has worked since 1990. It can work for you too!

What are you stressing about?

Once you realize that you do stress eat, it’s important to identify the situations in your life that create stress. So make a list of every trigger you can think of that sends you racing for the refrigerator or the vending machine. Examine your life from the moment you wake until the moment you fall asleep, and see when you feel the urge for comfort food. Look at both workdays and days off. It may help to carry a little notebook around for a week and jot down what kinds of events set you off toward a Big Mac attack. Once you become aware of your stressors, then you can develop a plan of action to create alternative behaviors when you are stressed.

At Slender for Life™, we teach three stress-reduction techniques in addition to self-hypnosis. In the very first session clients are taught the Stress Reduction Response, which is especially useful because it can be done in almost any situation—even covertly during meetings when you might need it the most! Instructions: Squeeze your thumb and forefinger together, take a deep breath in through your nose, then slowly exhale through your mouth while releasing your thumb and forefinger. This technique is used whenever stress events occur.

I also teach a Waking Trance or Learning Trance, a simple form of eye fixation described by James Braid in the 1850s. Using this technique alters your physiology, taking you out of stress, anger, fear and/or depression and may synchronize the left and right hemispheres of your brain. This waking trance also works wonders at ending the Siren’s song of the chocolate, cookie or whatever food is calling out to you.

Instructions: Pick a spot on the wall above eye level that you can gaze at, so that your eyes have to go up. As you do this now, just let your mind relax. Notice that in a matter of moments, as you focus on that single spot, you can allow your awareness to expand outward into the periphery. Notice you can begin to see things in the periphery. In fact, you are sharply aware of the things on the left side of your peripheral vision … and now, the things on the right side of your peripheral vision … as you stay focused on that spot. You can now move your eyes around while staying in peripheral vision with a slightly upward look. (Refer to CD 2, Track 6 to listen to this exercise.)

Another method of caging those tigers is the Floating Perspective exercise. Instructions: Imagine floating up so high that as you look down on your life now, all time as you know it is condensed into a timeline only an inch long. By doing this you gain a new perspective on that moment. With all time only an inch long, the stressful moment you were experiencing can’t be seen—it doesn’t even compare to a grain of sand on the beach of time. In the grand perspective of the universe, it is nothing. By realizing that whatever is going on in your life is not even as significant as a thread in the carpet, you can float back down into your body and focus on solutions rather than awfulizing the situation. (Refer to CD 2, Track 7 to listen to this exercise.)

From Becoming Slender For Life, second edition,
page 117 – 119

People who stress eat use food to pick them up and feel better when things go wrong or when feeling down. Going on a diet is stressful in and of itself. And then you have a bad day on top of the diet stress and that can be enough to send you to the freezer for those old friends Ben & Jerry. This is a vicious cycle because for weight loss you have to deny yourself the vary foods that numb out the pain of the stress. When you give in and eat the comfort food you feel worse for eating it – especially when you see the number on the scale.

The more stress that you are under, the more that you need hypnosis for stress relief to alleviate the pressure in a healthy way. This is Easter Sunday. A day to celebrate resurrection and new beginnings. With Self hypnosis at Slender For Life™ you can manage your stress and have new beginnings several times a day, every day…. and lose weight too!

Read Solutions for stress eating
from Seattle weight loss

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!