Weight Loss Miracle - Hypnosis Plus the Ornish Lifestyle Diet

The Ornish Diet is a low fat, vegetarian diet program. Correct application of the nutrition plan, exercise, and stress-management techniques of this diet results in weight loss and improved health for most people. Although this diet takes more dedication than many other diets, and often requires big lifestyle changes for the dieter, research indicates that it is effective for both losing weight and reversing heart disease. With its emphasis on stress-management and choosing healthy foods, this diet is also a perfect candidate for combined use with hypnosis therapy.

The Ornish diet can be in one of two, slightly different formulations, a Preventative diet and a Reversal diet. The Reversal diet is formulated for people already suffering from heart disease who want to reverse the effects of the disease and reduce their risk for heart attacks. The Preventative diet is perfect for people who need to shed pounds and lower their chance of developing heart disease. It is also suitable for people trying to lower their cholesterol levels.

Both versions of the Ornish diet recommend a diet plan that is composed of 10% fat, 20% protein, and 70% complex carbohydrates. Under the diet, all meat, fish, and poultry are to be avoided. All fats, nuts, seeds, and oils are also not permitted. Refined carbohydrate foods such as white flour and white rice are also banned, but whole grain pasta and bread, beans, and legumes are permitted.

Foods allowed in limited quantities include egg whites and fat free dairy products such as fat-free milk, yogurt, and cheese. Most processed foods are to be avoided, since any convenience foods with more than two grams of fat per serving are not permitted.

The diet allows you to eat beans, vegetables, whole grains, and fruit at every meal until you feel full. The good thing about this program is that since you are permitted to consume as much as you want of permitted foods, you can feel full and satisfied all the time. This program, unlike many others, is not based on unsafe "starvation" methods.

In addition to the diet plan, another important key to the Ornish diet program is stress-management. There are many stress-reducing practices you can use, such as yoga, meditation, and hypnosis. Hypnosis is ideal for relieving anxiety and tension while supporting natural weight loss. Hypnosis works by guiding your unconscious mind to having positive thoughts instead of negative thoughts when you begin to feel anxious. These techniques are extremely effective in promoting relaxation.

While the Ornish diet is healthy and effective for most dieters, it can be challenging to follow because it involves many restrictions. This diet and others similar to it often fail because people are unable to stay on them. Many people struggle with dieting because they suffer from an uncontrollable appetite, irresistible food cravings, compulsive overeating, or a simple lack of motivation to stick to a weight loss program. These obstacles keep many hard-working dieters from maintaining their diet and achieving permanent weight loss. Hypnosis therapy helps you beat these obstacles, and is an effective complement to the Ornish diet plan because it offers motivation to stay on a weight loss program.

Hypnosis works to control and regulate the appetite by "reprogramming" the unconscious mind to eliminate and replace bad habits with good ones. A lifetime of unhealthy eating habits such as "emotional eating" can cause people to eat compulsively, even when they are not truly hungry. Hypnosis breaks unhealthy associations with food and our feelings to eliminate this conditioned response and prevent emotional eating. Hypnosis can further influence dieting success by replacing the overeating response with another activity, such as exercise. This way, instead of feeling the urge to overeat, you will have the motivation to engage in healthy physical activity.  

Hypnosis can also be used to quell the emotional anxieties that keep you from losing weight. For many people, being overweight provides a "secondary gain" in the form of a sense of emotional protection or safety. For instance, many people with low self-esteem fear rejection, so they use their weight as a reason to believe that other people will dislike them.  Through hypnosis, we can think more positively and focus on improving our health instead of becoming overwhelmed by such anxieties. We can use hypnotherapy to boost our self-esteem, placing more value on ourselves and our own health.

Hypnosis offers a powerful, natural combination of stress-management, motivation, and behavior modification to encourage weight loss and help you follow your preferred diet plan. Using hypnosis with the Ornish diet is especially effective, but hypnotherapy is great for helping dieters stay on any diet program. Hypnosis promotes the success of weight loss diet programs as well as natural weight loss so people can enjoy permanent results.