I lost weight after being hypnotised. Actually it wasn’t about the losing weight, it was about the complete freedom I experienced. At age 34, I went from being a severe food addict to being a normal person after three hypnotism sessions.
Vogue magazine had an article about hypnotists in London and I spotted it whilst in the Reception of some hairdresser or something, normally I wouldn’t read Vogue. One particular lady who worked out of a home in North London caught my eye. I saved my money and signed up for a few sessions.
She was very nice but what I remember was odd was that she didn’t have any credentials as a therapist. She just had a gift for putting people under, and then adding/changing something in their subconscious. To me this was odd because I had been going to therapists – and also Overeaters Anonymous (OA) – since I was 15 years old and they always had to be highly trained before being allowed to treat sick people. Looking back, I feel like I was lucky. She just happened to be a genuinely lovely person and it was safe to work with her. We counted down from 10 to 1 and got off an imaginary lift to a secret garden, and I did find a very old and strange memory from my childhood which I won’t share here. She then asked me to think about love. Something like that. Anyway I walked out of that house a free woman and it is a miracle that I still treasure almost 20 years later.
People later told me that they thought I would be one of those people who OA could not help. After all I had been going to thousands of meetings since I was 15 and yet I kept relapsing. I had done the 12 steps at least three times and I had been to every kind of therapy including Gestalt and rebirthing. Sometimes when people are ‘constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves’ then they can’t get help from a 12 step fellowship. In my case, I think I had a deep-rooted fear of being thin, which was connected to a fear of sex and also somehow connected to homelessness, and this had completely undermined all my attempts to get well. I have absolutely no doubt that the 12 steps of OA saved my life, along with at least some of my various therapists. However I didn’t experience the full benefits until after I was hypnotised. These three sessions seemed to click off the deep level of fear that had driven me in so many crazy ways.
Since then, I have been a normal weight. I mean normal in that when you look at a scale of what I am supposed to weigh, I am bang in the middle. Best of all this doesn’t vary and it takes little effort although I do stay away from very dangerous foods. Actually I suppose the miracle is that I feel a bit disgusted by really creamy sweet fatty foods, so there is no problem. The freedom means that I have been able to hold a job, travel, find love, and also encourage my teenage daughters to also be thin and healthy (without resentment). There are many things to learn about life even when you are thin so it not like life has been easy of course. But I still remember the misery of being trapped in the disease of overeating and I am grateful.