Animal Care Society

In a society where 34% of Americans are categorized as overweight or obese, we should undertake every possible option where weight loss can be achieved. Weight loss hypnosis is a drug-free alternative for losing weight. Hypnosis for weight loss has been proven to work on many people and can be implemented in many different ways. Even though it had been labeled a parlor trick in the past, people have come to realize that hypnosis can become a mainstream treatment in medicine. It can modify behavior and also provide for pain control.

As with any health care issue, take caution if you plan to pursue weight loss hypnosis because even the most legitimate of appearances in programs can be covering poor research or out and out fictitious claims. Hypnosis can be most effective when pursuing a comprehensive program of diet, exercise, and behavior modification.

It may help to understand what hypnosis is and how it works to understand its role in weight control. While weight loss hypnosis is relatively recent, hypnosis has been used since at least around 1770 and its use by Franz Mesmer but more likely goes back to ancient times. "Sleep" healing and magnetic healing such as Paracelsus used probably worked mostly by hypnotic suggestion rather than any action of the stones that were waved over the body, or chants and incantations. Chanting and rituals may actually have been ways to induce hypnotic trances.

The "trance state" was originally called the "mesmeric trance" after Mesmer which means "animal magnetism". The trance state is the middle ground between being awake and sleeping in a state of suggestibility. It was not until 1843 that Scottish surgeon, Dr. James Braid gave it the name of hypnotism. He used objects to induce .