Posts Tagged ‘Diet’

Weight Loss Miracle – Self-hypnosis Plus the South Beach Diet

November 23rd, 2009

The South Beach diet is one of the most widely used ways to lose weight today. It is based around diet and lifestyle changes that help you steadily lose weight. By cutting out “bad” fats and carbohydrates and having plenty of “good” ones, dieters can take weight off without feeling deprived or sacrificing their health.

There are three stages in the diet program. During the first phase, dieters avoid all carbohydrates except for vegetables. Although many foods are restricted, dieters still have a wide range of foods they can eat. The first phase is the most difficult phase, but also the shortest since it only takes fourteen days. Dieters can expect to lose around ten pounds during this time.

In phase two, dieters begin incorporating the previously banned carb-rich foods into their meals. Dieters are expected to lose 1 to 2 pounds each week while steadily raising the volume of carbohydrates they eat. The second phase lasts until dieters attain their target weight.

The third phase is the maintenance phase. Dieters utilize their healthy eating strategies from phase two to maintain their goal weight throughout the duration of their lives. If dieters start to put on weight, they may go back to the first phase of the diet.

It is likely that you have seen pre-prepared South Beach meals and snacks sold in stores. These items are handy, but you do not need to buy them in order to follow the diet. You only need to commit to the different general guidelines for each phase of the diet.

During phase one of the diet, you are permitted to consume lean meats, such as turkey, chicken, and fish, eggs, most vegetables, nuts, and a limited amount of dairy products. Fruit juices and fruit are not eaten during this phase because they are high in sugar. Also banned are all carbohydrates, fatty cuts of meat, alcohol, and a few vegetables that are rather high in sugar content, such as corn. The point of this phase is to ban “bad” carbohydrates from your diet and initiate the process of losing weight.

During the second phase, dieters gradually reintroduce fruit, whole grains, and other banned foods into their diet. In the process, dieters learn how to adjust their diet to maintain a desirable weight. Once this is successfully accomplished, the diet moves into the life maintenance phase, in which dieters attempt to maintain the healthy habits that brought them to their desired weight.

The factor for success with the South Beach program is committing to eating healthy. Although that appears easy, this diet program and most other diet programs stop working because dieters abandon the diet before the program can achieve results. The challenges that most dieters have with weight loss often result from deep-rooted issues such as a lack of drive to lose weight, a habit of binge eating, or out-of-control appetite. The good thing is that all of these issues can be resolved with techniques that anyone can learn from a high quality hypnotherapy weight loss CD program.

To treat a lack of motivation, a technique from a technology called Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) will induce a strong desire to stick to your dieting goals.

To begin, dieters pinpoint precisely what it is that is most important to them, as a person. This is called their “highly valued criteria.” Then, NLP techniques are applied to make the dieters feel that by losing weight, their highly valued criteria will become enhanced. An alternative is to make the dieter feel that if they do not lose weight, their highly valued criteria will be placed in jeopardy.

Motivation comes from what we believe in, not from logic! So in the previous case, let us say that the dieter’s most highly valued desire is that the dieter’s children are happy and safe. Using an NLP tool called Submodalities, we can guide the dieter into feeling that if she or he is unable to lose weight, the children will be condemned to emulating their parent and they will be overweight and unhappy. This type of belief will provide a strong desire and feeling to stick to a diet and take the weight off.

Several NLP techniques can help to reduce or even completely remove the urges and cravings that prompt one to eat too much. This works very well to help dieters stick to the first and most challenging weeks of the South Beach diet. Furthermore, helps dieters commit to an exercise program, which will increase the usefulness of any diet program.

Stress is an issue that often drives people to eat too much or stop paying attention to their health, but stress-relief is offered by both hypnosis and NLP techniques. One such tool is called the NLP Flash. With this technique, having the unconscious use stressful thoughts as triggers for relaxing thoughts relieves the stress that causes the impulse to eat excessively.

Out-of-control eating habits can also cause people to put on weight. A lot of people have seemingly unmanageable eating habits because over the years, they have developed a “conditioned response” to eat under certain circumstances. For example, many of us snack on junk food in front of the television even though we aren’t actually hungry. The good thing is, hypnosis and NLP both have techniques that can quickly eliminate these conditioned responses. These techniques eliminate the appetite without drugs or pills.

By targeting the underlying problems that prevent people from shedding pounds, NLP and hypnosis has helped many people finally get in the best shape of their lives. When used with the South Beach plan, dieters may enjoy easy weight loss and success at achieving their fitness goals.

Time+a Diary=weight Loss

November 21st, 2009

Many business professionals use a diary to plan their day and week. Whether its a filofax or an A4 book, business people recognize the huge potential of listing their most immediate objectives. This works in business but it also works for weight loss! Through the use of a food diary you can list all yur objectives for the coming days and weeks but you can also do much, much more. Through using your diary you can identify problem areas around yur eating and exercise, adjust your approach to food and structure your day more effectively. Let me show you how.

A food diary like this allows you the opportunity of reviewing your behaviours and gives you the means for formulating new plans to help build new behaviours. These changes then act as a guide for setting weight-loss, eating and exercise goals. A food diary is a great way of tracking your progress. It gives you the opportunity to look back over the course of days, weeks and months to see how you have altered your approach and reached your goals. This is extremely motivating and reassuring. As you see how well you have done you are spurred on to even greater action. In a similar manner you can become more conscious of those times when you broke your new routine, ate that extra piece of cake, failed to exercise et. However, armed with this knowledge you can formulate a plan to deal with the problems that you have identified.

A food diary gives you the opportunity to make a conscious choice about your eating habits instead of going on automatic around food. Writing down what you can eat and can’t eat and reviewing your goals for the day sets out a clear plan and allows you to think twice before you act. A daily and weekly diary, with goals and strategies, is an approach used in business and by almost all high-achievers. They use it because it works.

To begin with you will just right down everything you eat and drink during the day. You will add your leisure activities like walking, jogging or just watching television. While you are in the middle of the task think about the reason or motivation behind doing it. Then once you have finished write the reason down in your diary. Do this with every activity even when you eat. This will allow you to analyse your motivations.

Once you have a week’s full of diary entries look back over it. You will find definite patterns emerging. Look closely at those patterns and use them to structure an eating and exercise plan for the upcoming week. Write an entry each day of what you will eat and what activity you will perform to help shed those excess pounds. For example, if you find that you are eating at certain times during the day because you are bored then this is an excellent time to pen into your diary an exercise activity or anything else that will relieve the boredom! Diligence and persistence is required to keep and follow your food diary but once you do the rewards are tremendous. Many people do not realize just how much they snack or eat due to reasons that have nothing to do with hunger. Your diary will help you see and deal with such times. It will also help you to formulate realistic goals because you have to put the activities and food you will eat down on paper. In the begining you may find that your aspirations outway your capabilities. Many times when we first start using a food diary we cram it with activities that are unrealistic. On the other hand some people don’t fill it up enough and find that they have too much time on their hands and we all know this leads to over-eating! However, with practise and time you will reach a comprimise with yourself.

Remember to jot down exactly how you feel and take note of the emotions. Our emotions truly do rule our behaviour. The more honest you are with yourself the more you will get out of this process. If you find that you are eating from stress or emotional issues then put it into your diary, as one of your activities, that you need to find techniques and approaches to deal with these emotions. Hypnosis, subliminals and other self improvement techniques have high success rates when it comes to re-programming our behaviours and eliminating emotional issues.

Keeping a diary can take some getting used to in the beginning, and to many it may sound like a waste of time, but it is a proven method for helping reach and maintain a healthy weight and has been shown to help people reach goals of all kinds.

Best Bets for Weight Loss in 2009

November 20th, 2009

Weight loss seems to be on everyone’s mind during those post-holiday weeks in early January, and who can blame us all for worrying? It seems like the entire month of December is spent on one nonstop smorgasboard of fattening, sugary, salty foods.
Sure, they taste good, but we end up paying in pounds (on our body, not the British currency) later on, and we all know that especially the older we get, those pounds go on easy, but become much harder to take off.
However, even if you think you have the most stubborn body fat, and you feel like losing weight takes more time than you’d like to waste on eating salads with no dressing and lean meats, rest assured that there are diets out there that anyone can lose weight on.
It just depends on what is the least painless for you personally. Do you hate carbs? Go on a low carb diet or carb conscious diet like the Zone or the South Beach Diet.
If you don’t care for meats and proteins, you may want to opt for a vegetarian based diet, or even a vegan diet for that matter. These types of diets tend to rely mostly on whole grains, nuts and other sources of fiber and substance that don’t involve any type of animal meat of animal byproducts.
What about those diets for people who don’t like to cook, and need to have portion control and calorie control? Well, in this day and age of everything you could possibly want at the click of a button or movement of a computer mouse, you can even get healthy, reduced calorie, and portion controlled meals sent right to your door.
Although these options may not be something that some people consider cost effective, if you really stick to the menu of foods that are shipped to you, and don’t veer off the menu and start spending money on fast food or restaurant foods, then you actually should find that you’re spending about the same amount as you would have on the groceries and restaurant meals that you normally would be eating anyways.
For those that are a little more adventurous and not averse to the more “extreme” diets, there are fasting diets that some swear by not only to jump start their weight loss, but also to give them an internal “cleansing” of sorts.
Although these types of diets are criticized for their extremism, and some even decry them as harmful to the health of anyone who does them, there are devotees that believe these types of deprivation diets give them their health back, and more importantly, take the focus off food in their life for a while, allowing them to channel their creative efforts everywhere else.
There are always those good old stand by diets that I think everyone and their brother has tried at some point, like the cabbage soup diet, which is famed for it’s use as a medical weight loss tool for those that are going to undergo some sort of surgical or medical procedure in the next few weeks.
It is known for it’s quick results, but a lot of people complain that it not only gives them zero variety since that’s all they can eat all day, but also that it gives them excess gas (which is of course embarrassing and not a desirable side effect of any diet).
My personal recommendation is that no matter what the type of diet you decide to try in 2009 to help you attain and maintain your ideal weight and gain your health back, you may want to buy a good set of self hypnosis CD’s for weight loss.
These can not only help you to get the internal willpower you need to lose weight and keep on losing weight, but they also work on such a subliminal level that you don’t even notice that you’re exercising the correct behavior that allows you to lose weight, keep on losing, and maintain your ideal weight.

The Three Bodies of Weight Loss

November 17th, 2009

The following words may seem taboo: weight loss is easy! We have just been going about it the wrong way. Almost all of the products and diets on the market today miss key components to achieving permanent weight loss. Almost all of them only focus on the physical body- what we eat, how much we eat, when we eat and how much we exercise. If that is all that is necessary, then why have you not achieved your ideal weight? Why do diets and pills have a success rate of less than 9%? The reason is simple: there is a missing link to permanent weight loss. The physical aspect of weight loss is only one third of the equation.

There are three separate aspects that must addressed for permanent weight loss, and I like to refer to them as the three bodies. The physical body is the first. The other bodies for weight loss are the missing links; the mental body and the emotional body. The mental body includes your eating habits, orientation and perception of food. The emotional body includes the emotional reasons you eat, your attitudes toward food, and the underlying reasons you are overweight. When you work with all three bodies, it makes weight loss easy! Imagine sitting on a stool with only one leg. How long could you balance yourself? That is what it is like attempting to lose weight while only focusing on the physical- it becomes a balancing act and a struggle to stay upright! If you find a stool that is steady with three legs, there is no balancing act at all. It is easy to comfortably sit on a balanced stool! When you have a plan that focuses on the physical, mental and emotional bodies of weight loss, you feel comfortable and secure, and your success rate dramatically increases from that of diets alone.

It is important to understand why the mental and emotional bodies play such a large role in weight loss. If making a change was as easy as simply stating the desire, we would all be ultra-healthy, thin millionaires with the perfect partners. How many times have you made a New Years resolution and had it fall through? Because we are creatures of habit, change can sometimes be difficult. When you want to make a change, sometimes it feels as though you are pushing against something inside of yourself. What you are pushing against is your unconscious (AKA subconscious) mind.

Let’s talk quickly about the unconscious mind. The unconscious works very differently than the conscious mind. For example, when you think about not being allowed to eat cheesecake, it makes the unconscious mind want to eat cheesecake even more because you are thinking about cheesecake! The unconscious does not know that cheesecake is bad because it only understands pictures and emotions, so all it sees is cheesecake! The more you think about not wanting the cheesecake, the more and more appealing it becomes until finally… well you know what happens. In order to easily avoid “bad” foods and cut down on or totally halt cravings, it is important to work with the “language” of the unconscious mind.

While I could go into much more detail, I also want to briefly discuss the emotional body of eating. There are two types of hunger- biological and emotional, and it is easy to tell the difference. Biological hunger comes on gradually and patiently, while emotional hunger comes on suddenly and feels urgent. Underlying feelings such as self-loathing, hopelessness, sadness, or worthlessness are often at the root of emotional hunger. Less intense emotions such as boredom can become a culprit as well. Whatever the underlying emotion is, eating is simply masking what is going on in your life. When you notice that you are experiencing emotional hunger, instead of asking “What should I eat?”, a better question to ask is “What is eating me?” Start keeping a list of those feelings and thoughts and find a way to resolve them! There are so many modalities that can help you let go of negative emotions and beliefs, such as psychotherapy, hypnosis, Emotional Freedom Techniques, Time Empowerment (my personal favorite), and Body Alignment, just to name a few. In my personal practice, I find that having multiple modalities in my toolbox greatly increases the amount of change I can help a client achieve. If you are looking for assistance, you may want to seek someone skilled in many modalities as well.

In summary, when you work with all three bodies of weight loss- the physical, the mental, and the emotional- you greatly increase your chances at achieving permanent weight loss and you feel much better! Weight loss can be totally easy if you approach it in a way that works with you, instead of against you! For continued advice on learning about all three bodies of weight loss, I highly recommend visiting my website at www.YourEmpowermentSource.com. We have also included a free law of attraction meditation download on our site.

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Hypnosis Results In Fast Weight Loss

November 13th, 2009

Weight loss is a problem faced by many but not many find a desired solution to it. Nowadays, several new kinds of products and techniques are being introduced to catch the attention of a large majority of persons suffering from obesity. A person desperately trying to experience Fast Weight Loss may get lured into using a hyped up weight loss product, but soon will realize that all the claims were just an exaggeration.
Most doctors if consulted would hand you over a pile of drugs and diet plans with boiled vegetables on the top to achieve Fast Weight Loss.
Therefore, it is time to think out of the box, and go for a solution that has brought excellent results to thousands of clients.
Hypnosis is a technique that has been used by experts for centuries, and as time is passing, studies have shown that it can create Fast Weight Loss results. Several mental disorders and complications have been successfully rooted out from clients suffering for years. Hypnosis is also used to help people achieve certain seemingly impossible goals and targets.
The basic theme behind all this process is to start creating more control over the subconscious mind of the client. While apparently, a person may want to have Fast Weight Loss, but if the subconscious mind oppose it, then he will face great difficulties in reaching this goal of his. A skilled expert hypnotizes the client, and starts cultivating positive ideas and suggestions in his mind.
Once the client re-enters his routine life, his actions become more focused towards achieving Fast Weight Loss, as subconscious mind starts commanding the rest of the body. Exercise, which seemed dull and a waste of time to the client before taking the hypnosis treatment, will now seem to be a fun-activity and he would do involuntarily, without any force.
Similarly, changing bad habits like eating food full of fat and cholesterol that looked hard to leave will become easier afterward. Hypnosis has showed great results in causing Fast Weight Loss and allowing the client to experience better control of eating and increase will power and self-control.
While conventional techniques, which have been tried and tested without much success, demand a lot of effort and sacrifices from the clients, use of hypnosis for Fast Weight Loss is a natural process. Clients do not have to follow diet plans in fact; most clients undergoing hypnosis eat whatever they like.
While several clinics offer excellent hypnosis services, you can also opt for a hypnosis program and Fast Weight Loss in the comforts of your living room. And if you are looking to get familiar with some basic knowledge about weight loss hypnosis, then all you have to do is to make a search online and check out some of the web sites of health centers which provide hypnosis services.
The dream to look slim and attractive will no longer remain impossibility, as Fast Weight Loss hypnosis, will act as a catalyst in helping you achieve this desire. But one must be cautious of not making the mistake of leaving all effort that has to be put in by the client himself. A client with stronger will power is more likely to lose weight quicker.

Hypnosis for Weight Loss : My Experience

November 13th, 2009

The subconscious mind is a subject of much debate. Some say that it wields more power over our everyday actions than we know, while others discount it as more or less an additional complexity of the vast human mind to be pondered, but nothing so powerful as to control our every choice. This is where self for weight loss hypnosis enters the picture.

First, let’s start off on a little history lesson on hypnosis. Hypnosis as we know it today actually has its roots (arguably) in several different cultures, at around the same time, hundreds of years ago. It’s roots go back to early Hindu cultures as well as early European civilizations as a means of healing one’s body and treating ailments.

Here’s where it gets interesting. It is believed that hypnosis may have crept into modern medicine and common practice inadvertently through what may have been the first failed “placebo” experiment on whether magnet therapy worked or not, performed hundreds of years ago at the request of the medical community.

Magnet therapy was put into practice and was believed to have helped heal many people’s ailments until it was put to the test and found that the only effect it had on anyone was what was called a “placebo” effect.

A placebo effect is basically an effect that is physiologically real (you can feel it physically, and your body obeys the suggestion of the mind), but is in fact simply brought on, or conjured up, by the human mind. It is essentially the power of suggestion at work, and that is exactly what hypnosis is – the utilization of the power of subconscious suggestion.

Hypnosis is a deeply relaxed “trance” state where suggestions made verbally by the hypnotizer are grabbed by the subconscious mind of the person being hypnotized, and the power of suggestion is such that the subject’s body and mind obey the “orders” of the hypnotizer, without even fully and consciously realizing why or how.

I experienced the power that hypnotism can have when I purchased some weight loss CD’s and attempted self hypnosis as a means to help control my ballooning appetite – and waistline, and was shocked at how it actually worked and gave me an unshakable sense of self control and “calm” that I’d never felt before.

My previous attempts at losing extra weight that I had gained were not pleasant experiences. I am not “overweight” by most standards, but I definitely fluctuate in the ten pound bracket up and down all of the time because I really do love food. Just experiencing the different tastes and textures of food is such an experience to me that I sometimes don’t realize that what I’m putting in my mouth is polluting my body and adding unnecessary extra weight.

Not only are the foods I choose wrong many times, but I also can tend to eat too much at one sitting, feeling bloated and moody afterwards. So, I wanted to take control of my eating habits again, and had always wanted to try self hypnosis to see if it could help me gain that quiet inner strength and that little voice guiding me to make the right decisions, and quelling my appetite.

And it did. The first time I listened to the it I was, as instructed in a deeply relaxed state which was accomplished by following the hypnotist’s instructions to take several deep breaths. The soothing voice was accompanied by what sounded like trance music, and I became so relaxed I actually dozed off (which she said was ok, in fact, expected).

I did it right before bed, and I woke up the next morning pretty much forgetting that I had listened to it. I went through my day without the usual cravings for sugar and high fat, high salt foods that usually litter my day at work due to stress or boredom with mundane tasks (can’t we all identify with that).

I tend to have somewhat of an oral fixation, especially when at work, meaning that I like to always be chewing or sipping on something. But I noticed this overwhelming urge did not hit me, and instead I just sipped on my water and some hot tea, and only ate when I was truly hungry. Strangely enough, I didn’t even have my usual mid-afternoon craving for chocolate.

Often times I’d be hitting up the candy machine for Peanut M&M’s around that time, and the afternoon came and went without the urge to eat chocolate. I thought this was a major accomplishment for me, but I also wondered if it wasn’t some of that “placebo effect” entering in.

Since I knew that I had listened to the hypnosis CD, was I actually “talking myself into” believing the hypnosis was cutting my appetite and shaping my food decisions as well as my intentions to work out?

Well, isn’t that what hypnosis is – that is, a placebo effect in itself? I suppose it doesn’t really matter, because the end result is that I saw a dramatic change in my eating habits, all seemingly without the pain of a constant internal struggle to not eat.

As far as the root cause of it, I really could care less. It accomplished the task of giving me a renewed sense of self control and eating to live, not living to eat, and that is all that matters in the end!

Try The Mediterranean Diet And Hypnotherapy To Lose Weight Fast!

November 5th, 2009

If you dream of the body of a Greek god or goddess, you don’t have to battle one-eyed monsters or hurl thunderbolts – simply eating like the ancient idols can help you get a body that people will worship.
The Mediterranean way of eating, which is a diet meal plan featuring plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fish, olive oil and red wine, can help you attain the ideal figure. The Mediterranean diet has also been linked to a healthier heart and a longer life span. Foods with refined sugar, red meat, and fatty dairy products are rarely consumed, if ever.
Thousands of years after the powerful gods shook things up, the Mediterranean style of eating still makes great sense as a weight loss diet because you get full on a lot of high-fiber, low fat foods that leave you feeling satiated longer. The fruits and vegetables eaten as part of the Mediterranean diet are naturally low in calories, and are chock full of antioxidants and omega-3 fatty acids, elements your body must have to create new and healthy cells.
The Mediterranean diet permits a higher fat intake than most weight loss diet plans, but it is healthy fat that comes from olive oil and nuts, which are rich in beneficial monounsaturated fats, and low in unhealthy saturated fats, like those found in cheese, ice-cream or beef.
Just bear in mind that for higher calorie items, like the red wine, olive oil and whole grains, you still must focus on overall calorie intake and serving sizes. The key to any successful weight loss meal plan is consuming fewer calories while still feeling satisfied.
When you feel satiated, it makes it a little easier to defeat cravings that most people who are trying to follow a weight loss diet go through. What good is a diet if you cannot remain on it because your appetite is out of control? Before starting any weight loss diet, you will need to find a safe, effective method to eliminate your urges, cravings and appetite to overeat.Lose weight hypnotherapy is a wonderful resource to help you curb your cravings.
The average person feels cravings and an urge to eat for two key reasons:
A. When you pair eating with any other behavior, the other behavior will trigger cravings and an impulse to eat.
B. When you feel tension, you feel compelled to put something into your mouth for pleasure and relaxation.
Let’s examine Part “A” first. Over 70% of the population learns much more quickly and easily by seeing, rather then by hearing. Think about it: If you have an urge to eat when watching TV, it’s because your mind recorded the video image of food in your hand, and then associated that image with the image of the television. From that point, each time you watch television, your unconscious flashes the image of the food in your hand, and you get a corresponding urge.
You have actually “programmed” your unconscious to make you feel cravings and urges as a “conditioned response” to watching television. The same thing occurs when you eat in your car or while on the telephone, etc.
Weight loss hypnotherapy will eliminate the conditioned responses easily by reprogramming your mind to have it trigger unconscious images of you watching the television without eating, and that will eliminate the urge to eat. It will also give you an urge to reject food in that scenario!
But what about Part “B”? Our sensations of stress are created by our thoughts. If you think negative thoughts, you feel tense and upset. If you think happy thoughts, you feel happy and relaxed.
If you have an upsetting thought seated at your computer, your mind will associate that thought with the computer. Thereafter, when you are sitting at your computer, you have a conditioned response; your mind will flash to that negative thought and you feel anxiety. Self hypnosis techniques can help you overcome these patterns almost immediately.
The techniques used in the most effective self-hypnosis programs are based on Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). This technology works by using a person’s existing thought processes instead of post-hypnotic suggestion.
Video weight loss self-hypnosis can program your subconscious to use negative thoughts as a trigger for comforting thoughts. So if you start to think of something that is distressing, your unconscious will automatically change to a relaxing thought in a millisecond. You become relaxed, so there are no sensations of anxiety to set off your cravings. And without an appetite to overeat, it is easy to lose weight and keep it off permanently.
Adhering to a sensible diet plan, like the Mediterranean style, along with weight loss hypnosis means you can finally overcome your cravings to attain the body of a Greek god or goddess.

Speed Up your Metabolic Rate for Quick Weight Loss With Nlp Cds

October 29th, 2009

We’ve all heard it or even said it one time or another: “I’m not able to lose weight because of my metabolism.” It’s easy to blame our extra fat on an abstract idea like metabolism, but let’s look at the real importance of metabolism – and better yet, how you can get the most “burn” for your buck by recharging your metabolism.

In the most basic sense, metabolism includes all of the physical and chemical changes that take place within the body’s cells. Most often, though, metabolism refers to the process in which the body gets and uses energy from what we eat, so it really does play an important part in weight loss and gain.

Not everyone is given the same metabolism, and our rates actually vary throughout our lives, so someone who blames their metabolism isn’t necessarily making excuses. Age affects metabolism, which will slow about 5% every 10 years after age 40, and by gender, as males typically burn more calories at rest than females, and by the quantity of muscle mass you have (more muscle generally means a higher rate of metabolism). Heredity also impacts metabolism, not to mention having children, as well as whether a woman decides to breast-feed.

In spit of all of the wild cards, the simple fact is that if your calorie intake surpasses your metabolism, excess energy will get housed in the body as fat. Though some of the issues affecting metabolic rate can’t be altered, fortunately, there are ways to rev up the metabolism you’re born with.

The first directive is to take in the correct foods in the correct amounts. When you skip a meal, your body goes into starvation mode, which slows metabolism to conserve calories, because it doesn’t know when it will get food again. And when the metabolism slows, so does the rate at which you lose weight.

When you finally do eat after having skipped a meal, instead of burning the calories in the food you have just taken in, your body transfers them to body fat to hold for the next “fast.” To keep your metabolism efficient, eat 4 – 6 smaller meals during the day and aim to eat close to the same times every day. Most importantly, never skip a meal.

You can also step up your metabolic rate with exercise, including both aerobic routines and weight lifting. Aerobic activities, such as dancing, biking and running, burn more calories in the short term, while weight lifting will create more muscle, which increases metabolism and burns more calories in the long term – even when you’re at rest, muscle uses more calories to function than fat.

In fact, every pound of muscle requires 35 calories a day, while every pound of fat requires only 2 calories per day. Despite this, you might be surprised that the more weight you have, the faster your metabolism is likely to run. Simply put, the extra weight forces your body work harder to maintain its processes.

This is partly why it is almost always easiest to lose weight when you start dieting, and gets challenging as you continue because, when you are significantly overweight, your metabolism is already at an elevated rate, so that even a slight cutback in calories will lead to an immediate weight loss.

But what happens after that immediate loss, when a plateau occurs and motivation seems to go by the “weigh” side? Persistent cravings and compulsions can swiftly return, and when they do, do not overlook a valuable resource – lose weight hypnosis. Hypnotherapy can actually retrain your unconscious so that, in essence, you can do away with food cravings. When we study why we snack, recognizing why weight loss hypnosis works so successfully becomes clear.

For a lot of us, snacking has become a habit – perhaps you do it unconsciously when you’re driving or watching TV or when you’re under stress. Hypnosis can actually reprogram your thoughts to stop those associations, leaving you to drive or watch TV without having the need to eat.

One of the most successful weight loss hypnosis techniques for curbing the snacking cycle is Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP, which relies on negotiating with the unconscious mind and making it use the same thought processes that are creating your appetite, to eliminate your appetite. NLP takes many years of study and practical experience for a hypnotherapist to learn and master, but positive results can come very rapidly and seem almost magical to a person who has always struggled with cravings.

NLP can be just as essential as exercise and motivation because, as you read above, it can help make sure that you eat the right kinds of foods at the right times, and this is a chief part of turbo-charging your metabolism. If you want to keep your metabolism at full speed and make sure that all of hard work and exercise are not going to waste by yielding to your food temptations, weight loss hypnosis and NLP can be a secret weapon to eliminate your cravings once and for all.