Always hungry? Hypnosis helps

Are you always hungry? Even when you've already eaten? That's very annoying, because before you know it you're just eating way too much. Fortunately, hypnosis can do a lot if you suffer from illogical hunger pangs.

When does hunger make sense or not

When you are hungry, you crave food, or even certain foods. Hunger, however, is not always logical. When it is not logical, it is often referred to as cravings, or tasty cravings. You crave something, like a whole bar of chocolate 😊.

Factors that contribute to logical hunger include if you exercise, because then you burn more, or if you are in a cold environment for an extended period of time[1], because then you also burn more energy.

In addition, it makes sense if you get hungry after not eating for a part of the day.

Of course, it doesn't make sense if you suffer from hunger when you've just eaten. It also shows that there are factors other than just actually being hungry, or burning a lot, that can cause you to always be hungry and overeat[2].

Why do you have an illogical feeling of hunger

There are a number of factors that can cause you to feel illogical hunger pangs.

Unfortunately, your socioeconomic status can cause you to be hungry more often than makes sense. Especially in affluent societies, someone who has a lower economic status may feel hungry more often while eating enough or even too much[3].

In addition, it has been found that people who are overweight have higher resting burn rates and, as a result, they also experience more hunger pangs and eat more than people who are not overweight[4]. The interesting thing is, that especially the part of the body that is fat-free, so say your muscles, is important for this feeling of hunger, while the fats in the body contribute only 5 to 6 percent to feelings of hunger.

What's important to know, though, is that when you're heavier, underneath that fat you're also more muscular, because you're lugging around all your weight all day. Being fatter is basically doing strength training all day and that takes energy.

That’s why walking can be so effective for weight loss— it doesn’t significantly build muscle mass, unlike strength training. As a result, it doesn’t make you even hungrier than you already are, because you aren’t working to increase your resting metabolic rate.

Effects of hunger pangs

The consequences of hunger—whether it’s logical or illogical—include, for example, becoming irritated more quickly, experiencing anxiety, and/or acting impulsively. You may even be more likely to use drugs (source 3).

Other research shows that when a person is hungry their mood often gets worse. Getting neutral or a better mood because of hunger is often not in the cards. In English, this bad mood caused by hunger is also known as "hangry."[5] A corruption of angry. In Dutch you could call it hoos 😉.

What can happen when you pay very close attention to your diet and then deliberately don't eat for hours at a time, is that the moment you then start eating again, you overeat because you "hoos".

And even if you can prevent that, hunger can still cause you to often feel bad and suffer from low self-confidence[6].

So hunger can cause you to feel bad[7]. You can then choose to solve that bad feeling with food, which in turn makes you feel bad which in turn can cause even more cravings because food has subconsciously become your solution to bad feelings.

This is how you end up in a vicious cycle.

How does hypnosis help against hunger

There are multiple ways hypnosis can help you with hunger pangs, and it all has to do with your cause for hunger pangs. Obesity is also often treated with psychotherapy, but without hypnosis, people are often more critical and find it difficult to go along with ideas given by the therapist. Hypnosis then causes people to be more relaxed and that helps to have less resistance to the treatment[8].

When experiencing negative emotions, there’s a chance you’ll feel “hungry,” because eating has become a way for you to get rid of that negative emotion. You may even have trouble distinguishing the feeling of hunger from the actual negative emotion (source 8).

In this case, hypnosis can help you accept and recognize precisely your negative feelings and possibly do something with them in a positive way. This can be done in combination with cognitive behavioral therapy[9].

For overweight people, it can sometimes even be more convenient to accept their weight because slimming down means they will experience more hunger. If you want less hunger then, acceptance is an important step, and one way to achieve that is with hypnosis[10].

In addition, hypnosis can help you recognize the feeling of being satisfied faster so you don't overeat. In some people, the connection between the stomach and the brain may have become impaired due to circumstances, and with hypnosis, that stomach-brain connection can be strengthened again.

You can also use visualizations about food to influence hunger pangs. In itself very logical, but by using this you can make hunger pangs less of an issue. This is also something hypnosis can help you with[11].

A case study of a 39-year-old woman also reveals that hypnotherapy can reduce appetite. Through hypnotherapy, she was able to drastically reduce her binge eating and gained better self-esteem[12].

Hypnosis techniques

If eating has become a way to cope with negative emotions, it’s often something that originated in your childhood. For example, you might have been given a piece of candy when you fell or something similar. So somewhere along the way, the belief took root that if you have a problem, food will solve it. As a result, negative feelings are linked to hunger.

Regression

Using the regression technique, you can go back to the first moment when you felt hungry even though it didn’t make sense at the time. A hypnotherapist can then help “repair” the memory of that moment[13], so that “food is the solution” is no longer a belief you hold. Instead, a constructive belief can be established, such as “problems are opportunities to ask for help.” Afterward, you can deal with problems differently and better distinguish hunger from other negative emotions.

Inner child

During a regression, a hypnotherapist may also choose to enter into the conversation with the inner child. The person suffering from hunger is then encouraged to speak to the inner child about how life is now and how the strategy of eating and seeing negative emotions as hunger now no longer helps. This conversation alone can have an incredibly healing effect on someone suffering from a problem or belief that originated in childhood.

Virtual gastric band

Placing a virtual gastric band also helps well to reduce hunger pangs and recognize the feeling of being satisfied faster. During a virtual gastric band, hypnotic suggestions make you feel like your stomach has actually gotten smaller. The suggestions affect what you feel (how satisfied you are), what your perception of food is, your thoughts about food and the way you deal with food[14].

Self-hypnosis

With all these techniques, you may be given homework to practice self-hypnosis . Usually, people receive an MP3 (audio file) from their hypnotherapist to help them internalize certain suggestions even more effectively.

The mp3 then helps you relax and there may be recorded suggestions that help you with your confidence and to feel better about your stomach, for example. You can then feel better whether you are suffering from hunger or whether it is a negative emotion after all.

Always stop hunger

So always hungry is to stop with hypnosis. This is because with hypnotherapy you can become more aware of what the signal of hunger really is, especially at the time when hunger does not make sense.

In addition, hypnotherapy can help you be more in touch with your body and thus better sense whether you are really hungry, or whether your stomach is actually full anyway.

Would you like to learn more about hypnosis and how you can use it to help yourself or others? Then join the free online masterclass.

This week, you can also sign up for the free masterclasses from the GOOI formula. These will help you overcome limiting beliefs, such as the idea that food is a solution to problems. Click here to access the masterclasses.

Or register directly for one of our training courses.

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