Podcast Episode #58: Does Hypnosis Really Work for Weight Loss?

In this podcast episode, hypnosis for weight loss, how to build muscle with a gym stick, a question on vitamin and mineral deficiency, how to ride your bicycle uphill, and how lean can a 55 year old man actually get?

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Welcome to podcast episode number 58 and I'm your host, Ben Greenfield. Today we have a pretty interesting discussion about hypnosis for weight loss. I've always been a little bit wary of this myself. I actually drive past a billboard when I go to work that advertises hypnosis and the results that it can achieve. But I thought we'd bring an expert on the show to talk about hypnosis for weight loss. It turns out that it could also be used for enhancing performance, motivation, adherence to nutrition protocols, etc. So that'll be an interesting interview. I also have a few interesting questions in the listener Q and A in today's podcast episode and then just a couple of special announcements before we move on to the Featured interview with Dr. Roberta Temes from New York. And I thought one of the most interesting things was that she actually hypnotizes people over the phone and almost had me hypnotized during the interview. Really interesting voice. So you want to listen to that. And again, anything that you hear during this podcast, remember you can check out in the show notes.

Special announcements.

First thing I want to tell you about is that I've put a video in the show notes to this podcast. And that video is of one of my clients who's been working with me back and forth doing an online personal training program. He's a 55 year old public speaker. Not only has he gone down a few suit sizes and trimmed his body quite nicely, but he actually ripped off his shirt and did a little bit of a flex off. And so I threw his video right there onto the show notes for this podcast. So you older guys out there, you can see what a 55 year old is capable of achieving. And he's been going for about seven months now with a program. It's very similar to the program out of shape 21, the lean body manual that I wrote. We've just tweaked it and customized it for him. And he does his program with email support back and forth with me asking questions about nutrition as we go. He sends me his logs every week. And so if you just want to check out his video, that is available right there in the show notes to this podcast. And then if you are a multisport athlete or a triathlete listening into this show on podcast episode number 58 and you did not hear the end of podcast number 57, you're definitely going to want to check that out. And you're definitely going to want to go check out the blog@BenGreenfieldFitness.com the post that was up there right before. This post gives you everything that you need to know about a brand new triathlete training camp happening down in Austin, Texas in January. This thing's going to be a fantastic all inclusive camp for training during the winter months. So check that out, go to the blog and see what that's all about. It's going to be a lot of fun, a lot of camaraderie, a lot of food, good time. So before we move on to this week's listener Q and A, the last thing that I wanted to mention is that the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast is actually, I don't think, even in the top 100 health, fitness and nutrition podcasts on iTunes. And there's two things that help a podcast to break into that top hundred. The first is reviews by listeners, where you can actually go to the itunes page and you can click right there BenGreenfieldFitness.com or you can just open itunes and do a search for Ben Greenfield Fitness. But reviews from listeners and leaving either a one star up through a five star hint, five stars is better. Or just leaving what you think of the show is not only very helpful to itunes to be able to rank the podcast, but it's helpful to me because I go in there and read those rankings and see what you'd like to see changed on the show. And then the other thing that really helps, if you do not currently subscribe to this podcast on itunes that also really helps it out. So subscribe on itunes if you're already subscribed, leave a ranking and let's go ahead and move on to this week's Listener Q and A.

Listener Q and A.

Remember, if you have a question, you can email me ben greenfieldfitness.com you can leave a comment over on the blog. And just about every blog post has been getting some interesting comments, especially one from last week from the Paleo Diet man, somebody was on there and they just were not happy about the fact that I called a naturopathic phone physician, a doctor. That was an interesting discussion. You should check that out if you haven't had a chance to yet. So you could email me your question. Ben greenfieldfitness.com you can leave a comment on the show notes or you can even call. I have an 800 number set up and there's an extension on there when you call the 800 number where it says if you have a question for BenGreenfieldFitness.com and that 800 number is 877-20994. So I also have that number in the, in the show notes so you can see that toll free number. First question is from listener Eric. And Eric says, I have been told that standing to pedal up hills in a triathlon is taboo because it burns too much energy. I have also been told that the not standing rule is bunk and it is fine to quote unquote, stand when needed. Well, that's a great question, Eric. It's baffled people for thousands of years. Okay, maybe hundreds of years or dozens of years, but essentially there have been some studies that were done on cyclists who stand to pedal on hill climbs. And most of these studies were done looking at the actual physiological response to uphill cycling, meaning that they measured energy expenditure in the same way that you'd measure VO2 max by wearing a gas mask. And they measured the heart rate. And, and what they found was that in most cyclists, and this study was done in competitive road cyclists, the energy expenditure and the heart rate have been significantly greater for standing when compared with seated. When the cyclists were riding up a kind of like not too steep of a grade, about a 4% grade, which isn't much. However, when they got them up to a 10% grade, that same trend was not seen. And the hypothesis was that the change in the biomechanics of the cyclists at the higher grade at the 10% grade involved more pushing and pulling force applied to the handlebars. And that added an additional energy expenditure when the cyclists were seated. And that resulted in really no significant difference from the standing position. And so what it comes down to is that if you are on a steady incline that's not really steep, it could benefit you to stay in the saddle. And when you get to a really, really steep hill, or about the point where you feel like you're really tugging on those handlebars, pushing and pulling on them, to be able to generate a force, that's about the point where you'd want to stand. Now, the other question that I get from triathletes is do you climb in the aero position? I would stay out of the aero position unless you're on a very, very low grade incline. Because when you're tucked in that position, you are able to maintain a higher cadence and you are able to utilize your quadriceps a little bit more. But as soon as you sit up, you're actually able to generate a little bit more force and utilize your glutes and your hamstrings. And that actually can help you out on the hills as long as you're not doing it too much. You know, don't do it over and over and over again in that sitting straight upright position. But especially for the hills that are a little bit steeper, you can get away with that. And for the hills that are very steep, I would stand. I personally train with something called a computrainer, which is, or not a portable, a stationary training device that lets you, for example, ride a set course on a computer and look at the amount of wattage that you're producing. My wattage always jumps up, usually by about 10 to 15 watts, anytime that I rise from that arrow position up into a seated position. Of course, the flip side of that is that you are wearing down some of those running muscles. So it's a, it's a kind of a difficult decision to make. But the general rule to follow is not very steep hills. Stay in the arrow position. As they get a little bit steeper, set up, and as they get real steep, stand. So great question, Eric. Then listener Chris asks, I came across your website while looking for some routines for the gym stick. I already own a silver gym stick, but used it very briefly before starting up at a gym. As I now have a mortgage and gym membership seem to have gone up since I was last at a gym, I'm now thinking of revisiting the gym stick as an alternative. My question is, I'm over trying to bulk up and have super wide shoulders, yet still want to have some width, but mainly be toned or defined. Can the silver or the gold gym stick increase muscle size even slightly at all or is it strictly for strengthening and toning? For those of you who don't know what a gym stick is, you can go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and do a search for gym stick. You can see some pictures of it, but essentially it's a stick with elastic bands for resistance on either side of it. So you can do chest press, shoulder press, Curls, lunges. You can actually do quite a few single leg stance, more athletic type of activities. They actually have a really cool website that gives you a bunch of different exercises, but I use it once a week. And when Chris is referring to the different colors, the silver gives you about 1-25 kg, which is a little over 50 pounds maximum of tension that you could get. So you think about what it would feel like to press 50 pounds overhead or a couple of 25 pound dumbbells, maybe 30 pound dumbbells. That's about how much maximum resistance you're going to get out of a silver. And the gold gives you about 10 to 15 pounds past that. So you'd be looking at being able to throw around up to about 60 maximum 70 pounds with the gold. The gym stick is very good for toning. It's very good for doing high reps, getting lean, working on muscular, endurance. You're never going to be able to get the same amount of muscle mass as you would by going to the gym and throw in 200 pounds on a barbell and bench pressing with that, or 300 or 400, whatever the case may be. I personally am 500 pounds, but that's just me. No, I'm just kidding. I couldn't, couldn't bench press £500 in my wildest dreams. But the thing that you can do with the gym stick to put on muscle mass is you can actually superset some of the exercises that you do, thus pre fatiguing a muscle. So for example, one superset that I'll do is I'll do a set of clap push ups or regular push ups and then I'll throw the gym stick on and I'll burn that out with another 12 to 15 of the gym stick chest press. Or you can do like a handstand push up against the wall, turn around, press the gym stick overhead. You can do jump squats and then put the gym stick on your back and do squats with that. But the idea is that you can build muscle with it, but you're going to need to superset and actually pre fatigue the muscle before you hit it with the gym stick to get optimum results when it comes to increasing muscle size. With something like that. If you don't have a gym membership, and let's just use myself as an example, let's say that I didn't have a membership, even though I do at the local ymca. If I didn't and I could choose to have a few things around in my home, and these are the things I do have around in my home. I have a 40 pound dumbbell set that's just two 40 pound dumbbells. I have a stability ball, I have a gym stick and I have an elastic band and that's it. That's my entire home gym and I've literally not visited the quote unquote real gym for two to three weeks at a time before and been just fine exercising at home with those tools. So hopefully that helps you. And I'll put a link to the gym stick in the show notes Chris and then we have another question from listener Christian Pretty long question but I think I'll read it because her frustration, his frustration, her frustration really comes through in the email. I have once before emailed you over some knee pain and it band pain I've suffered with for some time. You were very helpful with the information. I have not gotten your book Bulletproof Knee yet. Just short with finances right now. I had heard a podcast of yours a while back over the benefits of magnesium oil and how athletes lack in it. I'm a triathlete. I take a gnc, Women's Athlete, multivitamin and Total Omegas. I got into using an amino acid powder blend for training with and add glutamine to my shakes in the morning to stay hydrated every day. I use half a noon tablet and a whole one on long rides. I continue with exercises to strengthen my hips and roll out my it often and stretch every day. Wow. I eat very clean protein shake with blueberries and banana for breakfast. I snack on organic gluten free cereal with granola mixed in. I have spinach, chicken with tomatoes and cucumbers for lunch, snack on celery and carrots and then eat a rice cake before I work out or train. Then do chicken and broccoli for dinner. I'm 135 pounds. I believe I get about 1400 to 1500 calories a day. And I'm assuming you mean intake though you're not burning through that. I'm getting disappointed in not being able to trim down a little. But more importantly I'm not recovering from training sessions. I rode the Ironman course Saturday and did an easy ride to Coeur d' Alene on Monday and swam Tuesday night. Plan to swim again tonight. My legs are just too sore to ride or run. I'm frustrated and I will bounce back like other athletes that are much older than me. I'm only 24 and I feel like I'm 60. This is a 24 year old girl. I'm stiff all the time, even with stretching, I got lots of knots that I get worked out of my legs and I'm just not seeing improvement. It seems like my body is not flushing the lactic acid and I don't see why not. I eat and drink plenty. My question is, am I lacking some vitamin or mineral that will help with the inflammation and aches and pain? I taken a leave a day now and that's not cutting it. I want to continue doing what I love and next year I'm doing Iron man. But I got to get this old lady feeling out of me. I realize I'm not a paying client of yours, but I would truly be grateful for any advice you can give me. Thanks so much for your time. Frustrated and in pain.

Wow.

Okay. Most of the time this would be something that I would actually do as a consultation over the phone with an athlete. I'm not going to spend the whole 30 minutes on this or anything like that. But I just want to give you a few tips based off what I'm reading, Christian. Okay. The first is that I'm looking over your electrolyte intake and your mineral intake. You did mention magnesium oil yourself and how I talked about the benefits of that. Most of the listeners to this show who have listened for the past few weeks are aware of the benefits of it. But in looking over your mineral, your electrolyte intake, you know, noon is an electrolyte tablet. Its dosage recommendations are two an hour and you're using half in one day and a whole one on long rides. And for most cyclists, long rides, I mean two plus hours. So you're really not getting much at all in terms of electrolytes. That's the first thing that comes to mind. And that's, that's what I have. A lot of my athletes that I'm actively coaching now doing is simply no questions asked, supplementing with magnesium and having them use the topical magnesium oil. So from an electrolyte perspective, I would add that when I look over your nutrition, it actually looks pretty good in terms of the total amount of calories that you're getting in. And then when I jump down to your exercise protocol, it seems pretty straightforward. But you do say that you're stiff all the time, even with stretching. A few of the other things that I would look into in terms of your ability to recover from exercise is it's possible that you're not completely utilizing all the protein that you're taking in. You may want to consider adding digestive enzymes or proteolytic enzymes into your protocol. To allow you to upload that protein just a little bit better. You may also, let's see, you're already taking glutamine, but you may also want to consider from a protein perspective, taking in a branched chain amino acid source, which I also don't see in here. So branched chain amino acids and proteolytic enzymes. From a gut perspective, you could also look into digestive enzymes and you could look into probiotics. So all I'm thinking about is the fact that even though your food intake looks very clean, it's possible that your body isn't actually assimilating it, absorbing it and breaking it down as well as it could to actually give you the fuel on board that you need to bounce back. Now, when you say it seems like your body is not flushing lactic acid, that's a moot point. Nobody gets sore really from lactic acid. It's more of calcium leakage and inflammation that can result in post exercise muscle soreness. Lactic acid is usually out of your system within just a couple of hours after you've finished a workout. So it's not the lactic acid as much as the calcium leakage. Again, magnesium can help with that. As far as post exercise muscle soreness, you know, if you were a much older person, I would say, well, yeah, maybe you need to stretch a little bit more. Maybe you need to take an ice bath every workout because it takes longer and longer for your muscles to recover the older you get. You're 24 years old though, you shouldn't be feeling this all the time. That's pretty uncommon. So as far as your inflammation, your aches and your pains, it could be a problem with a deficiency. Now, as far as bouncing back from a workout, that wouldn't necessarily be a magnesium deficiency as much as possibly a vitamin D deficiency or vitamin D is a hormone precursor or an actual hormone deficiency. You can get your hormones tested, you can go in and you can do like a 24 hour sex steroid test. That's usually a urine test. You can do a saliva test for hormones, but you can take a look and see if your body actually has what it needs in it to optimize recovery. You can look at testosterone, you can look at cortisol, you can look at any of your estrogens, your progesterone. Those are some things that I would take into consideration. You didn't talk about, about your periods much. I don't know if you're regular, but that's something else that I would ask you if we were doing if we were doing a consult, you describe it as getting this old lady feeling out of me. Well, there are quite a few things that you can test to find out if there is something that needs to be addressed. But red flags, biggest red flags I see right now or biggest obvious things would be magnesium intake and then some type of more complete protein intake with the branched chain amino acids, proteolytic enzymes, digestive enzymes and preferably even a probiotic. And then the last thing is you say you're taking Aleve once a day for the muscle pain. You got to be careful with that stuff. Non steroidal anti inflammatory drug induced gastrointestinal problems are a big problem. You can get internal bleeding in your stomach, in the lining of your small intestine. You leave anything like that, like those little ulcers, untreated, you get digestive juices, stomach acid that can eat a hole in your intestinal lining. You get decreased nutrient absorption, you can get swelling, you get scarring from ulcers that can close the actual sphincter where your stomach empties into your small intestine that prevents food from passing, that causes, you know, everything from lack of absorption to weight loss to again lack of protein, at least uptake. So there could be a lot of problems with taking the Aleve. I would try to combine a topical anti inflammatory with something like the magnesium supplement like you could do. One good brand is Traumeal. That's something you can get just about any health food store. It's Arnica, Montana and a few other herbal extracts that can decrease muscle soreness. I would be careful with taking the Aleve on a daily basis. That's not something that you should be doing to your body in that case can cause GI toxicity when taken long term. The last thing from a connective tissue perspective, you say you get a lot of knots, you say you get a lot of tightness. I'm not sure if you are doing massage on a regular basis. I believe you mentioned that you were doing a foam roller. Maybe not. It's a pretty long email. Maybe not a foam roller, a stick. I use one called the Muscle Track. You can see that@bengreenfieldfitness.com or a massage therapist would all be something that would help out quite a bit. So there's a lot of different things that we would need to throw at this. Typically a question like this, it tends to be something that becomes multifactorial and I feel like I'm just kind of droning on. Typically when I'm doing a consult with somebody. We're bouncing things back and forth. I'm asking questions, you're answering. But that's just my basic response to your emails, that there's a lot of, a lot of little things, a lot of little red flags, and we just have to kind of change, check them off one by one. But what it comes down to is just because you're eating clean and taking a multivitamin does not mean that your body is getting what it really, truly needs for Ironman. And I think that about wraps up our questions. So remember, just email me ben greenfieldfitness.com if you have a question. And we're going to go ahead and move on to hypnosis for weight loss.

Featured topic.

Hey, podcast listeners, this is Ben Greenfield. And today on the other line, I have a psychotherapist with a PhD degree, counseling psychology. And Dr. Roberta, for more than 35 years has practiced psychotherapy in New York City. She's actually a faculty member at a medical school in Brooklyn. She is an author with several books, but most significantly, the one that we are going to talk about today and the process that we are going to talk about today, it's called the Complete Idiot's Guide to Hypnosis. If you happen to be in front of your computer while you're listening in to this podcast, you can actually go to drroberta.com and find out a little bit more about Dr. Roberta, who will be interviewing today. And primarily what we are going to talk about is weight loss, weight control, and hypnosis. So, Dr. Roberta, thanks for coming on.

Thank you.

I want to hear a little bit about your background in this because it seems just fascinating, having surfed around your website, how does someone get into the field of weight loss and hypnosis? What's your background in this?

Okay, well, I was just a regular shrink doing psychotherapy at a mental health center when I had a problem with one of my kids. My daughter needed some surgery and she was very nervous about it. She was a little girl. And she kept saying, mom, I want to cooperate, but I get so scared when I go into the doctors and the hospital and I start thrashing around and I can't do what needs to be done. And I mentioned this to one of my colleagues at my mental health center. And John said to me, you know, that sounds like good use of hypnosis. Why don't you bring her in here and I'll hypnotize her to be cooperative and not be frightened. I was little wary of it. I had only seen stage Hypnotists. I didn't know anything about it. So I went in with Karen and the doctor psychologist hypnotized her. He had. Hadn't done this very often. He was reading from a book to know what to do, but he did it. And in five minutes it was done. And she opened her eyes and said, oh, I look forward to tomorrow when they do all this stuff in my mouth. And I was like, what? And then I decided after that surgery went so easily and so swiftly, and the doctors actually accused me of giving her medication. They said, did you sedate her? No. But I said, okay, I want to learn this. So I started to learn it, and it turned out that I had a very good talent for it. Part of that is because I have kind of a boring voice. When I was a teacher, people used to fall asleep, but it's a very good voice for hypnosis. So I was good at it. I started it, and then little by little, people heard about me. And before you knew it, I had a full time practice in hypnosis.

Wow. And so any listeners who are listening in right now, I guess they know what a good hypnosis voice now sounds like. So when you're, when you're studying hypnosis and you're getting into that field, do you actually have to go to some type of a, of a school, of a sort of certification process? I mean, are there standardized permits or certifications or things like that that are necessary for a hypnosis practitioner?

I am so glad that you asked that question, because truth be told, there is no standard. Hypnosis is not regulated by anything anywhere. Therefore, whenever you hear or read about someone who says, oh, I'm a certified hypnotist, that has no validity. They might know hypnosis very well, but they might have taken a one hour mail order class. I could decide that everyone who listens to this podcast is now a certified hypnotist. Send you all a piece of paper that says Dr. Roberta has certified you because there are no national estate standards. Anyone can call himself a hypnotist.

Interesting.

Pretty scary, huh?

Yeah, it is a little bit scary. And what I'm primarily interested in because I, you know, I drive past a big billboard every day on my way to work that advertises weight loss and hypnosis. Is it the same deal with those type of clinics? Anyone can simply waltz in and be a weight loss hypnotist.

That's true. But of course, what we're hoping is that the person who does that has years of experience and they know what you're doing.

Absolutely.

But who knows? We don't know. My thing is that I suggest people go to someone who's well recommended. I think there's nothing like word of mouth. If your friend has been very successful losing weight with a particular hypnotist, that's the hypnotist to whom you should go. Because otherwise, I'm not even sure that credentials mean anything. Could have a PhD and be a bad hypnotist. I really think it's the ability that you have. Perhaps you should go to someone who has a state license in medicine or psychology or nursing just because they have something to lose if they do something terrible.

Right. Right. Now, how did you actually get into the weight loss arena when it comes to hypnosis, or what type of experience have you had in that?

Well, here's what I did. I started just opening my doors and saying, come on in if you wish to be hypnotized for anything. But I soon learned that the most frequent people were weight loss, smoking cessation, and insomnia. Those were the three things people wanted to do most. So with my years of experience, I kind of honed them each so that I could become very good and know what they needed best. And with weight loss, I realized that it would be a good idea to make a CD for people, because whereas smoking, I can give you the hypnotic suggestion, you will never again smoke. You hate cigarettes. Cigarettes will kill you, will poison you, and you know what? You'll never pick up a cigarette again. However, I can't do that with food. I cannot say, you'll never eat again. And with food, you're exposed to food all over the place. You can't walk, watch tv, be with another friend without being encouraged to eat. And it didn't seem fair that I would hypnotize someone and it would last for a week or two or three or four. And then they call and say, you know, it's starting to wear off. I'm starting to wish to eat all those forbidden foods. So that's when I got the idea of making a CD for weight loss so that they can simply play the CD again and again.

So before we get to a lot of the content of the CD and the book that you design based off of these experiences, when someone actually comes into your office and they're going to go through. Through a hypnosis for weight loss session, so to speak, what exactly happens? What's the walkthrough of a typical session?

Well, the first thing that happens is we Chat a little bit to see if they really need to lose weight. Because some people are so brainwashed by our society that says you must be very skinny, that they don't understand that they're fine. So that's the first thing we do. And some people think that maybe there's something wrong with them emotionally because they're overweight. Because again, our society often says, oh, if you eat too much, it's for psychological reasons. It's because you hate your mother, you hate yourself. So first we go through all those myths to be sure that people understand that those theories have been disproved. And it's now suspected that the opposite is true. That fat people are emotionally stronger than most because in fact they endure so much ridicule and criticism and yet they go out every day. None of this is true. So poor self esteem is just a myth. Humans come in a variety of shapes and sizes and obesity is not an eating disorder. It's not a psychological disorder, it's a genetic disorder. In fact, people do have a genetic predetermination to eat more. And as they gain weight, glucose piles up in fat cells and then their predisposition to gaining weight increases. However, they still can lose weight because genes give us the capacity to be fat. But your eating habits turn the capacity into a reality, right?

There's still a lifestyle component, right?

So what we do then, we figure out what diet program you should be on. If you simply say to yourself, I'm going to eat less or I'm going to watch my food, you won't lose weight. If you want to lose weight, you must be on a program that has been proved over and over. It doesn't have to be a specific program like Atkins or South beach or Weight Watchers. It can be your own program of counting calories or counting fat grams or eating at specific times and places. But once you have your program in place, then the hypnotist can hypnotize you to stick to your program. And that's where I come in. So first we determine the self esteem issues and the program issues. Then we say, okay, now we're going to think of suggestions to tell you when you're hypnotized. And the client and I figure out suggestions specifically for him. We say, typical suggestions, you will have no desire to eat while watching television. You will have no desire to eat while driving. You'll notice when you feel full during a meal and stop eating at that point. You'll only eat at a designated meal time. You won't keep junk food in the house, you'll eat your heaviest meal before.

7Pm for the actual hypnosis, prior to making those suggestions to people, do you have to have them in a certain state?

Yeah, well, this is what I'm saying. First we work on. You asked what happens in the course of a session. So the next step is that we develop the suggestions. Once the suggestions are developed, then the person is hypnotized by me. Then I read them the suggestions, then they visualize themselves enacting the suggestions and then they're finished and the session is over.

So really this is a lot different than say, the type of hypnosis that I would think of when I'm seeing what's portrayed, say, in Hollywood or in popular media or with magicians. This is more of just like a suggestion and a self visualization process.

There are two different types of suggestions of hypnosis. There are two different types of hypnosis. There is entertainment hypnosis, also called stage hypnosis, and then there is medical hypnosis, also called clinical hypnosis. I do the latter and so I do hypnotize the person. After we've made our list of suggestions, I tell them to sit back and relax and I talk to them for about 10 minutes. And in those 10 minutes they will enter a state of deep suggestibility. And we call that state of deep suggestibility hypnosis or trance. And I do it with words and my words permit them to become very suggestible and enter into that altered state of consciousness.

I can hear in your voice right now that you'd probably be very good at this.

I have a boring voice?

No, it's a soothing voice actually. What type of, of studies or research have been done on specifically hypnosis for weight loss? What? Because I know there's a lot of people that are, that are critical of this.

Really? What are they critical about?

Primarily the clients that I work with for weight loss who come in for exercise and nutrition. The question I get is what do you think about weight loss for hypnosis? Does that stuff really work?

Is usually what I get.

And you know, one of the things that we can do is, is listen to you and some of the information that you've put on your CD and in your book and what you do. Is it a book or is it a cd by the way? Or is it both? Both.

That's what I thought.

But are there other resources for them where they could go?

You know, there are number. There are a number of scholarly journals where we have reports of clinical trials done where people were given, were divided into groups. One group got hypnotized, one group just got nice support and encouragement. And they came every week to their meetings. And at the end of six months, those who were hypnotized lost three times as much weight as those who got nice support and encouragement. And those types of studies have been replicated over and over. In fact, you know, the place that sells my CD for weight loss is called www.HypnosisNetwork.com and they offer a money back guarantee. So you can imagine that it is very successful. Hypnosis is very successful for weight loss.

What I like is that my initial impression of hypnosis for weight loss was that the hypnotist would sit someone down and literally tell them that they were going to lose weight or that they were going to burn fat more quickly. But really what you're doing is you're enabling someone to make the proper lifestyle, exercise or nutrition modifications. That's the impression that I'm getting. Am I on the right track?

Of course, of course. Hypnosis is really all hypnosis is self hypnosis. I can't make somebody do something. I can. Instead, I function as their coach. They have a goal and I help them get to their goal.

So for the audience listening, the type of person who this would really be good for is the type of person who starts a program and falls off the bandwagon or who has trouble starting a program, period, who simply cannot seem to make those modifications without stumbling somewhere along the way. And just stopping a hypnosis program is something that would allow you to reach your goals more effectively.

Absolutely, absolutely. And your sessions, for example, on my cd, there are different tracks. There's one track that gives you motivation to exercise. So when you find that you have stopped going to your trainer or your gym because most of us don't do it 365 days a year and you want to have motivation to get back on track, you would listen to just that track on the cd, which gives you a hypnotic suggestion so that you will automatically, without thinking, go to exercise every day.

So you can just select a part of the CD for say, a weakness that you have, like nutrition weakness or a lack of ability to find motivation to exercise. And when someone listens to this cd, is it about what, what's the time commitment like? If I wanted to say, I'm assuming this would be on a daily basis, hypnotize myself.

You know, after you listen to each track once and each track is between, I'm trying to Think. I think it's approximately 10 minutes each. Then you would go back daily and decide which track is for you. And you may decide that right now you want the track about not eating when you go too much, when you go to a restaurant, or when you go to a catered affair, because that's what you might need at that particular day. Another day you might want to do the one about just having fun and accepting yourself and enjoying yourself and participating in all activities of life.

Interesting. And thehypnosisnetwork.com is where people could actually find both the book and the cd.

No, they just do the CD and the book you can get at Amazon, the Complete Idiot's Guide to Hypnosis. And my own website, which is drroberta.com d r r o b e r t a dot com gives you lots of information. And one of the interesting things that is now fully accredited and established is hypnosis by phone. So that just as you just said, my voice could be so soothing and calming. When people call me and make an appointment for hypnosis by phone, which they can do@hypnosisbyphone.com I can hypnotize them for whatever reason. Just this morning, I hypnotized somebody who had to make a sales presentation and was very nervous, and I functioned as the coach to get him over his nervousness.

Interesting.

Well, maybe that would be a good idea for a future episode, is to do a demonstration. Of course, you. You probably would have to be careful doing something like that in getting someone's permission to actually release the audio, I'm assuming.

Well, the problem with the audio is we don't want anyone to ever do it while they're driving.

So you wouldn't want someone to be listening to an episode where you hypnotize someone, get hypnotized themselves and be operating heavy machinery.

Yeah, that's right.

We don't want any tractors to end up in a ditch.

Exactly.

This has been quite helpful. I know for me, I had some preconceived notions about what hypnosis for weight loss actually involved. And this really answered my questions in terms of, you know, me as a fitness professional just knowing about another technique out there, especially for some of my clients who have difficulty motivating themselves. So I want to thank you for coming on the show and I'm going to put a link to some of the resources that you discussed in the show, notes to this podcast. So I would like to thank you for your time, Dr. Roberta. And you're over in New York. I believe. Is that correct?

I'm in New Jersey.

New Jersey. Okay.

I'm in New Jersey. I do most of my work by phone and on the Internet, but I am in New Jersey, where I do have an office, and I am eager to help any of your listeners who contact me.

Fantastic. Fantastic.

All right.

Well, thank you and have a wonderful day.

You, too. Bye now.

Bye.

Well, folks, that's just about it for today's podcast, but I did have one quick question for you. If you have suggestions for what you would like to see covered in this podcast, I do have a lot of pretty exciting things coming down the pipeline, including the complete results of the performance factor testing that I did. If you have other things that you would like to see, I know some people like this cue to be towards nutrition. Others like to hear more about training. Some people like to hear about the lifestyle component. But if there are specific things that you would like to see, feel free to email me benven greenfieldfitness.com and I can get just about any topic that you want to see covered on this show. I probably would have a little bit of a difficult time doing something like how to get an effective training session while standing on the Great Wall of China, but keep it, keep it reasonable, and I should be able to put together information for you from experts around the nation that really fits the needs of you as the audience. So until next time, have a great and healthy week. And this has been signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.