Peter details what it means to use hypnosis to overcome emotional eating. In his experience, a lot of people eat because they want to feel better about themselves. They are often trying to get to that place where they feel they’re filling a void and emptiness on the inside. Other times, emotional eating may be a way to distract themselves from other pains and discomforts in their lives. “A person with a heavy heart often has a heavy body,” Peter says. And it is from this sense of fullness that flows outwardly from our hearts that guides our behaviors, our beliefs, our bodies. So, naturally, it would seem that a heart full of grief would move a body to find contentment in that grief by whatever means it can, be it alcohol, drugs or compulsive eating. But that doesn’t have to be the end of the story.
Peter says that he often asks people why they want to lose weight when they say that they do. Oftentimes, he reveals, the motivation for wanting to have a fitter appearance is backwards. He offers this analogy of a cluttered and unmaintained house. The comparison is made to the house in that you’re not allowed to enjoy the house until you’ve finished painting the siding—this attitude toward weight loss is similar. It essentially suggests that you’re not allowed to be content or love your body unless it looks like what the culture is telling you. And more often than not, the image the culture is presenting is really not even a healthy body at all. Breaking from that spell is key to loving yourself and the body you’re in.
Peter also discusses emotions and how a loss of understanding leads to a loss of control. Because so much troublesome eating is done in emotionally distressed states, it would benefit you not only to consider how you’re feeling when you’re eating emotionally, but how hypnosis can help rid you of that burden. What weight loss hypnosis ultimately does is taps into your subconscious to help you grasp past traumas or pains—the emotional instabilities you work through by eating for comfort. By understanding the extent of past hurt, you can wield significant power over the habits you’ve developed to deal with the pain, including eating as a way to distract or feel more in control.
Self Hypnosis Track Below:
Before responding to live participants and speaking to their stories, Peter presents one more metaphor that is fleshed out more during the conversation. Imagine a leaky roof spilling water onto your carpet. While you could effectively treat the carpet and get it back to normal, it really only will stay that way if you patch the hole in the roof first. It makes no sense to clean the carpet 150 times instead of repairing the roof one time. He briefly mentions that we should think about our finances that way, too. But ultimately this goes back to the emotional eating—that to grasp why we eat compulsively in emotionally-charged states, we’ve got to get back to the emotional damage that got us here in the first place and truly deal with it. Peter offers lots of sage advice to listeners who are struggling with emotional eating and hopeful to take their lives back. Remember that there is no quick fix. Never stop weeding the garden.