Hypnotherapy for binge eating works and is a fast safe treatment. I’ve worked with people struggling with overeating in my clinics and our health clubs since 1970. We opened our first health club in 1971.
You can get help with binge eating, anorexia nervosa, bulimia, weight loss, pica and restricted eating.
You may even get health-fund rebates.
I am a clinical hypnotherapist (AHA), psychotherapist and mental health professional (PACFA), medical nutritionist and clinical naturopath (ANPA) with many years’ experience.
I take a holistic approach to your problem, encompassing both your physical and mental wellbeing.
Hypnosis helps the whole process go faster.
I was a dancer when I was young so I saw many people starving themselves and gorging after shows.
Never be embarrassed in coming to see me. I’m here to help and of course it is completely confidential.
Dr Tracie O’Keefe DCH teaching hypnotherapists how to help patients with binge eating.
How do I know if I am a binge eater?
Do you starve yourself all day, then blow out at night?
Are you a secret eater who hoards food and eats as much as you can away from other people and you can’t stop?
Binge eating is a lack of self-control around eating issues.
Maybe you were never taught to eat well, got caught up in emotional eating or obsessed with the thought you might put on weight.
Binge eaters are generally emotional eaters.
You are trying to feel better by not eating so you eat little. Then you try to feel better by eating a lot of food. It’s a vicious cycle that you have been unable to break.
You know it’s out of control but you try to hide it from people because you’re embarrassed. Even though you know you’re going to regret overeating, you can’t stop.
Lack of impulse control
Humans tend to eat less in the summer and more in the winter to protect ourselves from the cold – it’s biological. We eat after the sleep and fasting cycle (‘break-fast’) then eat less before sleep so while you sleep your body doesn’t have to focus on digestion.
This 24-hour rhythm evolved over millions of years to make us strong and healthy. When the rhythm is disturbed, your eating patterns and the impulse to eat become confused. People who follow this rhythm typically live longer, are calmer and more emotionally balanced.
There is confusion between the hormone leptin (which tells you that you are full), serotonin (feel good hormone), cortisone (panic hormone) and melatonin (the sleep hormone). Your body is out of balance.
Hypnosis can help you restore a healthy eating impulse control mechanism.
When counselling alone doesn’t work
Just talking about your eating patterns is not enough for permanent change because you have probably already asked yourself many questions about your eating and logic alone has not worked.
Emotions generally override logic: fear, love, hunger, sex and the need to reproduce. As humans we are governed by our impulses, no matter how sophisticated we aim to be.
So, in our sessions we take an approach where eating well gives you good emotions – better emotions than the binge eating problem.
Logic is a conscious process when we become aware of our reasoning and thinking in our neocortex in the brain. Impulse operates in other parts of the brain like the limbic system and the primitive reticular brain that we can reach with hypnosis.
A wholistic approach to healthy eating
Since I am a naturopath and medical nutritionist, I also look at what, where and when you eat and help you make changes. Eating less rubbish food is still eating rubbish food.
People with eating disorders of all kinds, including binge eating, have nutritional deficiencies or are consuming too much of the wrong kind of substances. That must be corrected for your body and mind to work well.
I’m meticulous in the changes I want you to make and you get follow-up material in writing after the sessions so it’s clear for you to refer to.
Correcting an eating disorder is not just psychological as you are a whole person and everything is connected.
Why hypnotherapy is so effective with binge eating
There’s conscious eating and unconscious eating. Binge eating is unconscious eating even though you are aware that’s what you are doing. So, it’s driven to satisfy serotonin needs not your leptin needs which it can never do.
We may also regress you to find the root of the problem, disconnect it and install healthier eating behaviour and emotions.
In hypnotherapy I help you to satisfy your serotonin needs with good eating patterns, creating an association between healthy eating and feeling good.
Hypnosis delivers suggestions deep into your unconscious mind where your automatic behavioural processes are operated, which means behaviour can change fast.
This is what makes hypnotherapy different and highly effective, so much so that I seldom see patients for long.
You can feel good, eating well and healthy all the time. And the good news is hypnosis helps your recovery go faster.
Are you ready to fall in love with eating in a peaceful and rewarding way again through hypnotherapy?
To get help to overcome binge eating call 0403 398 808 to come into the clinic or consult with me online.
