Imagine having the sensation that your stomach is surgically constricted to a fraction of its original size, making your appetite tiny, and your weight loss huge -- no surgery, no magic pills. According to hypnotherapists, you can achieve that for just a fraction of the cost of real bariatric surgery, by undergoing so called gastric bypass hypnosis.
The idea of losing weight through hypnosis has been around for decades, but now some hypnotherapists are offering "gastric bypass hypnosis," also called "lap band hypnosis." This "procedure" is done to "reprogram" the minds of patients to believe their stomachs are actually smaller, making them incapable of eating large meals without feeling uncomfortably full.
Every year, more than 200,000 Americans undergo painful and expensive surgical procedures to have portions of their stomachs removed, repositioned or constricted. These procedures can cost up to $35,000 dollars, but gastric bypass hypnotherapists claim their hypnosis sessions can provide similar weight loss results for a lot less money: about $1,200 dollars.
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Certified hypnotherapist Rena Greenberg said she has worked with over 100,000 patients in the past 20 years and is adamant that hypnosis helps stop her clients from obsessing over food. Her "virtual" procedure includes three hypnosis sessions, her therapeutic CDs and a weight-loss juice she invented called "Slender Cider."
Fifty-year-old Clarissa DeLong from Orlando, Fla., decided to try Greenberg's procedure after many failed attempts at dieting through much of her adult life. During a hypnotherapy session, Greenberg verbally walked DeLong through the gastric bypass procedure.
"You're aware the incision's being made and you feel sensation, as your liver is being moved over," she told DeLong. "You can feel that it's time to put that band on your belly."
When DeLong met Greenberg, she weighed 340 pounds and said she has had a life-long addiction to sugar. She said the virtual procedure helped re-program her brain to believe that her stomach had shrunken and her appetite for sugar was obliterated. She is hoping this mindset will help her get down to her goal weight of 200 pounds.
"It was almost surreal, that hollowness, and it was almost like dreaming," DeLong said after the session. "It's funny and it's hard to describe."
DeLong said her wake-up call to start losing weight was when six insurance companies turned her down for health care coverage, forcing her to pay a $1,200 premium and accept that she was considered morbidly obese.
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Gastric Bypass Hypnosis: Rethinking Weight Loss?
