Psychotherapist and

hypnotherapist SUSAN

HEPBURN is a leading weight-

loss expert with clinics in

London’s Harley Street, New

York, LA and Europe. She has

Author photo: Debbie Rowe

over 20 years’ experience and

her client list is packed with

A-list actors, rock stars and

sports personalities. She accompanied the England football

squad to the Japan World Cup and has made many TV

appearances (see PR coverage to date). She is also the

author of F*** Diets and the Amazon best-seller Stop

Smoking in One Hour.

Visit www.susanhepburn.com to find out more.

 What makes HypnoDiet so special?
H
It’s not a diet.
There is no calorie counting, faddy foods or deprivation. Just a commitment
to read the book, listen to the CD and do the guided meditations.
H
It works!
‘Hypnodiet will enable you to lose weight and keep it off – for ever.
I’ve seen thousands of people succeed – people who are vastly
overweight, people who are slightly overweight and people who have
been locked into dreadful eating patterns for years, who have tried
everything and have come to me as a last resort. Around 96 per cent
of my clients lose weight and keep it off.’
Susan Hepburn
H
It’s celebrity endorsed.
Susan Hepburn has helped many A-list celebrities
lose weight and maintain their enviable figures.
‘After the hypnotism, I want to go to the gym every day, otherwise I
feel really bad. I just want to get more toned and healthy. I’m really
good about everything at the moment – I’ve never been happier.’
Lily Allen
H
It’s based on proven, powerful techniques.
Hypnosis is accepted as a powerful tool for behavioural
change. Susan combines hypnosis with another highly effective
psychological tool: mindfulness. ‘Mindfulness eating’ is popular
with Hollywood celebrities.
H
 Press coverage to date
for susan hepburn

Marie Claire January 2009:

Hypnodieting with Susan Hepburn is
‘the hottest new diet craze to emerge from the States’.

Grazia January 2009:

Susan Hepburn’s Hypnodiet is
‘the hottest body trend of 2009’.

Daily Mail January 2009:

‘The secret to Lily Allen’s dramatic
weight loss has been revealed –
hypnotherapy…with Susan Hepburn.’

Daily Telegraph November 2008:

‘For the resolute hypno-sceptic,
the first eye-opener is that Susan Hepburn
doesn’t appear to be a loon.’

Daily Mail October 2007:

‘Lily Allen has gone from size twelve to size eight
after several sessions with Susan Hepburn.’

US Weekly October 2007:

‘Lily Allen slimmed down with the help
of Susan Hepburn, an accredited hypnotherapist
and psychotherapist.’
 Susan Hepburn’s work has also been featured
in the following publications:
February 2009:
New!, ES magazine, Now, Telegraph magazine,
Style magazine, The Times, Telegraph Weekend
and Closer

April 2009:
Healthy magazine, Independent, Express Woman
the Sun, Closer, Bella, New!, Look, Heat, Observer
Woman, Style and Stella magazine

Previous TV appearances include:

Fix My Fat Head, BBC1 may 2009

Truth about Beauty with Martine McCutcheon, UKTV Style May 2008
Raise your Game with Colin Jackson, BBC Wales 2008
This Morning with Richard and Judy, ITV JANUARY 2000
 Introduction 5

Contents

Introduction
Why this is NOT a diet • How the Hypnodiet has helped thousands of
people to lose weight – plus examples of those whose lives have changed
through Hypnodiet • Why it will work for you

Chapter 1 Are You Bored with Being on a Diet?

Why diets don’t work • The diet con • How dieting can create a bad
relationship with food, causing weight that yo-yos • Why Hypnodiet is
different • Immediate results • With Case Studies • Tip: how to establish
a routine

Chapter 2 How Did I Get This Way?

How is food controlling you? • Find out what makes us eat for comfort
• The emotional causes of weight gain • The importance of exercise
• Tip: how to work out your own emotional triggers

Chapter 3 What’s Normal?

Explains a normal, healthy relationship with food • What happens when
you don’t eat healthily and exercise • How mindful eating will change your
relationship with food • Using a daily food diary • Tip: how to normalise
your eating

Chapter 4 Relax – the Myths and Fears

Surrounding Hypnosis
What self-hypnosis is • Hypnosis myths exploded • What happens to the
brain and body during hypnosis • How negative thoughts about food can
be erased • Getting motivated • Case Studies and research evidence
• Tip: background noise
Chapter 5 Your Delete Button
Our emotional relationship with food is often formed in childhood
• How self-hypnosis can help you discover when it changed • How to
then ‘delete’ those thoughts using the meditations on the CD • Tip: explore
your past emotions

Chapter 6 See Yourself Slim

Understanding self-visualisation • How it works on the mind • Why it is
important for the Hypnodiet • Using visualisation tools to get great results
• Tip: making the most of visualisation in your daily meditations

Chapter 7 Reprogram Your Mind

Reprogram yourself for a diet-free future • Self-hypnosis meditations for
a positive, healthy relationship with food • Learn what’s involved, how
and why the meditations work • Tip: how to maximise the impact of your
‘reprogramming’ meditations

Chapter 8 Live Well

A basic guide to nutrition and the body’s exercise needs • Understanding
food dangers, such as trans-fats • Getting to know the important nutrients
• Meal suggestions • Tips: top ten habits for staying slim.

Conclusion Life Starts Here

Why this programme will work • Why it will work immediately
• How to make Hypnodiet a part of your life so that you never have
to diet again • With encouraging Case Studies of people who have
found that Hypnodiet worked wonders
 Introduction

T
his is not a diet. Diets just don’t work. It’s not a miracle cure
either – although I hope you’ll see miraculous results. It’s not
a fad; I won’t be giving you tricks or gimmicks, or asking you
to exist on cabbage soup or crispbreads. In fact, there won’t be
any deprivation, guilt or pain at all. Hypnodiet is simple: it allows
you to make peace with food and with your body – forever.
This book and accompanying CD will teach you new habits
that will last a lifetime. You’ll learn to eat when you’re hungry
and stop when you’re full. This isn’t traumatic or difficult, and
it doesn’t take loads of willpower. With Hypnodiet, when you’re
not hungry you simply will not want to eat. You’ll learn to make
healthy choices and to take regular exercise; to embrace exercise
and view it as an essential part of your daily life, rather than an
optional extra. Best of all, you’ll start to feel good about yourself
and about your body. And no, you don’t need personal trainers or
private chefs to see results.
Over the past 20 years as a weight-loss expert I’ve seen
thousands of people at my clinics in New York, LA, Europe
and London’s Harley Street. I work with anyone: from celebrity
A-listers and the England football squad to countless people with
ordinary lives – men and women of all ages and backgrounds.
I first saw Paula, 24, who works in the City, in October
2007. She was a size 18. She wanted to be a size 10, but she was
convinced that she’d never lose weight. She said she’d read about
me and that it had given her hope. She told me that people would
2 hypnodiet

say to her, ‘It’s such a shame – you’ve got a really pretty face’, and
her father would say, ‘You’ll be stunning when you lose weight.’
Sometimes he’d comment, ‘You’re so fat, you should be ashamed
of yourself. You’ll never get anyone to marry you. Why are you
doing this to yourself?’ Her self-esteem was at rock bottom.
By February 2008, when she came back for her third –
and final – Hypnodiet session, she had lost 9.5kg (1½ stone)
and had dropped two dress sizes to a size 14. ‘Everyone I work
with has commented that they can’t believe how it’s changed my
personality, how much confidence I have now,’ she told me, with
a huge smile. She had changed her job, within the same company,
to one with more face-to-face client contact, and she had her first
ever boyfriend. ‘Whereas before I didn’t like to be seen,’ she said,
‘now I just want to be around people, and I can’t stop smiling. I’m
really chatty, whereas before I would just want to hide.’
Paula confessed that she still had the odd fear. ‘Sometimes I
think, ooh, what if it doesn’t work; what if I put all the weight
back on again, but then I start thinking, no, it’s going to work.’
I recently saw Paula for an unrelated issue. She looks fabulous.
She’s a size 10 and almost unrecognisable, not just because of
her weight loss but also because of her enormous confidence and
energy. She is brimming with happiness.
What all my clients have in common when they first come to
me, whether they are famous or not, is a sense of despair. Deep
down they fear they’ll never be the weight and size they want
to be. They’ve probably tried everything from Caveman diets to
scary detox plans – often losing and gaining tens of pounds/kilos
in the process. They end up bigger than they were to begin with.
Often they punish themselves for this – what they see as ‘failure’.
They feel helpless and believe that they lack willpower. One guy
 Introduction 3

said, ‘When I wake up, I think about food; when I go to bed,

I think about food.’ He certainly isn’t alone. Food becomes an
obsession – a very unhappy one.
Even when they’re ‘thin’ they can’t enjoy the lost inches
because they’re so paranoid and anxious that they might pile the
weight back on. Not surprisingly, their relationship with food is
fraught.
If I’ve learned one thing over the years, it’s that dieting is futile.
I’ll talk about this in more detail in Chapter 1. But it’s important to
know that your diet trials can – and will – stop, right now. By buying
this book you’ve taken the first step to enjoying food and your body,
in a balanced, healthy way for the rest of your life. Throughout this
book I’ll be giving you information and tips on how to establish a
healthy lifestyle that suits you, and is sustainable.

So, how does it work?

For many people the word ‘hypnotism’ brings to mind gimmicky
TV shows where a charismatic Svengali-type figure ‘controls’
people, getting them to do funny, and often embarrassing, things.
This couldn’t be further from what I do. Hypnosis is actually a
very subtle technique. I don’t ‘put people under’ or play tricks
with the mind.
I’m simply going to teach you techniques that allow you to
reach a state of deep, but lucid, relaxation. Ultimately, you are
in charge of this process, not me. When you are in this state of
deep relaxation (‘hypnosis’), it is possible to bypass the conscious
mind and reach the more ‘suggestible’ subconscious. This part of
your mind holds the deep-rooted habits, beliefs and impulses that
undermine your best intentions.
4 hypnodiet

With Hypnodiet you’ll ‘reprogram’ your subconscious mind.

This isn’t a wild and unrealistic claim. Hypnosis can be a powerful
tool for behavioural change. And the human mind is capable
of unbelievable things. This is why, as a trained psychologist,
I began to use hypnosis techniques in the first place. There are
well-documented cases of people using self-hypnosis to undergo
surgery or dental treatment without anaesthetic. Hypnosis
(‘Hypnobirthing’) can be used for drug-free childbirth. One
clinical trial even found self-hypnosis could reduce the symptoms
of hay fever. The techniques aren’t magic – they just allow people
to distance themselves from pain and to remove associated feelings
of anxiety and fear. It works in a similar way with food.
I liken it to deleting unwanted files from a computer. First you
remove from your subconscious mind the emotional associations
that cause you to eat when you are not hungry (behaviours
such as comfort eating or eating because of boredom, stress or
tiredness). Next, you reprogram your mind with healthy and
positive attitudes to food and exercise.
To do this, I’ll be asking you to follow a straightforward
programme of short, daily meditations. I’ll guide you through these
on the CD that comes with this book. Don’t worry: this won’t
involve any special skills or chanting. By meditations, I just mean
quiet sessions in which you’ll learn to relax your body and mind.
For this to work you’re going to need to set aside about 20
minutes of each day. That’s not much of a commitment when
you think about it. During these meditations you’ll identify your
problematic eating habits. You’ll then replace them with patterns
of behaviour that allow you to lose weight, without feeling you
are being deprived of anything at all. Through the power of
suggestion I will guide you and do most of this work for you.
 Introduction 5

The other concept central to Hypnodiet is ‘mindfulness’.

Mindfulness is a highly effective psychological tool, gaining ground
both in popular culture and mainstream psychology (clinical trials
show that mindfulness-based stress-reduction programmes can
help with anything from pain management in cancer patients to
long-term depression). Hypnodiet is not a mindfulness course, but
it will certainly encourage you to eat ‘mindfully’: to really savour
food, so that you enjoy and get the most out of eating, becoming
more aware of what you put into your body, and therefore making
healthier choices.
Most people I see have lost touch with their bodies, they just
don’t know what it is to eat ‘normally’ any more. ‘I eat massive
portions,’ one client recently told me, ‘but I never know when
I’m full.’ With Hypnodiet, you’ll learn to eat what you want,
but in moderation, because you will – at long last – feel satisfied.
My method promotes a mindful awareness that will change your
attitude towards food, forever.
I also encourage you to keep
Around 96 per cent
a food diary. This will help you to
unpick the emotional associations
of my clients lose
you have with food and to weight and keep
understand your ‘triggers’ – the it off. Hypnodiet
feelings that make you eat when teaches you to
you’re not hungry. (Studies show have a normal,
that keeping a daily food diary
healthy
can help weight loss.)
Finally, I recommend that
relationship
you put away your bathroom with food –
scales – and ideally ditch them without guilt.
entirely. Weighing yourself can
6 hypnodiet

become a stressful obsession. Do you really need to know your

weight every day? Why bother? You’ll know it’s working by how
your clothes fit and feel, and how your body feels. Throwing out
the scales will seriously boost your ‘feel-good factor’ and this, in
turn, will help to motivate you.
Hypnodiet is not just for today, or next week, or until you can
fit into your skinny jeans – it’s forever. This is not a life-sentence,
it’s liberating! You’ll never have to fear going out to dinner any
more, or beat yourself up for wanting some chocolate or a piece
of cheese. My philosophy is ‘everything in moderation’. The
‘moderation’ part may have been too hard to stick to before, but
it isn’t now. Moderation and healthy eating – not deprivation and
feast/famine behaviour – are the cornerstones of Hypnodiet. Any
good nutritionist will tell you that this is the way to eat for life.
Hypnodiet will enable you to lose weight and keep it off –
forever. I’ve seen thousands of people succeed – people who are
vastly overweight, people who are slightly overweight and people
who have been locked into dreadful eating patterns for years, who
have tried everything and have come to me as a last resort.
As you do your daily meditations, you will replace the self-
criticism with self-acceptance. Your self-esteem will soar as you
begin to see what you can achieve, and how painless it is. Very
soon, you’ll find that you enjoy your food, and eat to satisfy your
hunger. You will begin to view food as an enjoyable fuel for your
body.
Hypnodiet isn’t rocket science. It’s no secret how to lose those
inches. It’s the simplicity of my method that makes it so effective
and appealing. You have all the skills you need right here, right
now: in your mind. So, find a quiet spot, open your mind and start
the journey that will lead you to the shape you want to be.
 Chapter 1
Are you bored
with being on
a diet?

Y
ou’ve probably gathered by now that I’m not a big diet
fan. You may be disappointed to hear this, having bought
a book called Hypnodiet. But despite its name my method
is designed to liberate you from diet hell forever. The name
Hypnodiet, in fact, springs from the understanding that to get your
attention I have to dangle that carrot. And you will lose weight –
permanently – if you work with me. But in reality Hypnodiet is
not a regime at all. I won’t be telling you about forbidden foods or
calorie counting, I won’t be exhorting you to have willpower, and
you’re not going to be weighing and measuring yourself.
Here’s why.

Learning to forget the ‘D’ word

Through 20 years of research, studying eating habits and listening
to peoples’ stories – their disastrous attempts at dieting, their
food battles and their emotional ordeals – I know that the key to
8 hypnodiet

staying at a healthy weight is to

put all thoughts of ‘dieting’ out of Achieve your
your mind, forever. target size and
Diets only appear to work. stay there –
Some work better than others,
without
but they aren’t sustainable and
they rarely tackle the root cause
going
of the problem: the mind. on a diet
I’ve heard some horror ever again.
stories over the years. And these
stories are getting worse as more
diets flood the market. The bottom line is that we now live in
a ‘supersize’ culture. Food – most of it fast and unhealthy – is
available on every corner, every hour of the day or night. We also
get far less exercise than previous generations. Experts call this
the ‘obesity epidemic’, and it’s getting worse all the time.

The pain of desperation

Over the years I’ve seen a change. Despite the diet choices out
there, people who come to me are more desperate, not less. They’ll
try to lose weight at virtually any cost. I regularly see people who
have been on diets that are so restrictive they pose a serious health
hazard. I’ve treated people who have spent their life savings on
gastric bands, stomach stapling and liposuction – sometimes with
life-threatening consequences.
 ARE y o u b o r e d w i t h b e i n g o n a d i e t ? 9

H Case Study: Carla

One of my clients, 47-year-old Carla, had a gastric band
fitted just before Christmas one year. She thought she could
recuperate over the holidays. On her first night at home she
experienced excruciating stomach pains and was rushed to
hospital where she underwent emergency surgery to have
the band removed. She spent that Christmas in intensive
care while her family, including her sister who had come
all the way from Australia, sat helplessly by, waiting to hear
whether she would survive. Carla now has an ugly scar
across her abdomen, is thousands of pounds poorer, and her
doctor said she’s lucky to be alive. All she wanted was an end
to her weight battles.
I am not suggesting that everyone who has a gastric
band fitted will experience Carla’s disastrous results;
however this possible danger cannot be overlooked.
With Hypnodiet, Carla finally found what she wanted.
She is losing weight steadily and healthily, and feels great.

The proof of thousands

You too can achieve your target size and maintain it without any
desperate measures. You probably don’t believe this, but it’s true.
I’ve helped thousands of people to do just this.
Virtually everyone I see is cynical to begin with. They’ve tried
virtually every diet going; they start off enthusiastic, full of hope
that the chosen diet will be ‘the one’, but they all end up the same:
in dismal failure. Allie, a marketing executive, is a classic example
of a failed dieter who came to me in despair:
10 hypnodiet

H Case Study: Allie

‘I followed one diet that seemed to be successful and lost 3
stone (19kg), then I put it back on quicker than I had lost it. It
was quite alarming actually; it was as though someone was
pumping me up. I had everything when I was on the diet:
hair loss, my periods stopped, I thought I was going into early
menopause and I am only 35 – I still want to have children. But
I didn’t care because I wanted to lose the weight so badly. Now
I have put it all back on again and more besides. I hated myself
and blamed myself all the time.’

A completely different approach

People like Allie come to me because they’ve got a hunch that what
I’m offering could be different – and they’ve got to try something.
But at the same time they’re asking themselves, ‘Why should this
work? Why am I bothering?’
Then they see the weight beginning to drop off. The effect of
this is often profound. Many of my clients – men and women of
all ages – become very emotional, there are tears of relief when
they realise that this is actually working. For the first time they
feel different about themselves. Recently, a woman wrote to thank
me: ‘Since your treatment I’ve had smaller portions, eaten very
healthily and have been exercising – all unheard of for me, totally
unheard of,’ she said. ‘I worry sometimes that it will stop working,
but then it feels different and I know I can do this!’
Virtually everyone tells me that they don’t want to follow
diets anymore; they are tired of them and upset to have gone
through so much for nothing, as they are back to square one: still
battling those inches.
 ARE y o u b o r e d w i t h b e i n g o n a d i e t ? 11

Why diets don’t work

There is a vast amount of scientific research that demonstrates
just how pointless – even harmful – radical dieting can be. For
a start, diets are generally only effective when you are on them,
being monitored, or monitoring yourself, all the time. This just
isn’t sustainable for most of us in the real world. Equally, a daily
eating regime that leaves you hungry, irritable, and even feeling ill,
is never going to be a way to eat for life.
Deprivation is no way to live. And it is certainly not good for
your body or your mind.

How it all goes wrong

This is where ‘yo-yo’ dieting behaviour kicks in. You’ll know the
drill by now: you start counting points, measuring foods, drinking
only fluids or eating dull – or perhaps unpalatable – foods.
Generally, you feel hungry most of the time. You may manage
to lose some weight because you have cut calories. For a few
months, sometimes more, you may look marvellous – everyone
compliments you. But then the weight starts to creep back on.
You can’t resist the foods you’ve been deprived of for so long
– usually the ones you love the most. Some days you gorge, other
days you starve yourself. You begin to feel guilty or panicky about
your ‘sins’ and you start mentally beating yourself up.
Then you begin to eat more, out of rebellion, sadness, self-
hatred or the desire for comfort – there can be any number of
emotional reasons why people eat (I’ll be unpicking this in Chapter
2). Before you know it, the weight is all back again.
You then eat even more because you’re so unhappy about
this weight gain. Then you’re even heavier than you were to begin
with. You can’t fit into your ‘fat clothes’. Finally, in desperation,
12 hypnodiet

you go on another – sometimes even more radical – diet.

The result is that you go through life one step away from a
diet at any time.

Beware: most diets will fail you

Scientific research demonstrates that diets rarely live up to their
inflated claims. They tell you they have the magical formula: all
you have to do is avoid eating carbs, or eat according to your
blood type, or eat like prehistoric man, or eat only at certain
times of the day, or combine only certain foods – and then the
weight will miraculously drop off.
It’s all nonsense. The only way to lose weight is to consume
fewer calories than you burn off (‘calories in’ versus ‘calories
out’). You may do this for a short while on these diets – they all
rely on getting you to eat fewer calories, whatever they say – but
at what cost?
When scientists at Stanford University in the US recently
compared four popular diets they were flabbergasted to see how
little weight participants actually lost. Those on the low-carb Atkins
diet, for instance, on average lost only just over 4.5kg (10lb),
from a starting weight averaging 86kg (13½ stone/190lb).
Those on the other three diets, on average, lost less than 2.7kg
(6lb). This is not a huge loss to show for hours of agonising and
self-denial. I’m sure you’ve had similar experiences yourself.
But here’s the truth: countless reputable scientific studies have
found that only a small minority of dieters manage to achieve
sustained weight loss. The majority regain all the weight, plus a
little extra for good measure.
 ARE y o u b o r e d w i t h b e i n g o n a d i e t ? 13

H Case Study: Eloise

One of my clients, Eloise, 34, used to be a swimmer. One
thoughtless comment from a trainer when she was 15 years
old threw her into a lifetime of dieting. ‘I am definitely a
serial dieter,’ she said, ‘always on diets’. But over the years,
despite all her attempts to lose weight, the pounds have
piled on. Now, she hardly recognises herself.
‘Recently, old friends wanted to meet up and I thought, oh
crikey! Three stone later, I can’t meet them. They haven’t seen
me since I put all this weight on.’

Over the years this yo-yo behav-

iour adds up to an awful lot of You will start
heartache, not to mention pounds to see results
gained and lost (which is, inci-
from the
dentally, harmful for the body,
moment
putting a strain on the heart and
disrupting the metabolism so that you listen
it becomes harder to lose weight to the CD.
than ever before).
In other words, the diet industry is a complete and utter con.
This is why my method will banish diets from your life, for good.

It can be so hard to do
what you know you should
You probably know all too well the ‘theory’ of how to lose weight.
It’s no secret. You know what to eat and do, but you just can’t
stick to it. Some of the people I see even have a personal chef,
either at home or in the office, but they still can’t eat healthily, like
Eleanor for example.
14 hypnodiet

H Case Study: Eleanor

Eleanor, 52, told me: ‘The chef cooks for my family,
preparing fruit plates and really healthy meals. I even order the
food for my family – all organic, lots of fish and vegetables. I
want them to have a balanced healthy diet, but I never eat any
of it. I just eat crap. I also drink three large bottles of diet coke
a day!’
When Eleanor came back to me for her follow-up
session she expressed absolute amazement that she hadn’t
had, or wanted, any diet coke at all since our first meeting.
She was eating healthy meals with her family and loving it.
She told me, ‘I feel liberated!’

Your tools for success

I’m going to give you the tools to liberate yourself. It won’t be
a matter of ‘sticking’ to anything, because eating healthily and
in moderation will become second nature to you – a way of
life. You’ll want to do it. You won’t have to deprive yourself of
anything and you’ll remove the guilt and pain associated with
eating. You’ll do this by reprogramming your mind.
This isn’t a crazy claim. I
actually see most clients for only
It’s that simple. two or three sessions, although they
have to practise the meditations
No gimmicks.
on their own. Hypnosis is fast
No fads.
and effective. You’ll immediately
Say goodbye see your behaviour change from ‘I
to diets need a snack’ to ‘I’d like a snack,
forever. but I don’t need one, so I’ll wait’,
or ‘I don’t want a snack at all’. The
 ARE y o u b o r e d w i t h b e i n g o n a d i e t ? 15

impulse to snack may be there

occasionally, but the connection Hypnosis is one
between impulse and action is of the most
not made. This will give you a
powerful states
sense of calm and confidence.
That’s something diets never do.
for personal
It will also banish anxiety and development
self-doubt – most people say that and positive
they actually enjoy the Hypnodiet change.
process.

H Case Study: Jenna

IN A FOLLOW-UP APPOINTMENT, JENNA TOLD ME:
‘I have been absolutely brilliant with the self-hypnosis. I have
done it twice a day. I absolutely do it every day and I feel like
it is working – it’s quite amazing. It’s such a change for me to
follow a programme and stick to it.’

Hypnodiet is not a quick fix, though. You do have to make an

effort – but it’s a pleasant, life-enhancing effort to make.

The key is in the CD

It’s very important to listen to the CD daily. But it is possible for
anyone to find 20 minutes each day, and what could be more
important than your future health and happiness? By listening to
the CD each day, and following my instructions, you will create
new and permanent patterns in your subconscious that will change
your relationship with your body forever.
16 hypnodiet

What you can expect

• From the outset, after listening to the CD, you will find that
you want to eat healthier foods.
• You will stop eating when you’ve reached that ‘had
enough to eat’ feeling.
• You will reduce – or even eliminate – the impulse to snack.
• You will see what a positive part of your daily life exercise
can be.

Hypnodiet tip
How to establish a routine
Set aside 20 minutes at the same time each day – perhaps
just after waking – for your meditation with the CD. Make
this part of your routine: same time each day, every day.
We all have busy lives and huge ‘to-do’ lists, but don’t let
this be at the bottom of yours. If you say to yourself ‘I’ll do it
later’ you probably won’t, but if you set aside a regular slot,
it will become easier and easier. Before you know it you’ll
be hooked on this valuable ‘me time’. Putting the CD on your
iPod or MP3 player allows you to continue this, even while
on business travel or vacations.
 Chapter 4
Relax
the Myths and fears
surrounding hypnosis

P
eople often ask me how hypnosis works. I tell them that it’s a
relatively simple, fast and straightforward tool that changes
your behaviour from the inside out. But how exactly does
it do this?

The astonishing power of the mind

Hypnosis is defined as a state of deep relaxation within your body
and a state of increased and heightened awareness within your
mind. However, for years hypnosis has caused intrigue and still
does to this day, but the misconception that hypnosis ‘messes with
your mind’ and you will never be the same again is simply not true.
It is popularly believed that hypnosis is a state resembling sleep
and almost unconsciousness, but scientific research has proven
time and time again that hypnosis is actually a wakeful state of
focused attention and heightened awareness and suggestibility.
Hypnosis allows you to access your creative potential. This is
how all those long-held thoughts, beliefs and patterns of behaviour
can be deleted and rewritten. It isn’t magic, it’s the astonishing
power of the mind.
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power of the mind. Note

Just to avoid confusion, hypnotherapy is
simply the hypnosis being used for therapeutic
reasons and is referred to as hypnotherapy.

H Case Study: Sylvia

When I first saw Sylvia, a TV producer in her thirties, she
was a size 16 and she had battled with her weight since early
adolescence. Her pattern was to binge on food and alcohol,
then purge with strict diets and detox regimes. She lost and
gained a lot of weight, but over the years the scales crept up
until she felt she was completely out of control.
Sylvia wanted to be a size 10 and to liberate herself from
the pain and stress of all these years of fearful dieting. She
achieved her target after five months. When I saw her for
our final session five months later she looked like a different
person – glowing, happy and confident. As we talked, after the
session, she said to me: ‘I don’t know what you have done, but
it’s as though you have somehow short-circuited my system.’

Deleting negative thoughts

Sylvia had put her finger right on it: hypnosis does work by short-
circuiting – or deleting – negative patterns of thought or behaviour,
and in a short period of time. Hypnodiet allowed Sylvia to short-
circuit all those negative, self-hating thoughts – the messages she’d
absorbed over the years from her critical mother, from her friends
or acquaintances, or from the media, that she was somehow less
worthwhile if she was overweight, less loved, less desirable – less
‘legitimate’.
 Relax 19

Hypnodiet, of course, is not

a ‘cure’ for years of unhappiness Hypnosis
or abuse, and it won’t change is almost like
our culture. It is simply a way
losing yourself
to bypass all those unhelpful
thoughts and impulses, replacing
in an amazing
them with new, healthy patterns book.
of behaviour.
Through deep relaxation, and reprogramming the mind,
using her daily meditations and visualisations, Sylvia was able to
short-circuit the years of bad eating habits and low self-esteem.
The process felt, she told me, like ‘a miracle’.

Does it work for everybody?

You, of course, may be thinking, it will never happen that way
for me. Well, the first thing to understand about hypnosis is that
virtually everybody has their doubts about whether it will work
for them – or indeed, for anyone!
‘I did have doubts,’ Sylvia admitted to me in that final session.
‘I’ve sometimes thought to myself, is it going to work? It feels
almost too good to be true that I will never have a weight issue
again. But then I look at myself and I realise that it has worked.
It is simply amazing.’

How hypnosis works

I began my career as a psychologist, but was drawn to hypnotherapy
because I realised that hypnosis could bring about far quicker,
longer lasting results. I am aware of just how powerful the mind
can be, and the combination of ‘results and speed’ fascinated
20 hypnodiet

me. Hypnosis is an amazing tool for change. Of course, not all

hypnotherapy – or hypnotherapists, for that matter – are the same,
and many have different ways of working. Some are therefore
more effective than others, but the basic principles are the same.
To describe how hypnosis works, it is often easiest to turn first to
the four most-common misconceptions about it.

Myth 1: I will be ‘put under’

Many people think that when they are hypnotised, they will
somehow lose consciousness – become zombielike and unable to
control their actions. They also think that afterwards they might
forget what happened – that the session will be a total blank.
These are very popular beliefs, but they are wrong.

Fact With hypnosis generally – and certainly the kind I practise

– you do not hand over your control (or your dignity!) to me. The
state of deep relaxation that you reach during hypnosis is known
as REM (rapid eye movement) or the ‘dream state’ – a term you
may have heard used for describing sleep patterns. You get there
purely by relaxing your body and mind, guided by my voice and
my instructions. With Hypnodiet, you can do this at home, using
the CD.
In this relaxed, guided state you will be calm but alert –
more hyper-attentive than drowsy. You ‘tune out’ from everything
around you but remain alert and focused. You can get up and
walk away at any time during a hypnotherapy session. You can
choose to ignore or blot out the whole thing; or you can choose
to let it in.
In other words, hypnosis is not something that’s done to
you – it’s something you do for yourself. It stands to reason,
 Relax 21

therefore, that the more motivated you are the better Hypnodiet
will work for you.

Myth 2: some people just can’t be hypnotised

Most people, during their first session, think ‘it’s not working’.
They feel wide-awake, fully conscious – even critical – and
assume that this means they are in some way resistant to the
method (or that the hypnotherapist is having an off-day!).

Fact Some people are certainly easier to hypnotise than

others, but anybody can be hypnotised very effectively by a
hypnotherapist who knows what he or she is doing.

Myth 3: it’s all mumbo-jumbo

Fact It is certainly true that science has yet to come up with a
definitive and watertight explanation for exactly how hypnosis
works. But then, there is a lot that science does not yet understand
about the workings of the human mind. Essentially, it is clear
that when you are under hypnosis you are in a more ‘suggestible’
state. Scientific studies using electroencephalographs have found
that under hypnosis the activity of the brain changes – it begins
to show more sleeplike patterns than conscious, waking ones.
And yet you feel lucid. In other words, it seems that during
hypnosis the conscious mind – with all its doubts, fears and
anxieties – takes a back seat. This allows the subconscious mind
to open up.
The subconscious mind is responsible not just for your
impulses and emotions but for your creativity and imagination
too. As your hypnotherapist, I will delete unhelpful ‘files’ from
your subconscious and replace them with helpful ones that you
22 hypnodiet

will then act upon, even when your conscious mind takes over (I’ll
explain this further in Chapter 5).

Myth 4: hypnosis doesn’t work.

Fact During my 20 years as a hypnotherapist I have seen countless
people conquer their weight problems (not to mention other
issues, such as alcohol or drug dependency) using hypnotherapy.
Countless women have used hypnosis techniques to cope with the
pain and anxiety of childbirth. Many others use hypnosis to cope
with undergoing dental work, or to tackle phobias.
But you don’t have to take my word for this. There are
numerous well-documented cases of hypnosis being used as the only
form of anaesthesia for surgery, including gall-bladder removal,
amputation,  caesarean section and hysterectomy. Hypnosis is
used in medical settings around the world to help people cope
with anything from cancer to allergies, gastrointestinal problems,
chronic pain, burns and hypertension (high blood pressure).
It is also, of course, a well-established tool in mainstream
psychotherapy, helping people to tackle issues such as anxiety or
sleep disorders.

H Case Study: Sylvia

Sylvia told me in that last session: ‘I’ve surprised myself
at how much better I have been, I haven’t been eating between
meals and haven’t even thought about doing so. The other
day there were lots of goodies around the office, and someone’s
birthday cupcakes, and I have never, ever refused them before.
I just didn’t want them. It was quite a revelation. I absolutely
love it!’
 Relax 23

Motivation
Hypnodiet is a tool that will help anyone who has decided for
themselves – rather than being pressurised by a critical friend,
partner or parent – that they would like to lose weight. If you think
you’re fine the way you are, but are only doing this because your
partner says you are fat, you may well struggle with Hypnodiet.
It is something you have to do for yourself. The good thing is,
though, that anybody who is truly motivated can use Hypnodiet
to slim down and develop a normal, healthy relationship with
food – forever.
It is, then, a total myth that you have to be on a diet in order
to lose weight and get to your ideal size.

Hypnodiet tip
Background noise
It is always best to try your meditations when you are unlikely
to be disturbed. Switch off your phones and shut the door.
But this is the real world too, so you may hear noises coming
from another room or outside while you are listening to the
CD. These will not disturb you. It is normal to be aware of
your surroundings during hypnosis. The difference is that you
will feel incredibly relaxed and free from tension. Even with
some background noise, you can reach a state of peace and
tranquillity.

But, once again, don’t take my word for it – or Sylvia’s. You can
discover the power of hypnosis for yourself. It’s all up to you.
 H

Hypnodiet is not rocket science!

‘It’s no secret how to lose those inches.
It’s the simplicity of my method that makes it
so effective and appealing. You have all the skills
you need right here, right now: in your mind.
So, find a quiet spot, open your mind and
start the journey that will lead you to
the shape you want to be.’
Susan Hepburn