Over the past decade or so, hypnosis has gained more and more acceptance as a great alternative therapy that can help you break a whole range of negative habits, like smoking, drug use, and overeating. Studies indicate that hypnosis is not very successful as a primary method of weight loss. You should modify your eating and start and exercise program first, and there are ample resources available that can tell you how to do that. Your own doctor is one resource, and there are hundred of others, including books on how to lose weight and programs such as Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers.

If you start off okay and then hit a plateau in your weight loss, however, that may be the perfect time to consider going for a session or two of hypnosis. According to studies, that's where hypnosis can work the best ? it can get you over a plateau, jumpstarting your weight loss again after it has stalled, and reinforcing the process you have already started. Try hypnosis if you have plateaued and are now stuck, with ten or twenty pounds more to lose.

Some people are nervous about going for hypnosis or hypnotherapy. This is understandable ? none of us like feeling that we have lost control, after all, and hypnosis is a way of circumventing the workings of the conscious mind and accessing the subconscious, where problems and behaviors are effectively solved on a whole other level of being. With a trained, registered hypnotherapist, you have nothing at all to fear. Hypnotherapy will not take control of you. It's just one more tool that can be use to help you modify your behavior in the way that you choose.

So forget what you have seen in movies, with the hypnotized subject clucking like a chicken whenever a certain word is mentioned, for example. Real hypnotherapy isn't like that in the least. What those movies are actually showing is a Victorian parlor trick, also called ?mesmerism?. It was hailed as a new science more than a hundred years ago, but no practical use was ever found for it. Today's hypnotherapy is very different.

In hypnotherapy, your therapist will ask you to relax, focusing on an image or a moving object. You will never actually lose consciousness, however ? you will just be very relaxed, but aware of what's going on at all times. In this state, the therapist may give you certain suggestions. You will be able to see and hear what is going on, and you will be in a receptive state, ready to implement the suggestions given. In this state, what the therapist says will have a more profound effect on you than it would have in another situation.

That's all there is to it, really. Your mind isn't altered, and you are never in the ?power? or the therapist. Over the next couple of days, you will most likely notice changes in your behavior, but they will be subtle ? for example, if you tend to overeat at night you might find that the desire to do so has diminished enough for you to take control. Or if you eat out of a sense of anxiety, as some overeaters do, you may find that you are calmer, and less likely to take advantage of this self-calming tool. The upshot is that you will feel better, plain and simple ? and you will be more in control of your eating as a result.

Not everyone's weight problem needs to be addressed in this way, because weight gain and overeating are not behavioral problems for all of us. If, for you, they are, then consider going for a few hypnotherapy sessions if you need to jumpstart your weight loss or if you have reached a plateau in your weight loss and want to push past it. Often, a plateau in weight loss (if you are still following your weight loss plan) is the result of a temporary loss of nerve, so to speak ? you may find that your are reluctant to continue with your weight loss after a certain point because of the underlying issues that are causing it in the first place. Hypnotherapy deals with these issues and behaviors quickly and easily, so that you are left free to pursue your weight loss goals.