The Ornish Diet is an extremely low fat, all-vegetarian diet plan. Proper use of the eating plan, exercise, and stress-management techniques of this plan results in weight loss and noticeably improved health for most people. Although this diet takes more dedication than a lot of other diets, and often requires crucial lifestyle changes for the dieter, research shows that it is good for both weight loss and reversing heart disease. With its emphasis on stress-reduction and choosing healthy foods, this diet is also a perfect candidate for use in conjunction with hypnosis treatments.

The Ornish diet is available in two slightly different forms, a Reversal diet and a Preventative diet. The Preventative diet is excellent for people who wish to lose weight and lower their chance of developing heart disease. It is also excellent for people trying to lower their cholesterol levels. The Reversal diet is designed for people already suffering from heart disease who want to reverse the effects of the condition and lower their risk of having heart attacks.

Both types of the diet recommend a nutritional approach that is composed of 10% fat, 20% protein, and 70% complex carbohydrates. Under the diet, all meat, fish, and poultry are to be avoided. All oils, fats, seeds, and nuts are also banned. Refined carbohydrate foods such as sugar and white flour are also not permitted, but whole grain pasta and bread, beans, and legumes are permitted.

Foods allowed in limited amounts include egg whites and fat free dairy products such as lowfat yogurt, milk, and cheese. Most convenience foods are to be avoided, since any prepackaged foods with over two grams of fat in one serving are banned.

The diet lets you to eat vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and beans at each meal until you feel full. The good thing about this plan is that since you are permitted to eat as much as you want of allowed foods, you can feel full and satisfied all the time. This plan, unlike many others, is not based on unsafe "starvation" techniques.

Along with the diet plan, another key aspect of the Ornish plan is stress-management. There are a wide range of stress-reducing techniques you can use, such as meditation, yoga, and hypnosis. Hypnotherapy is ideal for reducing anxiety and tension while promoting natural weight loss. Hypnosis works by helping your unconscious mind focus on having positive thoughts instead of negative ones when you start to get stressed. These techniques are quite effective in promoting relaxation.

While the Ornish plan is healthy and works for most people, it can be difficult to follow because it has many restrictions. This diet and others like it often fail because people are unable to stick to them. Many people struggle with dieting because they suffer from an uncontrollable appetite, uncontrollable food cravings, compulsive overeating, or a lack of motivation to lose weight. These obstacles keep many hard-working dieters from maintaining their diet and achieving permanent weight loss. Hypnosis therapy helps you beat these obstacles, and is an excellent complement to the Ornish diet plan because it offers motivation to stick to a weight loss plan.

Hypnosis works to control the appetite by "reprogramming" the unconscious mind to eliminate and replace bad habits with good ones. A lifetime of unhealthy eating habits such as "emotional eating" can cause people to eat compulsively, even when they are not truly hungry. Hypnosis breaks unhealthy associations with food and our feelings to eliminate this conditioned response and prevent emotional eating. Hypnosis can further influence dieting success by replacing the overeating response with another activity, such as exercise. This way, instead of having the urge to overeat, you will feel motivated to engage in healthy physical activity.

Hypnotherapy can also be used to quell the emotional anxieties that keep you from losing weight. For many people, being overweight provides a "secondary gain" in the form of a sense of safety or emotional protection. For example, many people with low self-esteem fear rejection, so they use their extra weight as a reason to believe that others will dislike and reject them. Through hypnotherapy, we can think more positively and focus on improving our health instead of feeling overwhelmed by such anxieties. We can use hypnosis to boost our self-esteem, to clearly see our self-worth and commit to our personal health.

Hypnosis offers a strong, natural combination of stress management, motivation, and behavior modification to promote weight loss and help you follow your diet plan of choice. Using hypnosis with the Ornish plan is particularly effective, but hypnosis is great for helping people stay committed to any weight loss plan. Hypnosis promotes the success of diet programs as well as natural weight loss so people can enjoy long-lasting results.