The Ornish Diet is a low-fat, vegetarian diet program. Proper use of the eating plan, exercise, and stress-management techniques of this program results in weight loss and improved health for most dieters. Although this diet program takes much more dedication than a lot of other diet plans, and often requires crucial lifestyle changes for the dieter, research shows that it is effective for both weight loss and reversing heart disease. With its focus on managing stress and choosing healthy foods, this diet is also a perfect candidate for combined use with hypnotherapy. The Ornish diet comes in two, very similar formulations, a Preventative diet and a Reversal diet. The Reversal diet is formulated for people already suffering from heart disease who wish to reverse the effects of the condition and lower their risk of having heart attacks.
The Preventative diet is perfect for people who need to lose weight and lower their chance of developing heart disease. It is also suitable for dieters looking to lower their cholesterol levels. Both types of the Ornish plan recommend a diet plan that is composed of 10% fat, 20% protein, and 70% complex carbohydrates.
Under the diet, all meat, fish, and poultry are avoided. All oils, fats, seeds, and nuts are also not allowed. Refined carbohydrate foods such as white flour and sugar are also not permitted, but whole grain bread and pasta, beans, and legumes are fine. Foods allowed in restricted portions include egg whites and nonfat dairy products such as fat free milk, cheese, and yogurt.
Most processed foods are not permitted, since any prepackaged foods with more than two grams of fat in one serving are not allowed. The diet lets you to eat vegetables, fruit, beans, and whole grains at each meal until you feel full. The good thing about this diet plan is that since you are allowed to eat as much as you want of permitted foods, you can feel full and satisfied all the time. This diet plan, unlike many others, is not based on unhealthy "starvation" techniques.
Along with the eating plan, another essential component of the Ornish program is stress-management. There are many stress-reducing practices you can use, such as yoga, meditation, and hypnosis. Hypnosis is ideal for reducing anxiety and tension while promoting natural weight loss. Hypnotherapy works by helping your unconscious mind focus on having positive thoughts instead of negative ones when you start to feel anxious. These techniques are extremely effective in promoting relaxation. While the Ornish program is healthy and works for most dieters, it can be difficult to follow because it involves many restrictions.
This diet and others similar to it often fail because dieters are unable to stay on them. Many people struggle with dieting because they suffer from an out-of-control appetite, irresistible cravings, compulsive overeating, or a simple lack of motivation to stick to a weight loss program. These obstacles keep many hard-working dieters from maintaining their diet and achieving long-term success. Hypnosis therapy helps you beat these obstacles, and is an excellent complement to the Ornish diet program because it offers motivation to stay on a weight loss program.
Hypnosis works to control and regulate 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 hungry. Hypnotherapy breaks unhealthy associations with food and our emotions to end this conditioned response and end emotional eating. Hypnotherapy can further influence dieting success by replacing the overeating response with another activity, such as exercise. This way, instead of feeling urges to overeat, you will feel motivated to exercise for your health. Hypnosis 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 feeling of emotional protection or safety. For instance, many people with low self-esteem fear rejection, so they use their extra weight as a reason to assume people will dislike and reject them. Through hypnotherapy, we can have more positive thoughts and focus on having better health instead of becoming overwhelmed by such anxieties. We can use hypnosis therapy to boost our self-esteem, to clearly see our self-worth and commit to our personal health.
Hypnosis therapy offers a powerful, natural combination of stress-management, motivation, and behavior modification to promote weight loss and help you follow your diet program of choice. Using hypnotherapy with the Ornish program is especially effective, but hypnotherapy is excellent for helping dieters stay committed to any weight loss program. Hypnotherapy promotes the success of weight loss programs along with natural weight loss so dieters can enjoy long-lasting results.
Alan B. Densky, CH is an NGH Certified Hypnotherapist. Visit his hypnotism website for Free NLP newsletters, videos, and downloads. He offers several ways to lose weight, including NLP for weight loss DVDs and lose weight hypnosis CDs. http://www.neuro-vision.us/
