The Ornish Diet is a low fat, vegetarian diet plan. Combining the eating plan, exercise, and stress-management techniques of this plan results in weight loss and improved health for most people. Although this diet plan requires more dedication than many other diets, and often requires big lifestyle changes for the dieter, studies have shown that it is effective for both losing weight and helping to reverse heart disease. With its focus on stress management and healthy food choices, this diet is also a great candidate for combined use with weight loss hypnotherapy.
The Ornish diet comes in two, slightly different formulations, a Reversal diet and a Preventative diet. The Preventative diet is excellent for people who need to lose weight and lower their risk for heart disease. It is also ideal for people looking to lower their cholesterol levels. The Reversal diet is designed for people already afflicted with heart disease who want to reverse the effects of the condition and reduce their risk for heart attacks.
Both versions of the Ornish program recommend a nutritional approach that is made up of 10% fat, 20% protein, and 70% complex carbohydrates. Under the diet, all meat, fish, and poultry are to be avoided. All fats, seeds, nuts, and oils are also banned. Refined carbohydrate foods such as white rice and white flour are also not permitted, but whole grain bread and pasta, beans, and legumes are permitted.
Foods allowed in limited portions include egg whites and fat free dairy products such as nonfat cheeses, milk, and yogurt. Most convenience foods are to be avoided, since any processed foods with more than two grams of fat in one serving are banned.
The diet allows you to eat whole grains, fruit, beans, and vegetables at each meal until you feel full. The benefit of this program is that since you are allowed to consume as much as you want of allowed foods, you can feel full and satisfied all the time. This program, unlike many others, is not based around unhealthy "starvation" methods.
In addition to the diet plan, another key aspect of the Ornish diet program is stress-management. There are many stress-reducing practices you can use, such as yoga, meditation, and hypnosis. Hypnotherapy is ideal for alleviating anxiety and tension while supporting natural weight loss. Hypnotherapy techniques work by guiding your unconscious mind to having positive thoughts instead of negative ones when you start to feel anxious. These techniques are extremely effective in reducing stress levels.
While the Ornish plan is healthy and effective for most people, it can be difficult to follow because it involves many restrictions. This diet and others similar to it often fail because people are unable to stick to them. Many people struggle with dieting because they suffer from an uncontrollable appetite, uncontrollable 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 permanent weight loss. Hypnotherapy helps you beat these obstacles, and is an effective complement to the Ornish diet plan because it offers powerful motivation to stay on a weight loss plan.
Hypnosis works to control and regulate the appetite by "reprogramming" the unconscious mind to eliminate and replace bad habits with good ones. Years of unhealthy eating habits such as "emotional eating" can cause people to eat impulsively, even when they are not hungry. Hypnosis breaks unhealthy associations with food and our feelings to stop this conditioned response and end emotional eating. Hypnosis can further influence dieting success by replacing the overeating response with another activity, such as exercise. This way, instead of getting urges to overeat, you will have the motivation 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 sense of safety or emotional protection. For example, many people with low self-esteem are afraid of people not liking them, so they use their extra weight as a reason to believe that others will dislike them. Through hypnotherapy, we can think positively and focus on improving our health instead of becoming overwhelmed by such anxieties. We can use hypnotherapy to improve our self-esteem, to clearly see our self-worth and commit to our personal health.
Hypnotic therapy offers a strong, natural combination of stress relief, motivation, and behavior regulation to promote weight loss and help you follow your diet of choice. Using hypnosis with the Ornish plan is particularly effective, but hypnosis therapy is great for helping people stay committed to any diet plan. Hypnosis promotes the success of diet programs along with natural weight loss so people can enjoy permanent results.
Alan B. Densky, CH has invested over 30 years specializing in weight loss. He offers several ways
to lose weight, including diet CDs and video weight loss hypnosis DVDs. Visit his
CDs for self-help website for Free hypnosis videos, newsletters, and downloads.
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