The Ornish Diet is a low fat, all-vegetarian diet program. Proper use of the nutrition plan, exercise, and stress-management techniques of this plan results in weight loss and vastly improved health for most dieters. Although this program takes more dedication than a lot of other diet programs, and often requires big lifestyle changes for the dieter, research indicates that it is good for both weight loss and helping to reverse heart disease. With its emphasis on stress-management and choosing healthy foods, this diet is also a perfect candidate for use in conjunction with hypnosis.
The Ornish diet comes in two slightly different forms, a Reversal diet and a Preventative diet. The Reversal diet is formulated for people already afflicted with heart disease who are looking to reverse the effects of the disease and reduce their risk of having heart attacks. The Preventative diet is ideal for people who need to shed pounds and lower their risk for heart disease. It is also ideal for dieters wanting to reduce their cholesterol levels.
Both versions of the Ornish diet recommend a nutritional approach that is composed of 10% fat, 20% protein, and 70% complex carbohydrates. Under the plan, 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 banned, but whole grain bread and pasta, beans, and legumes are allowed.
Foods allowed in limited quantities include egg whites and nonfat dairy products such as fat-free yogurt, milk, and cheese. Most processed foods are banned, since any prepackaged foods with over two grams of fat in one serving are banned.
The diet lets you to eat vegetables, fruit, beans, and whole grains at each meal until you feel full. The good thing about this 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 plan, unlike some others, is not based around unhealthy “starvation” techniques.
Combined with the diet plan, another important key to the Ornish diet plan is stress-management. There are many stress-relieving practices you can use, such as yoga, meditation, and hypnosis. Practicing hypnotherapy is ideal for relieving anxiety and tension while supporting natural weight loss. Hypnotherapy works by guiding your unconscious mind to having positive thoughts instead of negative ones when you start to get stressed. These techniques are very effective in reducing stress levels.
While the Ornish plan is healthy and works for most dieters, it can be challenging to follow because it involves many restrictions. This diet and others like it often fail because dieters cannot stay on them. Many people struggle with dieting because they suffer from an uncontrollable appetite, irresistible cravings, compulsive overeating, or a simple lack of motivation to lose weight. These obstacles keep many hard-working dieters from maintaining their diet and achieving permanent weight loss. Hypnosis helps you beat these obstacles, and is an effective complement to the Ornish diet approach because it offers powerful motivation to stick to a weight loss program.
Hypnosis works to 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 truly 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 the urge to overeat, you will feel motivated to engage in healthy physical activity.
Hypnosis can also be used to eliminate 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 safety or emotional protection. For example, many people with low self-esteem fear people not liking them, so they use their extra weight as a reason to assume people will dislike them. Through hypnotherapy, we can have more positive thoughts and focus on improving our health instead of feeling overwhelmed by such anxieties. We can use hypnotherapy to boost our self-esteem, to clearly see our self-worth and commit to our personal health.
Hypnotherapy offers a strong, natural combination of stress-relief, motivation, and behavior modification to encourage weight loss and help you follow your preferred diet plan. Using hypnosis with the Ornish plan is especially effective, but hypnosis is great for helping dieters stay committed to any diet program. Hypnotherapy promotes the success of diet plans as well as natural weight loss so dieters can enjoy long-lasting results.
Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com
Alan B. Densky, CH has invested over 30 years specializing in weight loss. He offers several ways to lose weight, including weight loss CDs and video hypnotism for losing weight DVD. Visit his CDs for self-help website for Free hypnosis downloads, videos, and newsletters. www.neuro-vision.us/