I give up on diets. Really. They don’t work. Do you know why not? Here’s my professional theory:

Any time you put an external restriction on yourself or anyone else, it backfires. Consider the classic  ”don’t think about a pink elephant.” Did you?  Tell yourself you’ll never be able to eat our favorite cake again if you want to be thin. What do you crave? Cake.

People with food allergies are able to eliminate certain foods with relative ease. That’s because the body gives swift and immediate negative feedback if they don’t, whether it’s the need for an epi-pen or the location of the nearest restroom. That’s a restriction from the inside. A very clear, impossible to ignore, internal cue.

So I wondered, can the body give us other signals about what it needs and what it doesn’t? A message less dramatic? Sure it can. D0es it all the time. We’ve forgotten how to hear the messages that every toddler responds to perfectly: “I’m hungry” and “I’m not hungry.” We don’t hear our cells calling out for the micro-nutrients and phyto-nutrients they must have to function well. Our pancreas could yell all day “No more carbs, I can’t keep up with the insulin demand!” and we’d just reach for another forkful of pasta.

How can we listen again to our very wise body and start to nourish it in kind? By learning some new (yet old) deep, deep listening skills.

Let me introduce you to “Dream Diet: The Mindful Way to Manage Your Weight.” My partner, Mary Heath, a Certified and very experienced Hypnotherapist and I have created a gentle way to push through the external babble and outdated diet voices to hear again the body’s wisdom.

The dreamy part is the hypnosis. In every one of the six sessions, Mary will guide you down to the dream world of your subconscious mind to have an intimate conversation and to anchor some new attitudes about food and body and movement.

The diet part is no diet at all of course, but guidance from me on eliminating those old diet rules and approaching food mindfully, intuitively, curiously. Like a toddler.

Here’s some new messages and attitudes we’ll anchor in our deeper minds (or, find them already there, stifled):

• Enjoy your food. No guilt, no judgment.
• Change your obsessive thoughts about food to mindful ones.
• Eat to internal cues even in the midst of a culture of excess.
• Clarify your own food values.
• Eat when you’re hungry. Stop when you’re full.
• Reprogram your brain to know when you’re satisfied.
• Learn to love your amazing, beautiful body. Today. As it is.
• Relax into dreamy guided imagery with a hypnotherapist to reinforce new attitudes.
• Learn techniques for self-hypnosis to use every day.