Acupuncture for Weight Loss

Can acupuncture help you lose weight?

It happens every New Year, doesn’t it?  The media focus on “New Year, New You” hype is relentless, gym memberships soar, people queue up to join slimming clubs and ponder whether to snap up sales bargains in sizes they can fit into, or wish they could fit into.  It’s just at this point in the year when there is a growing sense of increasing light that making new plans for a fresh start seems to come naturally.

So, when I was advised that it would be a good idea to write a blog post on acupuncture for weight loss, I knew it would make good promotional sense but I felt more than a bit hesitant.  You see, it’s time to come clean … I have struggled with my weight all my life, 57 years and counting, and if acupuncture was a guaranteed answer to this tricky issue, my personal struggle would have stopped when I was 26 and started having acupuncture treatment.  In addition, if acupuncture was that yearned-for guaranteed solution to issues of weight gain, I and all my acupuncture colleagues worldwide would be millionaires!

So, when someone like you calls or emails me, asking “does acupuncture help with weight loss?” I would always say that there is no magic wand which would make you wake up skinny and preferring naturally ‘slimming’ food.  Every single person reading this will have their own unique relationship to food, usually established in many ways since childhood – and what I know I can do is offer help and support for the person wanting to lose weight.

After years of going it alone, I joined a Slimming World group last July – in Burwell, Cambridgeshire.  It’s been great walking alongside others, supporting each other, encouraging and being encouraged, never being judged.  So far I’ve lost a stone and a half, and have learned a whole new way of eating well.  And I’ve looked around at the lovely people in the group and it’s so obvious that we all struggle uniquely to find healthier ways to comfort ourselves when we’re distressed, to let ourselves unleash our magnificence, to step into a life with a better sense of self esteem.  Anybody who has successfully lost a lot of weight will tell you that the losing is easy (the buzz that comes from feeling in control, having more energy, looking healthier and younger).  But maintaining a weight loss is much much harder, as it involves allowing yourself to be a different version of yourself, and be kind and accepting of yourself, and disable the self-destruct button that has probably ruled your life for many years.

Acupuncture for weight loss

So, can acupuncture help you lose weight?  Well, as a quick fix magical intervention … no.  As a way to help you get in better balance with yourself, stimulate your motivation and your metabolism, improve how you digest your food, ease your joint pains so that exercise becomes first possible, then easier and more enjoyable?  Yes, yes, yes, yes!

The best way I can describe the difference between a magic point to stop you eating too much of the wrong stuff, and the support and help needed to turn you towards self-belief and the ability to make good decisions for yourself is a memory I have.  About 20 years ago, I went to a hypnotherapist having said that I wished I didn’t crave sugar so much.  During hypnosis, she put in what’s known as a post-hypnotic suggestion that I would no longer want to eat sugar.  I remember the resistance I felt inside myself, even under hypnosis, to this suggestion.  For a few weeks I found myself not wanting to eat sugar despite wanting to eat sugar (if that makes sense!) – and then the effect wore off and I went back to eating sweet things with a vengeance.  You see, the hypnosis only stopped me from doing something from the outside, but my reason for doing it in the first place had not been addressed.

Let me help you explore more fully what your inner blocks are to letting yourself find a healthy, fitter, slimmer you – and by this time next year you might be feeling a whole lot better. Chinese medicine has so many ways of understanding those physical, mental and emotional patterns and blocks that I’m confident there will be ways to help you move on.

Call me now on 07970 295177 or email me at rosanna@tree-of-life-therapy.co.uk to book a consultation – and make the first steps in this new year towards good health and balance.