Weight Loss and Diet Using Hypnosis

A few years ago, a rather overweight lady came up to me after I finished a hypnosis demonstration. With arms folded, she said to me, "I want you to hypnotize me to lose weight but I don't want to change the way I eat and I don't want to exercise." I said to her, "Lady, I can hypnotize you to think you're thin, but the only way to lose weight is through better diet and exercise."
I have been practicing hypnotherapy for over 15 years and have attended several schools of hypnosis. Though I've learned from each school and from countless lectures and therapy sessions, I can tell you that in general, a therapist practicing hypnosis will usually use a particular method of hypnosis that they are comfortable with and discount the others either because they are not aware of other methods or they were 'taught' that one method is best. In reality, there are many ways to hypnotize for successful weight loss and it's best for a hypnotist or hypnotherapist to use a method that matches the subject being hypnotized.
I can tell you from experience that one session is almost never enough if the goal is permanent weight loss. On the other hand, it is not uncommon to need only three sessions. Why not just one? Why might three be enough? To answer this question, you need to understand the two types of hypnotherapy: Direct Suggestion and Regression to Cause.