Glasgow hypnotherapist wants to take down diet industry

Picture the next closest grocery store to your home and the same rule applies.  The all-you-can-eat supermarket sweep may not be quite so appealing.

It is a hypnotherapy technique - with a lot more nuance to it -  that aims to stop sugar cravings in their tracks. 

According to hypnotherapist Maria McGuire it aims to trick the reptilian or primal brain - which is geared towards survival - into thinking there is plenty of food available and therefore no requirement to eat.

The 42-year-old says she was "on some form of diet" for 20 years before she ditched a very successful career in the corporate world to train in the discipline.

Now two stones lighter, she is on a mission to take down the "toxic" highly lucrative diet industry which she says profits from the relentless weight loss and gain cycle of misery.

"The diet industry has a 97% fail rate," says the 42-year-old who lives in Glasgow's south side. "We feel like the problem, we are to blame each time it doesn't work.

"Hypnotherapy on the NHS website is the number one method for stopping smoking.

"It's proven statistically and I have a 100% success rate because I support people to become a non-smoker.

Maria McGuire says losing weight is all in the mind (Image: Gordon Terris)

"In the same way I help convince people through their subconscious mind that they are no longer on a diet."

When someone goes on a diet for the first time they tend to be very strict, she says, either completely changing the things they eat, going very low on calories or at least intending to.

READ MORE: Half of men with eating disorders don't get help: Eight warning signs 

"What the brain perceives, the brain believes," she says. "What tends to happen is that the first time someone goes on a diet is also the longest they will stick to it.

"The reptilian brain is triggered the moment we threaten ourselves that food is scarce.

"It then stands to attention and starts to push us towards survival and pushes us to food that is high in sugar, fat and salt because that's how we survived as cavemen."

At the same time, she says, the mammalian or monkey brain, which is all about comfort, is triggered.

"These two parts of the brain win." she says. "We all off the wagon, we feast and then we berate ourselves, dust ourselves down and say 'let's do that again'. But the reptilian brain hasn't gone to rest at all and stays alert," she says.

After graduating in business and management the 42-year-old worked for the government, helping people get back into employment and leading operations for Scotland.

She eventually started her own consultancy which involved travelling all over the world to advise other countries on welfare policy but started to think that it would be useful to have another skill.

Her boss mentioned that a colleague who was off work with stress had had a successful experience with hypnotherapy.

"At the time I was struggling with my weight and I thought I could kill two birds with one stone," she says.

After completing a two-year training course she started offering sessions "as a hobby" in a clinic in Glasgow city centre. She took redundancy from her main job but continued her international consultancy work in Singapore, Saudi Arabia and Canada.

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When the pandemic hit, international travel stopped so she put herself on furlough and started offering free hypnotherapy sessions.

"A  lot of people were struggling with their weight and I started doing online consultations and sending sessions to people to do at home," she says.

Hypnotherapy can cost between £50- £70 per session and is not usually available on the NHS. 

"Doing sessions for free when I was on furlough inspired me to make it as affordable and accessible as possible," says Ms McGuire, whose MiSolve packages cost £65. She also offers free sessions to people living with cancer.

She recalls working with a woman, from Los Angeles, who had been unable to sleep after discovering she was pregnant.

"I immediately had a strong suspicion about what was going on," she says.

"The reptilian part of her brain which is 100% geared towards survival has made a really unhelpful connection between her not sleeping and her baby being safe.

"She was at the point where the doctors were saying 'these medicines are not recommended for you in pregnancy but your lack of sleep is so chronic, we actually think it is better for you to take them'.

"I'll never forget, my husband and I were out for dinner and I got message from her saying she had slept for six hours." 

While hypnotherapy can help with many different things including anxiety, panic attacks and post-traumatic stress, most clients come for weight loss help, says the 42-year-old, who lives in Muirend with husband David, a mechanical engineer and their two-year-old son Innes.

"The number one thing we have to do is get the reptilian brain to rest," she says.

"It's an important part of the brain but it makes snap decisions. Getting it to change is like trying to prise open a reptile's jaw.

"What you have to do is reassure that part of the brain that number one it is doing a great job, which is the complete opposite to dieting where we berate ourselves.

"Secondly, you remind it that there aren't any threats, food is plentiful and everything you need is available to you. Then what you have to do is look at the existing patterns that are still there."

The conscious mind loves familiarity, she says and will keep going down a well-trodden path if you don't give it a different 'picture'.

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She says some clients experience a change after just one session and should be alert for small, subtle changes in mindset.

In every package there are 13 categories, which were created after interviews with more than 200 dieters. Beyond the 13th person, she says, there were no new behaviours that had to be factored in.

She says: "One client said to me, 'I can't believe how much I can smell food now.' They had become so blinkered, they were shutting down their senses, which again triggers the survival mechanism and over-eating."

She says the reptilian brain also makes people eat as if there is a predator nearby, so they might devour food as quickly as possible without chewing properly. 

She says she first went on a diet herself when she was 16 and lost 11lb in three weeks with a well-known slimming club.

"I don't think a day went by after that, that I wasn't thinking food was good or bad," shes says.

"I then tried every diet under the sun and my weight just went up and down, up and down."

Fasting diets including time-restricted eating (eating within a certain time frame) have risen in popularity in recent years and there is some evidence they can have spin-off benefits for health.

She says the problem with regimes such as the  5:2 diet is that "it's still not trusting your body" to consume what it needs.

"The majority of studies that have looked into weight and fasting have studied naturally lean people, non-dieters," she says.

"They stop eating at a certain point in the day and don't start until a certain point the next day. They gave their bodies everything it needed. That is natural intermittent fasting and the brain has no problem with that whatsoever.

"The diet industry is now selling it as a solution.

"If you are currently a dieter and want to try intermittent fasting, you have to do everything you can to reassure your mind that you are not at risk and plan what you are going to have when you break your fast."

To find out more, email enquiry@misolve.co.uk