The Ornish Diet is a low fat, vegetarian diet plan. Proper use of the nutrition plan, exercise, and stress-management techniques of this plan results in weight loss and improved health for most people. 

Although this plan requires more dedication than a lot of other diets, and often requires dramatic lifestyle changes for the dieter, research shows that it is good for both losing weight and reversing heart disease. With its emphasis on stress-management and choosing healthy foods, this diet is also a perfect candidate for combined use with weight loss hypnosis.

The Ornish diet is available in two very similar types, a Preventative diet and a Reversal diet. The Reversal diet is designed for people already afflicted with heart disease who wish to reverse the effects of the disease and reduce their risk of having heart attacks. The Preventative diet is ideal for people who want to lose weight and lower their risk for heart disease. It is also appropriate for people wanting to lower their cholesterol levels.

Both types 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 avoided. All nuts, fats, oils, and seeds are also banned. Refined carbohydrate foods such as white rice and white flour are also not permitted, but whole grain bread and pasta, beans, and legumes are permitted. 

Foods allowed in limited portions include egg whites and nonfat dairy products such as fat-free milk, yogurt, and cheese. Most convenience foods are not permitted, since any convenience foods with more than two grams of fat per serving are banned.

The diet lets you to eat vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and beans at each meal until you feel full. The benefit of this diet plan is that since you are permitted to consume as much as you want of allowed foods, you can feel full and satisfied all the time. This diet plan, unlike many others, is not based around unhealthy "starvation" techniques. 

In addition to the diet plan, another essential component of the Ornish diet plan is stress-management. There are numerous stress-relieving techniques you can use, such as yoga, meditation, and hypnosis. Practicing hypnotherapy is ideal for reducing anxiety and tension while promoting natural weight loss. Hypnotic techniques work by helping your unconscious mind focus on having positive thoughts instead of negative ones when you begin to feel anxious. These techniques are extremely effective in reducing stress levels. 

While the Ornish plan is healthy and effective for most dieters, it can be difficult to follow because it has many restrictions. This diet and others like it often fail because people are unable to stick to them. Many people struggle with dieting because they suffer from an out-of-control appetite, uncontrollable 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. Hypnotherapy helps you overcome these obstacles, and is an effective complement to the Ornish diet approach because it offers motivation to stay on a weight loss plan. 

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. Hypnosis breaks unhealthy associations with food and our feelings to stop this conditioned response and stop emotional eating. Hypnosis can further influence dieting success by replacing the overeating response with another activity, such as exercise. This way, instead of having the urge to overeat, you will feel motivated to engage in healthy physical activity. 

Hypnotherapy 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 sense of safety or emotional protection. For example, many people with low self-esteem have a fear of people not liking them, so they use their weight as a reason to assume other people will dislike them. Through hypnotherapy, we can think more positively and focus on having better health instead of feeling overcome by such anxieties. We can use hypnosis therapy to improve our self-esteem, placing value on ourselves and our own health. 

Hypnosis therapy offers a strong, natural combination of stress-management, motivation, and behavior regulation to promote weight loss and help you follow your diet of choice. Using hypnotherapy with the Ornish plan is especially effective, but hypnotherapy is great for helping dieters stay on any diet plan. Hypnosis promotes the success of weight loss diet programs along with natural weight loss so people can enjoy permanent results.

Alan B. Densky, CH is an NGH Certified Hypnotherapist. Visit his hypnosis website for Free hypnotherapy videos, newsletters, and downloads. He offers several ways to lose weight, including NLP for weight loss MP3s and lose weight self-hypnosis MP3s.

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