If you’re having problems losing those extra pounds or finding it hard to get motivated you may want to experiment with one or more of the four natural techniques below. They aren’t miracle cures but they can help you get to the root cause of why you aren’t losing weight or eating healthily and by so doing help you find ways to get back on track.

If you eat when you’re not hungry try hypnotherapy:

Most people with weight issues don’t need reminding that the way to lose weight is to eat less junk, more healthy, nutritious food and to be more physically active. They know exactly what they need to do to achieve their weight loss goal but for some reason they find it hard to actually make the changes they need to.

This is because for the great majority of people food is not the problem; the problem is stress, low self- esteem, and low willpower and until the real reason for overeating is taken into account they will continue to over eat or make poor food choices. In short, they eat not because they are hungry but to relieve boredom or to protect themselves from feeling lonely, angry, guilty or unfulfilled and this unhealthy relationship with food becomes a habit so they are eating without thinking about it.

Habits are stored in the unconscious area of your mind and the benefit of hypnotherapy is that it enables communication with the unconscious mind to make the needed behavioural and emotional changes. Hypnotherapy can also help change negative thinking habits which can trigger depression, low self-esteem and low willpower and give you the motivation you need to begin to love your own body and take care of it.

For instance, it can help give you the willpower to eat healthy and exercise and to turn away foods high in sugar, saturated fat and refined carbohydrates. It can help you feel full quicker, eat slower, and eat less than ever before.

You have to remember that it took years to put on the weight and it won’t come off over night and hypnotherapy isn’t a cure all for everyone but it can work for some people, especially those who for years have been reaching for food when they know they aren’t hungry.

If you’ve never had hypnotherapy before or are worried that it might be dangerous hypnotherapy remember that it is safe when practised by properly trained practitioners. It is usually carried out one-to-one with a trained and trusted hypnotherapist in a therapeutic setting. After taking a medical history and discussing how hypnotherapy may be of use, the therapist will ask you to sit in a comfortable chair or lie on a couch. Your attention will be shifted away from external events or mental stresses and you will be asked to focus on your breathing and increasingly relaxed state.

Once you’re relaxed, therapeutic suggestions will be made such as, ‘you will no longer feel the desire to eat when you are bored’. You’ll then gradually be brought out of your relaxed state and back into the present.

If you find it difficult to maintain a healthy weight pay attention to your digestive health:

Paying attention to your digestive health if you have weight problems is absolutely crucial because if your digestive health is poor you won’t be getting the nutrients you need to burn fat efficiently and lose weight. So take the following small steps to boost your digestion;

• Eat a small piece of fresh ginger before a meal to activate the saliva glands and stimulate digestion before you eat
• Drink a glass of lemon juice diluted with water first thing in the morning before you eat breakfast to give your digestive system a boost
• Try to increase your intake of green leafy vegetables because these ultra nutritious foods are packed full of important vitamins, minerals and antioxidants for good digestion
• Mindful eating: Eat in a peaceful relaxing environment (stress can have a negative impact on digestive health) and chew your food thoroughly. Put your knife and fork down between mouthfuls and savour every bite; digestion starts in the mouth with your saliva.
• Increase your intake of fibre by eating dried fruit such as dates, figs and prunes, beans and legumes, snacking on apples, sprinkling ground flaxseeds (linseeds) on rice, grains, salads or any other meal of your choice.
• Probiotics: The bacteria Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium bifidum are considered good “probiotic” bacteria because they can help to maintain digestive and intestinal health. Although good bacteria can be found in some yogurts, there is a wide variation in the quantity and quality so look for good quality organic yogurt that add the active cultures after pasteurisation, because this heat process destroys both good and bad bacteria. Or alternatively you can add in a probiotic supplement like BioKult.

If you can’t get motivated to exercise and lose weight try yoga:

If you want to lose weight healthy eating needs to be combined with regular exercise but if the idea of spending an hour sweating away calories is not an appealing option yoga is a brilliant alternative way to get fit and flexible.

Although most kinds of yoga help tone muscle and build flexibility the one that significantly helps you burn calories is ashtanga. If you are overweight but fit this kind, also known as power yoga, is a great alternative cardiovascular work out that can help you lose weight and build fitness. If, however, you aren’t as fit as you know you can be you may want to begin with a less vigorous form such as silvanada which will help you build up your calories burning muscles but will also increase your strength and stamina so you can eventually move on to more aerobic activities.

If you can’t stop comfort eating try cognitive behavioural therapy (CBF):

Losing weight and keeping it off isn’t just about watching what you eat it involves addressing why you have an issue with food and why it may have become a way to avoid dealing with emotional problems, such as guilt and fear, which can lead to comfort eating.

Like hypnotherapy, CBF explores the psychological reason for negative eating patterns to get to the core of the problem and help you resolve underlying issues. Unlike hypnotherapy, however, practitioners don’t use the power of suggestion but instead teach you how to recognise the negative thinking patterns that are triggering your comfort eating and then give you powerful tools to stop those negative thoughts and habits.

The real power of the system is that it can help calm your mind and body, so you think more uplifting thoughts, make healthier food choices and don’t feel the need to use food as a substitute for emotional insecurity or hurt anymore. Again, CBF isn’t a cure all for everyone but for some people it can provide the incentive they need to eat healthily, lose weight and keep it off.

According to a study by Japanese scientists, sniffing lavender or rosemary oil for just five minutes a day can reduce levels of a harmful stress hormone called cortisol.

It is known to cause oxidative stress, a destructive process that damages healthy cells. In the latest study, researchers at Meikal University, Japan, recruited 22 healthy volunteers and took saliva samples to test for a range of substances including cortisol.

Each one had to spend five minutes inhaling lavender or rosemary oil before the tests were repeated. The results in the Journal of Psychiatry Research showed a sharp drop in cortisol levels after sniffing the oil.

Acupuncture, the traditional Chinese medicine technique that uses hair-thin needles to treat pain, allergies, and nausea, is showing promise as a treatment for female infertility. Researchers from New York’s Weill Cornell Medical Centre recently reviewed existing sutdies and found that acupuncture helps…

1. Reduce stress hormones that interfere with ovulation
2. Normalize hormones that regulate ovulation so an egg is released
3. Increase blood flow to the uterus, improving the chances of a fertilized egg implanting
4. Improve ovulation cycles in women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which makes getting pregnant difficult. Many women with PCOS seem to find it helpful in kick starting absent periods or regulating cycles.
5. Improve pregnancy rates in women undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF)

Acupuncture is based on the theory that vital energy (or “qi,” pronounced “chi”) flows through the body along certain pathways. Acupuncturists try to balance this energy and restore health by stimulating specific points along the pathways with thin needles.

Traditional acupuncturists treat the whole person rather than a disease and therefore attempt to get to the root cause of the problem rather than treating the symptoms and, like other holistic practitioners, will consider all lifestyle and environmental factors before commencing treatment for infertility. Although it has been a staple of Chinese medicine for some 5,000 years, acupuncture has gained greater acceptance in the medical community only in the past few decades.

Acupuncture is perhaps one of the best researched natural therapies, other than nutrition. There is published evidence that acupuncture works well for such problems as back pain, toothaches and migraines and a growing body of research to suggest that it can help with infertility. In 2002, a team of German researchers discovered that acupuncture significantly increased the odds of pregnancy among a group of 160 women who were undergoing IVF treatment. Forty-two percent of the women who received acupuncture got pregnant, compared to 26 percent of those who didn’t receive the treatment. The researchers speculated that acupuncture helped increase blood flow to the uterus and relax the muscle tissue, giving the embryos a better chance of implanting.

Other research suggests that acupuncture is effective in reducing stress. Since stress has been shown to interfere with getting pregnant, because it can interfere with hormonal balance, it makes sense that reducing your stress through acupuncture could theoretically improve your odds of conceiving. Some women find acupuncture helpful to cope with the stress they feel about trying to conceive.

Acupuncture may also help male infertility. New research shows that acupuncture can significantly improve the quality and health of sperm. In a study published in Fertility and Sterility in 2005, researchers analysed sperm samples from men with infertility of unknown cause before and after acupuncture treatments. They found that acupuncture was associated with fewer structural defects in sperm and an increase in the number of normal sperm.

Although the researchers from Weill Cornell Medical Centre suggested that acupuncture shows great promise for treating fertility problems, many other experts believe that we need larger and better studies, ideally random and double blind, using fake needles for some patients and real ones for others, in order to truly know whether acupuncture is effective. In some of the studies mentioned above, the patients and health care providers knew that acupuncture was performed, which meant that the studies weren’t actually “blind” and the success of the treatment might have been due to what’s known as the placebo effect, the belief that something will help. So perhaps it was the patients’ belief in acupuncture – rather than the acupuncture itself – that accounted for the treatment’s success. It’s difficult to tell.

Perhaps, in the end it doesn’t matter that much whether the success of acupuncture is a placebo effect or not. The bottom line is that acupuncture is safe as long as you contact a qualified practitioner and if it improves fertility – even if it’s only because you think it does – or helps reduce the stress and anxiety associated with infertility and fertility treatment it can be worthwhile.