Weight Loss Boot Camp

Many people ask me what my “Process” is for helping people lose weight with Hypnosis, NLP, Timeline Techniques, etc.

As I enter my second decade helping people to reach their personal, physical, financial and relationship goals (aka creating the kind of life and body that you enjoy living in), I am tending to be more and more spontaneous, flexible and intuitive in my “process”.

Some of my clients need structure and assignments. Others need to reduce their stressors before they pop a gasket and asking them to complete rigid assignments is not only counter productive it could quite literally push them over the stress edge.

So the first thing must be said is this: Everybody is different and working with you in the way that works for you is my prime intention and the ultimate guide to how we will proceed in the goal of “enlightening” your body, mind, and spirit.

So with that caveat, I have recently come up with a ROUGH, APPROXIMATE Outline of the Hypnosis Weight Loss “Process” we will be working on together.

If you have “tried everything” to lose weight and still find yourself back at square one or even worse off after each “diet” attempt, you just might want to look at the bigger picture of your life.

It has been my experience since 2003 that people like us, have a challenge with our weight and physical health because we have been thinking negative, self defeating thoughts, and living a painful stressed out, lonely, miserable lives. Your unconscious mind wants to keep you alive so it has made food into a little treat, a little soothing moment. But just like cigarettes and alcohol, one “hit” isn’t usually enough to stop the pain. You begin to need more and more to tame the tension, the terror, the stress and anxiety.

I take a long term approach to weight gain. Personally it took me 4 years of concerted effort to address my own eating issues and challenges. Just as is the case with my CRUSH anxiety process for eliminating, anxiety, panic attacks and phobias, my weight loss process evolved out of my own personal necessity to master this area in my life as well as the long experience helping other people to do the same. This process took me a long time to develop and test. Because I’ve been there and done that, we can save you time and dead ends, frustration and failure.

So my approach has continued to develop over time. Here is how it looks at the moment. Please keep in mind that most of these steps are taken at the same time… your life and challenges may be different than mine or my other clients but what I do basically works if you are seeking long term results… If you apply ALL of my tools and techniques you can expect actually rapid results. But ultimately it is you applying the tools and showing up willing to work on your “stuff” that will get you where you want to go.

And yes, hypnosis and NLP and EFT and Time Line Techniques are all fabulous tools that enable us to understand how our neurology is wired so that we can begin to generate better and more consistent transformation in all areas of our lives.

Some folks are ready to rock and roll and are so miserable and desperate they follow my coaching to the letter. Others aren’t so ready. Ultimately it is up to you. I’m a coach and I’m here for you as best as I can humanly be here for you. But again ultimately you are the one who is putting the food in your mouth and living you own life. What food you choose, and what that food means to you symbolically, metaphorically and literally is unique to you.

In the last 50 years the way we eat as a culture has dramatically changed. “Traditional” whole foods have been replaced by factory farmed, and industrially processed foods that may look good, and taste good but are ultimately filled with empty calories, and increasing amounts and even kinds of sugars.

What the government tells us is healthy is pretty much what industrial agriculture has told the government to tell us is healthy.

And a lot of times it’s NOT.

But you can get rid of grains, and sugars and eat only grass fed, free range, wild caught, local, natural, organic meat, healthy fats and vegetables, and STILL not lose weight if you don’t also address the “other” issues that you have with and around food.

That’s my area of expertise, helping you to transform your thoughts, and patterns of thought and emotion that are seeking soothing.

• We address the underlying issues of self hate, self sabotage, low self esteem, stress, repressed emotions and limiting beliefs, childhood vows and other “traumas and dramas” that are running constantly in the background of your unconscious mind
• We begin to learn other ways to soothe and “treat” yourself that aren’t food, alcohol or other “feel good” substances.
• We begin to heal your gut:
• we start to wean you off of carbs, grains, sugars, processed foods, fast foods.
• We introduce fermented veggies like sauerkraut, Kim Chee,
• We begin to move away from factory farmed chicken and other meats, mercury contaminated fish.
• We institute a once a week “cheat day”, which begins to transform over time as well. (my current “cheat” is a really nice apple)
• STRESS! If you are massively stressed in your life one of your assignments is to start saying “no” to activities that add more of a burden and begin to say “yes” to self caring activities that are designed to fill your “reservoir”.
• RELATIONSHIPS! If your relationships are a cause of stress we work on learning how to express your truth in a safe and sustainable way.
• WORK! If your work is the main source of stress and unhappiness we begin to work on creating new and more enjoyable options for you.
• LIMITING BELIEFS! If you are working intensely stressful job(s), and have a whole series of beliefs about “how it’s not possible to actually create work you enjoy, then we may spend some time here.
• SELF LOVE AND ACCEPTANCE! Ultimately ALL the work I do with ALL my clients is on how to actually love and appreciate their uniqueness and wonderfulness exactly as they are, who they are. The goal is a fulfilling, healthy life with satisfying work and personal relationships. The foundation of all happiness is a healthy, reasonably fit body that allows you to do the things you want to do as well as express and receive love.

Does that seem like a lot? To me it is an invitation to dance!

Welcome to your world. Welcome to living in this amazing vehicle of sensing and perceiving that you call your “body”.

If you want some help to save you time, money, frustration, stress on your journey towards health and fitness, I’ve got the tools and experience to help you get there faster, easier better.

All the best!

Mark Shepard, ChT, NLPT
Albany NY Weight Loss Hypnosis Specialist
Master Practitioner and Trainer of NLP, Hypnosis, Time Line Therapy(tm), EFT

Want to learn more? Click here:

Check it out! It’s Not Just About The Food Online Weight Loss Revolution

Got questions? I have answers and I want you to have them, so…

Let’s talk

This morning, I watched the following video of Dr. Joseph Mercola, Interviewing J.J. Virgin about her new book.
JJ Virgin’s Sugar Impact Diet: Drop 7 Hidden Sugars, Lose Up to 10 Pounds in Just 2 Weeks

The timing was really good for me because In the last 3 weeks I’ve taken my own weight loss and fitness process to the next level.

Last year I read  Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar–Your Brain’s Silent Killers

and it stunned me into getting rid of ALL grains. I still allowed a “cheat day” one day a week or so to eat whatever I wanted. I noticed that I had MUCH more energy and felt pretty darn good, but I still had some significant belly flab. Even without the grains I was not letting go of that stubborn fat.

So I took the next step.

As many of the leading edge weight loss and fitness researchers have advised, I began to adapt intermittent fasting to my week. A couple of nights during the week I’d just skip dinner and not eat anything until the next morning. A couple of mornings I skipped breakfast. Again, not much of a change… ini the belly fat department.

I noticed that my fasting was not causing me to have any headaches or feelings of tiredness or even cravings for food. In fact the fasting felt really, really good. There was a lightness and almost feeling kind of high. It also lowered my stress level because I didn’t have to figure out what to have for dinner! It also saved me some significant money because it is usually in the evenings that I don’t feel like cooking and am more likely to go out to a restaurant. LOL!

Then after a weekend away in mid October, where I felt totally bloated and uncomfortable from eating restaurant food, I decided to go to the next level. I had been eating dark chocolate, cashews and apples a couple of times a week as a snack and a treat… So I stopped.

I thought that since the dark chocolate had MUCH LESS sugar in it that it would be okay to eat it. Of course I ended up eating an entire chocolate bar a day. In a similar way that I USED to eat ice cream all day.

Even though I knew eating apples was still eating sugar, I told myself that one apple  couldn’t be THAT bad…

The cashews are definitely a life long addiction. I LOVE them. I have suspected for a while that they were not really working with my digestive system. So even though they are a potential source of healthy fats, I figured I could take a break for a couple weeks even from them.

I figured that for 2 weeks I could just eliminate these foods and see.

2 weeks later, I’ve dropped 10 pounds and lost 4 inches around my belly. Going for 10 more pounds and 2-3 more inches gone. So I’m committing to really getting rid of every possible kind of sugar until my body is firmly and solidly burning fat. I WANT to see my abs! I also want to take healing my gut to the next level. So I have upped the amount of fermented foods I’m eating.

Coincidentally I saw this interview by Dr. Joseph Mercola with Best selling author J.J. Virgin about her new book “The Sugar Impact Diet” and it was uncanny how everything she said made sense. AND I had quite literally just done what she proposes, I quit all sugar for 2 weeks. I lost 10 pounds and 4 inches around my middle.  So I wanted to pass this along to you as soon as possible.

So here’s the video and all the thoughts it triggered for me are below.

Use the handy form at the bottom of this page if you have any questions or thoughts you’d like to share with me! Use the Handy Opt-in Form if you would like to be the first to get new articles and announcements from me.

One of the main “take-aways” from this interview is that there is a ton of mis-information floating around out there.

Mis-information about what is healthy to eat. Mis-information about what kind of exercise actually helps you to start burning fat and keep burning fat… Mis-information about hypnosis… Sometimes it’s discouraging. Other times it fires me up and drives me forward on my mission to help people get to where they want to be faster, easier better…

Here are just a few off the top of my head.

1. Eating frequent snacks. The truth? if you are burning sugar instead of fat you will crash and burn without frequent “top-ups”. But when you have successfully switched to fat burning mode, you can easily go many hours between meals without feeling tired or depleted.
2. Fruit is healthy. I have a friend who is a diabetic. He eats a ton of fruit. Why Because he thinks its “healthy”. He’s also a vegetarian and doesn’t “get” that rice and beans and “whole grains” are also experienced as sugar by our bodies.
3. The first law of thermodynamics. Calories in Calories out. It’s as simple as reduce the amount of calories you take in and increase the amount of calories you expend and you will lose weight and inches…. FALSE! It’s an over simplification and it will get you in trouble. the hormones triggered by the kinds of foods you eat either support fat storage or fat burning. If you go on a starvation reduced calorie diet you will trigger a whole host of unwanted processes, you body will think there is a famine and so start to get more and more efficient at NOT using up your fat supplies. You ghet sad and depressed as you struggle to not eat foods you are craving. DEPRIVATION sets in… and eventually you give up and BINGE.
4. Whole grains are “healthy”. Read Wheat Belly and Grain Brain if you want the facts. The bottom line is that Wheat is one of the food highest on the glycemic index. Your body experiences it as sugar.
5. “Alternative” sweeteners like Agave are “better” than regular sugar. Come on! It’s still sugar. Just because the “Agave Industry” wants to sell more of it doesn’t mean you should eat more of it.
6. Gluten Free  or vegan desserts are better for you than regular desserts. Maybe. But THEY ARE STILL FILLED WITH SUGAR! Every single vegan I’ve ever met was totally addicted to carbs… and carbs are …. sugar! Wheat is SUGAR. Corn is Sugar, quinoa is sugar!
7. It’s better to drink diet soda than regular soda.  NOT! Some of the sugar substitutes are 100’s of times sweeter than regular cane sugar and what that does is cause you to become accustomed to sweeter and sweeter tastes. Chemical sweeteners are basically poison and contain excite toxins. If you had a choice between something sweetened with chemicals or something sweetened with actual cane sugar, you would be better off with the natural sweetener. HOWEVER!
8. It’s better to drink Juice than soda. NOT. Fruit juice is simply concentrated SUGAR. ALL soda and fruit juices should be on your DO NOT TOUCH list.
9. Fat will make you fat. False. There are books and books written about this but sadly few of my weight loss clients have heard of them much less read them.
10. You are “stuck” with your genetic predisposition, Your “family” body. Totally false. You may be stuck with your basic body structure like whether you are big boned or small boned, endomorph or ectomorph, tall or short, but what you put into your body and what you do with your body and what kinds of thoughts you think are totally and completely determined by YOU. Where your family of origin factors in is mostly the beliefs about your body and about what foods are good for you and about the quantity of food you need to be “healthy” etc.
11. Marathon runners are healthy. Other than wearing out their bodies with hundreds of miles of high impact stresses, and wearing out your body with over training, Marathon runners and long distance cyclists as a group are totally convinced they have to load up with carbs in order to fuel  themselves. If you love to run, go ahead and do it. But if you are running to be fit and want to stay fit for life and avoid injuries that cause you to stop moving, then you will want to explore other options that take less time and are safer.
12. Eating energy bars and meal replacement shakes sweetened with fructose is healthy. Sorry Isagenix and Herbal Life. Your meal replacement shakes are filled with fructose. NO THANK YOU.
13. Yogurt with fruit in it is a healthy food choice… maybe in extreme moderation AFTER you’ve switched to fat burning mode. But the fruit will also make you bloated and gassy. And Fruit is… SUGAR. The healthy bacteria in the yogurt IS good for you. But somehow you’re going to have to find a way to either eat full fat organic yogurt without sugar, or get your healthy probiotics with fermented vegetables or in a  supplement.

In case you didn’t read what I just wrote here it is in a nutshell:

•  Sugar is sugar
• Honey is sugar
• Wheat and other grains are sugar
• potatoes are sugar
• fruit is sugar
• SUGAR feeds the bad bacteria in your gut and causes you to store fat as well as to crave more sugar!

One of the other things that J.J. Virgin pointed out:

• FOOD IS INFORMATION.
• Cutting calories without getting rid of the sugar triggers deprivation and ultimately causes you to fail…
• Gluten, dairy and sugar are ADDICTIVE…. pharmacologically and biologically they act like DRUGS. These substances shake hands with the opium receptors in your brain… WE are hardwired as animals to seek pleasure. Sweetness in nature is rare. But in the last 100 years we as a species have had more access to sugar in all it’s forms than any people in history. It is wreaking havoc with our health.
• There are always ways to improve.
• Bad gut bacteria (which feeds on sugars) literally acts to suck more “energy” from the food to store it as fat…

I hope you take the time to consider that your body is a vehicle for you to enjoy and interact with the world of sights, sounds, feelings, tastes, textures, scents and awareness. If you don’t take care of your body where will you live?

Watch the video, educate yourself, begin to experiment with a long-term strategy for gradual, steady, optimal health and wellness, well being, happiness, self love and fitness.

If you want support, need help, guidance, coaching, I’m here for you. My next class “It’s Not Just About The Food” will be limited to 25 people and will start up at the beginning of February 2015 in the Albany NY Capital District area (most likely Clifton Park). I will again be collaborating with Bethany Gonyea, and one of my favorite NLP and Hypnosis “protege’s”, Ms. Leslie Thornton...

Want to learn more? Click here:

Check it out! It’s Not Just About The Food Online Weight Loss Revolution

Got questions? I have answers and I want you to have them, so…

Let’s talk