Media Review: Paul McKenna

Paul McKenna is more familiar to viewers across the pond, but he's come to the USA in a big way now on TLC's show, I Can Make You Thin with Paul McKenna. He used hypnosis with Ellen Degeneres to help her stop smoking and was on her show using hypnosis to help folks eilminate fear of snakes, spiders, etc.

Now, McKenna is spending five weeks to help folks lose weight.

I watched the debut on Sunday and delighted at the provocative way he couched his Golden Rules for weight loss.

1. When you're hungry, go and eat.
2. Eat what you want, not what you think you should.
2. Eat consciously.
4. When you're full, stop.

Why are these provocative? A couple are so simple that they're easy to dismiss. I can imagine people rolling their eyes in disgust, saying, "Well, of course, everybody knows that."

If those Golden Rules were really as simple as they appear, McKenna wouldn't have spent a full hour explaining them! Hypnosis depends on precise language, and McKenna took care to unpack "hungry," "consciously," and "full."

I loved the experiment where they invited people to a restaurant for identical breakfasts on two consecutive mornings. The second day, they blindfolded the customers. And guess what? People felt full sooner. They left food on their plates. I'm guessing they also ate more slowly, because it's probably a little more difficult to eat when you're blindfolded. I wonder if the food tasted differently, too?

McKenna hasn't talked about hypnosis, but clips from next week's show had people using EFT, Gary Craig's Emotional Freedom Technique, derived from Roger Callahan's Thought Field Therapy. A recent article in the March 2008 Journal of Hypnotism cited a study that said people who eat for emotional reasons (bored, stressed, lonely) have a harder time losing weight than others. I'm looking forward to watching McKenna at work.