• Certified Clinical  Hypnotherapist
• Past Life Regressionist
• Neuro-linguistic Programmer

• The Sugar Free Program

• Why the program was developed

• Class Schedule

• Class Registration

• The Case Against Sugar

• Test for Sugar Addiction

• Why Use Hypnosis

• Article by Tricia: Cravings Covered

Why The "Sugar Free" Program Was Developed

I began my research of Sugar Addiction because of an overwhelming desire to end the ugly cycle I had created in my life, and which if you are on this site, you can probably relate.  Through my research, the catastrophic consequences of  “Sugar Addiction” became clear to me and I was compelled to educate and help members of my community to not only stop the emotional self abuse but also the life style that is in fact, physical abuse.

The cycle I refer to goes like this: I notice I feel bad (nervous, stressed, tired, anxious, afraid, ugly, fat, frustrated, overwhelmed or unhappy.)  I think to myself, I don’t want to feel this way.  Then I ask myself, “What will make me feel better?”  My first thought is of some kind of diversion, most likely eating.  Unknowingly I am reaching for comfort and I turn to “comfort foods” like sugar and other refined carbohydrates.  My subconscious mind sees this as giving me comfort, treating myself, giving me love so I’ll feel better.  As strange as it may seem, I would reach for these foods to feel loved, to feel good about myself in the face of whatever adversity I was facing; like Mom giving me a cookie when the other kids teased me to the point of tears.  This act of comfort eating would result in immediate gratification. I felt loved and comforted at the subconscious level, but only for a very short while. 

Then the guilt would set in as well as the sugar blues and I would be back to I feel bad, I hate myself, why did I do that? I need comfort; I’ll just eat a little more, sometimes to the point of bingeing.  This ultimately would result in a downward spiral that may last from several hours to several days before I could pull myself out of it.

 The more sugar I ate, the worse I actually felt physically, the more I hated myself and the more hopeless and depressed I became. Everything became too much to cope with.   Yet I continued to reach for more sugar.    I could eat an entire box of chocolates even though the first three pieces had already made me sick.   The self-loathing and disgust were unbelievable yet I continued on.

 This set of circumstances continued to mystify me for many years until I was led to understand that I am a sugarholic, I am addicted to sugar.  This addiction does not sound all that different from other addictions considered hard and more dangerous like alcohol, prescription and recreational drugs, does it?  Actually my research has shown that sugar addiction often leads to the harder addictions, so I guess I have been lucky to escape that.

It took years of journaling and soul searching to come up with the realization that this was an unending cycle in my life, this love-hate relationship with sugar and myself.  It seems so simple in retrospect.  I can’t even begin to imagine how much precious energy I wasted while being involved in this cycle.

During the months spent researching sugar addiction I came to realize the problem was more serious that just the emotional abuse I put myself through.  After my cycles I was primarily angry that during these times of self-medication I gained weight and felt depressed.  I never thought about how much actual harm I was doing to my body and how my actions could lead to serious chronic disease later in my life.  I suffered with many symptoms, which went undiagnosed but plagued me just the same.  I never related them to my sugar consumption.

As a hypnotherapist I have worked with hundreds of weight loss clients.  Most came to me because they wanted to be thinner and more attractive, even perhaps more active.  Until recently, few came because they didn’t feel well or were concerned about their health, or were unable to get health insurance. Very few if any ever admitted to being out of control in the sugar department.  Denial is very powerful.  Those that did were mostly unwilling to receive suggestions on eliminating sugar from their lives.  They related giving up sugar to giving up the one thing that held them up in hard times.  Some related the loss of sugar to dying.  The seriousness of this addiction was unknown.   Most wanted to continue to have the choice to indulge sometimes, not willing to accept that there really was no choice, not for the addict anyway.  Though the hypnotherapy helped with many of the problems that lead them to eat “comfort” sugar, unwillingness to give it up altogether prevented them from having total success and usually led to a regaining of the weight.

There are many people who can eat just one cookie and walk away, but there is a large population for which that is an impossibility.  We are now called “sugar sensitives” which means that our bodies cannot take or leave sugar at will.  It’s neither our fault nor our lack of will power that causes our downfall.  It is heredity and part of our body chemistry.  When we try to have just one, there is a small (sometimes not so small) inner voice that nags us for more until we give in.  When we later try to abstain our body begins to scream for more driving us to betray our self-promises.

 The solution is to release sugar all together.  We are addicts, we cannot have just one.  Research shows some people may need to get all the sugar out of everything, while others my find they can tolerate small amounts contained in natural foods without starting up the addiction.

Through hypnotherapy you can learn better ways to love and comfort yourself, release many of the fears, the anxiety and low self esteems issues that lead to the need for comfort.  You can change your thought patterns and programming to eliminate sugars from your life willingly without feeling like you are going to die.  But eliminate it you must because any time you indulge you are likely to set up the cycle I described above, which not only leads to debilitating self loathing but to chronic disease and a decreased quality of life.

The “Sugar Free U” program is designed to help you determine how sugar affects you, if you are “sugar sensitive”, and introduces you to the benefits of hypnosis.  Changes are made both at the conscious and subconscious level.  In order for the changes to be permanent, however, they must be accepted at the subconscious level so two private hypnosis sessions are included in the program.

The more research I do, the more I am convinced that now is the time that a shift in consciousness must be made by our society.  There is more disease, higher costs of insurance and health care, more incidences of depression, low self-esteem, serious addictions and such overwhelming obesity that I do not see how our society is going to survive it.  You only have to observe our children to realize how much trouble our society is in; currently over 24% of American children are obese and studies show that 1 out of every 3 children born in 2000 will contract diabetes.

I have put together this program to do my small part in helping those that are ready to step out of the box they find themselves in and end their own cycles of disempowerment and physical destruction.

Tricia Burbank
The New Visioning Institute
Nevada City, California
(530) 265-4094
email: tjb@TriciaBurbank.com