Hypnotherapy and Weight Loss
Article on Paul Mckenna from 'The Observer' UK newspaper
Sunday July 8th 2007
He's the former stage hypnotist who got rich preaching a simple anti-diet message to the overweight. It's a scam, assumed Rachel Cooke - then she met Paul McKenna. Three weeks later, her waistband felt looser ...
Peer pressure is a terrible thing. It is nine o'clock on a Saturday morning and, rather than being in bed, which is where I'd like to be, I'm standing in the lobby of an anonymous hotel in West London. Why? Because my friend, N, has persuaded me - who knows how - to attend a Paul McKenna Weight Loss Event. 'Come on!' she said. 'It's right up your street. You can lose weight without doing anything at all!' In fact, this is not entirely accurate, but her appeal was clever, and well-aimed. Just like Paul McKenna, I hate diets, and I've never been on one. I also love eating. For a female, I'm as unscrewed-up about food as it's possible to be. There is nothing I avoid (apart from celery, which is vile), and no 'low-fat' product that I would be tempted to buy. However, if I am absolutely honest, like every woman I've ever met, I sometimes do dumb things. Occasionally, especially when I'm working, I eat nothing all day and then, just as I'm about to faint, I'll scoff eight biscuits. I eat when I'm bored, and when I'm miserable. And guess what? I wouldn't mind losing a stone. Show me a woman who doesn't want to lose a stone, even if only in theory, and I'll show you ... well, a bloke.
So, here we are. Me, N, and about 500 people - women, mainly - who want to lose weight. It costs £250 to attend this event, plus travel, so it's a serious investment for most people - and that's exactly how they see it, as an investment. This crowd is not, you quickly realise, here to be entertained. For the majority, this is the last resort. They have nothing to lose. They have tried everything, from calorie-counting to drinking cabbage soup, and they are still fat. Who can blame them for thinking that Paul McKenna, hypnotist, self-proclaimed 'expert on the power of the human mind' and author of the best-selling I Can Make You Thin, might be worth a punt? Not only does his book have the most alluringly explicit title ever published in the field of self-help, but he claims that his 'system' also has a success rate of 'over 70 per cent' (Kirsty Young, the newsreader, is one of his successes. She even gave him a blurb for his book. 'I lost weight long-term and re-established a relaxed relationship with food.') This live version of the book, then, has double its appeal: you get all the benefits of the 'system' - immediate and life-long weight loss, plus increased self-esteem - but without even having to read about how to achieve them. Plus, you get Paul to hold your hand! To shout his encouragement! To tell you you're lovely! You can see why this might appeal to the lonely dieter, worn out with circling the biscuit tin in her kitchen.
And boy, is he encouraging. We register, and go through into a big function room. When McKenna first appears on his specially assembled stage - in black suit and glasses, and wearing a smile that says: 'I've brushed, I've flossed and I'm ready to save your life' - the atmosphere in the room is lacklustre - depressed, even. People are sitting around, feeling rubbish about their thighs, and waiting for the miracle to happen. No matter. He has energy enough for everyone. It's Mr Bean meets Batman up there! McKenna's 'system', as he would be the first to admit, is very, very simple. It consists of four golden rules. Follow them, and you will lose weight. One: when you are hungry, eat. Two: eat what you want, not what you think you should. Three: eat consciously, and enjoy every mouthful. Four: when you think you are full, stop eating. That's it.
But, of course, following these rules is easier said than done, and this is where McKenna's beloved neuro-linguistic programming comes in. He has all sorts of weird ways of getting you to change your behaviour, most of which have to do with what he calls the 'reprogramming of the mind'. Here's an example. A volunteer comes up on stage, a chocolate addict. McKenna produces a giant bar of Dairy Milk and watches her salivate. Then, over a period of minutes, he builds up an association in her mind between chocolate and a food she really hates - a food, what's more, that has also been covered with hair from the floor of a barber's shop. Ugh! The latter makes her gag and, once the association is fully established, so does the chocolate. 'How about a piece now?' he says, snapping off a corner. She pulls a face. The audience gasps.
Another much weirder technique favoured by McKenna is called 'tapping'. In fact, he has a special film to show us about it, in which a cola addict uses it to beat her cravings. Tapping was developed by Dr Roger Callahan, author of Tapping the Healer Within, and it involves tapping on certain acupuncture points in the body. Think about whatever it is that you crave. Now use two fingers to tap above your eyes 10 times, then below them, under the collarbone, in the armpit, and on the back of your hand. Close your eyes, open them, look down to the right, down to the left, then rotate them 360 degrees in either direction. Count out loud from one to five, and hum the first few lines of 'Happy Birthday'. Now tap under your eye again, and under your collarbone and armpit... OK, how is the craving? According to McKenna, it will either be vastly reduced or gone altogether (he does not have any advice as to what you should do if you happen to be in a public place when this routine is called for). If not, go through the sequence again. McKenna loves tapping. So do his trained volunteers, who stand at the back waiting to help us out when we work in groups. For some of them, it seems to be a kind of all-purpose cure. When I try to leave early because I have a toothache, one of them catches me and, after I explain the problem, suggests that I 'tap the toothache out'. Oh, come on. Just show me the paracetamol.
It's a long and exhausting day. Repetition is always tiring and part of McKenna's technique, honed during his heyday as a stage hypnotist, is to repeat his message over and over in as many different forms as possible. There is no real way of judging the impact of his efforts on his audience; no follow-up work is done afterwards, so who really knows if this event will change forever their dysfunctional relationship with food? But I will say that, by the afternoon, people look happier and more bright-eyed. Me? I'm impressed by his shtick, and the inherent common sense of his message, but I'm still thinking - obsessing would be a better word - about the piece of beef that I plan to roast when I get home. I'm also worried about N. Just now, I looked at her out of the corner of my eye, and her mouth was wide open in wonderment. During our lunch break (food is not included in the cost of the event), she keeps telling me to put my knife and fork down (McKenna wants us to eat slowly, the better to enable us to hear the signal from our brain to our belly telling us that we are full), and to chew everything 12 times. 'Prawns disappear after three chews,' I say. 'No they don't!' she replies. 'Just do as you are told! Don't you want to lose weight?'
The following week, having decided that I want to write about McKenna, I have a private consultation with him at his Kensington mews house. It's very amusing. What a smoothy! He greets me first in his office, which features a life-size Paul McKenna cardboard cut-out, lots of Paul McKenna show posters, a box containing a model of a UFO and a Great Dane with unfeasibly huge testicles. He then takes me upstairs to his, er, private quarters, which are sort of 1980s minimalist: there are Oriental touches, and lots of leather furniture. In his study, where we sit for my consultation, there are button-back armchairs, stacks of self-help books by other people and, on the back of a cupboard door, a full-length mirror.
McKenna is incredibly fidgety, jiggling his knee and rubbing his nose, and it's not very relaxing. He asks me about my eating habits. I tell him that I was brought up to clean my plate, and that it makes me anxious to leave it otherwise. We work on this anxiety. He tells me to imagine myself in a liberating movie in which the sight of an unfinished roast potato means absolutely nothing to me. We also practise our tapping. Then he gets me to stand in front of the mirror. I'm not happy about this. The lighting is highly unflattering.
'So, Rachel,' he purrs, in his weird pop-picker twang (McKenna is a former DJ). 'What do you see? What do you dislike about yourself?' I rattle through the usual: face, arms, legs, bum, er, belly. I concede that my breasts aren't bad. McKenna takes a deep breath and does a routine I saw him do at the event. He adopts a frankly ridiculous voice, like a dwarf with adenoids trying for a role on 'Allo 'Allo. 'Ah hate ma bum!' he says, mincing and gurning. 'Ah hate ma face! Ah hate ma arms! Ah hate ma legs!' I don't know where to put myself. The idea is that I will see how silly it is to be so self-critical, but he's the one who seems daft, not me. It's embarrassing. Will I hear this voice every time I scrutinise my cellulite? I hope not. He then asks me to think of a compliment someone once paid to me, to remember how it made me feel, and look at myself again. 'See! You're already standing differently,' he says. This is true, but I'm not sure it has anything to do with my brain. I just want to please Paul. Sure, he's cheesy, but he's also so determined, so convinced by his self-appointed mission. I can't bear to let him down. I'm very approval-seeking, that way.
He sends me off with a full collection of his weight-loss CDs and a 'success journal', in which I can record my habits. I'm disappointed that he didn't hypnotise me, and I'm not convinced that our little chat is going to have any effect. Then something weird happens. I don't start thinking I am Christy Turlington but, over the next few days, I notice that I eat more slowly, and feel full more quickly. This involves no effort on my part; it just happens.
By the end of the following week, my trousers fit better. I'm pleased by this, but also confused. I think of myself as a rational person. I do not believe in 'mind reprogramming', and even if I did, I don't think I'm the kind of person on whom it would work; I'm cynical and stubborn and not easily led. What is going on? Am I secretly following the rules, but refusing to admit that I am? No. The full feeling comes upon me from nowhere, and I'm certainly not doing any tapping (though when Paul rings me to find out how I'm doing, I lie and say that I am). This leaves me with only two alternatives: either he hypnotised me on the sly, and I just didn't notice or, God forbid, he really has 'reprogrammed' my mind.
