Our nation's waistbands are expanding like crazy! If the trend continues every state in the U.S. will have obesity rates above 44 percent by 2030.
Every year 200,000 Americans are stapling, banding, and even removing part of their stomachs to beat the bulge. Some dropping tens of thousands of dollars on bariatric surgery to drop the unwanted pounds.
"I've tried every diet in the world and nothing worked," Gastric Bypass Hypnosis Patient, Roy May, told Ivanhoe.
But Roy and Sue May spent about eleven-hundred bucks a piece on something else, they believe is just as effective.
Rena Greenberg hypnotized the couple into thinking they had gastric bypass surgery.
"So I'm actually guiding them through the experience as if it were actually happening. Going to a hospital, meeting the nurse, having the anesthesia. And you remember leaving the hospital with such a sense of positive expectancy and excitement, and gratitude," Hypnotherapist and Author, Rena Greenberg, told Ivanhoe.
Along with simulating surgery, Greenberg tries to change her clients' way of thinking.
"Definitely for me it's been a miracle," Gastric Bypass Hypnosis Patient, Sue May, told Ivanhoe.
With the help of hypnotic surgery Roy and Sue May have lost a combined weight of 160 pounds.
"It has changed our life completely," Roy May said.
Greenberg tells us she has seen over 100 clients for gastric bypass hypnosis. She says 70 percent reported they lost weight, but Bariatric Surgeon Ernest Rehnke isn't buying it.
"We actually know that the statistic is only about four percent of people long term can take weight off and keep it off successfully, but these people that are morbidly obese or have weight that is killing them, they need to have something done," Bariatric Surgeon Ernest Rehnke, told Ivanhoe.
The doctor says only surgery can physically shrink the stomach, reducing the amount of food that can be eaten. It works for 80 percent of his patients. He doesn't believe hypnosis has that kind of power.
"It's not going to work long term for them. They are going to end up reverting back to their habits of eating a little more and a little more," said Dr. Rehnke.
Greenberg sees it differently.
"So, it's really just writing a new program; it's having a new inner conversation about food," Greenberg explained.
It seems to be helping Roy and Sue stay on course. They've kept the weight off for more than a year.
But the question remains, how long will the hypno-surgery's effects really last?
