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Hypnosis overrides your brain
The air is spiked with the scent of antiseptic and the steady, punctuating beep of a heart monitor.
The patient is in a deep sleep; the gastric band operation she hopes will transform her life is due to commence.
But Natalie Couldwell, a size 22 mum of two whose weight has plagued her since early childhood, is lying fully-clad on a couch in a tiny meeting room at Hillsbrough Leisure Centre.
There's the faint hum of conversation from the coffee shop next door. Every now and then, a tannoy call for a gym staff member rings out.
And the "surgeon" on whom Natalie is nailing her hopes has not a single medicinal qualification.
Alison Tynan is a qualified clinical hypnotherapist; she is hypnotising Natalie into believing she is undergoing a gastric band operation, the drastic weightloss surgery which has soared in popularity, despite its risks and costs of up to 6,000 for non NHS patients.
A real gastric band operation reduces the size of an obese patient's stomach with an adjustable band so only small meals can be eaten; usually dramatic weightloss follows.
Natalie's stomach will be untouched. But hypnosis will hopefully convince her mind that a band is in place – and be enough to stop her from binging on her beloved chips, bread, crisps and big family meals.
Moments earlier I had watched the Stocksbridge supermarket worker close her eyes and fall under Alison's hypnotic spell.
Rhythmically and repetitively, she talked of steps Natalie was encouraged to slowly descend, of a clock tick, tick, ticking and floating jigsaw puzzles.
Then she had spoke to the part of Natalie's psyche that three weeks' worth of counselling and hypnotherapy had already persuaded food was a friend and to believe she could be the size she has always wanted to be by eating only when she was truly hungry. Once a state of deep hypnosis had been reached, Alison began talking Natalie through the entire surgical procedure, starting with her arrival at the clinic, climbing into the green surgical gown and being wheeled down to theatre.
Natalie was told a hospital bracelet was being fastened around her wrist and the consultant was explaining the keyhole procedure he was about to undertake.
Then, to my surprise, Alison turned to a few props. She opened a bottle of disinfectant, soaked a cotton wool pad and laid it on Natalie's pillow, then set a laptop to play the sounds of a real operating theatre as the "operation" was verbally played out..
Natalie was told she would feel a slight tugging on her abdomen as an incision was made, and again when the instruments were withdrawn and the wound dressed.
Minutes later, she was told she had woken up in the clinic and was sitting down to her first post-op meal.
"It looks tiny; you think there won't be enough but amazingly you are full after a few mouthfuls. It will be the same from now on," said Alison.
After being brought out of hypnosis Natalie left eager to start her new relationship with food.
"The gastric band I gave Natalie is on her mind rather than her stomach. It will work because she eats when her brain tells her to and, not because she is hungry," explains Alison, who for two and a half years has been helping hundreds of South Yorkshire people lose weight.
Her company Kick The Diet, a programme, deals with psychological issues to food while also giving healthy eating and exercise advice.
"I've had great results with Kick The Diet but the one problem I found was people had problems with portion size," she says. "Your stomach is the size of your fist but people eat far more than that."
A master neuro-linguistic programming practitioner and a qualified personal fitness instructor, Alison was looking for another answer. She heard about the hypnotic gastric band technique, researched its success rate and took training.
One of up to 20 practising the procedure, she has "fitted" bands for 20 clients in the last five months and reports 16 are progressing well, though four have not lost weight.
She explains: "Eating habits and weight gain are different and complex. Hypnosis is not right for everybody, but for many it could be a very useful tool to help them combat their deeply ingrained issues with food."
A hypno gastric band course is 350, a fraction of the cost of surgery and roughly the equivalent of a year's slimming club membership. Clients return at three weeks and three months and the effects could be permanent.
"The band should stay in place in Natalie's mind permanently as long as she doesn't allow herself to be brainwashed by negative environments," says Alison.
"For Natalie, that would be being around people on diets; it could make her start obsessing about food again. Remember, even a real gastric band can be over-ridden by the mind."
British Dietary Association spokesperson Lucy Jones, an obesity surgery specialist, said: "This is a very novel procedure and we tend not to recommend anything until there are long term results to look at.
"But we are not winning the battle against obesity and can't afford to dis-count something new. I am aware of patients who have gone through this treatment and had some success."
A week later, Natalie is eating the same amount as her three-year-old daughter, Madison.
"My portions are less than a quarter of what they were. I literally can't eat any more," says the 28-year-old who has battled with her weight for as long as she can remember.
She was bullied at school because of her weight and comfort-ate to compensate.
"I only realised that when I began the hypno therapy course with Alison," she admits. "She made me look at my relationship with food. From the very first session I started eating less. Within three weeks I had almost dropped a dress size."
Previously, diets had never lasted. Chips and bread would usually sway her willpower.
And working evenings at Stocksbridge Co-op didn't help. She would cook tea for her family, head to work and eat hers when she came in after 10pm - "the worst time for a big meal," she reflects.
The crunch came this spring when Natalie had to sit and watch from the sidelines as her older, sister Diane, a fitness instructor, joined the fun of an adventure playground with her nieces.
She recalls: "They were my kids; I was guilty it wasn't me having fun with them."
She considered having gastric band surgery. "I knew people who had been transformed by the operation.
"But in the end I couldn't face the risks or the long recovery period. The only time I've ever gone under the knife was when I had my tonsils out at 15. And I couldn't justify spending so much money on myself."
Then she heard about the hypnotic band; "I felt it could be the answer for me. So much of my overeating was psychological."
After having her band "fitted", Natalie's first meal was ham and coleslaw sandwiches.
"I used two slices of bread instead of four - Alison had warned me I would want to eat much less. I cut the sandwich into four but could only manage one section. I was absolutely amazed; normally I would have had the whole plateful, plus crisps, a cup of tea and half a packet of biscuits.
"I threw the leftovers in the bin, which was something I would never have allowed myself to do normally. I was brought up not to waste food."
Natalie can remember nothing of the hypnosis session.
" I've no recollection of what was said. But clearly, it's worked. Alison has planted the belief in my mind that my stomach has been made smaller by a gastric band," she says.
She now eats tiny amounts of food four or five times a day. She says: "I'm full after half a banana or a few spoons from a small can of soup. My husband Chris is amazed and my sister Diane is delighted.
"I feel so confident and so sure I'm going to get to my goal size 14 – and be able to wear the little black dress which has been hanging in my wardrobe virtually unworn for the last 14 years."
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