Have you ever felt like food controls your thoughts, your mood, or even your self-worth? Are you constantly battling shame after eating something "bad"? What if the real problem isn't food at all, but how you've been taught to think about it?
For many, dieting becomes a cycle of restriction, guilt, and rebellion. You follow the rules during the week, only to spiral into bingeing on the weekend—then beat yourself up for "failing." The shame builds silently, reinforcing the belief that you just don't have enough willpower.
Melissa knows that pattern all too well. For years, she woke up thinking about food, struggling with guilt and punishing herself for not doing things "perfectly." Even after trying other courses and hypnosis programs, nothing seemed to stick—until she found a radically different approach.
Through a blend of coaching, hypnosis, and mindset work, Melissa broke free from the shame-based cycle in just eight weeks. She learned to trust her body, stop labeling food as good or bad, and finally feel peace around eating. Her story shows that healing isn't about more discipline—it's about reclaiming your freedom.
"But there's nothing more powerful than the mind. That's right. And whatever you[Leslie] put into your hypnotherapy, it totally works. And again, I've done other courses and they did nothing for me and they were just a waste of money. But the way you[Leslie] structured it, it was exactly what I needed." - Melissa
What you will learn from this episode:
02:37 - How Melissa ultimately recognized hypnosis effectiveness
07:42 - Struggling with late-night bingeing --- driven by compulsion and not by hunger
12:47 - Realizing her medical condition didn't have to define her eating habits helped her shift beliefs
18:18 - How Leslie's program heal Melissa's unprocessed grief linked to a friend's death
24:03 - Overcoming her reliance on calorie counting and justifying the program investment as a necessary step to heal her relationship with food
32:17 - Sharing how committing to the course helped her break free from shame, improve her self-worth, reconnect with her faith, and shift long-standing emotional patterns around food
39:05 - Discussing how a timeline therapy session uncovered a deep, unconscious fear of scarcity rooted in her family's ancestral history of going from wealth to poverty
46:13 - Letting go of comparison, releasing shame-based diet thinking, and redefining integrity with food
48:00 - Learning to trust her body's signals helps her break free from rigid diet rules
50:22 - Gone from waking up consumed by food shame to feeling free, neutral about her weight, and finally at peace after just eight weeks of mindset and hypnotherapy work
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