Mind Over Appetite Hypnotherapy is helping people lose weight when other strategies fail By: Kimberly Hayes Taylor The Detroit News Veronica Douglas that she didn’t know why she kept gaining weight, but suspected avoiding the gym, excessive sleeping and stuffing down chili dogs and candy were the likely reasons. At any rate, she couldn’t stop.  Before she knew it, the 5-foot-4-inch Detroiter ballooned to 230 pounds, even after joining a medical weight-loss program.  One day in November 2005, she attended a hypnosis workshop at a local hospital and prayed it would work.  In the session, she agreed to drink lots of water, eat healthy foods and exercise regularly. Afterward, Douglas noticed significant changes.  She didn’t want the four boxes of Lemonheads she ate daily.  Instead she reached for salads.  Suddenly, she loved eating cabbage, a vegetable she once hated.  Soon, she lost 80 pounds without conscious effort. Douglas, 32, attributes her weight loss to hypnosis,” she says.  “You’re basically just talking yourself into how you want to look. I said I want to be 160 pounds, and I can’t get under 160 pounds. It’s harmless because you don’t have to take drugs or have surgery.” While some hypnotists still use the therapy to get beer-bellied men to act like Victoria’s Secret models or Chippendale dancers, hypnosis has made its way beyond entertainment to mainstream arenas, most notably healthcare.  Hynotherapy is being used for an array of physical and mental issues, including weight loss, depression, insomnia, anxiety, smoking cessation and pain management. Rena Greenberg, a certified hypnotherapist who says she has hypnotized more than 100,000 people at two-hour workshops in the past 20 years, says the therapy works only when people are open to it.  Starting today, Greenberg will hypnotize people for weight loss at Metro Detroit hospitals this week. “You have to want it to work,” says Greenberg, author of The Craving Cure: Break the Hold Carbs and Sweets Have on Your Life (McGraw-Hill $16.95).  “It’s natural to have some doubt, some skepticism, but you have to have the desire. “It’s not something you can force on another person; you have to be receptive,” she says.  “So if you have a conscious desire to do something, like a desire to lose weight, with the hypnosis we are able to access the greater strength inside ourselves which are necessary to make the changes, just the way a thin person thinks and acts with food.” Deanna Dotterer of Ferndale says that her experience after Greenberg hypnotized her, and she lost 101 pounds.  The 34-year-old elementary school teacher, who once weight 289 pounds, says she overate when she was bored, stressed or unhappy. “You want to push away the bad foods and drink more water,” she says.