Are you still waiting for the number on the scale to give you permission to feel confident, happy, or worthy? Do you find yourself trapped in a cycle of self-criticism and stress, thinking that losing weight will finally make everything fall into place? What if the key to lasting change isn’t in the number, but in how you treat yourself now?

This constant self-criticism not only keeps you stuck but also ruins your ability to make lasting changes. The more you wait for "the right moment," the more you delay your joy, peace, and dreams. Every day spent in stress or shame robs you of the energy and motivation you need to create a fulfilling life.

The solution lies in shifting your mindset from punishment to self-care. By prioritizing inner peace, self-worth, and emotional safety, you can break free from the cycle and create the transformation you desire. It's time to put your happiness first—right now.

"You are worthy of joy now. You don't have to earn your happiness. You are worthy of joy right now. You don't have to earn your happiness and your freedom is not 10 pounds away or 20 or 30 or 50 or a hundred. It's one decision away. Please say yes to the version of you who puts peace first." - Leslie Thornton

What you will learn from this episode:

01:11 - How positive reinforcement, not shame, is key to lasting weight loss

05:35 - Why self-criticism keeps you stuck and life is too short to wait to be happy

12:06 - Sharing how happiness makes weight loss easier, while stress keeps you stuck

14:19 - Why obsessing over weight loss delays joy, purpose, and truly living your life

15:56 - What loving yourself now—not after weight loss—leads to: Real, lasting freedom and healthier habits

17:45 - Highlighting how true, lasting change comes from building inner peace and self-worth, not from punishing yourself into weight loss

21:24 - An invitation to start your journey to food freedom and self-trust now

Valuable Resources:

• Join my next LIVE masterclass
• Join the 8-week Fastrack to Food Freedom Program -Guaranteed mental and emotional freedom from food

Connect With Leslie Thornton:

• Book A Clarity Call
• Website
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Email: Leslie@hpwl.co

If you enjoy the podcast, Would you please consider leaving a quick review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes in under 60 seconds? It brightens our day and helps us bring you incredible guests for top-notch content. Plus, I cherish reading every review! Click here to make a difference!

Episode Title: The Invisible Weight You’re Carrying (and How to Release It)
Host: Leslie M. Thornton

Episode Summary: In this transformative episode of the Hypnosis for Permanent Weight Loss Podcast, Leslie M. Thornton dives deep into why traditional dieting fails and how to create lasting change through emotional mastery and hypnosis. Leslie shares valuable insights and powerful tools to help you rewire the beliefs and patterns that keep you stuck in the cycle of dieting, guilt, and inconsistency.

Key Takeaways:

• The Dieting Cycle: Why 95% of people who lose weight gain it back and how diets only work on the conscious mind, not the subconscious, which is where permanent change happens.

• The Power of Emotional Mastery: How to identify and overcome emotional eating triggers and stop the all-or-nothing mindset that sabotages progress.

• The Role of Hypnosis: How hypnosis helps rewire deep-rooted beliefs and behaviors around food, weight, and body image.

• The Importance of Action and Support: To make permanent changes, you must take action, get support, and stay focused on what you truly desire—peace, energy, and confidence—rather than just focusing on what you don’t want.

• The Shame Trap: Understanding how shame impacts your ability to move forward and a simple exercise to start releasing shame.

• A New Approach to Weight Loss: Instead of more dieting and willpower, focus on emotional healing and lasting mental shifts to create a new, sustainable relationship with food and your body.

Episode Highlights:

• [0:00] - Introduction: Reflecting on the dieting struggle

• [1:06] - The difference between conscious and subconscious mind when it comes to weight loss

• [5:10] - Why diets don’t work long-term and the importance of alignment

• [7:05] - The emotional patterns that keep you stuck and how hypnosis can help

• [9:03] - Releasing shame with a fun exercise to separate from your inner critic

• [12:54] - The 3 essential steps for lasting change: unconscious work, taking action, and focusing on what you want

• [18:25] - Why coaching and support are critical for success

Call to Action: If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to leave a rating and review on this podcast. Your feedback helps us continue to spread the message of permanent weight loss and food freedom to more people.

Why does it feel like no matter how hard you try, you're still stuck in survival mode? Why do you lash out at the people you love, then feel terrible about it afterward? Why does intimacy feel impossible—even though all you want is a deep connection? If you're asking yourself these questions, you're not alone.

So many high-functioning women are silently battling the effects of trauma, often without even realizing it. From childhood abuse to emotionally neglectful parenting, these wounds leave lasting imprints on the nervous system. You might be smiling on the outside, doing all the things, but inside it feels like you're barely holding it together.

Healing is absolutely possible. In this episode, Leslie explains how true transformation requires more than willpower—it takes action, conscious intention, and deep unconscious work. Through personal breakthrough sessions and NLP tools, she's helped countless women release old survival patterns and finally step into the freedom they crave. If you want to stop just surviving and start living, this conversation is your invitation.

"If you wanna stop just surviving and finally start living, it's time to do something different. I'm talking about permanent change, not a bandaid, not a quick fix. Let me tell you the three things that are required to have that permanent change. Number one is you need to take action. Number two is you need to focus on what you want and know what you want. And number three is you must do unconscious work. This is the piece almost everyone misses. You have to go beneath the surface. You can't create a new life with an old survival blueprint. And this is the work I get to do with my clients every single day." - Leslie Thornton

What you will learn from this episode:

01:11 - Revealing how unresolved abuse—especially emotional can deeply affect self-worth, body image, and coping behaviors like overeating or overworking

04:30 - Comparing people with traumatic upbringings to rescue dogs, urging us to replace self-judgment with compassion

08:00 - Manifestations of a deeply buried trauma

11:17 - Explaining how unresolved trauma can create hidden survival patterns

14:48 - Showing how unresolved trauma silently damages health and relationships

18:05 - Emphasizes that deep healing—not willpower or self-coaching—is what truly allows you to move from merely surviving to fully living

20:56 - Outlining the three keys to lasting change

23:04 - A powerful client story showing how deep fear and skepticism can be overcome through willingness, unconscious healing, and the right support to create real, lasting change

27:10 - Sharing heartfelt stories of transformation and encouraging to seek help, that you’re not alone, healing is possible, and thriving is worth the risk

Valuable Resources:

• Join my next LIVE masterclass
• Join the 8-week Fastrack to Food Freedom Program -Guaranteed mental and emotional freedom from food

Connect With Leslie Thornton:

• Book A Clarity Call
• Website
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Email: Leslie@hpwl.co

If you enjoy the podcast, Would you please consider leaving a quick review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes in under 60 seconds? It brightens our day and helps us bring you incredible guests for top-notch content. Plus, I cherish reading every review! Click here to make a difference!

Have you ever felt like life was just happening to you, leaving you stuck in a cycle of giving to others while losing sight of yourself? What if years of people-pleasing and pushing through left you drained and holding a lot of stress, with no clear sense of what you truly want? And when deep struggles arise, how do you begin to rebuild while still showing up for those who rely on you?

Our bodies hold onto stress, often without us noticing, creating patterns that shape our reactions to financial, professional, and personal challenges. Traditional advice tells us to “just think differently,” but changing your mindset isn’t that simple when your nervous system is wired for stress. Without the right tools, breaking free from these automatic reactions can feel impossible.

For Dr. Laura Collatz, dentistry has always been a part of her life, from her early days filing charts at a family dentist's office to owning her successful practice. Despite facing unimaginable challenges, including complex PTSD, she found healing through neuroscience techniques and laughter yoga. Now a certified laughter yoga instructor, Laura combines her personal experiences with her professional expertise to help other dental professionals to find their inner magic.

In this episode, Laura shares how laughter exercises, NLP techniques, and mindset shifts can reprogram your response to financial stress, anxiety, and even everyday challenges. By creating new neural pathways, you can train your brain to associate money, work, and even dental visits with a sense of ease. Through intentional practice and guidance, you can shift from stress and fear to confidence and joy.

"I have been starting to implement[NLP learnings] just subtle things that I've learned into my conversations with patients and my treatment acceptance is going up because I know how to listen to them differently now. And I know how to respond to them differently now. And that's huge when a patient feels like they're truly heard and they're understood, that's a big chunk of the puzzle." - Laura Collatz

What you will learn from this episode:

04:24 - Shares her journey of overcoming trauma, people-pleasing, and complex PTSD and ultimately finding resilience and joy

09:16 - How her personal breakthrough session with Leslie helped her overcome procrastination, regain motivation, and launch her Laughter Fairy Coaching business

14:55 - Highlighting how gaining confidence in coaching and recording content for her online class has been both challenging and rewarding

17:48 - How the unconscious mind can't distinguish between visualization and reality, emphasizing how mental rehearsal, like that used by Olympic athletes, can rewire the brain for success

20:32 - Explaining the powerful effects of laughter yoga on the brain and body and how intentional laughter helped her overcome stress during vaccinations and emphasizing its ability to boost mood, reduce cortisol, and improve mental clarity

24:32 - How laughter exercises helps rewire the brain’s stress responses and sharing a Mel Robbins-inspired phone hack to reduce screen time

27:46 - Highlighting her work in laughter coaching, motivational speaking, and dentistry, including upcoming talks at major dental conferences

29:03 - NLP and how learning it has transformed the way she communicates with dental patients, increasing treatment acceptance

Connect with Laura Collatz:

• Website: https://www.laughterfairy.com/

Valuable Resources:

• Join my next LIVE masterclass
• Join the 8-week Fastrack to Food Freedom Program -Guaranteed mental and emotional freedom from food

Connect With Leslie Thornton:

• Book A Clarity Call
• Website
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Email: Leslie@hpwl.co

If you enjoy the podcast, Would you please consider leaving a quick review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes in under 60 seconds? It brightens our day and helps us bring you incredible guests for top-notch content. Plus, I cherish reading every review! Click here to make a difference!