When we are frustrated, stressed, sad, angry, or bored, the body forces us to eat without being hungry. Everyone eats for two reasons: firstly, to survive, secondly, to get rid of negative feelings caused by stress, unhappiness, sadness or frustration, etc. This frustration eating / stress eating is not needed by the body to survive, only to feel good again. Overweight is the result. A new reaction to stress and bad feelings. We get rid of this overweight by training our body to react differently to frustration, boredom, sadness, or stress etc. The Mental Weight-loss Training consists of three different mental listening exercises that permanently change the way the body reacts to negative emotions. These reactions are anchored in our bodies like roots of an ancient tree. These roots are removed step-by-step from the 1st listening exercise, a so-called "negative scenes". The negative scenes (8-10 min. playing time per scene) are mental perception trainings, which prevent eating too much fatty, sweet and altogether too much food out of negative emotions. Listening to the negative scene once can be thought of as pulling out part of those roots. Instead of the old roots, new, healthy reactions are to be planted. This is the purpose of the positive scenes. They teach the body to react to frustration with new, healthy behaviors (drinking water, drinking tea, exercise). Many users notice after a very short time (e.g. after the first week of daily listening) that they are less hungry, perceive food differently (e.g. lose the desire for something sweet, such as cola) while the desire to exercise, drink tea and eat salad increases greatly.

The Herzog Method is not a diet and therefore does not have a yo-yo effect. The Mental Weight-loss Training changes the way you feel about food and changes your metabolism. It is a fundamental change in eating behavior that has a long-term effect and leads to permanent weight loss. Rather, there is an absolute ban on dieting and restricted weighing with the Herzog method. With Low-Carb or Paleo, FDH or pineapple diet or with food substitutes in powder form it concerns diets: one forces oneself with discipline certain things preferentially to eat, altogether less to eat or replaces meals with powder. As long as you follow the diet strictly, it usually works quite well. The body receives fewer calories than it burns and you lose weight. The problem is that over time you lose discipline and your metabolism works increasingly slowly, and then at some point you return to your former, habitual (addictive) eating behavior. It is often the case that an external event interrupts and brings the diet to a standstill: you are under particular stress at work, something happens that affects you emotionally (sadness because of a loss, difficulties in a relationship or with a boyfriend/girlfriend, etc.). One feels (emotionally) bad. The body reacts with the old help programs, because it knows: "when I feel bad, I eat something, then I feel better again (through the happy hormones that are released while eating). We experienced food with good feelings early in our childhood. If we are not feeling well today, we have stress, are frustrated, etc., then the body wants to feel good again. For many people, food is then the means of choice to feel good again (so-called addictive eating) - you eat even though you are not hungry. The famous stress-eating, frustration-eating, etc. The bad thing is that many are then totally desperate and blame themselves because they have the feeling that they have failed again.

Wieso legt man die verlorenen Kilos schnell wieder zu (JoJo-Effekt)?

Science has three reasons for this: First, something happens on the neurological (nervous) level. By dieting, you automatically think about food much more often. It has been proven that the body reacts much more strongly to food (when you see food, for example), because dieting is always accompanied by selection or prohibitions. You can imagine it like a small child: it always wants what it is not allowed to have. Eating seems much more attractive in the result of a diet and the desire to eat something increases. As soon as the diet is over, it crashes: you love food even more than before, the desire is simply too great to keep the weight off. Second, there are measurable changes at the hormonal level (our emotions are hormones, they control how we feel). Once you start losing body fat on a diet, that also changes your hormonal balance. The amount of hormones that make us feel full decreases when we diet. At the same time, the hormone level (= amount of hormones) of the hormones that make you feel hungry increases. You feel full later and you feel hungrier. Not a good combination and a difficult condition to keep the weight off after a diet. The third reason why it is difficult to keep the weight after a diet is a change in metabolism: the body changes to a so-called hunger metabolism. The metabolism automatically slows down, the body realizes: "There is less to eat, then I should be prepared to cope with less food". Dieting is nothing more than a malnutrition and the body notices that. It adjusts to hard times and the metabolism shuts down. You notice this, when you pay attention to your body during a diet and then feel, for example, that you are less efficient. If the diet is now over or if you simply stop and start eating again as before, the hunger metabolism is still active in the body for a while and now the body thinks to itself: "great, now energy is really coming in again, but I don't need it right now (because the metabolism is still shut down), I'll store it as fat as a precaution so that I can call up the energy again in bad times".

Kein JoJo-Effekt beim Mentalen Schlankheitstraining

The Mental Weight-loss Training changes eating behavior and especially the brain's reaction to stress, boredom, sadness, and bad feelings in general. As a result, one has fewer cravings for sweets, fatty foods and eats less overall (which is the effect of the negative scenes). The feelings about food are changed. At the same time, the positive scenes make one feel more like drinking water, drinking tea, eating salad, and exercising. In sum, the changed eating behavior leads to a weight loss that is permanent, because one has reprogrammed the basic eating behavior, stimulates the metabolism through the many happy hormones that are released daily. It is important that the method is carried out daily for 8-10 months, so that the wrong eating behavior is completely deleted and only the new, healthy eating behavior, which has been taught to the brain through Mental Weight-loss Training, is present. The Max Planck Institute in Munich, together with doctors, has tested the method over several years on patients: they all lost weight and this over a period of more than 2 years. Here you can read all about the study and its results: http://www.dagmarherzog.de/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Max-Planck-Institut-Mediengestuetzte-Gewichtsreduktion-mit-Herzog-Methode-Studie.pdf

During a phase of grief, one has strong negative emotions which lead people who react to bad feelings with food to eat more, even without being hungry. The Mental Weight-loss Training can still be applied here, because it brings strong positive feelings into the body through the positive scenes and harmonies, which positively influence the eating behavior. We have heard from several participants that the grieving phase could be ended very quickly through the Mental Weight-loss Training and at the same time the bad eating behavior was reprogrammed through the negative scenes. There is a lot of evidence that Mental Weight-loss Training has a very positive effect in a phase of grief.

Many vegetarians experience the following: they feel disgust very clearly when listening to the meat scenes, especially since they don't eat meat and can't stand it or find it disgusting. This is a very good sign, since the Mental Slimming Training works well for users who feel strong emotions like disgust. The training also involves many vegetarian foods (e.g. chocolates as a symbol of sweetness), but this is not necessary for the method to work for you. As you may have heard in the rehearsal scenes, it is also about reprogramming the inner attitude towards food. Eating in general is banned from your mind and through the positive scenes new programs are installed that lead to you no longer being bored/frustrated/sad etc.. The negative scenes in which fat occurs, target all fats, as long as you are disgusted by fat (in sausage), the desire for too many vegetarian or vegan foods that contain fat will also reduce (cheese, cream, oil, nut mousse, for example, is also very fatty, etc.). Fats are then perceived negatively in the subconscious and this is also achieved with meat scenes. As a result, the subconscious perceives fat differently. On the contrary, as a vegetarian or vegan, you should feel the disgust even more, since you don't eat meat and may even find it disgusting. You can see the meat and the fat associated with it as synonymous with all fats. Imagine, while listening to the scenes, that you are an actress and are forced to eat this now and imagine how you feel the lumps of fat in your mouth. I am pretty sure that you will then perceive too greasy vegan food differently in the future, even the vegetarian and vegan foods that are very greasy. The negative scenes play on fat, sweet and "too much". Sentences like "You feel the pressure" will change your body perception and that will help your subconscious to deal with food differently. Boredom is often associated with frustration and frustration produces stress hormones. The body has learned that it can reduce these stress hormones very well with opposite feelings, namely happiness hormones. And these happiness hormones are produced with every bite of food. This explains the connection between boredom and food.

The negative scenes are crucial for the success to permanently change and delete the addiction program, because only with negative feelings in connection with too much, too sweet and too fatty food the body develops the normal eating behavior again. You learn to listen to your body again and to eat only when you are hungry and stop when you are full. You program your subconscious to the eating behavior of an unconditioned child. It is therefore quite possible that you will feel nauseous during the negative scenes. This reaction from your body shows that you are doing everything right.

In order to feel better after the negative scenes and so that the nausea does not last too long, you should listen to the positive scenes directly afterwards for 5 minutes. This way you get out of negative feelings quickly and your subconscious learns that it makes you happy to experience healthy ways of living (e.g. exercise in nature in connection with strong feelings of happiness, drinking tea in connection with security). In stressful situations in the future, your subconscious mind will no longer try to comfort you with food but with a walk or a cup of tea that promises you feelings of happiness. So you can easily retrain your subconscious with the negative and positive scenes and start the day with strengthening feelings towards yourself.