JOPLIN, Mo. — For her entire adult life, Carthage resident Grace Sandy, 48, had tried every diet plan she could find. Nothing worked.    Overweight, she experienced hypertension and diabetes, among other health issues. She knew eating was a crutch.

“One of the first things I go to is food, when nothing else is going right in life,” Sandy said. “After an argument with a friend or something awful is said by a parent or sibling, or you get in a fight, you’re like, ‘Well, I’ll just eat my way through it.’”

But a chance glance at a brochure about hypnotic weight release piqued her curiosity enough to give something new a try.

“It will take something profound to get me to lose weight,” she recalled thinking.

With nothing else to lose, she decided to give it a chance last January with Janette Eldred, a licensed clinical social worker, who is an advanced clinical hypnotherapist affiliated with Freeman Health System.

It worked.

By December, she’d lost 72 pounds. Since then, she’s lost another 8.

“Last year was my biggest thrill,” Sandy said. “72 pounds in a year is just amazing.”

Too amazing?

The technique has its skeptics. One of them, Katherine Zeratsky, R.D., L.D., is a nutritionist with Mayo Clinic who says, “Hypnosis may help you shed a few extra pounds when it’s used along with other weight-loss methods, such as diet and exercise. But there isn’t enough solid scientific evidence about weight-loss hypnosis to recommend for or against it.”

As reported by Mayo Clinic, several studies have evaluated the use of weight-loss hypnosis. While most did find positive weight-loss results, they were only slight Ñ with an average weight loss of about 6 pounds.

Some in the field have questioned the quality of some of those studies, making it hard to determine just how effective the technique is.

Either way, Eldred said it’s not just about the pounds lost, as thrilled as Sandy may be.

“A diet says you have to release the weight, and it doesn’t address anything beyond calories and numbers,” said Eldred.

Her system, is more about getting at the root of why people overeat, or eat the wrong things, in the first place.

“When we use hypnosis for weight release, we are using the subconscious mind where all habits are formed,” Eldred said. “We are developing affirmations of what behavior (patients) would like now, and we can also use it to determine why that habit was formed in the first place, often as the result of an emotion.”

Take Sandy, for example: Food is her coping mechanism. Eldred said that’s an example of “stuffing emotions.”

“People are stuffing emotions. Don’t feel, don’t cry, be a man,” Eldred said. “Instead of feeling them, we use food to cover that. We were taught to use addictions to numb out pain, physical abuse, neglect, tension, emotional abuse, relationship problems, an insecure significant other.”

The type of hypnosis she uses, usually with a group of five or six participants, is not the iconic television form in which a slow-talking psychiatrist uses a pocket watch as a pendulum in front of an unsuspecting client.

“The healthy version is teaching somebody how to self relax,” Eldred said. “We’re so stressed, we don’t know how to relax, so we’re continually releasing stress hormones.”

She drew a comparison: “If you’ve ever driven from Point A to Point B and you don’t really remember the drive, you’re in a trance, and that’s the form we use. It’s client directed, the therapist isn’t making suggestions.”

In other words, the patient is relaxed, like a warm bath. That’s the perfect time to get in touch with feelings, she said.

Cue word

Eldred then helps each patient develop a cue word, such as “bubble.”

“If a bath is relaxing to you, then you say ‘bubble’ to yourself and your body, your nervous system, go into that relaxed state. You could be at your desk and do that,” she said. “It’s teaching yourself how to relax in whatever situation you’re in. Instead of going to chocolate or that extra piece of pizza, you say to yourself ‘bubble.’”

After a 90-minute session each week for six weeks, Eldred said patients begin to see results that go beyond weight loss.

Sandy didn’t even track how much she was losing. Instead, she focused on the therapy, on worksheets, on walking her dog. About four weeks later she stepped on a scale as part of a doctor’s appointment and was amazed to have lost 35 pounds.

To date, she’s gone down four clothing sizes, but more importantly, she said, her doctor believes she will be able to reduce the amount of blood pressure medicine she’s on if she loses about 30 more pounds.

“It becomes less about the weight,” Eldred said. “What most people find is their success broadens. They come only wanting to release weight, but the success is they’re sleeping better, a memory that bothered them is not as strong or they’re able to cope with it, relationships start changing, and we’re teaching them how to talk to people about what they need. What they’re really excited about is looking at life differently and are addressing an issue they’d never addressed before.”