THE PICTURE OF GOOD HEALTH Imagery helped her to lose 142 pounds By: Loretta Grantham Palm Beach Post Staff Writer Janice Holden lost 142 pounds nearly five years ago, and when she craves pizza and bagels, she places them on a table in front of her. But instead of stuffing the food in her mouth, she sweeps it to the floor.  Whoosh! Gone. Thing is, the table isn’t in her kitchen.  It’s in her mind. The retired schoolteacher uses imagery and relaxation, tools she learned at one of Rena Greenberg’s hypnosis seminars, to conquer a lifelong weight problem. “It was always a struggle,” says Holden, who lives in Boca Raton. “I did Medifast and Optifast, and had really good success with liquid diets.  But then I never kept it off.  I went to the seminar and right away, I did notice a difference. “One of my favorite parts is how you picture a table with unhealthy foods, and you push them all off.  Then you picture that same table with healthy foods, like vegetables and fruit.  You just replace the old image with the new.” Pizza and bagels aren’t unhealthy in moderation, of course, but the New York native had to master portion control.    And because she couldn’t master chocolate, she gave it up for good.  Willingly. “What I like about this approach is that nobody is telling me exactly what to do and what to eat.  I developed this over time.” Holden, 59 emphasizes that hypnosis wasn’t a quick fix.  In fact, she can’t even recall exactly when the pounds started peeling away.  She just began to notice that her clothes were looser.  And then she found herself plucking items from regular racks instead of the plus-sized department. “I think the main thing is that I did it slowly.  I kept changing the way I ate a little bit at a time instead of that on and off deal.  I never officially started a diet.   “In the beginning, I’d eat as many pretzels and grapes as I wanted because they’re not terrible things, but now I don’t do that.  I’m very conscious of calories, and I pretty much stopped eating between meals. “Rena never tells you to be conscious of calories.  She encourages you to make healthy choices.” A veteran of Weight Watchers, Atkins and food plans galore, Holden figured, what the heck, she might as well give hypnosis a try.  So she showed up at Boca Raton Community Hospital in January 2000 with an open mind. “I was always tired of being overweight, and I was always looking for the next diet,” she says.  “I thought the seminar couldn’t hurt.  But I didn’t have this super attitude like ‘this is going to work’ or ‘I’ve found the answer.’ But I listened to the tape every day for the first 30 days, and I started to notice a difference,” Greenberg’s participants receive a cassette to take home with a 20-minute weight loss meditation on it. (They also can buy a CD or download the hypnotic session for free with a password that Greenberg provides.) Speaking slowly, Greenberg guides listeners to focus on their breathing and to relax, picturing themselves at their ideal weight and concentrating on why they want to slim down.  Phrases such as “I am absolutely determined to succeed, I am succeeding” float by, intended for the subconscious. Holden, who’s 5-foot-seven and weights 138 pounds, now only listens to the tape occasionally when she feels she needs a boost or starts thinking about food too much.  Otherwise, she says, she stays on track with practical strategies she devised herself. For example, she plans ahead.  Recently, she packed a spoon in her purse because she knew she was going to miss lunch and could later swing by Publix for yogurt and an apple. She doesn’t weigh obsessively, but she keeps an eye on the scale reining herself in if she gains so much as a pound. “I definitely overeat sometimes,” says the former elementary special education instructor.  “Every once in a while, I’ll do a Chinese buffet.  But it’s rare and a special treat.  Like Thanksgiving. “I don’t want to feel deprived because I feel that’s the way to failure.  I wan to be able to have the stuffing or the matzo in the matzo ball soup.  I cut out a few things in advance, like frozen yogurt or extra fruit, so I can enjoy the delicacies. “One of my mainstays is how I pull myself back into compliance if I backslide and put myself on ‘restriction’ until I’m back at my goal weight.” All this from a one-time seminar and a cassette tape? “It’s not like quick weight loss where you don’t feel like yourself and become a movie star in your own mind,” Holden explains.  “When you do that, everyone’s noticing, and you look so good, and you’re buying all these new clothes.  But you haven’t provided for what you’re going to do when the weight is off. “The difference this time is determination and gradual change.  Once you do the hypnosis, you’ll recognize, “I am absolutely determined to succeed, I am succeeding.”  My determination involves being honest with myself and creating rules that I can adhere to.  I’ve created what works best for me.”