We are hard-wired to eat, since if we didn't eat, we would die. But for us here in Britain, starvation is unlikely.

My cat is a stray and I found her when she was scavenging in my friend’s kitchen. She was skinny and scared. After coming to stay with me she became as fat as fat because food, all of a sudden, was freely available. These are the rules my cat was following, to deal with the serious risk of lack of food and starvation:

• Always eat when food is available
• Always eat as fast as possible
• Always eat as much as possible
• Always eat anything put in front of you

We are animals too, and are wired to protect ourselves from starvation, so we can end up following these same rules, even though food is easily accessible and cheap. Do you? I know I do!

Hypnotherapy can help you by embedding suggestions in your mind to help you overcome these hard-wired behaviours.

You can do-it-yourself of course. Here are some weight-control tips. By introducing some of the behaviours suggested below, one or two at a time, you will find that they become increasingly automatic.

1. Eat half the plate offered you, screw up your napkin and place it on top of the remaining food and push the plate away. If you are in a public place, it will be very hard for you to grab the plate back, remove the napkin and start eating again! It is using your sense of embarrassment in your own defence.
2. Before you eat anything, consult your hunger quotient. How hungry are you at the moment on a scale of 0-10? If it is less than 5, you don’t need to eat. There is always food available later. This just adds a little bit of delay to the decision to eat. You know that if you eat when you are already satisfied, then more food just makes you feel sick.
3. Eat slowly. I eat very slowly and in restaurants, my plate gets whizzed away when everyone else has finished. I feel a tinge of disappointment, but gratitude too. Research has shown that if you train yourself to eat slowly, and indeed, to decelerate your eating rate, you will eat less.

I was watching Gok Kwan on the telly the other day. He is just great. Maybe because he was once fat himself. But what I really like about him is that he accepts his women as they are. He knows we come in all shapes and sizes, and helps his women to not only come to terms with the reality, but to feel really good. This must be the goal.

And I am always very interested to find out about the range of undergarments to squeeze away the lumps and bumps for special occasions. Certainly a well-fitting bra makes all the difference. (In my mother's day, they seemed to accept the wobbly body. The Playtex Living Girdle was regularly advertised on the box.)

Trinny and Susannah were always extolling the virtues of concrete knickers, and eventually, they became easy to find. They too accepted our lumps, bumps and wrinkles, and helped us to understand what clothes suit what shapes, rather than requiring us to fit the clothes.(If one shop doesn't make clothes that fit you, then try another and another. If the garment doesn't fit, it is the wrong garment for you. Not the other way around.)

But I am not so sure about Look Ten Years Younger.  I feel any good ideas they suggest are lost because they go for cosmetic surgery. This causes 2 problems in my view.

1. All my problems will be solved if I have cosmetic surgery.
2. I don't have to do anything myself, the surgeon will take over responsibility.

But Ten Years Younger does talk sense about getting our hair looking nice and generally taking care. We should take care of ourselves and make the most of what we have.

Getting thin does not make us happier. Learning to be happy as we are, lumps and bumps and all, might mean we could be happy when we are thinner. But just being thin does not make us happy. We still have the same problems after the knife. We cannot leave the responsibility for feeling good about ourselves to other people. It is our own personal responsibility. Hypnosis can help you take personal responsibility and help you feel better about yourself.

Willpower is managed in the pre-frontal cortex part of your brain. This is the bit that deals with planning, proper social behaviour and other elements of "executive function".

Baba Shiv Professor at Stanford University, shows in his research that the prefrontal cortex is pretty fragile, so demonstrating why and how willpower is so feeble. Like Baumeister, Shiv's research shows that even small efforts can deplete willpower.

But willpower can be developed. If you practice doing things that are a bit uncomfortable or a bit unpleasant, then you will strengthen your willpower. Shiv suggests that the prefrontal cortex can be compared to a bicep muscle. Exercise it and it will develop and strengthen.

This could be consciously improving your posture. Or regularly tidying up after yourself, or doing the filing, or phoning your mother, or writing that letter. Avoiding procrastination generally. So if you face up to and do moderately unpleasant things, you will find that your willpower will increase. And you will be able to accomplish the goals that you desire. Like losing weight.

Many people use food for comfort and to help combat stress. In particular, snack foods are used in this way. Learning to manage your stress will help you stop comfort eating. Hypnotherapy is one of the best ways to control stress.

Dr Daryl O'Connor and pals from University of Leeds, found that ego-threatening, interpersonal and work-related hassles lead people to snack more. In contrast, physical stressors lead people to snack less. The people most at risk of snacking as a result of the hurly burly of life were found to be:

• dieters
• people who tend to eat in response to their mood and feelings rather than in response to physical hunger signals
• people who can't resist food if they see it. Just the sight of it makes them feel hungry so they eat it
• people who can't control their impulses, don't get feelings of shame or embarrassment, or are drunk
• the obese and women

In other words, people with higher levels of vulnerability are significantly more likely to consume increased snacks in response to life's daily stresses. In particular, people who eat in response to their mood are prone to the effects of stress on eating.

 

What is a portion? Well, portions have certainly got bigger over the last decade or so. A Beefeater restaurant steak plate from the 1960s (seen in an antiques shop recently) looked really small to me. We have got used to eating off huge plates. We eat out much more than a generation ago, and we load our plates at the buffet to get our money's worth. All this makes it harder for us to assess a portion so we find it hard to manage our weight.

And when we buy a pre-pack meal from the supermarket, what looks like a meal for one, on close reading of the package, is a meal for two. On the plate it looks like a portion for one, (or maybe 1 and a tiny visitor). I am starting to think that it is calories for two but quantity for one. Look at an interesting portion control discussion here.

The King Size 84g Mars Bar was phased out following a House of Commons report, which showed that a Snickers bar had more calories than a full steak meal. It was replaced by the Mars Duo - two bars now at 91g (about 400 calories - equivalent to a plate of chicken, potatoes and veg). Research shows that once a pack is opened we eat it, so the unintended consequence of the House of Commons report is that we eat even more! For those with a sweet tooth and a desire to lose weight, buy fun packs. One little bar is a portion.

If you hold onto the idea that one formal meal is round about 500 calories, then when you read the calorie content of a sweetie bar or other snack, you can get an idea of the relative benefit of eating it. I was once given a delicious slice of chocolate cake - and was horrified to see that it contained 1,500 calories. A belt buster to be sure!

Now is a good time to weigh ourselves and witness the damage. Very few of us will have put on less than 2 pounds. Unless we take action, this weight will still be there next Christmas.

Weigh yourself now and decide to be cautious over New Year so that the extra weight doesn't grow further.

Over Christmas we are unusually inactive and unusually well-fed. When we get back to our normal way of life, we can take a little action to get that excess weight off. For now, while we are still in the holiday mood, the most we can hope for is to not put any more on!