Most women in the West are disappointed by their bodies and want to lose weight. At New Year, and now in Lent, we make resolutions. How you word these resolutions will go a long way towards success.

So, say your resolution is "I am going to lose weight". How do you know? Just saying it, as we all know, doesn't magic the weight off.

At the moment on the telly, you can get food hampers sent to your home cooked by a chef. And that probably works. But what will happen when you decide you have lost enough weight, or you can't afford the hampers, or your family are sick of you having hamper food and they are still eating your cooking?

Slimming techniques which include unsustainable approaches are just that. Unsustainable. And as soon as you stop the treatment, the weight comes back on. Losing weight requires something to change. A change in our pattern of eating. And so the best idea is to focus on what exactly that change might be. Most of us know what causes us to keep putting on weight. So think what yours might be.

For one of my clients, it was a Chinese meal every Friday. She ate well the rest of the time, in fact was very careful. Just one session of hypnosis and she broke the habit. Her resolution was "I will no longer bother with the Friday night takeaway". For another, it was buying biscuits for the visitors and eating them herself. Just knowing that she was colluding with herself helped her stop buying the biscuits in the first place. Don't forget - In the house is in the mouth. Her resolution was "I will not buy biscuits with the weekly shop". If she had an overwhelming need for a biscuit, there would be none in the house. She would have to get up and go out and buy enough for the immediate need.

But for others it might be eating for self comfort. If you are an emotional eater then deal with that first. Get feeling good and strong, so that you no longer need to comfort yourself with food. Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy is just the ticket for making friends with yourself. And then you feel strong enough to deal with the habit side of eating.

So if you plan to lose weight, exactly what change are you going to make? It doesn't have to be all at once, bit by bit is good. What is the bad eating habit you want to change, and what exactly can you do to change it? Here are some examples of well-worded resolutions:

I will have just one slice of toast for breakfast
I will not buy biscuits for the cupboard
I will use a smaller plate so I can eat a smaller portion
At eat-all-you-can buffets, I will use the salad plate
I shall say no to crisps and biscuits

Our bodies are surprisingly finely tuned. Just 150 calories a day more than we need - and the weight goes on. So, cut out 150 calories a day and the weight will come off.

The diet industry is huge and growing. There are the foods for dieters (Kraft makes all the Weight Watchers food, as well as a wide range of chocolates and snack foods - a balanced portfolio.) the meal replacements, the slimming clubs, the diet books…….

If the diet industry was effective in getting us to lose weight, instead of  growing, it would be in decline. But diets do work for a short time. For some of us, they work well. And so we see the images of the person who has lost all that weight and we think, it will work for me too. We have another go, full of hope.

For most of us though, we do the diet, lose the weight, and within a year, it is all back on again. Yo-yo dieting. But we remember that it did work, and so we try it again. And again, getting heavier and heavier all the time.

Because we are not dealing with the root cause. We feel that the suffering imposed by the diet is good for us, and we deny and deprive ourselves, feeling that these virtues will keep us slim. High costs, but we are full of hope. It is a miserable life, so as soon as (or before) we achieve our weight goals, we go back to our old ways.

Counting calories, suffering hunger, getting on the scales, all these make us focus on food and our weight. And yet, we are really looking for a future when food is just a small part of our lives.

A better alternative is to establish a way of eating that is sustainable, automatic, routine. Where you enjoy your food, and maintain a healthy weight. Without shame or fear. Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy can get you into this new way of eating. Automatic. Routine, Sustainable.