We will all put weight on over Christmas and New Year. It is inevitable. Christmas is the time for feasting. The feasting starts a week or two before Christmas and ends just after New Year. With parties and drinks, and extra food on the table and more meals each day, it is unsurprising that we will all put on a few pounds. We can deal with them in the New Year.

But over the holiday we don't need to eat everything we see. For some of us, me included, when I see a table full of so many different delicious foods, I want some of everything. Psychologists have noticed this too. When there is a lot of variety on offer, eating just one of everything means we eat much much more. So if you want to avoid some of those extra pounds, you might choose to have just one of just half of what we see.

But Christmas and New Year are the times of plenty and we want to enjoy them. When the New Year comes round, time to make a resolution to eat more helpfully during 2012! Happy Christmas.

Christmas is getting closer. This is the time when friends and family gather together and enjoy the pleasure of a shared meal. And snacks, and drinks, and sweets. Sometimes the eating seems like its never-ending. We do eat more at Christmas. That's a fact. We spend longer at the table, we go to parties, we visit friends. But we still have a choice.

Hypnosis works to help you spot the chances to make a choice, and then to make it.

There will be a bit more weight around the hips after Christmas. After such festivities it is almost inevitable. Hypnosis will help you make those New Year Resolutions stick for the long term, easily and automatically.

It is normally just a few pounds, and getting back to our normal routines will shift some of them. But we can do a few things to speed the process along, so that we don't enter 2011 with 2009 Christmas bulges.

What has caused those extra pounds? For most of us, we said Oh Heck, and bought  mince pies, sweets and biscuits, mostly for family and visitors,  and just to be sociable, we tucked into them. Hunt them out now, all those beltbusters, and remove them from the home. Take them round as welcome gift to people with growing children, feed them to the ducks, or steel yourself and bin them. The Christmas self-indulgence is over. New Year, New You!

Avoid eating out and takeaways for a month or so. You have had the Great Feast, now is the time for a bit of famine. Meals eaten at home tend to have fewer calories and fewer courses.

Practice eating smaller portions. After the Great Stuffing, most of us will welcome a bit less food. Use a smaller plate, or fill more than half the half the plate with veg, which is less calorie dense than meat. Practice leaving some of the food on the plate. Use a paper napkin, and when you have finished, screw up the napkin and put it into the plate. That will make it harder for you to continue eating.

Just these few changes will help. Making a few small changes every month means that by the end of 2011 you will have developed eating habits that will help you manage your weight.

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 unusualy 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!