I have blogged about this before. There is now a lot of evidence that shows
that dieters are prone to future weight gain. A study by researchers at the University of Helsinki, published in the latest issue of the International Journal of Obesity, supports this and also provides evidence that the waist busting effects of dieting are not related to any genetic factors.

There is lots of pressure to be thin. Models are still abnormally skinny (less than 5% of women could achieve such bodies) and not only that, they are airbrushed to look even more unnaturally svelte. So we see before us every day lots of little hints that our bodies are not up to standard.

So there is pressure to diet. But all the research says that dieting makes you fat. So losing weight just to be more socially acceptable might make matters worse. The less you feel able to achieve the unachievable, the more likely you are to hit the Bounty bar (28g, 135 calories and gone in a trice).
If you are attempting to lose weight by dieting then be warned that you may in fact be increasing your long term risk of becoming (more) overweight or even obese.

But there is another way. For most of us, we have developed bad habits, such as nibbling on crisps in front of the telly, buying a bucket of popcorn at the cinema, eating peanuts with our drinks, drinking lots of alcohol, getting hungry and work and shovelling in a mars bar on the way home, eating till we are fit to burst..... need I go on? Many of us have done or are doing all or some of these. Me too, I am just as affected by advertising as the rest of us. So, dealing with these bad habits will at least allow us to feel in control of our eating, and as a result, this will protect us from the risks of dieting.

Come and see me and give it a try.

I have blogged and banged on many times about the combination of fat and sugar and fat and salt that hits our bliss point. Just think of chocolate and crisps. They really hit the spot. And they have been engineered to do so, designed to make us want more and more. Read what David Kessler has to say. He bangs on about this too.

We have nerve endings in our mouths that mean we can sense the ‘fattiness’ of food. In the Stone Age this was really important. Fat provides the densest source of calories and living in a cave with just a sheepskin on, you needed the calories to survive. It turns out that these nerve endings activate an addictive response that promotes more fat intake. Again, in the Stone Age it meant if you managed to find something that tickled your nerve endings, you could gorge on fatty foods and thus fend off starvation.

The researchers showed that a high-fat diet results in the vigorous activation in the small intestine of endocannabinoids (cannabis-like compounds produced in the body). It does this by altering the activity of enzymes that control endocannabinoid metabolism. Endocannbinoids are well known to play an important role in regulating rewarding, that is, pleasurable, feeding behaviours. The sensing of fat in the mouth sends a signal to the brain, which sends a signal to the gut, which triggers an addictive neural pathway, which reinforces fat consumption.

No wonder eating just one biscuit seems impossible. Eating just one handful of crisps inevitably leads to eating the whole bag. Trying to eat just one square of chocolate doesn't work either. We are hard-wired to eat till they are all gone. In the Stone Age fat was a rare treat. Nowadays we can scarcely avoid it. But our bodies have not adapted to this abundance.

My recommendation is to not buy these fat and sugar or fat and salt treats. But if you must, then buy them one pack at a time. Once the pack is opened you will eat the lot so buy the smallest you can find. After all, you know that in the hand is in the mouth. Do yourself a favour and reduce the risk.

This is a constant complaint of clients who get in touch with me. Why on earth do I persist in eating even when I am not hungry?

A current telly advert is encouraging a Good Mother to feed her family even though they have said they are not hungry. Sometimes I despair! It is hard enough managing our eating when we are accosted every day with little encouragements to eat, little cues that trigger our eating - ads in the paper (even in slimming mags), ads on the telly, so many food shops and so many takeaways. We are affected more than we realise by these constant hints to eat.

So the latest advert by Galloway cheese has me shouting at the telly. The family is at home and the Good Mother asks if they are hungry. No, they are not. They are all busy doing their thing, enjoying themselves and not thinking about food. So the Good Mother decides We will see about that, and fills a dish with nachos or crisps, grates on a cheesy topping and brings it to them, fragrant and melting. Well, I was right, she suggests, you were hungry. Well, not until the food was stuck in front of them they weren't.

Most of us don't put on weight by eating 3 meals a day. It is the fun snacks like this that make us fat. So we don't need advertisers to do more of what is not in our best interests.

Well, after that rant I feel much better.

Some of us just eat for something to do, because we feel bored. The sort of food we eat at times like this is very unlikely to be a simple ham salad. More likely, a packet of biscuits. Boredom eating tends to be automatic eating. What is that then?

Automatic eating is the eating that just seems to continue till the packet is finished. Like munching through a bag of crisps while you are watching the telly. The bag is empty before you know it. The hand to mouth continues until there is nothing left to eat.

Automatic eating makes us fat. We have no idea how much we have eaten, because we didn't really notice we were doing it. Hand, mouth, hand, mouth. So the inbuilt system that tells us we are full doesn't work. We just not paying attention, not to the food or to the signals from our body.

Automatic eating tends to be hand food, eaten while you are doing something else. Because you don't know you are doing it, it follows that when you kick this habit, you won't feel deprived because you weren't aware anyway.

Hypnotherapy to the rescue. Out with the habit, quickly and permanently.

Going without a meal is frequently used as a weight control method, often as a response to overindulgence the day before. It doesn't work. It has been shown to result in bingeing in response to the feelings of hunger. It is regarded as one of the unhealthy strategies.

New research by Mikael Symmonds and colleagues from the University College London,  shows that hunger influences the level of risk that people will take.

Animals take more risk to get food when they are hungry so the researchers wanted to see if this applies to humans, and tested a group of people to find out if they would take more economic risks when hungry.

They found a very close relationship with hunger and higher risk taking - hungry people take more risks and are more impulsive than when they have just eaten. The research also suggests that dieting may make people more prone to taking risks.

Similarly, they find that hungry people are likely to take more risks with their food choices and eat all the wrong sort of foods (chocolate, crisps, takeouts etc) than people who are less hungry.

So what to make of this.

1. Don't go food shopping when you are hungry - you will buy all the wrong stuff.
2. Don't skip meals.

If you are near Glasgow or Annan, try hypnosis with me to try a better way to lose weight.

Cravings seem to arise out of the blue and we are overcome with the need to eat the craved item, often sweet things for women. Well, the key thing to know is that like a screaming child, if you ignore them, they eventually stop, and if you keep ignoring them, they will stop for ever altogether.

So how to ignore cravings so you can lose weight?

Well, one way is to identify what is triggering them. It is not hunger. It could be your routine. For example, if you have always had a snack at 3.00pm your cravings will arrive on the dot. If you always eat in the car on the way home, they will be there too. If you walk past a sweet shop and always buy chocolate or crisps with your paper, you will repeat the actions on and on. So these are environmental cues and habit-based triggers for cravings. Change your route, have no food in the car, stop snacking at 3.00pm. And if the trigger is boredom, develop a portable hobby so that you can distract yourself. And if I might bang on about this again, if you always munch away at chocs and crisps in front of the telly, just turning the telly on turns your belly on.

Changing behaviour in these relatively small ways is quite easy. You don't have to deal with everything all at once. One or two a week is quite enough. Then what?

When cravings come, ignore them. Distract yourself. This could be by going for a walk, phoning a friend, washing the car. Just tapping your finger onto your hand for a few minutes is also quite distracting.

Cravings disappear in only a few minutes. You can handle that! And to make it easier, try hypnosis.

So you have decided enough is enough and you are going to lose weight once and for all, starting now.

What do you do? Skip meals? Go on a fast? Try pills?

These are considered unhealthy weight loss strategies, and on the whole, they don't work. It requires a high degree of self-control and restraint. And restraint is often followed by a binge. Most women who wish to lose weight use this strategy, possibly also trying to eat more healthily and maybe low-carb too. Restrained eating like this (fasting, skipping meals, eating lettuce) is unsustainable, especially for those of us who before we decided to do something about our weight, were all over the place. Eating takeaways, drinking a lot, snacking on crisps and chocolate.

If your diet is all over the place, then try hypnotherapy to get into a more regular and healthy way of eating. Making it sustainable and automatic.