Research by Kings College London shows that children with low self-esteem are overweight as adults, and this link is stronger with women.

Professor David Collier, one of the researchers, said that this is not about people with deep psychological problems, as all the anxiety and low self-esteem were within the normal range. So helping children to feel better about themselves and less anxious will help reduce the risk of being overweight as adults. For women, self-esteem is strongly linked to how we feel about our attractiveness. We can feel and be attractive even with ordinary bodies, we don't need to be perfect. But if you feel bad about yourself, your confidence low, then you can see that dieting isn`t going to deal with any excess weight. Until you feel good about yourself, any unhelpful eating behaviours, like comfort eating, will continue to defeatThis is an important message for young people, especially girls. As I have blogged before:

• don't talk about dieting in front of the children
• don't express anxiety about your body

And on the practical front, don't have fun foods like chocolate, biscuits, cakes, crisps, fizzy pop in the house all the time and available as everyday consumables. Treat treats as treats.

Well, it is great for a few weeks so you can squeeze back into an outfit for a special event, like a wedding or the summer holiday.

But there are a few problems with dieting if your goal is long term weight reduction. One is that once you reach the desired weight, you stop the diet. It is a bit like stopping the medicine once the symptoms go when you have a chronic illness. As soon as you stop taking the medicine, the symptoms come back. Restraining your eating, as when you are dieting, is a risk factor for bingeing as well as more serious eating disorders. You will know that when you are dieting you are fixated on food, your weight and your body image. Restraining your eating (being good, missing lunch to save the calories, depriving yourself of foods you enjoy) tends to result in major lapses – the What the Hell effect. One breach of your diet and you feel that you have blown it, a failure. This social stress results in us eating significantly more food than when we are feeling okay. You might as well eat the rest of the packet of biscuits and indeed, most of us in these circumstances stuff in the equivalent of a big meal. And this overeating becomes another stress, because it makes you feel that you are completely unable to control your eating, making you feel bad about yourself, lowering your self esteem

Research has shown that dieters tend to describe themselves in negative terms, and have low self-esteem, heightened social anxiety, and body dissatisfaction.

So, if you want to lose weight, is there an alternative to dieting? Yes, there is. Come and see me and find out. (Or read some more of this blog for some free tips!)

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.

A report published by the Medical Research Council demonstrates that once you gain weight, dieting does not help you to lose it. 12 million Britons go on diets of one kind or another every year, only around 10 per cent lose a significant amount of weight and most regain it within a year. I have blogged about this before. Dieting itself can lead to psychological responses which result in increased weight gain.

This MRC report is based on a long-term study of 25,000 men and women living in the UK. 5,362 adults born in 1946, and 20,000 born in 1958, were tracked, assessing their weight, blood pressure and lifestyles. Dr Rebecca Hardy told the Sunday Times that weight "For men it goes steadily through life. For women it starts slowly and accelerates in the mid-thirties. Once people become overweight they continue relentlessly upwards. They hardly ever go back down."

The other interesting thing she said was that "Both groups began increasing in weight in the 1980s and since then people have been increasing in mass all through life." So, regardless of when they were born, their weight began increasing in the 1980s.

Cutler et al (Journal of Economic Perspectives 2003) identified the reason for this as the industrialisation of food. Before the 1980s in the UK, if you wanted a curry, you went to the restaurant. Now you can buy it in the supermarket. If you wanted a cream cake, you either made it yourself, or went to the baker. Now it is easy to buy a huge range of previously complex to make or difficult to access foods in the local supermarket. All at great low prices.

They use the change in potato consumption as a good example of how the industrialisation of food production has dramatically changed our eating habits. What began in America has come over here.

"Before World War II, Americans ate massive amounts of potatoes, largely baked, boiled or mashed. They were generally consumed at home. French fries were rare, both at home and in restaurants, because the preparation of French fries requires significant peeling, cutting and cooking. Without expensive machinery, these activities take a lot of time. In the postwar period, a number of innovations allowed the centralisation of French fry production. French fries are now typically peeled, cut and cooked in a few central locations using sophisticated new technologies. They are then frozen at -40 degrees and shipped to the point of consumption, where they are quickly reheated either in a deep fryer (in a fast food restaurant), in an oven or even a microwave
(at home). Today, the French fry is the dominant form of potato and America’s favorite vegetable. From 1977 to 1995,total potato consumption increased by about 30 percent, accounted for almost
exclusively by increased consumption of potato chips and French fries."

Just think about it. What are the foods that you are eating that you know are contributing to your overweight. Is it the pie you made for your tea? Is the cake you baked? Or is the factory produced food that you bought at the petrol station or supermarket? Knowledge is power!

Depression is a risk factor for obesity. How can that help when trying to manage our weight?

According to Sarah Markovitz in Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, depression makes obesity more likely because it causes change in their immune system and how their hormones respond. But the research also shows that depression causes difficulty in generally taking personal care, getting up and about, overeating and having negative thoughts. This is the bit that I think is of general interest to people who worry about their weight.

While most of us who want to manage our weight better are not obese, many suffer from low self-esteem and low mood. So improving our mood and feeling better about ourselves is likely to have a positive impact on our ability to manage our weight. And if your experience of dieting for you is a series of failures, then dieting might worsen your mood........

Studies have shown that regular exercise can make you feel good (pleasure hormones are released about 20 minutes into brisk exercise - the dopamine rush). So the weight loss achieved by those who get into regular exercise and enjoy it, could be because they feel better about themselves and do less comfort eating.

Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy can get you feeling better, treating yourself as a good friend rather than haranguing you and pointing out your weaknesses. We can get into the habit of aggressive and unkind self-talk. And you can get out of the habit too.

Research literature is full of reports that people whose food intake has been limited, for example through dieting, typically regain whatever weight they lost after the intake restraints are removed. This graph is taken from an article in the Journal of Nutrition. It shows that after 2 to 3 years about half of those who lost weight have regained it, and after a longer period nearly everyone has. This is the data that is used to show that 95% or so of all dieters go back to their old weight.

Once the dietary restriction is over, the weight creeps back on. So if you are going on a restrictive diet, then it needs to be sustained. This is the tricky bit. For most of us, dieting is hard, boring, antisocial, and it makes us think about food all the time. So sustaining this way of eating for life seems impossible and depressing.

Indeed, it is shown in this same article, that when we restrict our food intake, our body gets defensive and prepares for famine. This report states that  "when weight loss occurs, resting metabolism declines by an amount significantly in excess of that expected from the loss in metabolically active tissue. We have observed a drop of 24.6% in daily resting energy expenditure when the body weight of rats was reduced (by caloric restriction) by 14.9%"

This means that when we dramatically reduce our intake, our bodies adjust by needing less. Drat!! So what to do? Gradually changing eating patterns, in the direction of the desired pattern, little and often, will help to reassure your body that there is no risk of starvation, so that it does not try to defend itself.

Hypnotherapy can help you to identify the eating patterns you want to get rid of and give you the confidence and optimism that they can be changed, easily, effectively and permanently. Give it a try.