Most sorts of diets involve limiting the range of foods we can eat. Any restriction of this kind will result in weight loss. So a grapefruit and sausage diet will result in weight loss. The problem is that we can't sustain this sort of diet for a long time. It would make us miserable and eventually will make us unwell, because we need a wide range of nutrients to keep us healthy.

Once we have lost the weight we usually go back to our old ways, and those old ways were the cause of the increased weight. And many of us give up long before the weight has gone.

Instead of a fancy diet, we need to find a way of eating that fits our preferences and our way of life, so that we can lose weight and maintain a healthy weight for ever.

Hypnotherapy will help you identify this for you. Quickly and effectively.

Without realising it, our eating is affected by the person we sit next to.

If it is a really fat person, then we will eat a bit less than them. Their weight serves as a warning to us. But if we sit next to a skinny with a huge portion, then we automatically, without thinking, get the idea that it is okay to pile on the food. This research is from the University of Chicago.

We are affected by all sorts of cues when it comes to eating. The modern environment is full of encouragements to eat. This includes a food ad on the telly (research shows that any food on the telly makes us hungry, even if we have just eaten). Or flicking through a slimming magazine (more talk about and pictures of food in these than you would expect). The sight and smell or popcorn in the cinema. Or passing a restaurant fragrant with cooking smells. And then there is habit. What do you pair your unnecessary eating with. Is it 3pm, a cup of tea and a biscuit? Or in front of the telly with the pringles? Or a glass of wine and a bag of nuts?

Sad, perhaps, but true. Women need less energy to run their bodies than men do, and therefore need to eat less than men, even of the same weight, height, age etc etc etc. So it follows that if you eat the same as your man, unless he is really teeny weeny, then either he will shrivel away to nothing or the woman will put on weight.

Women 's portions need to be smaller than men's. How can we achieve this?

The easiest way is to use a smaller plate yourself. This will make it easier for you to estimate a healthier portion. Large plates give us a subliminal message that large portions are okay.

When you have got used to using a smaller plate (it takes a weekend), you no longer have to think about food all the time. Your plate size does it for you.

Well, one of the outcomes is that the diet industry gets fat, while you will probably remain the same size. Click here for a BBC article about the diet industry banking on failure.

For most people, dieting leads to increased attention to food, thinking about it all the time. This results in cravings. Dr Andrew Hill of the University of Leeds shows this in his research . He also showed that when you restrict access to a particular food, the cravings for that food increases. So if you are on the yo-yo of Diet Deny and Deprive and banning a favourite food from your diet, you will think about that food more and more. And then you will violate your diet, and pig out. Having done that, you then beat yourself up as a failure, decide you are past caring and get straight back to your old ways of eating so any weight loss is regained.

An alternative is to be a bit more forgiving. Work out what your eating problem is. People who manage their mood by eating tend to overeat and stuff themselves. There are people who have to eat food if they see it, but if they don't see it (or smell it, or talk about it) then they are fine. There are people who have got into a habit of eating a chocolate bar at 3 in the afternoon. Most of us know what our bad eating habits are. Knowing what they are helps you to decide what action to take.

If you have low moods, then what might you do to make yourself feel better. If you eat it if you see it, don't fill your cupboards with food that just has to be eaten. Don't walk by the cake shop on your way to work.

Whatever you do, avoid Diet, Deny and Deprive. It only makes you unhappy.

Eating a large portion does not make you feel more satisfied than eating a small one. That's good news isn't it? So when you eat a smaller portion, you don't physically feel any less content. This research was carried out at Penn State University. So it means that if you serve yourself a smaller portion, you will feel fine. The easiest way to do this is to use a smaller plate. That way you can deceive your eyes about the size of the portion. When your eyes see a full plate, all of you feels that you are not being short-changed.

They also show that people eat more when they are given a larger portion. Indeed, most of us will eat whatever is put in front of us. We do it on an aeroplane, and we do it at home as well!

Saving just 150 calories a day is all you need to do to lose weight. This is an easy way to do it.

We can all find a little space for something particularly delicious and tempting. Our stomachs (normally the size of our fist) are very stretchy.
But what is making us eat when we are not hungry? Well, there are a number of reasons. If any seem to apply to you, think about how you can avoid them.

For many of us, it is boredom. We are wanting something to do with our hands. This is often the case when watching telly. Snacking in front of the telly is a risk factor for obesity. But what was that? Bored while watching telly? Maybe it is time to do something more rewarding like martial arts, or yoga, or going to the cinema, or phoning someone. Or taking up knitting or pottery. Many of us have got out of the way of hobbies. Our lives are complicated and it seems just too much extra hassle to get involved. But it is one of the best ways of controlling our weight.

For others of us, it is habit. If we regularly eat a little snack at 3.00pm, then our bodies get used to it. Even if we have had plenty to eat, our bodies cry out for the 3.00pm intake. After a couple of days without the 3pm snack, these cravings go. Refined carbohydrates make your blood sugar peak and trough dramatically so you feel hungry soon after. This includes sugary foods, white flour, sweets, cakes and biscuits. If you don't buy them, you won't eat them. Remember, in the hand is in the mouth.

Of course, if something looks and smells delicious, our body responds positively, with lots of encouraging saliva flow, which itself makes you hungry. Alcohol lowers your general ability to resist. If you eat before you go out drinking, you will be less likely to succumb to a takeaway on the way home.

People whose food intake has been drastically reduced – examples include war and famine as well as restrictive diets – usually regain pretty quickly whatever weight they lost. The most famous experiment which proved this is the Minnesota Starvation Experiment carried out in the 50s by Ancel Keys and colleagues.

In the Minnesota Experiment, 36 normal, healthy men were restricted to half their normal calories for 6 months. Although this was described as a study of "semistarvation,"  cutting the men's rations to half of their former intake is precisely the level of caloric deficit used to define "conservative" treatments for obesity (Stunkard, 1993)

One of the results was that the men became intensely preoccupied with food which interfered considerably with their ability to concentrate on their usual activities. Food became the pre-eminent topic of conversation and fantasy. (Is this ringing any bells?) They also started behaving oddly, for example, hoarding unnecessary items.

When the experiment had finished, the men were gradually reintroduced to normal food. During this rehabilitation time, many of the men lost control of their appetites and "ate more or less continuously" Even after 12 weeks of rehabilitation, the men frequently complained that they experienced an increase in hunger immediately following a large meal. One of the men ate immense meals of 5,000-6,000 (double the daily intake of normal people) and only an hour later started snacking.

What can we learn from this if we are wanting to lose weight? Drastic reductions in our intake will make us food-obsessed and this obviously doesn't help us to eat less. And then we binge, losing control, feeling angry with ourselves and putting all that weight back on. A more helpful approach is to eat normally and healthily, without snacking. And hypnosis will help.

Trying to limit your food intake by dieting produces a tendency to overeat or even binge when restrictions are lifted (e.g. social disinhibition). The end result, paradoxically, is weight gain or re-gain.

This has been well described by Janet Polivy (Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto) who researches into the area of eating. She shows that food deprivation amongst dieters (achieved with intentional dietary restriction and restraint) produces a tendency to overeat, explaining why long-term dieting does not work.

Dr. Polivy's main interests have been and continue to be the influence of restrained eating and long-term dieting on behaviour. The discovery of the 'what the hell!' effect whereby dieting leads to binge eating has continued to foster further questions about the effects of trying to eat less than one would really like to. This includes studies of eating behaviour, cognitive and emotional reactions - contributing to and in reaction to food-related events. She has also been investigating the 'False Hope Syndrome' which characterises many of us who attempt self-change efforts such as dieting, identifying the factors that contribute to and maintain unrealistic expectations that lead to failure, and attributions and cognitions that promote repeated unsuccessful attempts. All very relevant.

My approach in this Weight Loss Clinic similarly focuses on the thought processes that contribute to unhelpful eating behaviours and the ways in which we can manage our environment to minimise the risks of unhelpful eating. Supported with hypnosis, this approach allows you to manage your eating in a sustainable and healthy way, without the constant worry of Diet, Deny and Deprive. Give me a call!

When Rubens was painting, voluptuous women were considered beautiful. Attractiveness stereotypes have been with us for centuries, but the particular ideal changes with fashion. The current beauty ideal is unrealistically thin. Using younger and younger models, with immature body shapes, demonstrates how unrealistic it is. And as the beauty ideal gets thinner, real women have been getting bigger. So the difference between ideal and actual just keeps growing.

In times of famine, people tend to get thin. When food is freely available, people get fat. We in the Western world have easy access to plentiful supplies of the widest range of palatable foods at very low prices. Thus the social pressure to achieve unrealistically thin bodies is even harder because at the same time we are receiving messages to eat. Particularly messages to eat for fun.

To help you maintain a healthy body image in a healthy body, try hypnosis.

Well, I think that most of us know this.

When we are on diets, we are actively restraining ourselves from eating. Research has shown that this leads to attentional bias towards food cues. That is, we are more alert to things that make us think of eating, such as advertisements, cakes on display in a shop, the smell of cooking. And the more we think about food, the more likely we are to overeat.

If in addition, you are someone who already has a tendency to want to eat when you see food, then this attentional bias is increased.

One more reason why diets fail.

Hypnotherapy can help you to think less about food instead of obsessing, and to develop healthier eating habits.