_Most of what we do is automatic. If you think about it,  we could not actively consider every single action. We would be exhausted and get very little achieved in the day. Our brain is very clever at putting us on automatic pilot. Eating is no different. Our brain reminds of occasions when eating has occurred in the past and our bodies respond with hunger signals. And if our brain gets just a hint of a food cue, those hunger signals start too.

As a result, if we have been in the habit of snacking at 3pm, then our brain will be on the lookout for the time and our tums will rumble. If you have been used to eating a snack while Eastenders is on, the theme tune will get the juices going and the cupboard doors opening. Knowing this, means we can take action to avoid it.

Hypnosis works by helping you become aware of these occasions and stick to decisions you have made about ho

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.

This is an interesting and fun quiz on healthy eating!! Some of the answers are surprising. And there are other fun quizzes on this site too.

We are all bombarded with food information every day, and it is had to sort out the valuable food messages from all this confusion.

When we are trying to control our weight, we are automatically routed to think about dieting. But most people who go on diets end up putting weight on. Why is this. The cycle of Diet Deprive and Deny makes us even more interested in food. We get food-obsessed. And we start believing silly things. One of my clients the other day recounted this overheard conversation:

Mmm, this chocolate bar contains 150 calories....
Well, try the diet one, it is only 113.

Changing your way of eating so that you maintain a good weight and good health is not about just saving a few calories here and there. Hypnotherapy will help you identify your problem habits, work out a way to overcome them and then support your motivation, so that you automatically make the positive choices, without having to think about it. Much easier.

The generation that was told to eat everything on their plate find leaving food very tricky.These suggestions from your childhood are persistent and powerful.

So when you go to the fridge and see the remains of a meal, there is a powerful urge to eat it, to avoid waste. Don't tidy your fridge by eating up the contents. Feeling guilty about waste can interfere with our goal to avoid overeating.

So what can we do? Well, hypnosis can embed new suggestions, permitting you to throw food away. In hypnosis, you can learn to always leave your plate half eaten. Breaking the instruction to eat everything up needs a bit of support. However, many of us feel strongly about food waste. Hypnosis can help you develop new habits, simple things like cooking smaller quantities so that you get just the right portion size. You may feel that to be eco-friendly, you can't use the oven to heat up or bake just a small portion, so you might cook a bit more and freeze the rest. You might keep a dog - scraps and bones are apparently the ideal diet! What might be the best approach for you?

But your belly is not the bin. Don't fill it with rubbish.

I have been on my holiday in France. I noticed that there are fewer heavy people than over here in Scotland. What was going on? I decided to examine their eating habits!

They were not all skinny, by the way. Women in their 50s and 60s and older had comfortable shapes. Those who had clearly been thin people in their youth were still thinnish, but a bit more lumpy, and those who had been plump were perhaps more chunky in their middle age. As is only natural. They did not seem to feel the need to squeeze into the clothes their children wear. But there were lots of nice jackets, which took my eye.

Anyway, back to the food. What I noticed was this:

They all eat at the table for dinner at 7.00pm prompt, and everyone is required to be there otherwise there are serious ructions. Everyone eats the same meal. It is cooked at home (though increasingly assembled from bought-in parts such as pastry and other labour saving ideas). A complete packet meal was not normal.

Now, this is for families. So it will be different for students and people living on their own at the start of their adult years. But they have been trained to eat at table in company.

What was even more interesting is that this "training" starts in primary school. The menu for the day is posted on the school canteen door, and it is the same throughout the local authority region. It includes a wide range of local food types, vegetables, salads and real local cheese. They are training the palates of their children so that they appreciate a wide range of different foods, including the local smelly cheeses. As a result, these children do not grow up faddy.

I asked one of them whether he liked his school lunch (which by the way the parents pay quite a lot for) and he said it was all right. I asked him what he would prefer. Pizza was the answer. But he wasn't offered pizza.