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?

Is it eating too much or exercising too little? Well, it is probably more complicated than that.

An obese friend of mine has an electric pepper grinder, so that saves her a few calories of effort every day. And there's the zapper for the telly, on-line ordering from the supermarket. All saving us energy. And we are much less active generally. We sit more. At work, at home in front of the computer or in front of the telly. So the change in our society has made it harder for us to be active as part of our every day.

And we all eat so much more than we did 30 years ago. Food is cheaper, even with the recent price hikes. Whether we like it or not, we respond to cues to eat. Calorie-dense foods are widely advertised on the telly as well as all those cooking programmes. These keep us thinking about food and eating. We become conditioned by these cues to respond by eating. And then that can become a habit, like how we associate eating crisps with relaxing in front of the telly. Eating has become something we do automatically, without thinking. And we cook less at home, because we are busier than ever before. So we eat more engineered-to-taste-fantastic food from the chill cabinet in the supermarket. We eat more takeaways where the amount of fat can only be guessed at. And plate sizes have increased so portions are bigger. So eating has never been easier. Research has shown that the 10 pound increase in average weight in the last 30 years is a result of eating food prepared outside the home.

There is a lot of social pressure to eat, not just from friends offering us biscuits, but from the way food is presented to us every day in the media and in the shops. While at the same time, there is a lot of pressure on us to be fashionably thin.

Hypnosis will help you understand your particular responses to eating cues, so you can make some simple changes which are easy to follow and sustainable. But, note this. It is far easier to not eat 500 calories than it is to burn it off.

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.

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.

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.

Most women in the West are disappointed by their bodies and want to lose weight. At New Year, and now in Lent, we make resolutions. How you word these resolutions will go a long way towards success.

So, say your resolution is "I am going to lose weight". How do you know? Just saying it, as we all know, doesn't magic the weight off.

At the moment on the telly, you can get food hampers sent to your home cooked by a chef. And that probably works. But what will happen when you decide you have lost enough weight, or you can't afford the hampers, or your family are sick of you having hamper food and they are still eating your cooking?

Slimming techniques which include unsustainable approaches are just that. Unsustainable. And as soon as you stop the treatment, the weight comes back on. Losing weight requires something to change. A change in our pattern of eating. And so the best idea is to focus on what exactly that change might be. Most of us know what causes us to keep putting on weight. So think what yours might be.

For one of my clients, it was a Chinese meal every Friday. She ate well the rest of the time, in fact was very careful. Just one session of hypnosis and she broke the habit. Her resolution was "I will no longer bother with the Friday night takeaway". For another, it was buying biscuits for the visitors and eating them herself. Just knowing that she was colluding with herself helped her stop buying the biscuits in the first place. Don't forget - In the house is in the mouth. Her resolution was "I will not buy biscuits with the weekly shop". If she had an overwhelming need for a biscuit, there would be none in the house. She would have to get up and go out and buy enough for the immediate need.

But for others it might be eating for self comfort. If you are an emotional eater then deal with that first. Get feeling good and strong, so that you no longer need to comfort yourself with food. Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy is just the ticket for making friends with yourself. And then you feel strong enough to deal with the habit side of eating.

So if you plan to lose weight, exactly what change are you going to make? It doesn't have to be all at once, bit by bit is good. What is the bad eating habit you want to change, and what exactly can you do to change it? Here are some examples of well-worded resolutions:

I will have just one slice of toast for breakfast
I will not buy biscuits for the cupboard
I will use a smaller plate so I can eat a smaller portion
At eat-all-you-can buffets, I will use the salad plate
I shall say no to crisps and biscuits

Our bodies are surprisingly finely tuned. Just 150 calories a day more than we need - and the weight goes on. So, cut out 150 calories a day and the weight will come off.

Eating less is clearly an important goal in losing weight. Getting a clearer idea of the reasons for eating too much will help us to regain control.

For some of us it is habit. We have got used to eating a bag of crisps with our pint, or eating a cake with our coffee. Maybe we are shopping and eating in the way we did when we were young and active.

For some of us, it is an expression of difficult feelings about ourselves. If we feel unloved, worthless, unattractive, lonely, betrayed, ashamed or guilty, or any number of complex emotions, then we might overeat in order to feel better, to feel in control.

Hypnotherapy deals with these unhelpful feelings. Once you feel comfortable again about who you are, you will have the confidence and the energy to reorganise your eating patterns. Learning to love ourselves, warts and all.

For some of us, we eat because the food is there. So, in the evening, after you've eaten your meal, you raid the cupboards. This might be triggered by a telly advert. (Look at the things that are advertised. Sometimes it is a healthy margarine or yoghurt, but usually it is fun food. The latest Pringle ads are all about the fun you can have by eating them. These are food-like materials, food toys perhaps.)

So a good way to deal with this is to have nothing tempting in the cupboards. Simple and effective. Hypnosis can help to make that decision and stick to it.

Some of us eat when we feel a bit low. This is "emotional" or "comfort" eating. We eat when we are going through the low mood, when we can foresee a low mood coming, or when we relive a low mood. Identify what you eat when you feel miserable, and don't buy it. Hypnosis can help you avoid the aisles in the supermarket which are full of the chocolate muffins or whatever is your particular foible.

Some of us don't know when we are full and keep eating and keep eating. Since we eat with our eyes, you can use a smaller plate and eat very slowly. Research has shown that a full smaller plate is just as satisfying as a full large plate. It is the fullness that matters. And eating slowly has been proved to help avoid obesity.

Some of eat because we are hungry, but in these times of accessible and cheap food, this is not most of us most of the time.

In part, of all these strategies are about changing habits in a way that fits in with your particular issues. Hypnosis can help you here. Fast, effective and safe.