Womans Hour on Radio 4 devoted itself to dieting today. There were some interesting snippets. 97% of people who diet regain the weight lost. They suggested it was relatively easy to lose the weight, but hard to maintain the new lower weight. There are lots of fad diets around, and most will work for a short time, but very few of us could eat like that forever. Most of us think, I will go on a diet for 3 months, and then I will be fine. But we slip back into our old ways of eating.

My approach is to get you to challenge your eating habits, and make a series of small, easy changes, little and often. So that you don't think about food all the time, you don't starve yourself or make yourself a social pariah.

These little changes are each easy to make. No hardship at all. And gradually all these little changes build up and the benefits accumulate. In control of your eating once again. Straightforward, uncomplicated.

Get in touch and let's discuss how hypnotherapy will help you to manage your weight.

I'm talking about scales addiction. An affliction that causes the sufferer, usually someone on a diet, or chronically worried about their weight, to step on the scales multiple times a day and if the scales don't go down or worse, they go, they suffer mild to severe mental anguish. And call themselves failures, fatties, useless, no willpower and other offensive comments that they would never use on other people.

Of course, rationally, they understand that getting on the scales multiple times a day won't make a difference, but that they just can't help themselves. If you are a scales addict, you will know that weight fluctuates both day by day and within a day. And scales measure clothing, water retention, constipation and lots else, rather than necessarily weight loss.

Here are two things you need to know.

Firstly, there's 3,500 calories in a pound. 2,000 to 2,500 calories a day is normal. If you step on the scales on a Wednesday and it's 3 pounds heavier than Tuesday, unless you consumed at least 10,500 calories more than you burned, the scale is weighing something other than true additional weight.

Secondly, the number on the scales doesn't matter. What moves the number on the scale is not the act of standing on the scales, it's what you're doing and choosing during the times you're not standing on the scale. It's your lifestyle and your choices that change your weight. You need to determine how you're doing by what you're doing. What have your dietary choices been like?  How's your fitness? Are you being thoughtful? Are you organised and consistent?

At the end of the day, it's your life that can change the scales, not the other way around. And hypnosis can help you with those changes.

How should we use the scales then? What about this. for two days, one a weekday and one a weekend, weigh yourself very frequently and make a written note. Observe the fluctuations during the day and between the days.

Thereafter weigh yourself once a week at exactly the same time, with no clothes on. If there is some weight gain, take some action. If you are trying to lose weight, this will help you keep the trend is downward by making choices. And hypnosis can help you stick to those choices.

Alternatively or additionally, measure your waistline. That is a clearer estimate of body fat. And it is fat you are seeking to control.

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.

One of my clients the other day told me that she had been on a diet for 30 years on and off, but was stubbornly one stone overweight. Clearly dieting doesn't work for her. Jennifer Savage and Leann Birch from Pennsylvania State University have just published research on this very problem!

A total of 176 women were assessed at baseline and followed over four years to see how their weight changed. There were 3 types of women identified.

1. Those making no effort to control their weights (N)
   
2. Those using healthy strategies (H)
   
3. Those using both healthy and unhealthy strategies (H+U)

Women using a mix of healthy and unhealthy strategies (H+U) gained significantly more weight (4.56 kg) than the N group (1.51 kg) and H group (1.02 kg) over the four year observation period. This was after taking statistical account of things like education, income and initial BMI..

Perhaps not surprisingly, the H+U weight control group demonstrated greater anxiety over weight concerns and restraining their food intake and had poorer eating attitudes than women in the H or N groups.

So what were the strategies these women were using to control their weight?

• Healthy strategies included reducing calories and amount of food, eliminating sweets, junk food and snacks, increasing activity, eating more fruit and vegetables, eating less fat or less high-carb food, and eating less meat.

• Unhealthy strategies included skipping meals, using diet pills, liquid diets, appetite suppressants, laxatives, enemas, diuretics, and fasting. The women who used these strategies gained weight.

As the researchers point out, the probable reason that women who used healthy weight control strategies were more successful was simply because these strategies are more sustainable. Unhealthy strategies can lead to loss of control, overeating and bingeing, which over time results in increased weight. So it is the way you try to control your weight that determines success.

We are hard-wired to eat, since if we didn't eat, we would die. But for us here in Britain, starvation is unlikely.

My cat is a stray and I found her when she was scavenging in my friend’s kitchen. She was skinny and scared. After coming to stay with me she became as fat as fat because food, all of a sudden, was freely available. These are the rules my cat was following, to deal with the serious risk of lack of food and starvation:

• Always eat when food is available
• Always eat as fast as possible
• Always eat as much as possible
• Always eat anything put in front of you

We are animals too, and are wired to protect ourselves from starvation, so we can end up following these same rules, even though food is easily accessible and cheap. Do you? I know I do!

Hypnotherapy can help you by embedding suggestions in your mind to help you overcome these hard-wired behaviours.

You can do-it-yourself of course. Here are some weight-control tips. By introducing some of the behaviours suggested below, one or two at a time, you will find that they become increasingly automatic.

1. Eat half the plate offered you, screw up your napkin and place it on top of the remaining food and push the plate away. If you are in a public place, it will be very hard for you to grab the plate back, remove the napkin and start eating again! It is using your sense of embarrassment in your own defence.
2. Before you eat anything, consult your hunger quotient. How hungry are you at the moment on a scale of 0-10? If it is less than 5, you don’t need to eat. There is always food available later. This just adds a little bit of delay to the decision to eat. You know that if you eat when you are already satisfied, then more food just makes you feel sick.
3. Eat slowly. I eat very slowly and in restaurants, my plate gets whizzed away when everyone else has finished. I feel a tinge of disappointment, but gratitude too. Research has shown that if you train yourself to eat slowly, and indeed, to decelerate your eating rate, you will eat less.