Yesterday the Scottish Government published summary statistics showing changes in overweight and obesity in Scotland between 1995 and 2009. It shows an upward trend of obesity and overweight. This is a serious health problem for Scotland.

In 2009 almost two-thirds of men aged 16-64 (66.3%) and more than half of women (58.4%) were overweight (including obese). I bet most people think that overweight is a woman's problem! Certainly women worry about it more than men. In 1995 the figures were 55.6% for men. So 20% more men are obese or overweight in just 14 years. In 1995 47.2% women were classified as overweight or obese, so by 2009 the number had gone up by 21%.

The increase was greater amongst those who were obese (including morbidly obese) where the percentage for men increased from 15.9% to 26.8%  (over a quarter of the population and up 68%)between 1995 and 2009 and from 17.3% to 26.4% for women. So more than a quarter of Scotland's population is obese. Obesity has risen faster than general overweight.

In 2009, almost a third of children (29.7%) were outwith the healthy weight range (31.0% of boys and 28.3% of girls). For boys, prevalence increased between 1998 and 2008, followed by a sharp decline in 2009. For girls the corresponding figures were very similar each year and did not vary significantly. The Scottish Government has established a National Indicator to reduce the rate of increase in the proportion of children with their BMI outwith a healthy range by 2018.

Your eating pattern is one of the first things that I ask about when I meet with a new weight loss client. With young people, the week's eating pattern can be completely different from the weekend. They go out clubbing and dancing and come home in the early hours and can become very, very hungry. As a result, they buy a takeaway on the way home, or go the supermarket and load up with pies, cakes, crisps and other calorie-dense foods. In the morning they regret this because they know it is promoting weight gain.

The dynamics of weight gain are quite complex but when we get overhungry, we overeat. This is a primeval response, to protect ourselves from the risk of starvation by building up fat stores to see us through another hard time.

Clubbing involves lack of normal sleep. Research shows that sleep deprivation down-regulates leptin, the hormone which gives you sensations of food satisfaction and up-regulates the appetite-stimulating hormone ghrelin. So sleep deprivation actually makes you feel more hungry. Most young people going out at the weekend have already eaten the contents of the fridge, so there is nothing healthy to eat when they get home, so the takeaway is an obvious choice.

Our normal circadian rhythm - our body clock - is to be awake during the day and asleep at night. The hormone melatonin is produced as light dims in the evening and helps us to sleep. (So if you are a poor sleeper, dim the lights for 2 hours before bed.) We disrupt melatonin production with bright lights and when we take the decision to stay awake through the night. Research has shown that this disruption affects our body at the system, tissue, and cellular levels and in the longer term is associated with diabetes and obesity.

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.

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.

Age-old advice encouraging expectant mothers to eat for two during pregnancy could condemn women to a life of obesity and illness, according to the University of Queensland researchers who are presenting their work at the International Conference on Obesity in Stockholm.

The focus of attention in the past has been on the health of the baby, rather than the health of the mother. In the Olden Days, people didn't have easy access to food and there was a risk of low birth weight babies. So that advice might have been fine then. Not now.

Overeating during pregnancy can quadruple the risk of long term overweight, obesity, diabetes and heart disease. The researchers found that being relaxed about your eating during pregnancy resulted in being 3 stone overweight 21 years later. The research demonstrated that it is hard to shift excess weight gained during pregnancy.

Their recommendation is to lose weight before pregnancy and to eat a normal healthy diet during pregnancy. About 10 to 12kg is a healthy weight gain.

To help you get back to healthy eating, try hypnotherapy before pregnancy. It will help you with the birth too!

But size 12 is a healthy, slim normal. And Dr Alex Yellowlees of the Glasgow Priory agrees. He believes that thinking size 12 is outsize is unhealthy. Too right.

This is all in today's Herald. A normal girl, Glasgow teenager Angelica Gray, size 12, is doing a photoshoot for Vogue. This is terrific news, in the fight against size 0 role models. The rather bleaker news is that she is becoming the new face of Evans, known for its outsize fashions. At size 12.

The Herald was full of good stuff today. Scottish Borders Council is no longer providing biscuits at their meetings. Someone spotted the silliness of debating the problem of obesity whilst tucking into the free bikkies. The wise spokesperson said "If we regularly served up spoonfuls of salt, sugar and fat at meetings there would be an outcry but in effect that is just what biscuits are." Good man.

Speed of eating turns out to be one of the earliest predictors of obesity. And obesity is a risk factor for diabetes.

In a study by Robert Berkowitz and colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania,  rapid eating (higher number of mouthfuls per minute) of a single laboratory testmeal was a remarkably strong predictor of subsequent weight gain in kids.

At 4 years of age, 32 children of overweight mothers and 29 children of normal weight mothers were given a test meal in a controlled laboratory setting. Mouthfuls of food per minute at this single meal not only predicted changes in BMI from 4 to 6 years but also changes in sum of skinfolds and total body fat. Of course you can always trick your 4-year old into eating slow by providing foods that take longer to eat and if your 4-year old prefers to play with her food and takes forever to finish, you can at least comfort yourself with the notion that she is probably not in danger of having to worry about excess weight any time soon.

But what about you? People who eat rapidly are at risk of being overweight. Research has shown that obese people eat fast and maintain the same rate of eating, whereas normal weight people slow down their rate of eating during the course of the meal. Slowing down allows the stretch receptors to signal to your brain that your stomach is full. Eating quickly means you pass the Full point and reach Stuffed before your brain has been alerted to the meal.

Another interesting piece of research by Yvonne Linne at Huddinge University Hospital in Sweden, hows that eating with a blindfold decreased the intake of food, without making subjects feel less full. Eating blindfolded, therefore, may force subjects to rely more on internal signals. Most of us have stopped using internal signals to guide our eating, and we are getting overweight as a result. With practice, we can start to identify when we are hungry (most of us never feel hunger) and when we are full.

So, focusing on your internal cues helps you reduce weight. To help you achieve this:

• eat slowly (putting your hands in your lap between mouthfuls really slows you down)
• do nothing else whilst eating (no telly, no radio, no reading)
• use a small plate

Hedonic hyperphagia is overeating for reward or pleasure rather than need for calories. Eating because it is nice. Eating for fun.

There are lots of foods we eat because they are nice, and they tend to be processed foods. And they tend to be developed by people in white coats, in the lab. So what is going on there then?

Well, Dr Kessler, who used to head up the US Food and Drugs Administration, says "The food industry has been able to figure out the bliss point, the optimal combinations of fat and salt, fat and sugar, fat, sugar and salt that you think tastes good". So industrially-developed food  is designed to get you to eat for pleasure.

And it is eating for pleasure - the crispy, salty, fatty crisps mmmm, the sweet and creamy (read fatty) chocolate aaah - that underlies our excess calorie intake.

And it really is addictive. After all, these industrial giants want you to buy more, and if you buy more, you eat more. (In the hand is in the mouth.)

The reward centres in the brain that regulate drug and other forms of addiction are the same as those brain areas that are stimulated by highly palatable foods (read fat, sugar, fat, salt). It is not surprising that genes associated with  addiction may also be linked with obesity. This assumption finds new support in a study published this month in PLoS Genetics by Nancy Heard-Costa from Boston University School of Medicine.

This research supports the notion that some individuals may be more susceptible to obesity because of an increased genetic predisposition to reward-seeking behaviours, that obviously include seeking out highly-palatable (addictive, fatty, salty, sugary) foods as well as other addictive behaviours.

Well, you might say, that is all very interesting. What does it mean for me? Well, it means this. Some of us eat for pleasure, and indeed take in most of our calories when we are eating for pleasure. This is my recommendation. If you are one of these people (and you will know this by checking your supermarket receipts, and if you are on the podgy side). Don't buy processed snack materials in the supermarket. If you do, you will buy them in large quantities and you will eat them in large quantities. Don't eat food out of sacks or buckets (crisps come in sacks). Else you will gain weight.

If you must buy food to eat for fun (and hypnotherapy will help you stop) then buy it in small quantities from small shops.