Research by Kings College London shows that children with low self-esteem are overweight as adults, and this link is stronger with women.

Professor David Collier, one of the researchers, said that this is not about people with deep psychological problems, as all the anxiety and low self-esteem were within the normal range. So helping children to feel better about themselves and less anxious will help reduce the risk of being overweight as adults. For women, self-esteem is strongly linked to how we feel about our attractiveness. We can feel and be attractive even with ordinary bodies, we don't need to be perfect. But if you feel bad about yourself, your confidence low, then you can see that dieting isn`t going to deal with any excess weight. Until you feel good about yourself, any unhelpful eating behaviours, like comfort eating, will continue to defeatThis is an important message for young people, especially girls. As I have blogged before:

• don't talk about dieting in front of the children
• don't express anxiety about your body

And on the practical front, don't have fun foods like chocolate, biscuits, cakes, crisps, fizzy pop in the house all the time and available as everyday consumables. Treat treats as treats.

Depression is a risk factor for obesity. How can that help when trying to manage our weight?

According to Sarah Markovitz in Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, depression makes obesity more likely because it causes change in their immune system and how their hormones respond. But the research also shows that depression causes difficulty in generally taking personal care, getting up and about, overeating and having negative thoughts. This is the bit that I think is of general interest to people who worry about their weight.

While most of us who want to manage our weight better are not obese, many suffer from low self-esteem and low mood. So improving our mood and feeling better about ourselves is likely to have a positive impact on our ability to manage our weight. And if your experience of dieting for you is a series of failures, then dieting might worsen your mood........

Studies have shown that regular exercise can make you feel good (pleasure hormones are released about 20 minutes into brisk exercise - the dopamine rush). So the weight loss achieved by those who get into regular exercise and enjoy it, could be because they feel better about themselves and do less comfort eating.

Cognitive behavioural hypnotherapy can get you feeling better, treating yourself as a good friend rather than haranguing you and pointing out your weaknesses. We can get into the habit of aggressive and unkind self-talk. And you can get out of the habit too.

Well, the simple answer is, when we are feeling good, when things are generally going well. When the ducks are in a row.

That gives you the greatest chance, because you will be willing to accept changing your eating behaviour as a process rather than demanding that your weight gets lower NOW!

When we decide to lose weight, it is usually because we think our body is not satisfactory. The trouble is that body dissatisfaction is related to lower levels of self-esteem. The relationship is significantly stronger for women than for men, and, curiously, about the same for both traditional and feminist women.

For both sexes, more negative attitudes towards one's body are related to greater proneness to depression.  You can read more of this research here.

Women have so accepted the new norms about body shape (these are social constructs, made-up ideas, and have nothing to do with the actual shape of human bodies) that body dissatisfaction is the norm too. Women are likely to perceive themselves as overweight or slightly overweight, regardless of their actual weight, and most want to lose weight. Men get dissatisfied with their bodies, too, and the number is increasing. Men perceive themselves as underweight and want to gain weight - so they can meet the social construct that men are muscly and strong.