_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

Hunger is the most powerful driver, because without it, we might forget to eat, and eating is essential. But these days most of us rarely get really hungry but the fear of hunger is powerful too.

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, but starvation had been a daily risk. 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, so we can end up following these same rules, even though food is easily accessible and starvation is unlikely. Hypnotherapy can help you by embedding suggestions in your mind to help you overcome these hard-wired behaviours to avoid putting on too much weight.

We usually talk about losing weight, and I think that is a bit too abstract or most of us. We might think about a goal weight and express a desire to reach it. Again, for me, a bit too abstract. And we know that the goal is in the future, and things get a bit less urgent and a bit vaguer. To manage our weight we need to manage our eating and we can make those changes one or two at a time. Hypnosis helps by bedding those changes in, so they become automatic and sustained.

So, if you know that you just eat too much of everything, start eating half of any plate of food in front of you. Some of us were taught to eat everything on the plate, so this new behaviour might need some practice.

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. For some of us, a better question is when did you last eat anything at all? If it was less than 3 hours ago, you wil not be hungry. You might have the desire to eat and your appetite might be strong, but this is not hunger. Most of us have forgotten the difference.

When you eat, eat slowly. Completely finish one mouthful before preparing the next one. Research has shown that if you train yourself to eat slowly, and indeed, if you reduce your eating speed during the meal, you will eat less.

And that is another tip. Eat meals rather than snacks. Snacking is a new habit and since we started doing it, the average weight has increased by over 10 pounds.

I have just received a marketing email about fat burning coffee. That sounds just the ticket. Does this work?

If it did, we would all have heard about it and would all be thin.

It is possible that some drink or other speeds up our metabolism a bit so more calories could well be lost. Calories might well be burned, but would we lose weight? It takes 10,000 steps a day to burn off 1 pound a week. So how much of this coffee would we have to drink?

Most of all though, the problem is belief in Magic. These marketeers are selling Magic. When we are looking for Magic, we are not looking to make the changes to our habits that are necessary for long term weight maintenance. Those changes don`t have to onerous. Just a few small changes every month and you can manage your weight.

People whose food intake has been drastically reduced – examples include war and famine as well as restrictive diets – usually regain pretty quickly whatever weight they lost. The most famous experiment which proved this is the Minnesota Starvation Experiment carried out in the 50s by Ancel Keys and colleagues.

In the Minnesota Experiment, 36 normal, healthy men were restricted to half their normal calories for 6 months. Although this was described as a study of "semistarvation,"  cutting the men's rations to half of their former intake is precisely the level of caloric deficit used to define "conservative" treatments for obesity (Stunkard, 1993)

One of the results was that the men became intensely preoccupied with food which interfered considerably with their ability to concentrate on their usual activities. Food became the pre-eminent topic of conversation and fantasy. (Is this ringing any bells?) They also started behaving oddly, for example, hoarding unnecessary items.

When the experiment had finished, the men were gradually reintroduced to normal food. During this rehabilitation time, many of the men lost control of their appetites and "ate more or less continuously" Even after 12 weeks of rehabilitation, the men frequently complained that they experienced an increase in hunger immediately following a large meal. One of the men ate immense meals of 5,000-6,000 (double the daily intake of normal people) and only an hour later started snacking.

What can we learn from this if we are wanting to lose weight? Drastic reductions in our intake will make us food-obsessed and this obviously doesn't help us to eat less. And then we binge, losing control, feeling angry with ourselves and putting all that weight back on. A more helpful approach is to eat normally and healthily, without snacking. And hypnosis will help.