Cravings seem to arise out of the blue and we are overcome with the need to eat the craved item, often sweet things for women. Well, the key thing to know is that like a screaming child, if you ignore them, they eventually stop, and if you keep ignoring them, they will stop for ever altogether.

So how to ignore cravings.

Well, one way is to identify what is triggering them. It is not hunger. It could be your routine. For example, if you have always had a snack at 3.00pm your cravings will arrive on the dot. If you always eat in the car on the way home, they will be there too. If you walk past a sweet shop and always buy chocolate or crisps with your paper, you will repeat the actions on and on. So these are environmental and habit-based triggers for cravings. Change your route, have no food in the car, stop snacking at 3.00pm. And if the trigger is boredom, develop a portable hobby so that you can distract yourself. And if I might bang on about this again, if you always munch away at chocs and crisps in front of the telly, just turning the telly on turns your belly on.

Changing behaviour in these relatively small ways is quite easy. You don't have to deal with everything all at once. One or two a week is quite enough. Then what?

When cravings come, ignore them. Distract yourself. This could be by going for a walk, phoning a friend, washing the car. Just tapping your finger onto your hand for a few minutes is also quite distracting.

Cravings disappear in only a few minutes. You can handle that!

I tend to say weight management rather than weight loss. Why is that? Well, management sounds more active and involved, whereas loss doesn't sound very purposeful to me, in fact I feel there is a little hint of accidental and by chance. As well as that, for many people, losing weight is step 2. Step 1 is stopping the increase.

Purposeful weight management involves behaviour change. Eating differently. And in fact it is not really about managing weight either. It is about managing our eating. So with my clients I try to move the goal away from demanding their bodies to weigh less and be slimmer and towards changing their behaviours, focusing on all aspects of their eating-related behaviours.

And that is not just about eating less, though that will be result. It is about the daily routine, the shopping, where you eat, who you eat with. And of course how you feel about yourself. When you are feeling confident then you less likely to eat for comfort.

And it is not about losing a certain number of pounds every week. It is about changing to more helpful eating behaviours. It is about action. They may tell me that their goal is to achieve a better BMI or lose a certain number of pounds. To do this, requires action, and that is what I focus on, taking into account their lifestyle and work and home responsibilities etc.

And it is not about losing a certain number of pounds by the end of a particular period. When the eating behaviours change, the weight will change. But by how much and when?

Who knows? Setting a target may seem like a good idea, but if we continually fail, then it is likely we will just start on the cream buns again. And if there is a target you will be on the scales time and again, constantly checking and always finding the results unsatisfactory.

But what if you do lose weight? You achieve a target. What then? Do you go off the diet? Back to your old routines?  Or set yourself an even more challenging weight goal constantly chasing a moving target? Continuing the cycle of diet, deny and deprive. And if one day you will see the pointer on the scales go up and you might abandon your diet as a complete waste of time and go back to the cream buns. And some people believe their lives will suddenly become fabulous when the scales are friendly. More boyfriends, more money, more fun. And when the weight is just right for these magical happenings, disappointment sets in as reality strikes. Back to the buns.

But changing eating behaviours in a way that suits you is likely to be sustainable, and eventually automatic. Eating in the way that keeps your weight managed, without constantly having to think about it or worry about it. And this will make you feel in control, more contented and stop the constant fretting about your weight.

So the goal is to change eating behaviours bit by bit. Making little changes every month and bedding them in. Starting with the ones that are easiest or give the most rapid results. That success buoys you up, and keeps you on track. So losing weight is not the goal. Changing the way you eat is.

American researchers found burgers, chips and sausages programmed a human brain into craving even more sugar, salt and fat laden food.  Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in Florida found laboratory rats became addicted to a bad diet.

They tested rats and the rats which ate as much junk food as they wanted became very fat and started bingeing. When researchers electronically stimulated the part of the brain that feels pleasure, they found the rats on unlimited junk food needed even more stimulation to register the same level of pleasure as the animals on healthier diets.

"They always went for the worst types of food and as a result, they took in twice the calories as the control rats,” said Dr Kenny. "The change in their diet preference was so great that they basically starved themselves for two weeks after they were cut off from junk food." Read  more here.

This is what Dr David Kessler identified. He was a commissioner with the US Food and Drugs Administration. He claims that manufacturers have created combinations of fat, sugar and salt that are so tasty and trigger addictive neural pathways in the brain that many people really cannot stop eating these foods even when they have just eaten a full meal.  He argues that manufacturers are seeking to trigger a "bliss point" when people eat certain products, leaving them hungry for more, so that they gain weight.

To help you overcome these addictions, try hypnosis.

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I have been recommending yoga to my clients for some time now. There is lots of research which shows that it helps reduce anxiety. I am keen on it because of the breathing techniques. Shallow rapid breathing is implicated in anxiety and panic attacks and yoga can teach you deep diaphragmatic breathing, the sort actors and singers use. But as well as that, new research shows that stretching exercises, such as with yoga, increases the level of antioxidants in our blood, protecting us from cell damage. Antioxidants are also found in those superfoods - essentially any bright coloured fruit or veg. So for all these good reasons, read what Caroline Smart, a yoga teacher in Glasgow, has to say about yoga.

I was very lucky to discover yoga when I was 17. A TV series in the 70s called Yoga for Health hooked me and now, over 30 years on, I am a trained Yoga Scotland teacher. The great thing about yoga is that it is a journey to good health and it offers many different types of path to get there. May be you just want a gentle incline. Or perhaps you are after the challenge of a steep climb. You need to decide which path suits you best. Ultimately the goal is well being (both of body and probably more importantly, of mind). Sometimes people are put off by the strange sounding names: Iyengar, Bikram, Ashtanga, Dru. These are just the different teaching methods and may refer to the name of the teacher who inspired it (Iyengar) or the style (Ashtanga). See the glossary below for further information. All these types of yoga are essentially hatha yoga which means your route to total wellbeing is through a physical approach. You may have already come across some of the poses: cobra, tree, mountain, etc. Many are named after the natural world and the shape the pose makes.

Practising the poses gets your body a bit more supple and under your control. This doesn’t mean getting your feet hooked behind the back of your head stuff. A back bend might be simply lying on your tummy and lifting your head and shoulders off the ground. An upside down pose could be lying on the ground with your legs leaning up against the wall (believe me, this is very refreshing!).

And yoga can help you quieten your mind. Anyone out there with grasshopper concentration? No, it’s not a yoga technique! It is probably where most of us are today with the hundreds of distractions that fill our minds with a ticker tape of worrying thoughts. The quickest way to still an overworked mind is simply by turning your attention to your breath. Just focus on the breath being drawn in and out through your nostrils. Feel it on the inside of the nostrils as it enters the body, and then, when you are ready to breath out, feel it as it leaves the body. See? Everything else has been blocked out. Yoga teaches you how to fill your lungs with nourishing oxygen-rich air and then how to empty them completely.

Many of the problems associated with hyperventilation and panic attacks come from bad habits in breathing. Maybe over the years and leading a stressful life you have forgotten how to breathe properly and any breathing takes place in the top of your lungs. Yoga teaches how to relearn good habits. Visualise a jug filling a glass full of water. As you pour the water in, first the bottom of the glass fills, then the middle, then the top. To empty the glass, first the water comes out of the top, then the middle and then the bottom. So it is with belly breathing. As you fill the bottom of the lungs with air, it forces the diaphragm down leaving no room for the belly except to push outwards. As you empty the lungs and the diaphragm is drawn back into place, so your belly is drawn back into its usual position.

Your experience can often depend on the teacher. It may take a few tries to find both the style of yoga and teacher that are right for you. It is wise to find out whether the class is right for you - beginner or advanced.

For classes with me here in Glasgow, email ninianetta@yahoo.co.uk. For hatha yoga classes in Scotland visit www.yogascotland.org.uk.

Hatha: Classes with this name are probably more suited to beginners who want a gentle introduction to the poses and basic breathing techniques.
Dru: A graceful form of yoga based on flowing movement using the breath. Good for beginners.
Vinyasa: Relatively fast paced combining breath and movement. Salute to the Sun often introduces the class.
Bikram: A sequence of 26 poses carried out in sauna-like condition so that toxins are sweated out of the body. Better for advanced students who know the poses.
Iyengar: Usually quite physically challenging, using props such as belt and blocks. Often suited to men because of the physical strength aspect.
Ashtanga: Power yoga. Even more physical than Iyengar. Suits people with lots of energy to burn and who want a body like Madonna’s.

If you get deeply involved in yoga you may be interested in its traditional beliefs. For example, that yoga breathing directs energy (prana) around the body to ensure that the main energy channel travelling up the spine is free of blockages. To move energy upwards, there are 7 wheels (chakras) located from the base of the spine to the crown of the head. These wheels are also associated with emotional states: any blockages (or, indeed, too open a chakra) can cause problems. A blockage in the throat chakra (associated with communication) might mean that you find it difficult to express what you feel. Too open a heart centre (associated with compassion) might mean that you are taking on everyone else’s problems and becoming overwhelmed by them.

While these beliefs might not fit in with your view of the world, research does show that yoga practice reduces anxiety by reducing the levels of cortisol in the blood. Well worth a try.

Do you remember the Roly Polys? They were Les Dawson's dance group. Most of them were overweight, one certainly obese, but they danced really well. Overweight maybe, but fit, supple and energetic.

Research has shown that obesity doesn't necessarily make you ill. Just measuring your BMI is not going to tell you whether your weight is a health risk. So concludes research by obesity expert Dr Aryan Sharma of Canada. He has now developed a scale of risk, from stage 0 where the risk is low to stage 4 where surgical interventions might be needed.

So what is the difference between healthy obese people (stages 0 and 1) and obese with health risks or damage (stages 3 and 4)? He found 3 key differences. People at stages 0 and 1 had (1) better cardiovascular strength, (2) ate more fruit and vegetables and (3) they had no history of weight cycling. So what does that mean?

Cardiovascular strength comes from physical activity. Dancing like the Roly Polys, walking to the shops, gardening, standing rather than sitting. Weight cycling is where your weight goes up and down, usually through intentional weight loss (dieting). People at stages 0 and 1 were not seeking intentional weight loss. However, those at higher stages were found to have had many episodes of weight loss and regain. They were on diets, losing weight, only to put it all back on again. This is also known as yo-yo dieting. Dieting has been shown to cause weight increase. (There are other ways of managing your weight, which may surprise you.)

So those people who were at health risk as a result of their obesity were inactive, going on and off diets and not eating fruit and veg (and this begs the question, what were they eating instead? It tends to suggest little cooking since cooking uses veg, which might make you think it might be snack foods, but that is just a supposition.)

So, if you are obese, you don't need to lose weight to reduce your health risk. Eat a greater proportion of your daily food as fruit and veg, get up and about a bit more and don't diet. Come and see me abo

In the Devil Wears Prada, Meryl Streep explains to Ann Hathaway that her choice of a blue sweater (not blue, cerulean) was not her own personal choice, but the result of the decisions by hordes of designers and marketers. Our eating choices are similarly directed. We are not on our own when making food choices.

There are lots of psychologists and neuroscientists helping the food industry to get us to make their choices. At its most simple, the smell of the bakery wafts at the supermarket door making us feel hungry. Hungry people shop more. All that delicious food waiting for us in Marks and Spencer. Just waiting to be eaten. Beautifully packaged and tempting us as we shop after work, when we are hungry.

But when we know how the all-pervasive food environment with all the little cues and triggers to eat combines with the reward systems in our brain to encourage us to eat, then we can at least start to make active food choices.

I have blogged before about the the concept of ‘food reward’ involving the brain’s mesolimbic reward circuitry (as in addictions). And I have blogged about the importance of the prefrontal cortex part of the brain -  the hard- working area that does all the decision-making and is involved in  motivation, impulsivity and self-control. My approach is to help you to avoid buying the foods that trigger this mesolimbic reward system and to protect you from the huge array of eating encouragements that bombard us through the day. In the house is in the mouth.

I am delighted that recent research by Bradley Applehaus and colleagues from the Rush University Medical Centre, Chicago, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, supports my approach. They agree that you can help yourself by not making yourself face temptation every day. And they agree that it helps to avoid situations that weaken your self-control, such as all-you-can-eat buffets, where variety stimulates overeating.

Of course, each client is different. And so these ideas need to be presented in a way that fits your concerns. Another point the researchers raise is that the goal of being slim again is a long time in the future and it is hard to focus on long-term goals in our busy lives. They agree here with Peter Gollwitzer that focusing on those short-term goals will help lead to the long-term outcomes.

It is just not a matter of willpower. It is not a lack of moral fibre. It is not about buying special foods. It is about understanding how our own lifestyles and workloads interact with our brain circuitry and the obsogenic environment. And then what actions we can take to reduce the risk, making it easier for us to behave in the ways which will help us to take control of our eating. In a sustainable and automatic way. Come and see me and get back in charge. Read my longer article.

Exercise where the goal is weight loss has contrary results. I have blogged about this before (8 March 2011). Exercising to reduce weight is linked to disordered eating which can be caused by or trigger low self-esteem and can result in increased weight.

Exercise for health and wellbeing on the other hand is a most excellent idea, promoting suppleness, strength and stamina.

But what about when you are pregnant? I found the book Essential Exercises for the Childbearing Year very helpful and it seems the author was many decades ahead of her time. New research suggests that stretching exercises are protective against pre-eclampsia.

Pre-eclampsia is more common when you are overweight. Exercise has been shown to reduce the risk of pre-eclampsia even when weight remains the same.  Research in 2009 reported that simple stretching exercises consisting of slow muscle movements performed 5 times a week starting at 18 weeks, reduced the risk of pre-eclampsia significantly more than walking for 40 minutes 5 times a week. That report and another by the same researcher showed that more women will stick to doing stretching exercises than walking. Perhaps it fits in more easily to everyday life.

Research just published in the American Journal of Perinatology by Sowndramalingam Sankaralingam and colleagues suggests that this difference may be due to stretching exercises reducing oxidative stress in blood vessels. Oxidation damages cells in the body, and it seems that stretching reduces oxidation, whereas walking doesn't. (Most of us know now that dark coloured vegetables and fruit  contain anti-oxidants which help to protect us from oxidative cell damage.)

The researchers tested biopsy samples obtained during cesarean sections from women who had been following either the stretching or the walking regime. The stretchers had more of the antioxidant Superoxide Dismutase and higher Plasma Transferrin levels (which shows that antioxidants are in the blood). Plasma Transferrin levels continued to increase throughout pregnancy among the stretchers but not among the walkers.

The researchers conclude that the beneficial effect of regular stretching exercises during pregnancy beat the benefits of walking and that this may be due to the higher antioxidant protective effect of this low-intensity exercise. So these exercises go beyond strength, suppleness and stamina, and increase our general good health. Perhaps all of us should give them a try, not just pregnant women.

I have blogged about this before. There is now a lot of evidence that shows
that dieters are prone to future weight gain. A study by researchers at the University of Helsinki, published in the latest issue of the International Journal of Obesity, supports this and also provides evidence that the waist busting effects of dieting are not related to any genetic factors.

There is lots of pressure to be thin. Models are still abnormally skinny (less than 5% of women could achieve such bodies) and not only that, they are airbrushed to look even more unnaturally svelte. So we see before us every day lots of little hints that our bodies are not up to standard.

So there is pressure to diet. But all the research says that dieting makes you fat. So losing weight just to be more socially acceptable might make matters worse. The less you feel able to achieve the unachievable, the more likely you are to hit the Bounty bar (28g, 135 calories and gone in a trice).
If you are attempting to lose weight by dieting then be warned that you may in fact be increasing your long term risk of becoming (more) overweight or even obese.

But there is another way. For most of us, we have developed bad habits, such as nibbling on crisps in front of the telly, buying a bucket of popcorn at the cinema, eating peanuts with our drinks, drinking lots of alcohol, getting hungry and work and shovelling in a mars bar on the way home, eating till we are fit to burst..... need I go on? Many of us have done or are doing all or some of these. Me too, I am just as affected by advertising as the rest of us. So, dealing with these bad habits will at least allow us to feel in control of our eating, and as a result, this will protect us from the risks of dieting.

Come and see me and give it a try.

For some of us, it is just the sight of food. See it, want it, eat it.

Advertisers benefit from this by showing us appetising foods with lots of happy people enjoying them. TV food advertising has been shown to make us eat significantly more of anything. Just watching the ads makes us rush to the cupboards. This sort of eating is not related to meals. It tends to be hand food - biscuits, crisps, sweets. And it is eaten without much thought - hand, mouth, hand, mouth. This sort of eating is called automatic eating. You scarcely know how much you have eaten. In fact, we look into the crisp packet and are astonished the

Researchers conducted 2 experiments. First, children aged 7-11 watched a cartoon including food ads. They ate 45% more snack food while watching the show than children who watched the same cartoon with non-food ads.

They show that just half an hour a day watching telly the would lead to a weight gain of nearly 10 pounds a year (we are talking about children here) unless they cut down their other calorie intake or increased their physical activity.

In a second experiment,adults watched TV interspersed with snack food ads. They ate significantly more than those who saw ads with a nutritional or healthy food message. These effects persisted even after the TV viewing.

Adults and children increased eating of any foods in the house, not just those advertised.

“This research shows a direct and powerful link between television food advertising and calories consumed by adults and children,” said Jennifer Harris, PhD, the study’s lead author and director of Marketing Initiatives at the Rudd Center. “Food advertising triggers automatic eating, regardless of hunger, and is a significant contributor to the obesity epidemic".

What to do about this if you are wanting to control your weight? Watch less telly. Don't always have snack foods in the house to tempt you when the ads give you the munchies.

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?