Do I have to exercise?

Well, to be honest, only reducing your calories will reduce your weight. I was going to say, only reducing the amount you eat - but that is not so. You can eat lots of water-rich food and lose weight. It is the calorie-dense food that we all need to avoid, even though it tastes lovely.

What exercise does is reduce the amount of abdominal fat. This fat is packed into the abdominal cavity and in between the internal organs. It is also called organ fat or visceral fat. This is the fat that you are losing when you find your waist is getting smaller. Abdominal fat is linked to cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome. This is the natural place for fat deposits in men, whereas for women it is the buttocks, hips and thighs. However, after the menopause, fat moves to the organs.

So, rather than keep miserably eying the scales, measure your waist. When you reduce your waist measurement, you are losing fat and are back on the healthy slopes. And a hypnotherapist will help you keep to your goals.

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Eat lots of different kinds of food

We get a lot of really important nutrients from vegetables and fruit. Beetroot for example contains betalains and is the only source of these protective nutrients in the UK (prickly pear contains them though).

Dark coloured fruit and veg have the most useful micronutrients.

The way to ensure that we get these beneficial nutrients is by eating a wide range of different food and eating more fruit and veg.

Fad diets tend to restrict what foods you can eat (that is one of the ways they work) but you can't keep on these restricted diets for the whole of your life. But eating a greater proportion of your food in the form of fruit and veg will help you control your weight and keep healthy.

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Cue to eat!

There are lots of ways in which we are cued to eat more, even when we are not hungry and even when we want to limit our intake.

Have you been at a friend's house where they fill your glass up as soon as it is empty? Because I am usually the driver, I have cottoned on to this, and never let my glass get empty after I have glugged down the first one. I know I am okay with 2 glasses, so the second one is not finally gulped until just before I leave.

The same goes for plates. In some restaurants, your plate is cleared away when you have finished and you are presented with a clean plate. The empty plate is a trigger to fill it up with more food, and you soon forget how much you had already eaten. The worst places for this is the eat-all-you-can buffet. All those bones and scraps bearing witness to your having already eaten a full meal, are wheeked away and you are presented with a clean plate which is a silent invitation to eat more.

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Why do you eat so many chips?

So far, we have understood that we go for chips, and other calorie stuffed food, because it makes us feel good - we get a "happy hit". Research carried out by Jeffrey Brunstrom and Peter Rogers at the University of Bristol, suggests that we eat lots of chips, because we know they don't give us that nice full feeling. We need to eat lots before we get any sense of being satisfied. And because they are loaded with oil, we end up eating too many calories.

It seems that we are looking for this sense of satisfaction- a feeling of a nice full tum - and we know that these calorie-stuffed foods just don't do it for us. Think about it, how many bags of crisps does it take before you get a nice full feeling? For me, the answer is never. I get that nice full feeling from porage, or rice or potatoes and gravy.

Better to eat water-rich foods, because they give us that nice feeling of a full tum.

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According to Weight Wise, if you've tried to lose weight, and have slipped back into your old ways of eating, you're not alone.

The key point here is slipping back into your old ways of eating. If you are going to control your weight, then changing your patterns of eating, and making those changes automatic, is the goal. You can do this bit by bit, making small changes every week. There are lots of tips here on my blog about the sorts of little changes that you can make. And gradually, these regular small changes accumulate so that your eating pattern helps maintain you at the weight you want, without thinking about food all the time.

They offer a great chart to help you monitor your weight and waist. Weight Wise has been developed by the British Dietetic Association and they talk a lot of sense and give lots of great tips.

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In defence of real food

Food is good. I enjoy eating it and cooking it. Eating is one of our most powerful drives, after all. We need it to survive. Cooking to make food taste nice has meant that we enjoy this essential activity.

For many people who have trouble maintaining their weight, food has become the enemy, and that is sad, because it is essential and can be a non-guilty pleasure.

Michael Pollan writes some interesting rules in his book "In defence of food". He thinks we have stopped eating food, and started eating nutrients. Here are a few of his rules, and some of my own, which will help those who are struggling with their weight. The underlying rule is this.

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

If you want to control your weight, follow these simple guidelines:

• Eat at a table
• If you can't eat it with cutlery, don't eat it at all
• Eat meals
• Cook your own food
• Don’t eat anything your grandmother would not recognize as food
• Avoid food products containing ingredients that are unfamiliar, unpronounceable, more than five in number, or that include corn syrup
• Be a guerrila shopper - make a list, locate it, buy it and get out of the shop
• Shop the periphery of the supermarket and avoid the middle
• Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does
• Try not to eat alone
• Eat slowly
• Avoid fizzy drinks

I agree with him when he says that what we are consuming today is not food, and how we're consuming it -- in the car, in front of the TV, and increasingly alone -- is not really eating. Instead of food, we're consuming "edible foodlike substances" no longer the products of nature but of food science.



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The pressure to be thin

Twenty years ago, the average model weighed 8 per cent less than the average woman—but today’s models weigh 23 per cent less. And her image is airbrushed and photoshopped to make her look even more unreal. Don't forget what the photographer Rankin (who did the Dove adverts) says about fashion photography "It is an art form and should not be taken seriously". See my blog of 4 August 2009.

The Canadian Media Awareness Network has some interesting things to say about the pressure to be thin - mostly the pressure on women to be thin. They note the high value of the diet industry - £60 billion - depends on us feeling bad about our bodies so that we go to their classes, buy their food. Did you know that Weight Watchers food products are sold to us by Kraft?

This ideal of women's beauty is a Western ideal, but it is now spreading internationally. Television, showing lots of Western films and shows, is affecting women everywhere. Look at this research article in the Royal College of Psychiatrists journal on the effect of television on teenage girls in Fiji. It shows that disordered eating - fasting, anorexia, bulimia - is one of the effects of prolonged television viewing.

I will bang on about women's magazines later. Hypnotherapy helps you get a clearer idea of what is normal, what you can achieve, and how to be happy with how you are. Make changes where change is possible and necessary, and learn to accept the rest, and be happy.

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Become a guerrilla shopper

Researchers show that if you put a jar of sweets on your desk then you eat more than if you have to walk just a few paces to get them. If the sweets are in a glass jar, so you can see them, then you will eat more than if they are in a tin.

Is that obvious? Maybe. If you are one of those people who eat it if they see it (health professionals label you an "external eater") then keep the risky foods out of sight. Ideally, keep them out of the house. In the house is in the hand, in the hand is in the mouth.

External eaters respond to food cues rather than hunger pangs. That is, the smell of freshly baked bread makes you hungry, or the sight of a creamy cake. Or the display in the supermarket (whose clever people know exactly what you will respond to). Or the ads on the telly.

If you are one of those whose urges to eat are triggered by the sight or smell of food, then don't go shopping when you are hungry. Become a guerrilla shopper, rushing in with your list and swooping onto your target before getting out at speed. That will help you avoid the temptations the supermarkets have put in a deliberate attempt to catch YOU.

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Body image

Western women are very strongly affected by the social requirement to be slender, even though naturally we come in all shapes and sizes, and we live in a world where food and eating messages bombard us all day long. Call that mixed signals or what. And women in other countries where Western values are being introduced are starting to feel this pressure too.

Dr Eyecandy points out that in France there are debates about requiring digitally tailored images to display the following warning: "Photograph retouched to modify the physical appearance of a person".

Politicians who support the law claim digitally enhanced images portraying unrealistic beauty are to blame for extensive body and self esteem issues in adolescents. And this leads to eating disorders such as bulimia, anorexia as well as obesity.


Life is hard enough without trying to achieve the looks that the stars only manage with airbrushing.

So I am all for it. Let's get real.


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Big isn't better

Eating a large portion does not make you feel more satisfied than eating a small one. That's good news isn't it. So if you eat a smaller portion, you won't physically feel any less content. This research was carried out at Penn State University. They also show that people eat more if they are given a larger portion. Indeed, most of us will eat what is put in front of us. (We do it on an aeroplane, and we do it at home as well!)



So it means that if you serve yourself a smaller portion, you will feel fine. The easiest way to do this is to use a smaller plate. That way you can deceive your eyes about the size of the portion. When your eyes see a full plate, all of you feels that you are not being short-changed.

A normal-sized portion looks pretty mean and disappointing on one of the huge plates we now seem to use for our meals. The same sized portion on a smaller plate looks fine. This is because of the Delboeuf Illusion.

Hypnotherapy will help you to make regular changes to your eating patterns, so that you automatically eat in a healthier way, without having to think about food all the time.

We are eating the same things, so why is my husband so skinny and I am overweight?

Women need less energy to run their bodies than men do, and therefore need to eat less than men, even of the same weight, height, age etc etc etc. So it follows that if you eat the same as your husband, unless he is really teeny weeny, then either he will shrivel away to nothing or the woman will put on weight.

Women 's portions need to be smaller than men's. How can we achieve this?

The easiest way is to use a smaller plate yourself. This will make it easier for you to estimate a healthier portion. Large plates give us a subliminal message that large portions are okay. Join the Small Plate Movement, run by my hero Brian Wansink of Cornell University.

When you have got used to using a smaller plate (it takes a weekend), you no longer have to think about food all the time. Your plate size does it for you.

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I know how I should eat, I just can't do it

Many people use food for comfort and to help combat stress. In particular, snack foods are used in this way. Learning to manage your stress will help you stop comfort eating. Hypnotherapy is one of the best ways to control stress.

Dr Daryl O'Connor and pals from University of Leeds, found that ego-threatening, interpersonal and work-related hassles lead people to snack more. In contrast, physical stressors lead people to snack less.

The people most at risk of snacking as a result of the hurly burly of life were found to be:

• dieters
• people who tend to eat in response to their mood and feelings rather than in response to physical hunger signals
• people who can't resist food if they see it. Just the sight of it makes them feel hungry and eat it
• people who can't control their impulses, don't get feelings of shame or embarrassment, or are drunk
• the obese and women

In other words, people with higher levels of vulnerability are significantly more likely to consume increased snacks in response to life's daily stressors. In particular, people who eat in response to their mood are prone to the effects of stress on eating.

To control your weight, cut down 150 calories a day

Just eating an extra 150 calories a day will increase steady state weight by 10 pounds.

What does 150 calories look like? Well, a 35g bag of Walkers Cheese and Onion crisps is 184 calories. Cadbury Cream Eggs come in at 173.6 calories.

It is the snacks that are making us fat. Cut them out. A hypnotherapist can make avoiding snacks completely automatic. Make healthy eating your automatic eating style.

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Our bodies don't like diets

If you have ever dieted, you will know about the weight loss plateau. That weight level that seems to stick, even though you are still being careful about what you eat. This weight loss plateau is one of the reasons why dieters get frustrated - so much care and control and you stay the same weight. The thought comes to mind "Why bother?" and we can all sympathise with that.

Rudulph Leibel of Columbia University has shown that there is a biological mechanism that tends to defeat efforts to reduce our weight. What happens is this: When the body sees that food is getting short, it reduces its metabolism, often rapidly and substantially, in order to keep you fit to survive these hard times - with enough body fat to keep you ready for efficient reproduction. Your body is really only interested in this part of you!

So as you reduce your food intake, your body is reducing the calories it needs for maintenance, and so you are chasing a moving target. So diets don't work.What can you do?

Small, regular changes to your eating habits will avoid the big weight changes (5%-10% of body weight) which trigger this effect. Increasing your activity even just a little will also help. Get yourself a pedometer and check how many steps a day you are doing, and do a bit every day to increase the steps within your normal daily behaviours.

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How to deal with the cause of the symptom

Lifestyle affects how we put on weight. This interesting chart was developed by Dr Sharma of the University of Alberta.

His view is that being overweight is the clue to the symptom which is overeating. What is it a symptom of?
(By the way, he means coping patterns, not copying patterns.)

Understanding why we follow these eating, exercise and coping patterns is the start to regaining control. Hypnotherapy can help you find out the cause of the symptom, and then help you deal with it.
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