Why do we eat when we are not hungry?

We can all find a little space for something particularly delicious and tempting. Our stomachs (normally the size of our fist) are very stretchy.

Maybe you remember Mr Creosote from the Monty Python sketch? He tried to squeeze in one last mint wafer.

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.

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 however, these cravings go. When are you snacking?

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. As for me, I can never resist a mango, but I have trained myself to resist chocolate, and now it doesn't interest me.

Alchohol 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.


www.carolinebrowntherapy.com

The diet industry is growing fatter and fatter

The diet industry is vast - about $70billion a year. Huge food companies, like Kraft, have diet product businesses - fattening us up on the one hand and then selling us stuff when we want to lose weight. And the reason Big Business are in the diet industry, is because we keep failing at maintaining our diets. We put the weight back on again and again. Pretty much everyone does. None of us can keep up a lifestyle of diet, deny and deprive for long.

I bang on about changing behaviour and habits rather than going on diets. Diets are fine in the short term, if you want to go on the beach in the summer, then a crash diet will help.

I think Julia Roberts was speaking the truth in Notting Hill when she said she had been hungry for 10 years. And in an interview with Jenny Murray on Radio 4, Joan Collins said that it was her job to keep looking good, so she spent up to 8 hours a day primping, preening and exercising, before she went out to face her public. What are they telling us here? Well, it is that they have made a lifestyle choice. They have habits that help them to achieve the goals they have set for themselves (pretty tough goals, but the rewards of obviously huge for them!)

So let me bang on again. If you feel you are heavier than you want to be, look at your lifestyle. What habits do you have that encourage weight gain?

Most of us do not get fat by eating 3 meals a day. Research has shown that the calorie content of our 3 meals has been flatlining. It is the hidden 4th meal that puts on the pounds. Getting out of established habits is not easy, but you will have done it lots of times. When you change job, you change habits. When you get a new partner, you change your habits too.

Think about these new habits, making one or two changes each week. Don't do it all at once.

1. No more fizzy drinks. Even diet ones. You are training your taste buds to want sweet stuff. And they don't refresh thirst. Train yourself to drink water when you are thirsty.
2. Cut down the takeaways. You really don't know what they contain. Just look at the orange fat floating on the surface.
3. Don't watch the telly when you eat (you don't notice your food and you eat much more). Eat at a table whenever you can.

Start to notice what you are eating between meals. Just being aware will help you avoid snacks.


www.arolinebrowntherapy.com

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.

www.carolinebrowntherapy.com