Christmas stuffing

Now is a good time to weigh ourselves and witness the damage. Very few of us will have put on less than 2 pounds. Unless we take action, this weight will still be there next Christmas.

Weigh yourself now and decide to be cautious over New Year so that the extra weight doesn't grow further.

Over Christmas we are unusually inactive and unusualy well-fed. When we get back to our normal way of life, we can take a little action to get that excess weight off. For now, while we are still in the holiday mood, the most we can hope for is to not put any more on!


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The urge to gorge

Here we are in the Christmas season. Even before Christianity came to Europe, there were pagan winter feastings. In those days, food was hard to come by, and winter was a time of hunger, so a special festival like this was a major treat.

Nowadays, food is plentiful, accessible and relatively cheap. For the vast majority of us, food shortage is just not an issue. But getting fat is something that concerns an increasing number of us.

Somehow at Christmas, we permit ourselves to gorge hugely, stuffing ourselves before, during and after a meal, with calorie-stuffed fun food. So what to do?

I was in the supermarket the other day with a friend who has a problem with alcohol. He wanted to buy a bottle of each kind of spirit - vodka, whisky, gin, brandy - for the friends who would be dropping by. He did this last year, and personally consumed all the bottles by New Years Day.

So here is the tip. Don't kid yourself that all these boxes of chocolates, tins of biscuits, sacks of crisps, bags of nuts, cakes etc etc etc are for your friends and visitors. Letting rip like this will only make you feel miserable, after you have eaten the evidence.

Enjoy lots of wonderful meals with your family. Have a happy Christmas. But when you are in the supermarket, make a Christmas wish to avoid all the fun food. It will be no fun at all in the New Year, when you struggle to lose the 3 pounds that you are at risk of putting on, and keeping on.

And when I say you, of course I mean Us!

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Social factors make it harder for women to manage their weight

Apart from greater social pressure in the Western world to be thin, there are social pressures which reduce women's opportunity to control their weight. These pressures are changing, though, as women become more economically resilient.

Leisure or recreational activity levels are lower for women than men, with a marked decline during adolescence. While boys continue to play football or ride their bikes, womens' physical activity declines.

When they are older, opportunities for physical activity for women are limited by greater caregiving responsibilities. They have less time for themselves. And indeed, their partners and family members often view any time spent at the gym or a dance class as "stolen" since they take the woman away from family responsibilities. I remember this well. My husband went every week to play squash straight after work. This of course meant that I had to be home to look after the children. I never felt permitted to take the same sort of time off.

And then there are safety concerns that affect times and places available for physical activity.

Socially acceptable forms of physical activity may be fewer for women than men, particularly in some ethnic groups. This includes swimming for some groups, dancing for others.

In addition to this, occupational activity levels are also often lower for women.

There is often a lot of family negotiating to do when it comes to fitting in some exercise, and women's plans are often confounded by another family member's needs - so that the woman has to stay at home.

So if you are having trouble committing to physical activity, you are not alone. Don't beat yourself up about it. A hypnotherapist will help steel your resolve, and suggest ways to empower you.



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Stepping onto the scales!

How often do you weigh yourself? People who are worried about their weight (whether or not they are trying to control their eating) weigh themselves lots. They get on the scales in the morning at home, at work, when they get back home and again before they go to bed. Each weigh-in is another opportunity to feel bad and get a dose of anxiety.

Getting on the scales won't make you thin but it could make you depressed. If you are a scale-junkie, then you will know that your weight varies throughout the day not just over a month.

Use the scales to check for trends. To do this, a weekly weigh-in is enough. Are you remaining the same weight, putting weight on or losing it. Then take action. Taking your waist measurement helps you to check on the loss of fat stores. Do that once a week too.

To get a lower number on the scales, try a few of my tips to change your eating behaviours.


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It's the environment making us fat

There is a new term, which came along in the 1990s. It's the obsogenic environment, which means that our whole environment is geared up to getting us overweight. Just knowing this can help us manage our weight better.

It is hardly surprising that we get fat. We have been designing our environments to expend as little energy as possible. All the shops are gathered together by the car park, so we don't walk to the shops. We don't even get up to turn the channels over on the telly.

And we are given food messages all the time. The TV channels are stuffed with them, not just adverts, but whole programmes. Magazines, even slimming magazines, are stuffed with food messages. And the presentation of food in the shops, as well as the kind of food they sell, gets us thinking about eating.

There are more subtle environmental cues. Food packages have got larger and suggest that larger portions are fine - we didn't ask for it. But we have got used to it. When we go out, it is more often to a restaurant or bar than to play bowls, dance or do a communal activity.

One way to control your eating is to control your own environment. We tend to want to eat when we see food. Research by Brian Wansink has shown that if food is in opaque packets we eat less than if it is in clear packets. And if we have to make an effort to get at the food (even a walk of just a few yards) we eat less. So, here are some good tips to modify your own environment:

• Watch less telly - get another pleasurable activity into your daily routine
• Avoid magazines with loads of food ads
• Shop with a list and get out quick
• Don't buy and store in the house foods that you know you can't resist
• Keep biscuits and other stuff in tins or opaque boxes

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British find depression linked to processed foods

A great piece of research from University College London (UCL) is the Whitehall II study which examines behaviour, work and lifestyle of 3,486 civil servants in the UK. Earlier this month, the researchers published their findings linking processed food to depression.

The researchers identified two groups of people, those who mostly eat natural and fresh food, cooking from scratch, and those who eat mostly highly processed foods such as fried foods, processed meats, sweetened desserts and high-fat dairy products etc. We can all relate to that. Increasing numbers of people no longer cook, relying on the scientifically-ensured-delicious prepared foods we can now get so easily.

In analysising their data, the researchers took account in a statistical way of age, gender, activity levels and any thing else so that they could just measure the effect of these different eating types.

The people in the processed food group had a 58% higher risk of future depression than the natural food group. Those who ate the most whole foods had a 26% lower risk of future depression than those who at the least whole foods.

Depression thrives on chips, hamburgers, lots of bread, fatty meats, regular fry-ups, suet pastries, cakes, éclairs, sugary pies, toffees, sweet drinks and chocolate bars. It also loves snacks throughout the day. It will become the devoted companion of anyone regularly eating junk food and drinking too much alcohol. Read more about that here.

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Unwiring our urge to eat

We are hard-wired to eat, since if we didn't eat, we would die.

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. 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, and are wired to protect ourselves from starvation, so we can end up following these rules too, even though food is easy, accessible and cheap. Do you? I know I do!

Hypnotherapy can help you by embedding suggestions in your mind, to help you overcome these hard-wired behaviours.

You can do-it-yourself of course. Here are some weight-control tips. By introducing some of the behaviours suggested below, one or two at a time, you will find that they become increasingly automatic.

1. Eat half the plate offered you, screw up your napkin and place it on top of the remaining food and push the plate away. If you are in a public place, it will be very hard for you to grab the plate back, remove the napkin and start eating again! It is using your sense of embarrassment in your own defence.

2. 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. This just adds a little bit of delay to the decision to eat. You know that if you eat when you are already satisfied, then more food just makes you feel sick.

3. Eat slowly. I eat very slowly and in restaurants, my plate gets whizzed away when everyone else has finished. I feel a tinge of disappointment, but gratitude too. Research has shown that if you train yourself to eat slowly, and indeed, to decelerate your eating rate, you will eat less.

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Why am I eating?

Part of what I am trying to encourage is to eat mindfully, being fully aware whenever you are eating and enjoying it. .When you become very aware of what you are eating, you get a clearer idea of why you might be putting on weight.

My approach encourages you first of all to work on giving up the food that you are eating for no particular reason. Simplify your life by just taking note of the eating you do between meals. This eating is the easiest to give up. You don't have to do it all at once. Take it week by week or month by month. Don't be too hard on yourself. Make these changes for the long-term and do it bit by bit.

So first of all, leaving aside your regular meals, what are you eating and when? Make a note of it, maybe put it on a post-it note on the fridge. Becoming aware of these unnecessary eating behaviours helps you stop them. And hypnotherapy can help you too.

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Why should I exercise?

Exercise makes you feel better. For some, thrashing away at a gym for 2 hours is just the ticket. For others, gardening or walking to the shops suits, and others still enjoy dancing. Whatever you choose, it should be something that you enjoy doing and can fit it into your day without a great struggle. The natural response of your body to exercise is a desire to eat, so it is good to do it before a regular meal.

As I mentioned in my blog of.29 November 2009 exercise won't make you thin, unless you are really going at it, like an Olympic athlete. However, it will protect your health. Start with a bit of exercise, and then see if you can do more. Don't set yourself such high targets that you give up early.

Here are a list of benefits!

• Lovely supple joints for your old age
• Less stress
• Less risk of dementia in your old age
• A smaller waistline and thus less risk of metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease (Coronary heart disease mortality is higher in Scotland than in the rest of the UK. The premature death rate for men living in Scotland is 50% higher than in the South West of England, and around 90% higher for women.)
• Less risk of insulin resistance and overproduction, which lead to diabetes or obesity with high cholesterol and heart disease)
• Less osteoporosis - weight bearing exercise such as running, dancing, skipping, rather than swimming
  

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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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What is a healthy BMI?

Dr FTSE tells us that his BMI, using the little gadget on this page, is 27.4. This puts him in the overweight range. Following some of my tips will help him get down to the healthy range which is 18.5 to 25. A BMI of 30 or more indicates obesity.

BMI is a good rule of thumb, because it takes account of your height. It is not perfect, but if you are under or over the normal, you should be examining your diet, and maybe talking to a nurse at your health centre. Another really useful rule of thumb is waist circumference. Read more.

A waist circumference greater than 80cm (32in) for women and 94cm (37in) for men puts you at risk of health problems and a measurement of more than 88cm (35in) for women and 102cm (40in) for men is worth seeing your health centre about. The risk is coronary heart disease and more generally, metabolic syndrome.

Keeping an eye on these 2 numbers and changing your eating behaviour so that you get into the normal range will make a big difference to your overall wellbeing.

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Body makeovers on the telly

I was watching Gok on the telly the other day. He is just great. Maybe because he was once fat himself. But what I really like about him is that he accepts his women as they are. He knows we come in all shapes and sizes, and helps his women to not only come to terms with the reality, but to feel really good. This must be the goal. It is always very interesting to learn about the range of undergarments available for special occasions. Certainly a well-fitting bra makes all the difference.

Trinny and Susannah were always extolling the virtues of concrete knickers, and eventually, they became easy to find. They too accepted us lumps, bumps and wrinkles, and helped us to understand what clothes suit what shapes, rather than requiring us to fit the clothes. So I like them too.

But I am not so sure about Look Ten Years Younger, even though Nicky has wonderful specs. She has some good messages, but I feel they are lost because she goes for cosmetic surgery. This causes in my view 2 problems.

1. All my problems will be solved if I have cosmetic surgery.
2. I don't have to do anything myself, the surgeon will take over responsibility.

Getting thin will not make us happier. Learning to be happy as we are, lumps and bumps and all, might mean we could be happy when we are thinner. But just being thin does not make us happy. We still have the same problems after the knife. We cannot leave the responsibility for feeling good about ourselves to other people.

But Nicky does talk sense about getting our hair looking nice and generally taking care.



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Body Image and Western culture

Why do we all want to be thin? It was not always so. Just after the war, women wanted to look fatter, and could buy thigh and bottom boosters, as well as stuffing hankies down their bras.

Western culture exerts pressure on women to conform to the current fashionable body shape, even though women have always come in all shapes and sizes. This pressure leads to unhappiness.

Research carried out by Northumbria University showed how Western culture is starting to put pressure on South African women to conform to Western ideals of beauty and the preferred body shape. These pressures were identified as coming from the pressure to please men. In the past, South African women had to be fat in order for their husbands and fathers to demonstrate their prosperity. Now, they can choose their size. So in one way, the report suggests, this is a sign of empowerment. On the other hand, the women also say that they want to be thin for their menfolk, who are also developing preferences for the Western ideal. The women said they wanted to be like the women in the adverts.

Striving after unachievable ideals of body shape only make us unhappy. When we are unhappy, we eat to comfort ourselves. Try hypnotherapy and break free.
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Why are the French so slim?

French people are really keen on food (so am I!) and they spend 135 minutes a day eating. In Britain, its about 85 minutes, and in the USA about 75 minutes. This is from an OECD report. And yet the French are generally of healthy proportions. What is going on here?

Well, the French still eat at the table, and they concentrate on their food while they are eating. They talk about it with their dinner companions. They eat in a slow and calm way, taking their time. As a result, they are aware of when they are feeling full. It takes about 20 minutes for your brain to register that your stomach is happy with its meal. Then they stop eating, and continue with the conversation.

The British and Americans are spending less time eating, but managing to munch many more calories in this shorter time. Britain and the USA are in the top 3 overweight nations. Americans eat in front of the telly, and the trigger to stop eating is when the show is over.

To help you manage your own eating, work out what it is that triggers you to stop eating.

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Don't drink your calories

The excellent Dr Sharma of the University of Alberta has pointed to research from Purdue University which shows that calories taken in a drink do not register with our brains as a meal. We feel just as hungry as if we had taken no calories at all. Some of these drinks can be as much as 200 calories - 10% of our daily allowance.

For calories to register, they need to be in solid food.

If you are wanting to lose weight, the easiest thing to give up is calorie filled drinks, such as fizzy drinks, and it could help you lose one pound a week.

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Body image

Even among women with normal body shape and weight, physical appearance is the factor which shows the strongest relationship with self-esteem (Alice Penner, Louis Gleghorn, Body Image and Self esteem in normal weight women, 1989). So that means if you have any disquiet about your body, then you can expect to feel bad in some way.

In our society, women are required to be slim. This was not always so. In Rubens' day, women were attractive when they were plump and curvy. While what is fashionable in terms of women's bodies changes over time, women's actual body shapes remain the same. Women come in all shapes and sizes. Does that affect your love life? That might be an important question. Well, walk around the supermarket and have a look at the couples and families who are shopping. Married women come in all shapes and sizes.

Australian researchers Williamson & Delin (The development of body size dissatisfaction in primary school children, 1998) showed that girls as young as five show a clear preference for smaller body sizes and were already dissatisfied with their bodies. That can only be the result of the complex and constant barrage of information from the media, their friends, and other social pressures about what women should look like.

Hypnotherapy can help to refocus body image and come to terms with what is normal. Don't forget, fashion photography is an art form, we are not supposed to take it seriously. And even the stars have to be airbrushed. (see my blog of 4 August 2009)

Dieting just to achieve a socially acceptable shape makes us ill. Hypnotherapy can help.
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Earlier this month scientists at the University of Edinburgh reported that a protein, invadolysin, which they discovered a few years ago, might be involved in how we store fat in our bodies. When it is disabled, fat storage is impaired. So that line of research looks promising.

Other research from the University of Missouri shows that sitting down makes you fat and that standing can help with keeping your weight down. Obvious?

Well, the research shows that lipase, an enzyme which absorbs into our muscles the fat which is circulating in the blood stream (which comes from digestion), operates when you are standing or moving, but almost shuts down when you are seated. So when you are sitting, the fat goes into storage, rather than to the muscles where it can be used. Worse, it can stay in the blood vessels and can clog the arteries.

So stand or move about whenever possible, actively trying to reduce chair time.

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Other people recommend knitting as well!!

I think that the knitting thing might just take off! On 9 September 2009 another website reported some research into knitting. The report suggests that i t is difficult to worry about food and do a visual spatial task at the same time. Things like computer games would fall into that category. I think knitting or sewing is a great way to not nibble whilst watching the telly, which is one of the most used opportunities for mindless munching.

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Miss Big Booty on Diet Blog is worried about her all-or-nothing approach to dieting. She eats well, makes a mistake, then blows the whole thing, and binges on what she knows is all the bad foods.

She is eating in a very restrained manner on the good days, with almost fat free dinners, steamed vegetables etc. This kind of abnormal food and restrained eating requires a high degree of motivation and self-control. Most of us would prefer to eat a more varied diet and in the long-term that is essential. I can't imagine life without spaghetti bolognese, roast chicken or puddings. Dieting doesn't work. But being a bit more vigilant about what you eat does.

If you go on a diet, with a tight regime of foods regarded as bad and foods regarded as good, then you are setting yourself up for a guilt trip. When you break one of the diet rules, you feel bad, worthless, miserable etc etc and say to yourself "I'm a failure. I can't do this" etc etc. Why not get off your case and be a bit nicer to yourself, following some simple, sustainable guidelines.

Eating food is one of the pleasures of life. Enjoy it. If you are restricting yourself to salads and lean meat when that is not enjoyable for you, you just won't last the course. Instead, enjoy your 3 meals a day. Each normal meal is probably 600 calories. Maybe a bit more. That is equivalent to 2 chockie bars. Giving up the chockie bars is easier than giving up a meal. The meal will fill you up and satisfy you. The chockie bar wants you to eat his friend too.

Portion control - confused?

What is a portion? Well, portions have certainly got bigger over the last decade or so. A Beefeater restaurant steak plate from the 1960s (seen in an antiques shop recently) looked really small to me. We have got used to eating off really huge plates. We eat out much more than a generation ago, and we load our plates at the buffet to get our money's worth. All this makes it harder for us to assess a portion.

And when we buy a pre-pack meal from the supermarket, what looks like a meal for one, on close reading of the package, is a meal for two. On the plate it looks like a portion for one, (or maybe 1 and a tiny visitor). I am starting to think that it is calories for two but quantity for one. Look at an interesting portion control discussion here.

The King Size 84g Mars Bar was phased out following a House of Commons report, which showed that a Snickers bar had more calories than a full steak meal. It was replaced by the Mars Duo - two bars now at 91g (about 400 calories - equivalent to a plate of chicken, potatoes and veg). Research shows that once a pack is opened we eat it, so the unintended consequence of the House of Commons report is that we eat even more! For those with a sweet tooth and a desire to lose weight, buy fun packs. One little bar is a portion.

If you hold onto the idea that one formal meal is round about 500 calories, then when you read the calorie content of a sweetie bar or other snack, you can get an idea of the relative benefit of eating it. I was once given a delicious slice of chocolate cake - and was horrified to see that it contained 1,500 calories. A belt buster to be sure!


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What is triggering our eating?

Well, not hunger for the most part. There are lots of cues to encourage us to eat. Brian Wansink of Cornell University has done loads of research on these environmental cues and we can all learn from his work. For example, if sweets are on your desk, you will eat more than if you have to get up and walk 10 yards for them. Obvious? Then put tempting foods out of sight. Tempting food in transparent containers (ice cream for example) is eaten faster than if it is in an opaque box.

Have a listen here to his interview on CBS News about what triggers eating.

Here are a couple of his tips for when you are eating out. Sit next to the person who starts last. Don't sit next to the Speed Eater.

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Eat slowly and lose weight

The European Food Information Council has a great website, crammed with interesting information, of great use to people wishing to adopt a healthier eating pattern. Click here to take a test to check how your vital statistics are affecting your health.

One piece of research they mention relates to eating slowly. The research showed that people who eat slowly tend to eat fewer calories, drink more water with their meal, get more pleasure from eating and feel more satisfied afterwards. It takes stretch receptors in the stomach about 20 minutes to work out that the stomach is full. So eating slowly means that you are more aware of these internal sensations.

On the other hand, a different study shows that eating fast correlates with insulin resistance and thus to some increased risk of diabetes.

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A healthy weight improves your general health

The Scotsman report today that maintaining a healthy weight will reduce the risk of breast cancer.

"Researchers have recently estimated that around 40% of all breast cancer cases could be prevented if women maintained a healthy weight, limited their alcohol intake and increased their level of physical activity."

Over the last 20 years or so, we have started to use food as fun. Something to do when we are with our friends. So we have a girls' night in, and we bring along the marshmallows, cakes and chocolate. The total calorie value of these fun foods has added the equivalent of "an extra meal" to our daily food intake.

What else could we do for fun, that doesn't involve eating this "extra meal"? Giving up this fun food is much easier than trying to limit what you eat at each formal meal.



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That conspiracy of fat and sugar, and salt too

We are hard-wired to want to eat fat (it was in short supply and is a store of energy for those hard times), sugar (the only source was honey - dangerous - and fruit - seasonal) and salt, which keeps you from dehydrating - where would you find salt if there weren't any shops?

So it is not surprising that salty, fatty, or sugary, fatty foods hit the spot. Nor is it surprising that the food industry knows this and beguiles us with just this sort of food, with the added bonus of flavour enhancers to get the juices going. And it does prove quite addictive. You may remember seeing Super Size Me? "The film documents this lifestyle's drastic effects on Spurlock's physical and psychological well-being, and explores the fast food industry's corporate influence, including how it encourages poor nutrition for its own profit."

Well, Dr Kessler, who used to head up the US Food and Drugs Administration, has found that fat, salt and sugar cause a dopamine rush, similar to other addictive products. "The food industry has been able to figure out the bliss point, the optimal combinations of fat and salt, fat and sugar, fat, sugar and salt that you think tastes good, but when you look at the science, we now know that those ingredients stimulate, they activate the brain's circuitry". So the food industry is deliberately targeting those addictive centres in our brains, when they design and advertise their processed foods.

And the food industry is also active in the diet foods industry. They have it both ways.

If you are overweight, you are dealing with some powerful opposition. Understanding it and supporting yourself with hypnotherapy, will get you back in control.


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Unhappy children become overweight adults

A long-term study published last week has shown that children who have emotional problems and poor self-perceptions are overweight when they are adult.

Feeling good about yourself is important for adults too. This is an area where hypnotherapy has been shown to work. Before you consider hypnotherapy, Melanie Fennell has written a great self help book. You can get it from here.

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A meal deal in Scotland is different from a meal deal in London. Why?

I was in London last week, and bought a meal deal at a major supermarket.

Now, I have been looked at meal deals before, but this one was different, and I am interested to know why, and I wonder too if I could buy it up here in Scotland. The meal deals I have seen in Glasgow normally consist of a sandwich, a bottle of water or a fizzy drink, and a bag of crisps.

The one in London was a sandwich, a pack of fresh fruit (pineapple) and a bottle of real orange juice. Giving me 2 of my 5-a-days and many fewer calories. Now, is this because Down South they have got the health message?

So I had a look round the aisles in another big supermarket, and I was surprised at the contrast with Scotland. Down South they don't have even half the space allocated to fizzy drinks, biscuits and sweets.

It seems to me that our local supermarkets are pandering to our traditionally bad eating behaviours, rather than helping us to change and improve our health. When I am working with clients to lose weight, one of the key things we work on is what to buy in the supermarket. If you have it in the house, you will eat it.


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Compulsive overeating

Compulsive eating (uncontrolled overeating that is not related to hunger) was investigated in 279 college women with the use of a self-report questionnaire. Results indicated a relationship between unpleasant emotional states (boredom, depression, anxiety, loneliness, anger),compulsive eating and the calming effect of eating.

If you tend to feel unhappy, then you might find yourself eating as a form of self-medication to make yourself feel better. What else might you do to lighten your mood. Phone a friend maybe, go out for a walk, go and see a film or take up knitting.

Hypnotherapy helps you to deal with your emotions, so if this is the cause of your overeating, why not deal with the cause, using hypnotherapy?


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Are you pouring on the pounds?

A New York campaign has just been launched to limit consumption of fizzy drinks.
Read it.... Scotland is second only to the US in obesity rates.

Clearly it is not just me banging on about fizzy drinks. Fundamentally I suppose I feel that pop is for children, who need the sugar while they are growing rapidly. And we adults just don't need these sugar-filled drinks - and they really are sugar-filled. You wouldn't put 10 teaspoons of sugar in your tea, would you? Would you? Check the next can of pop that you buy. Most are around 150-200 calories. A teaspoon of sugar is 16 calories. Find out more here!

Most of Americans increase in weight over the last 30 years comes from adding these sugary drinks to their diet. Since making a change to other drinks is relatively easy, here is a way to reduce your weight with very little effort indeed. Give it a try!

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Take up knitting!

I often suggest to my clients that they might take up knitting! I heard on the radio recently that the majority of people watch tv for more than 3 hours a day. This is an obesity risk, since we often feel the need to do something while watching telly, and this frequently takes the form of eating. Eating and knitting are incompatible, so it is a way to stop you nibbling.

And today on the radio, it seems that NHS Highland staff are taking up knitting to relieve stress. Why not give it a try! Look here.

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Help with getting some exercise

Exercise is important for general health, reducing the risk of osteoporosis, and keeping your joints supple.

It is not necessary to do masses unless you like it, but fitting a bit more exercise into your daily routine will make a difference to your weight. On this blog, I am trying to encourage you to make a few small changes every week, so that over the long term, you will find that your weight has settled down to a healthy, easy to maintain level.

Changing from a sedentary to a moderately active lifestyle or from moderate to highly active helps you burn calories faster. Have a look at this website to give you an idea of how this change affects your weight.

Walk jog run helps you plan a walking route, measures it out for you and tells you whether you are slow or fast! Not only that, but you can see the routes that other people have taken, so you can explore Glasgow a bit wider.


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Yoga can help you lose weight

One of my clients told me she found yoga helpful. As a result, I have been keeping an eye out for research into yoga and weight loss.

A study funded by the United States National Cancer Institute shows that regular yoga practice can help control middle-age spread, maintaining the weight of normal-weight middle-aged people, and possibly contributing to weight loss among the overweight middle-aged. They published a follow-up in August 2009.

“In our earlier study, we found that middle-age people who practice yoga gained less weight over a 10-year period than those who did not. This was independent of physical activity and dietary patterns. We hypothesised that mindfulness — a skill learned either directly or indirectly through yoga — could affect eating behaviour,”

This supports a great deal of the research which you will find on my blog. Eating in front of the telly, in the car, or any time when you are really doing something else, means you eat more. This sort of eating stops your digestive system from telling the brain that you have had enough to eat. Stretch receptors take about 20 minutes to notice that we are full, and if we miss the signals, we will overeat. His research shows the Mindfulness that comes from practising yoga keeps you in control when faced with delicious food when you are not hungry.


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Why do we stuff ourselves at Eat All You Can Buffets

When we are trying to lose weight, we should avoid going to places where we are inclined to overeat. It just puts pressure on our limited supply of willpower. If you had a friend with a gambling problem, would you meet him in the bookies, or suggest somewhere safer? It is the same when you are wanting to reduce the amount you eat. Don't make it harder than it needs to be.

And one of the places to avoid is the Eat All You Can Buffet. Pretty much everyone stuffs themselves. Are we just wanting our money's worth? That might be part of it, but there is something else going on....

We rely on cues and rules of thumb to help us control our eating, so that we don't have to be constantly counting calories or measuring things out. For example, most of us will pour half a bowl of cereal. This is our rule of thumb quantity control. It doesn't matter if the bowl is small or large. A serving is half a bowl. So trick yourself with small bowls.

When there is lots of variety, we eat more. There is lots of research on this. Served a bowl of mixed colour sweets, people eat more than if they are all the same colour. It seems that when items are all the same, our brains recognise the items as a single whole, and can estimate the quantity. We lose this ability to estimate when there is variety. Effectively we see less when there is variety.

At buffets, the variety is the thing, and this is what gets us eating more than we should. At buffets, limit yourself to 2 different things on the plate at any one time.

American researchers state that "Both people and animals will eat more food when a meal or diet contains a greater variety of food, which can eventually cause weight gain". Variety seems to slow down the feelings of fullness and satisfaction. Eating the same sorts of food every day on the other hand limits the amount that you eat. Meals where the foods are similar in shape, texture or colour, can help reduce overeating.

So in our food-saturated society, where you can buy whatever food you want, variety is always there. And this is a risk for over-eating. Reducing variety when you are out shopping will help. If you must buy snacks, buy just one sort, only one flavour. If you must buy desserts, buy just one type.

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Are we training our children to be obese?

The Scottish Government has recently published research showing how much fatter we are becoming in Scotland. The latest figures are for 2003, comparing them with 1995.

In 2003 almost two-thirds of men (64%) and more than half of women (57%) were overweight. In 1995 57% of men and 47% of women were overweight. That is an increase of 12% for men and over 20% for women in less than 10 years.

Worse news is that the trend for obesity is increasing even faster. In 1995 16% of men and 17% of women were obese. This had increased to 21% of men and 24% of women in those 8 years. That is a staggering 30-40% - in just 8 years!

Let's just look at those figures again. 1 in 5 men is obese. 1 in 4 women is obese. And the trend is upwards. 2 in 3 men are overweight. Nearly 2 in 3 women who are overweight. That means that the large majority of Scottish people are overweight. And the trend is upwards. Rapidly upwards.

Now most people don't want to be obese, with all the social stigma, illness and physical difficulties it causes. So somehow it must be just too easy to put on those extra pounds. This blog will try to show you how some of this is happening (and it is just too easy to put on weight) and what you can do without having to follow a restricted diet.

What is more worrying, is that we seem to be passing this problem onto our children. Over 30% of our children are outside the healthy weight range. Here are some things you can do now to assist your children to avoid obesity in adulthood.

1. Don't eat in front of the telly. This is an obesity risk factor.
2. Reduce the amount of time doing sedentary things (which most children prefer). Some children are spending 4 hours in front of the tv, computer or with their game consoles. This is an obesity risk factor. If you reduce the opportunity for sedentary activity, research shows that children will do something more active. It is not about offering a choice, but just removing the chance to sit and veg.
3. Fizzy pop should be a very rare special treat and not an everyday drink. Pop is implicated strongly in obesity.

If you are overweight, and the majority of Scots are, don't pass it on.

Adults are classed as overweight if their BMI is 25 or more, obese if their BMI is 30 or more and morbidly obese if their BMI is 40 or more. Check your BMI now.

If you are wanting to lose weight, and live near Glasgow, then contact me and see how hypnotherapy can help.

www.carolinebrowntherapy.com

Diet soft drinks makes you put on weight - so what is that all about then?

To try to control your weight, you've moved onto diet soft or fizzy drinks. But scientific studies are showing that for each can of diet drink, your risk of being overweight goes up by a belt-busting 41%.

Well, diet drinks don't themselves make you put on weight. So what could be going on?

It could be that your body is complaining at being tricked. In comes all this lovely sweetness and your body is expecting calories. They don't come, so your body sends you the munchies by way of complaint. There is some evidence that soft drinks stimulate appetite.

It could be that part of you thinks that no-cal drinks constitute a diet, giving you permission to eat a bit more than you otherwise might.

So, if you are drinking diet pops, have a think about whether you are making up for it by eating more of something else.

If you are in or near Glasgow and want to lose weight, try to make a few small changes every week. To help you, try hypnotherapy with me.


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The conspiracy of fat and sugar

Andrew Drenowski is an American scientist studying why we are all getting so much fatter than we were just 30 years ago.

He shows that it is the wicked conspiracy of fat and sugar that is the culprit - the blame swithering between the two from decade to decade. His work shows that energy-rich foods, food with lots of calories to the ounce, have become cheap, convenient and good-tasting (developed by other clever scientists in the food industry). Energy dense foods cost less per calorie than do nutrient dense foods. It is this low cost of high calorie, great-tasting manufactured food that is causing the overall increase in weight of the population as a whole, and individuals too.

You might have seen the film "Supersize me". The star complained that he felt the burgers he was eating gave him an initial shot of intense pleasure, but didn't make him feel full or satisfied, but rather made him want more.Fatty, sugary foods trigger the pleasure receptors in our brains, in a similar way to recreational drugs.

It is not just the burger chains though. I once read the ingredients on boned leg of lamb for sale from a famous upmarket UK store. It read 84% meat. What was the other 16% for goodness' sake?

If you are in or near Glasgow and want to lose weight, try to make a few small changes every week. To help you, try hypnotherapy with me.

www.carolinebrowntherapy.com

What makes us start eating, and then again, what makes us stop?

There are lots of cues that triggering eating, and hunger is seldom one of them. Most of us don't ever really feel hunger, and when we do, we can satisfy it straight away, no waiting at all. Knowing what triggers your eating, and also what causes you to stop eating is crucial to controlling your weight. After all, your weight is the result of what you eat - when calories in are more than calories used up, we gain weight. We all know that.

The eating cues that we respond to include the people we are with. If you are with a companion who eats like a sparrow, it is harder to ladle out a second or third helping. Sometimes we associate things with food - like watching a film with a bucket of popcorn or driving home eating a chocolate bar. When we know what the eating cues are, we can work out ways to avoid them.

If you are in or near Glasgow and want to lose weight, try to make a few small changes every week. To help you, try hypnotherapy with me.
www.carolinebrowntherapy.com

More about mindless eating

Mindless eating is when we just chomp away for want of something better to do. So we might be eating popcorn in the cinema (out of a bucket!), munching on a chocolate bar in the underground or bus. Or maybe we are at the football, eating a pie. Or in front of the telly, with a bag of crisps (some bags so huge now they would be better called sacks).

When we are concentrating on doing something else, then we are not concentrating on what we are eating. The calories go in, and we don't even get that nice feeling of a full tummy. This sort of eating is relatively easy to give up.

Reducing weight means eating less, so it is important that we really enjoy our food. Concentrating on what we are eating allows us to enjoy it more, but also gives time for the stretch receptors in our stomach to notice when we are getting full.

Take the Mindless Eating Challenge! This website is run from Cornell University, and is really helpful in making those frequent small changes to eating behaviour. Give it a try.

If you are in or near Glasgow and want to lose weight, try to make a few small changes every week. To help you, try hypnotherapy with me.

www.carolinebrowntherapy.com

Should I be counting calories?

Counting calories is very difficult to do over the long term, but we do need to have a good idea of the amount we can eat without putting on weight. Click here for a good website. It tells you how many calories you are consuming to maintain your present weight. Then if you enter the weight you would like to be, then it tells you your goal calories too.

For the moment, lets say that women need 2,000 calories a day, and men need 2,500. This is plenty for 3 satisfying meals. Research shows that over the last 30 years or so, the calorie value of each meal has made no significant change.

So why are we on average 10 pounds heavier?

The difference is the 4th meal. We munch away on chocolates, crisps and biscuits to the value of a complete meal.

Don't forget, if you buy them, you will eat them. In the hand is in the mouth!

If you are in or near Glasgow and want to lose weight, try to make a few small changes every week. To help you, try hypnotherapy with me.

www.carolinebrowntherapy.com

How does hypnosis help weight loss

Following a discussion of your concerns, the therapist will check out with you a series of immediate goals. This might be to eat at a table rather than in front of the telly, to use smaller plates, or to cook more at home. Once these goals are clear, the hypnosis begins. In a deep state of hypnosis, these goals will be proposed to you as suggestions.

The hypnotic state (which is very pleasant!) makes you very suggestible. While you retain full control and awareness of what is going on, you are highly sensitive to positive suggestions. Away from the therapy room, you will find yourself reminded of these goals and before picking up the phone to order a takeaway, you will stop and think. That gives you enough time to reconsider your order, or decide to go ahead anyway. That little voice remains with you though - always at the back of your mind.

As a hypnotherapist I have so often given the suggestion "You can leave food on the plate" that I can now do it. I was brought up to clean my plate and breaking out of this habit has taken time. Hypnosis made it easier, and now after many years of being a good girl and cleaning my plate, I can now leave a plate half-eaten. It means I can enjoy the taste of the occasional cooked breakfast, without the guilt of eating too much fatty food.

If you are in or near Glasgow and want to lose weight, try to make a few small changes every week. To help you, try hypnotherapy with me.
www.carolinebrowntherapy.com