New Rule! Use Cutlery!

One of the big changes in our lifetime compared to our mother's or grandmother's time, is eating with our hands. In those days, they didn't really have access to much handfood, and they ate their meals with cutlery sitting at the table. They weighed on average 10lbs less than we do now.

Of course it is not just about cutlery, but going through the ritual of laying a table for your meal makes you more aware of your eating. It becomes a planned event. Compare that with eating out of the packet, on the hoof etc. Mindless eating, automatic eating is one of the ways in which we are getting heavier. Think of the things that we eat without thinking, and you will realise that these are handfoods rather than sitting-at-a-table-with-cutlery foods - pizzas, burgers, pies, sweets, chocolate, cakes, popcorn, crisps. And these foods are full of fat and salt or full of fat and sugar - the fastest way to gain weight.

So a simple rule is Always Eat with Cutlery. And you will find that you are easily giving up the most calorie-packed foods.

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How to manage cravings

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!


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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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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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