This article first appeared in the Ealing & Acton Gazette on April 13th 2007
 Hands up everybody who has ever managed to lose weight. Now hands down if you’ve put it back on again …
While we're all still burping the last of those Easter eggs and facing the prospect of sunnier days and skimpier clothes, we’ll probably be thinking we should substitute apples for those chocolate bars. Diets tell us we need to eat special food in special ways to lose weight but my experience as a hypnotherapist has shown me that it’s really a behavioural issue. My weight loss clients agree. It’s not the apples, it the urges!
I've found several key success points with people who’ve come to me for weight-loss and I’m going to share the most important one with you today.
Are you a plate-clearer?
For most people, this is the single biggest one. If you were trained as a child to eat everything on your plate (and most of us were), it’s likely that conditioning is still with you today. Your body has a beautifully crafted mechanism for telling when you're full and when to stop eating - and it's routinely stomped-on by your inner plate-clearer. While nobody enjoys waste, the plain facts are
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that no starving children will benefit from your over-eating and you won’t save any household budget while you pile up your portions. I've helped clients who not only cleared their own plates, but routinely went on to clear their children's too. Remember that the unit of food is the mouthful – not the plateful and not the packet. Have a mouthful and stop. Consult your body to see if you’re full. If you want more, have more. If you don’t, leave it. When food belongs in the bin, put it there. You are not the dustbin.
This may feel uncomfortable when you start. So practice by selecting something in advance, three baked beans, say, and put them to one side before you start chewing. Then leave them and scrape them into the bin. Then notice - the ceiling hasn’t fallen in!
It’s worth mentally rehearsing the throwing away process, as it gets your brain used to the better new habit. And when eating as much as you truly need becomes second nature, you’ll guess your portions more accurately and not overload your plate in the first place – now there’s a real avoidance of waste.
And the great thing about this habit is that it applies to all food. If you want chocolate, eat chocolate – one mouthful at a time, and put the excess in the bin!
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