Many of the women that I see for weight reduction hypnotherapy not only have a negative relationship with food, they also have a negative relationship with their body. It’s as though their body is the enemy engaged in a war over just inches of territory. (The body being a just few inches larger than the mind would like.)

This war has disproportionately dreadful consequences because unless we love our bodies we are unlikely to cherish them, nurture and respect them. And as if by some cruel twist of fate it also means we find it harder to reach and maintain our perfect size and shape.

After years of hatred and fighting our bodies, how do we start to love them? The first thing I recommend is to start by concentrating on the bits that are easy to love.

So you might love your heart because it beats so beautifully and regularly and your lungs because they breathe giving you the oxygen you need. You could focus on how amazing your body is at things like healing itself, bending and stretching in that yoga class or recovering from too much wine at the weekend.

Once you’ve loved all the bits you can’t see you can bring your attention to the outward-facing parts, for example loving your beautiful eyes, your luscious hair and your newly painted toes. From there, you can start loving yourself in ever decreasing circles towards the wobbly bits, slowly but surely accepting and loving all parts of you.

Another way to start to love your body is to treat it kindly and gently; spoil it as though it was your lover. There are millions of things you can do to treat yourself:

• Have your nails painted a beautiful colour and then every time you look at your hands you'll feel glamorous and gorgeous
• Buy some shampoo that's indulgent and that you really love the smell of, then every time you shake your hair the perfume will remind you to tell your body how much you love it (the same principle applies with a delicious handcream)
• And you’ll find plenty more ways to delight your body on the Wahanda website.

Of course, pampering your body doesn’t have to cost money, for example, you could give your body a lie in on a Sunday, then take a long bath. And remember the best treat of all for your body is regular exercise and delicious, nutritious food, which in the long run will help you love your body all the more.

Have a wonderful and indulgent day.

Spring has sprung and everywhere everyone is telling me how to spring clean my house and my life, mind, body, soul and spirit too. And for good reason - cleaning away what we no longer need makes way for something better to come into our lives.

With one of my clients this week, our conversation went something like this...

Client: I want to get another job, one where I have a day off, so I have the time to write my book.

Me: Fantastic, how long have you wanted to write a book for?

Client: Oh, since my early twenties. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.

Me: That’s great - how do you feel about writing your book?

Client: Honestly?

Me: Yes, the truth.

Client: Actually, it makes me feel so heavy it’s as though all my limbs won’t work.

You can see the problem. My client has held a dream to write a book which in reality she won’t ever write, because who would want to do something that made them feel so heavy that their limbs won’t work?

The rest of our session was spent letting go of this long-held but now outdated dream. It was important to let go of it, because she was stopping herself getting the job she wanted, as if she got the new job she’d have to write the book.

The way I see it, we have three to-do lists:

• The first is all the stuff that is essential to maintaining life, but that we’d prefer to run along in the background - washing, shopping, cleaning, running etc.
• The second list is about our current projects and exciting things that are happening right now, things like: shop for a dress to wear to Kate’s wedding, write the next Hypnogogo, prepare the marketing materials for my next workshop and so on.
• The third to-do list is the one that contains all of those big things, the things that have been lurking around for many years that we never really seem to get round to doing, things like: learning a language, writing a book, learning an instrument and joining a band, taking a year off to explore Peru.

Now, it’s this final to do list that could do with a spring clean. After all, who wants to have things you once wanted to do holding you back twenty, thirty or even forty years later? Not me! So try this 10 point plan for spring cleaning:

1. Start with the list and write down each and every one of those big things you’ve wanted to do for years but have never started.

2. Take one thing at a time.

3. Ask ‘Who does this belong to?’

4. If it’s not yours, say ‘I return you to sender’ and go to point 10 below.

5. If it’s yours, ask ‘What stops me doing this? What stops me starting it?’. Write your answers down.

6. Then pretend that I’ve taken away all the things that stop you.

7. Now ask how you feel about getting started.

8. Notice how you feel physically - are you light or heavy, excited or anxious, what other sensations do you feel? Where do you feel them? What colour is the feeling?

9. In reality, it’s time to get rid of anything that doesn’t make your heart sing with joy and your body feel light with energy.

10. Simply cross it off your list and never think about it or feel guilty about it again. And yes, you can do this, and yes, it is OK to do it.

Repeat for all the items on your list. Of course, if anything does make you full of joy, etc, just do one small thing to get you started and move it to to-do list 2.

Personally, I crossed off learning Spanish...and French...and learning the drums...oh and the guitar...and I feel fantastic, so much lighter!

We all know that, when things are going well, it’s easy to reach our goals and dreams. At these magical times, everything in the universe lines up to help us. At other times, though, it’s much less simple - as if every curve ball is thrown in our direction to trip us up or sidetrack us from our path to success.

Acknowledging that there are times when things will stand in our way is a really good start to making sure that we achieve what we desire regardless, because we can then develop strategies to help us.

One way that you can do this is to identify all of the things that have stood in the way of success. Simply write them as a list - then work out what you can do about it. My clients find this a really useful exercise, because just planning for what might happen demonstrates how easy it can be to stick to your goals and how easy (but daft) it is to be sidetracked when you’re ill prepared.

Working together, we normally fill in a very simple form that looks like this (and the examples are those of my weight reduction clients):

What stood in the way of success: A break in routine/holidays

What I’m doing about it now:

• Continuing to plan my meals
• Challenging myself to find healthy alternatives while I’m away
• Being really aware of portion sizes and focus on stopping when I’m full, even when I’m eating out

What stood in the way of success: My friends who encourage me to break my good habits

What I’m doing about it now:

• Meeting up at places where we don’t eat
• Planning to do exercise together (walks, tennis)
• Reminding myself before we meet of how important reaching my goal is (more important than overeating)

What stood in the way of success: Chocolate

What I’m doing about it now:

• Not having it in the house at all, ever
• Having herbal tea (Yogi Tea Choco is quite a good substitute)
• Waiting for my mind to ask 3 times before I say yes

Work through with as many items in your list as you need and add to it. It’s a dynamic document designed to help you find ways to navigate your way past the potholes on your road to success.

I was working with a client yesterday about how to create more happiness in his life. Loads of great ideas came out of the session and I thought I’d share two with you.

Make a choice to be happy

This was inspired by a feature in the Guardian about people’s dying regrets - number five was “I wish I’d let myself be happier.” But, if you’re not used to being happy how do you remind yourself? We thought these three things would be useful:

First thing in the morning: Make it your intention to be happy for the day. Literally say to yourself: “Today it is my intention and expectation to be happy.”

Throughout the day: Set reminders on your phone to go off every hour or so to make you smile (these could be silly messages, jokes or just a reminder)

Before bed: Make a daily note of at least six things that made you smile, made you happy, or gave you pleasure, or were fun and so on

Do these for 60 days, long enough to make them (and happiness) a habit.

Make yourself a ‘happy first aid kit’

Collect together things that without-fail make you smile (a hilarious DVD, your favourite song, that childhood joke that’s side-achingly awful) and if you’re feeling blue just choose something from your first aid kit and have a jolly good laugh. We all know that laughter is good - it relaxes your body, releases endorphins, the happy hormones and even boosts your immune system.

The things I’m going to put in my happy first aid kit:

• The Green Wing
• Love and Happiness - Masters at Work, featuring India
• This joke: Why did the banana go to the hospital? Because it wasn’t peeling very well (groan)

What’s going in yours?

One of the less pleasant things about running my own business is the constant barrage of sales calls I get. In particular, the people selling SEO (search engine optimisation) really do not understand the meaning of the word ‘NO’. It’s been a particularly active week for them and, as I was saying ‘no’ in a calm and assertive way for the tenth time, it got me thinking about how important it is to be able to say ‘no’ effectively.

Saying ‘no’ is one of the things I talk about with my clients a lot, particularly those who are trying to reduce their weight. People really don’t like saying no. Why? Partly, it’s because we fear being judged negatively when we say no to others - and partly it’s because if we are saying no it means that we are denying ourselves something that we want.

Let’s imagine that someone is trying to reduce their weight and therefore has their meals carefully planned, and then they are offered a delicious looking piece of cake in the mid-afternoon to celebrate a colleague’s birthday. Saying ‘no’ will mean that the birthday boy may feel upset - additionally, the cake does look lovely and not having a piece will stir up feelings of acute deprivation. You’re torn between the short term pleasure of the cake and pleasing your colleague and the long term pleasure of reaching your ideal weight.

Whether you choose to have the cake or not will determine whether or not you reach your goal. And it’s up to you to decide which is most important to you - the piece of cake or your slim healthy body.

To take us back to the SEO salespeople: I could say yes to all of them, but the consequences would be dire - I’d be paying money to many, many people for a service I don’t actually need, regardless of how tempting their sales patter is, and I’d very quickly be bankrupt. In the same way, if you say yes to every piece of cake or every temptation you’re offered, you’ll end up fat.

So how can you make saying no easier? Here’s my three step plan:

1. Keep your long term goal front of mind at all times and make all choices that affect it based on that goal. After all your goal is what you really, really want, isn’t it? And every piece of cake makes your goal a more distant dream.

2. Practise saying no to yourself and others - because the more your say it, the easier it gets. Notice how easy it is to say ‘no’ to things you don’t want or like (those pesky sales people, for a start).Then, using how that feels, try saying no in your imagination to anything that could stand in your way of success (e.g. chocolate); you could call this a mental rehearsal. Then do it out loud and for real, actually say ‘no’ to yourself and others. (I quite like to shout ‘NO’ at my children’s sweet tin - although only when I’m in the house on my own).

3. Really enjoy how powerful it feels to say to no - it puts you in complete control and allows you to make the choices that are most conducive to reaching your goal.

Best of all, it’s easier than you think...

It might sound odd coming from a hypnotherapist, but it’s rare that I see I client and don’t recommend that they take some form of exercise as part of their life. It’s probably obvious for people who want to lose weight, but it’s also really effective at helping people who are suffering from stress or depression, can’t get pregnant, have low self-esteem, lack confidence and many other things too. Why?

Well, mostly it’s because exercise makes you feel good and if you feel good, you’ll be more motivated to achieve your goals. Exercise allows you to challenge yourself and find out strengths that you didn’t even know you had (ask anyone who’s run a half marathon!). And of course it also helps keep you fit and healthy. But you don’t need me to tell you that.

It’s great if you can make official exercise (sports, gym etc) non-negotiable and important enough to stick to. In addition, it’s fantastic if you can also integrate as much movement as possible into your everyday routine and habits.

So, in the spirit of making 2012 an active, healthy and happy year, here are 99 ways to move your body:

1. Ride your bike to work

2. Stand up on the tube/bus

3. Stand up for meetings and when you’re typing

4. Use an exercise ball instead of a chair if you need to sit down at a desk

5. Fidget

6. Yoga

7. Knit or crochet when you’re watching TV

8. Run - use Hypnogogo, sign up for a race or join a running club to help motivate you. Please do download this free recording if you need help getting started (http://www.hypnogogo.co.uk/promotions/get-up-and-gogo-for-womens.html)

9. Take a walk at lunchtime

10. Love your cleaning...

11. ...and ironing!

12. Dance around the kitchen when you’re cooking

13. Pretend you are a donkey and carry passengers (this works best in the park)

14. Walk up escalators

15. Use the ad breaks in TV programmes to do sit ups/crunches - see how many you can do in each commercial break

16. Blow up some balloons and hang them on your fridge

17. Do your Kegel exercises

18. Stretch your whole body when you first wake up

19. Carry your suitcases instead of pulling them along

20. Carry a bottle of water with you and use it to do some bicep curls as you walk or when you’re standing on the tube

21. Hulahoop

22. Sing in the shower

23. Go on a treasure hunt (make a list of 10 things and walk until you find them. It helps to make number 10 a pub or a coffee shop!)

24. Play football

25. Take a dog for a walk (and if you don’t have your own, borrow one)

26. Body brushing

27. Spring clean as if you have the Queen coming to stay

28. Take an exercise based holiday - yoga retreat, cycling, snowboarding, skiing

29. Aerobics

30. Pick up litter in your neighbourhood, park or favourite beach

31. Play follow the leader

32. Zumba

33. Step

34. Download an audio workout (e.g. 20 minute yoga)

35. Try out an exercise DVD instead of watching EastEnders

36. Have sex

37. Trampoline

38. Jump up and down whenever you are in a queue or waiting for the bus

39. Gymnastics

40. Go swimming

41. Lift weights

42. Put on your favourite song and dance and sing along

43. Skipping (with or without a rope)

44. Frisbee

45. Table tennis

46. Wii fit

47. Cricket

48. Rounders

49. Rowing

50. Basketball

51. Netball

52. Pushups

53. Go to the park and have a sports day - egg and spoon, sack race, three legged race - medals and fruit as prizes

54. Leg lifts (you could do this while watching the tele)

55. Make a game out of any jobs and get the whole family involved (e.g. time yourself to do things faster, pretend that you need to zap the dust aliens with the hoover)

56. Work using a treadmill desk

57. Capoeira

58. Tennis

59. Badminton

60. Squash

61. Wrestling

62. Dancing

63. Golf

64. Mountain biking

65. White water rafting

66. Diving

67. Bowls

68. Ten pin bowling

69. Kayaking or canoeing

70. Trapeze

71. Aqua aerobics

72. Play twister

73. Laugh (watch a funny video, tell some jokes, just laugh for fun!)

74. Spin class

75. Ride a micro scooter instead of taking the bus

76. Gardening

77. Ice skate

78. Run up and down the stairs (in a very tall building if they’ll let you in!)

79. Water skiing

80. Belly dancing

81. Tai Chi

82. Tae Kwon Do

83. Karate

84. Play the drums

85. Burlesque

86. Pole dancing

87. Wash the car

88. DIY

89. Pull your stomach muscles in whenever you see the colour red

90. Have a water fight or pillow fight

91. Hire a bouncy castle and bounce!

92. Croquet

93. Do some volunteer work

94. Bake some cup cakes and walk to your local old people’s home to deliver them (don’t lick the icing)

95. Run through sprinklers

96. Hockey

97. Play tag or stuck in the mud

98. Learn to juggle (balls not life)

99. Join a dance class - ballroom, lindy hop, ballet, jazz

Why not challenge yourself to try at least half of them by the end of the year? Who knows how good that could make you feel!

By the way, if you are starting a new exercise regime please do check with your doctor first.

I talk with my clients about motivation a lot - because if they don’t have it, I can predict with almost 100% accuracy that they won’t reach their goals. But what is motivation, and why is it so important in helping us reach our goals and dreams?

The Oxford Concise Dictionary describes the verb ‘to motivate’ as 'cause a person to act in a particular way' or 'to stimulate the interest of a person into activity'. (It’s interesting to remind ourselves of the precise meanings of words, because then we are able to think about them in a new light).

The definition here is all about action and what will make you take action. And actually, this makes it easier to consider than the quite abstract word ‘motivation’. In essence, it’s all about the reasons why you want to reach your goal - and let’s be honest, they have to be pretty good reasons, because you are going to have to act as a result of them.

Trying to get ourselves to act without good reason is often a fairly futile exercise, as anyone who’s tried for years to lose that last 10lb can tell you. Without the reasons to underpin your action, it’s easy to be waylaid and for choices to become difficult. If it doesn’t mean enough to you to lose the weight, chocolate bars become impossible to resist.

On the other hand, when we really understand what we want and why we want it, action to reach that goal seems inevitable because our choices become easy ones. When we define things in this way, our goals are supported by our deepest needs and desires. They become saturated with positive emotion - so as well as ‘I want to lose 10lb’ we might also be thinking something like ‘I want to look hot for my wedding’. Put in those terms, action becomes easy: ‘do I want this chocolate bar or do I want to look hot for my wedding?’.

So here’s a challenge - for all of your goals for 2012, take some time to ask yourself this question: 'What will make me take action to achieve this goal?' You may well find some interesting answers.

(If you do this and find that there are things you aren’t that bothered about, cross them off your list and move on from them without a shred of guilt. Life is too short to be aiming for goals you don’t want to achieve).

Yes, I really do hate them. Resolutions are all about guilt, about a magnificent lack of willpower and of course about that feeling of doom and gloom that I’m setting myself up for failure... again.

There is one good thing about them, though, and that is thinking about how I might like to change my life for the better. So this year, instead of embarking on New Year Resolutions, I’m giving myself 21 goals for the year ahead.

Why 21 goals? Well, ‘21’ because it’s a huge number of things to work towards, so there’s space for the small things and fun things as well as the big and serious things. I’ve included ‘have a really brilliant time on holiday with lots of laughs’ as well as ‘read a book a week’ and ‘get to the number one spot in the google rankings’.

And ‘goals’ - well, because goals are achievable, doable, something to work towards. And because you know when you’ve scored. That’s right, I think it’s really important to keep them specific and measurable, so I’ve put ‘run a marathon’ on my list and not ‘get fitter’.

I’ve also got the time frame of a year within which to achieve these 21 goals, which is nice because there’s a bit of flexibility. I don’t have to start on the first of January with my new improved lifestyle, I can just do a bit here and bit there to get things moving with my goals front of mind.

So why not give it a try - it’s easy to do and quite good fun (especially when you get to about goal 15 or 16!)

Happy New Year, may it be filled with good health, fun, laughter, joy, prosperity, happiness and everything else your heart desires. And if you want to make 2012 your best year, I’ve recorded this free, deeply relaxing self-hypnosis session to help you do just that. I hope you enjoy it.

Unsurprisingly, this time of year I see fewer clients for weight reduction than I do in January and February. It’s as though the minute Bonfire Night is out of the way, the nation breathes a huge sigh of relief and collective gluttony sets in.

I’m not exactly sure when the festive season started to begin in November, but I certainly don’t remember it from my childhood. Then, the festive season started on Christmas Eve when we’d put our tree up and indulge in a chocolate feast. While I remember gorging myself, in reality the feast consisted of a box of Matchmakers and very, very small box of Quality Street.

Now we feast not just for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, we also feast for most of November and the rest of December, sometimes if the hangover is bad enough on January 1st as well, starting our New Year purge on the 2nd or sometimes even the 3rd - which means the Christmas binge lasts nearly 20% of the year!

I blame the giant tins of sweets, well not the sweets themselves of course, but the fact they are so unbelievably cheap. On my last visit to the supermarket I saw a massive tin was only £4.50 - that’s cheaper than a bottle of wine. Consequently, visitors tend to bring them on any and every occasion. And now it’s just part of things, it’s expected.

And the gluttonous goodwill has spread beyond the sweet tin. Beautiful, extremely chocolatey biscuits or a luxury, brandy-laced mince pie are offered with every cup of tea. The coffee shops promote their Christmas ‘coffees’ which are really just an excuse to sell you sugar and fat in a seasonal cup. I think we can all assume that an eggnog or toffee nut latte is not going to be light on calories (in fact a large one of those has 579 or 444 calories respectively). And I haven’t even mentioned the endless (albeit fun) work/social occasions.

Research shows that it takes about 66 days to make a habit (see my blog from 8 November: Creating Healthy Habits) and of course if we start regularly and habitually including snacks as part of our diet oh, just one because it’s Christmas’ from the beginning of November, by Christmas this very unhealthy habit is well and truly cemented. And once it’s cemented, it’s a habit that becomes hard to kick.

And it’s hard to say no. We get caught up in a national psyche whereby on the food front anything goes because it’s Christmas. While I agree with that when it is Christmas (i.e. Christmas Eve, Day and Boxing Day), I think it’s stretching the point in November - don’t you?

And I guess this is the important thing: how do you extract yourself from this national gluttony and say ‘NO’ - both to yourself and to those around you who are trying to coerce you into excessive eating. I’m not saying it will be easy, but here are seven tips that might help...

1. Avoid the gigantic tins - certainly don’t buy one and if someone gives one to you, thank them graciously, but don’t open it there and then. Ideally give it away: school raffle, old people’s home etc, etc.

2. Practise saying ‘no thank you’ and meaning it.

3. Pretend you are allergic to chocolate and if you have the tiniest nibble you will come out in hives all over your body.

4. Imagine there’s a pubic hair in that bowl of nuts.

5. Keep that image of the slim you in your mind, know what you really want is that and not a mince pie.

6. Do some research online so you can be informed and make good judgements about what you eat. It’s much less appetising when you know a mince pie is about 365 Calories (without double cream) and you’d have to run about four miles to burn that off!

7. Remember a Christmas season that starts in November is created by manufacturers and marketers to sell you stuff, they want you to eat and eat and eat because then you buy and buy and buy. It’s in their interest. So make it your choice not theirs about when you eat and what you eat.

And while I don’t want to end on a totally sombre note, I write this on the day that all the news channels and papers are reporting a cancer research study that shows being overweight may well be worse for us than we thought. Being overweight is the biggest risk factor for a woman contracting cancer apart from smoking. It’s a bigger risk than too much sun, alcohol, viruses (eg HPV) and not eating enough fruit and veg. Now, that really is enough to put you off pigging out.

Yesterday may well have been one of the nicest days ever. Because the schools were on strike I got to spend an extra, unexpected, almost illicit day with my children. We packed a few sandwiches, hopped on the train and headed for Kew Gardens. The sun was shining, we scuffled in the leaves, got stalked by peacocks and then ended the day by seeing the most beautiful rainbow on our way home (we even managed to miss getting caught in the rain!)

It could have been different. I’m self-employed so a day off work means a day when I don’t earn anything if I don’t work, so I could have viewed this strike as not only a gross inconvenience but also costly.

In the first scenario we all had a great time, in the second I would have started the day feeling agitated and have no doubt those feelings of irritation would have escalated as the day went on and the children took full advantage of my mood. Instead of rainbows and peacocks it would have been a day of petty arguments, naughty steps and sweet deprivation. If we had had this day there’s no doubt I would have been feeling extremely tense and very stressed by the end of it. In fact I can feel myself grinding my teeth as I type!

The strike was out of my control, it was going ahead whether I liked it, agreed with it, wanted it or not. The only thing in my control was how I reacted to it. It’s all a question of perspective a.k.a. ‘framing’.

Of course so much of what happens in our lives is out of our control: the weather, the moods of the people around us, the seemingly endless economic gloom, Christmas. And when we feel out of control it can lead to anxiety, worry, sleeplessness, depression, lack of self-worth and decreased confidence. It goes without saying that none of these are good feelings and no-one wants to feel them.

So when you are faced with something you don’t particularly like yet have no control over, it’s useful to think about how you might face that situation with different frames. Then you can choose which frame best suits you, because different frames force you to behave differently.

Taking the example of the strike:

• Frame 1: the “I’m really annoyed about this’ frame, would have led me to feeling resentful, angry and frankly pissed off.
• Frame 2: the ‘find a way to cope’ frame, would have made me feel flustered and frustrated as I would not be doing anything properly, trying to do both my job and look after my children
• I chose the ‘make the best of it frame’, this gave me permission to have fun, focus on the kids, turn off the mobile, forget about work and have a guilt-free, fantastic day.

And of course you can think about frames for any situation. Let’s apply it to the weather: this weekend we are due to be taking the kids for a bike ride in the park with friends and the forecast is now for torrential rain (I hate rain)...

• Frame 1: the ‘get on with it’ frame = rug up, put our wellies and waterproofs on and don’t let the rain get in the way
• Frame 2: the ‘in denial’ frame = pretend it’s not raining, carry on regardless, moan a lot about the weather
• Frame 3: the ‘what’s important here’ frame = actually the bike ride’s not the important thing after all, it’s seeing our friends, so we might be going swimming or to see a free concert at the Royal Festival Hall.

I’d love to know how you’re going to frame this rainy weekend?

This morning the Dukan diet was being discussed on the BBC. The segment showed the various celebs who allegedly use it, a video montage of diets through the ages and then an interview with Dr Dukan and a nutritionist.

The Dukan diet, like Atkins before it, has been hugely successful. It’s estimated that about 24 million people worldwide are following it. And in a way, it’s no surprise, because these high-protein, low-carb diets work and they work quickly.

Inevitably, when people come to see me for weight reduction they want to talk about the Dukan and other quick fix diets. Of course it’s media hype and celebrity endorsement that makes these diets so attractive ... and they do work, if you stick to them. The question is can you? I can’t, I find that after about four days on this sort of diet I start to go blind with lust for things I don’t normally eat - like marmalade sandwiches or doughnuts. Any weight (or water) lost in those first few light-headed days is immediately regained with a garnish of guilt and splash of inevitability. And I’m not the only one.

Sticking to a way of eating is perhaps the most important thing when deciding that you want to reduce your weight. So, one of the first things I ask when I meet a new client is 'how do you want to eat ... for the rest of your life?'

Normally I get some sort of flippant response like 'crisps, chocolate, pizza ... and I really want to be 8 stone'; which is not only unrealistic but not particularly desirable either. What’s interesting is how people actually are really answering the question 'what do you want to eat?'

‘How do you want to eat?’ is much more interesting question and leads to answers that can genuinely help someone achieve their goals because it doesn’t impose on them ‘what’ to eat. After all, we already know the different foods we like and don’t like.

Here are some of the answers that my clients have given me:

• I want to eat at meal times only (not snack)
• I want to eat my own food (not my children’s left overs)
• I want to be mindful about what I eat (not eat loads of food that I’m not even aware of, e.g. half a tin of Roses in front of the TV)
• I want eating to be fun and social and enjoyable (not guilty and secret)
• I want to eat a wide variety of good quality foods (not to feel as though my life is totally restricted and inhibited by what I’m allowed to eat)
• I want to eat when I’m hungry and stop when I’m full (not because I’ve had a bad day)
• I want to be able to say no to things I don’t want to eat (not feel pressured by the people around me to have just a little taste of cake or chocolate or sweets)
• I want to eat normally, three meals a day, the occasional treat, a glass or two of wine at the weekend (not be constantly obsessed with food)
• I want to eat when I want to (not because I think I should)
• I want to exercise one more time a week and eat one more piece of fruit a day

And when you see how people want to eat it’s blindingly obvious why a highly restrictive diet is really hard to stick to, because it’s not how people want to eat. In fact anything that makes people feel guilty, deprived, restricted, out of control, naughty, lonely or unhappy isn’t likely to last long.

Best of all, to think about how you eat is a great start point for long term behaviour change. It’s not only bespoke to each person and respectful of their needs and lifestyle, it’s also great because it doesn’t require a complete overhaul of their life. Most of us are the way we are and eat the way we eat because we like it so it makes sense to play to our strengths and tweak accordingly.

I, like the nutritionist this morning on the BBC, think, in the (very) short term, diets like the Dukan do little physical harm and can even help kick start your weight reduction programme. In the long term though you might have better results doing something far less drastic and much, much easier. So just ask yourself: 'How do I want to eat ... for the rest of my life?'

I’m always curious how things come into your life when you most need to learn something. So, as most of my clients in the last couple of weeks have seen me about how they can reach their potential and be the best they can be, my curiosity has been awakened.

During our initial consultation it is very obvious that each of them is putting up unconscious barriers, sometimes even huge obstacles, to achieving the success they desire. I actually saw one client last week who believed he couldn’t be true to his roots if he was successful. (Of course, as soon as the words were out of his mouth he saw how crazy it was to believe that).

So with my curiosity sharpened I started to explore what beliefs might be holding me back.

Now, I’m currently going through the process of launching a new part to my business. It’s a new idea and is taking me way way out of my comfort zone. I’m completely fine with the doing of it, but the selling of it makes me anxious, partly because it’s new and partly because it’s with corporate clients.

Certainly my behaviour in the past week or so indicates I have some seriously limiting thinking going on...

1. I am procrastinating. Whenever I go to work on the proposal for my idea I find myself doing the washing (I hate doing the washing)

2. I’m sleeping a lot, and dreaming a lot

3. I’m finding it hard to concentrate

But how do we find out what belief is limiting us and how might we start to challenge it?

Finding and articulating a limiting belief is not as easy as it sounds, because we’ve often held the belief since childhood and genuinely think it’s true; the belief is so ingrained in us that we can’t imagine ourselves not having it. If you think about my client above, he had been told all his life ‘money can’t buy you happiness’ and ‘don’t get too big for your boots’, so it really was no wonder he believed that success meant he couldn’t be true to his roots.

Our beliefs nearly always stem from what our parents told us (repeatedly) about our place in the world. So one way we can start to identify them is to think about the things you were repeatedly told as a child. For example if you want to find out your limiting beliefs around money, start by recalling the positive and negative experiences you had around money as a child and think about what were you told about money. You might come up with things like ‘money doesn’t grow on trees’ or ‘we’re not made of money’ and while these statements may seem benign they are really about there being not enough to go round and sacrifices having to be made. So perhaps you were made to feel that you weren’t worth the sacrifices or worth the little there was to go round. Therefore the issue is not about money but about your own self worth.

As for challenging your limiting beliefs two good questions to start with are:

1. Can you prove it in a court of law?

2. Would you teach it to primary school children?

Sometimes just identifying our limiting beliefs is enough to start us thinking in a new direction, sometimes we need to work with a professional to help us channel our thinking in a new, more positive direction.

And it’s important to remember that there is always a good reason that we hold onto these limiting beliefs (the belief itself probably won’t serve a good purpose, but holding onto it does). We might be trying to protect ourselves from failure, it might keep us close to our family or friends, we may even think we might not be loved. And in any solution or new way of thinking the change works best if we can honour that reason.

So for me this week, I have some work to do around fear and about trusting my instincts and ideas. So I’m taking a deep breath, relaxing and practising some self hypnosis to build my confidence and self-belief. All in a day’s work!

For the past three weeks I’ve been sick with tonsillitis – it’s been thoroughly miserable. The good news is I’m now feeling better... hurrah! But my life seems to have disintegrated into absolute chaos, which is all round less good.

Since I’ve been ill, I’ve done the bare essentials: seen clients, recorded the new Hypnogogo, done the washing, baked birthdays cakes for my children. However everything non-essential has been ignored: filing, working on my book, studying, catching up with emails. I now have a to-do list that’s longer than my Christmas list.

One of the other not so positive side effects of this enforced change in routine is that I’ve done no exercise in nearly a month. This is not good, not good at all: I really miss it and I can feel myself getting unfit and fatter - urgh! The weird thing is that I don’t seem to have time - my life has changed in just this three week period and it seems there’s not a moment left to exercise. Honestly, I just can’t imagine how I used to fit it in. Put simply, I've got out of the habit and it’s proving really difficult to get back into it.

As a hypnotherapist, I often see people who want to stop a bad habit, like overeating, but I see fewer that want to create a good habit, like starting to exercise.

Habits are really interesting. By definition a habit is ‘an acquired behaviour pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary’. According to research done by UCL it takes 66 days to acquire a habit; that is until the action is automatic and done almost without thinking. Sixty-six days - groan, it feels like ages - moan, that’s seven weeks and three days. On the bright side, if I start now I’ll have that good old exercise habit back before Christmas, which would be a wonderful gift to my body!

So what are the component parts to making a habit?

First of all you’ve got to have motivation, a really powerful desire to do thing you want to become a habit. Without this motivation you’ve got no chance of achieving the required level of consistency - especially in the early days.

And you really do need consistency. If you really want to make something a habit you have to do that something regularly and frequently.

And finally you have to link your action to a cue or context. Certainly this is what makes habits hard to break - giving up that after-dinner cigarette is without doubt the hardest part of stopping smoking!

At this point it helps to try your new habit on for size by trying it out in your imagination before you try it out for real. That way you can see if there is anything you might like to change about either the action or the context. (For example if you want to acquire the habit of running, there’s no point in deciding to leap out of bed to do a run first thing in the morning if you can’t normally drag yourself out of bed anyway. It would be far better to run at a time of day that suits you better). I know this sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people give up on their action because of the cue or context.

So, I’ve got my motivation which will help with my consistency (might also get myself a little sticker chart going!). As for my cue, well, I’m thinking it’s got to be my morning cuppa - I can’t get up before it, so as soon as the last sip is slurped it’s my signal to crawl out of bed and lay down on my yoga mat. Glad that’s sorted – I’m feeling fitter already!

Iʼve had tonsillitis this week. And while itʼs not life threatening itʼs seriously debilitating, not just the sore throat that feels like youʼve got a brussel sprout stuck with razor blades caught there, but also the crippling flu-like symptoms - fever, aches and pains, feeling cold ... blah, blah, blah - enough of my moaning.

After two bed-bound days with all my appointments cancelled and no sign of feeling any better, I went to see a doctor at the emergency clinic and left there last night armed with penicillin. Twelve hours later, while not back to normal, I am certainly on the road to recovery.

Penicillin is without doubt a miracle.

I love the story about the many, many scientists before Fleming who had seen penicillin in their petri dishes, however instead of celebrating their discovery they just got cross because their cultures hadnʼt grown! Now of course I couldnʼt guarantee the absolute truth of this story, but its sentiment is interesting. How many of us disregard things because we canʼt see their good?

Now, on a completely different tangent (yes, not being able to hold a thought for long is one of other side effects of being unwell) the penicillin got me thinking about the whole idea of miracles.

By definition a miracle is 1. an extraordinary event attributed to some supernatural agency or 2. any remarkable occurrence (source: Concise Oxford Dictionary) and while penicillin may not be the first itʼs certainly the second.

When we start to think about our lives there are just so many ʻremarkable occurrencesʼ that they cease to be remarkable because we get used to them, we simply take them for granted. And I suppose because they are with us all the time that by definition they stop being miracles because they stop being remarkable, yet somehow that doesnʼt feel right.

So because Iʼm feeling so much better I want to think about and celebrate the forgotten miracles today. Iʼm going to take a moment to say thanks for some of the miracles that happened just this morning. You can read on to share my miracles if you like or just take a moment to be grateful for yours, itʼs up to you ...

1. Running hot water - itʼs really, really cold outside, I turned on the tap in the shower to find hot running water - and heated towels from the towel rail - bliss! Thanks Romans for your passion for sanitation and comfort

2. Contact lenses - allowing the blind to see again, thanks Otto Wichterle

3. Radio 4 - not just the content of the Today programme, but the technology behind it; isnʼt it amazing that people in a studio on the other side of London interviewing someone on the other side of the world can be heard in my bathroom in real time? Thanks Hertz, Branly, Tesla, de Moura, Lodge, Bose, Rutherfod, Braun, Popov, Baviera, Marconi, Stone, Fessenden, Fleming, De Forest and those who came before and after them and thanks also to Evan, John, Jim and Sarah

4. My children - and lovely cuddles this morning, special thanks to Ian Donald for the ultrasound scanner without which I may not be writing this blog today

5. Penicillin - well, you already know that story, thanks again Mr Fleming I canʼt tell you how much I appreciate your work!

I had a really lovely weekend this weekend, but my goodness I ate too much!

So much of our social life in this country is focussed around food, which on the whole is all good as far as I'm concerned because I love food, and I love a nice glass of wine as well. This weekend, though, I have to admit I simply ate too much and am paying the price today. I still feel a bit sluggish, my belly is definitely bloated and weirdly I still feel full.

As a hypnotherapist, I work a lot with people wanting to lose weight - and getting them to stop overeating is one of the hardest things we do. This is because many of us have learned to ignore and override our body's signals for fullness.

Our stomach and body might be saying “I'm full, I'm full, please, please don't feed me any more.”

But our eyes, nose and mouth have just seen the dessert arrive and are saying “Oooooh, look at that, yummy, I can't resist that, I could just squeeze in a little bit.” (And then the cheese board arrives and there's room to squeeze in a bit of that too).

Interestingly many, many people eat according to appetite (our eyes, nose and mouth) rather than hunger (stomach and nutritional needs). Because appetite is stimulated externally (want) rather than internally (need), it's really easy to overeat - because every time you see or smell something delicious you can find a bit of room for it.

Over time, we become so used to ignoring and overriding our hunger signals we often don't know what they are. We actually don't know what it's like to feel hungry... ever.

One interesting way to define hunger (or satiety) is using a hunger scale. There are numerous different scales (you'll find them online) - normally a scale from one to ten, where ten is stuffed to bursting, five is satisfied and zero is dizzy with hunger.

This weekend I lived my life between about seven and ten - there wasn't a single moment that I felt hungry and I'd forgotten what it's like, which is not at all healthy. So this Monday morning I decided to take my hunger below five. I wanted to feel hungry, perhaps not really, really hungry (I'm no martyr), but certainly below five.

By about 11 am I was feeling about a four, and it felt quite good actually. By midday my tummy rumbled, not a big growl, but a definite groan. And by 1.30 when I sat down to eat lunch I was genuinely hungry, my tummy felt empty and I was really looking forward to eating. I didn't go below three, but it felt great and my lunch tasted all the better for it.

So I've decided to learn to love my hunger a little, eating as much as possible in response to hunger, rather than being dictated to and bullied by my appetite. Now I just need to find a polite way to say “no thank you” out loud ... anyone got any good tips?

I did two really stupid things this week...

Firstly, I exploded two tins of condensed milk as I was trying to make toffee. This had nothing to do with the method and everything to do with me leaving the pot to boil dry.

The hot toffee covered the ceiling, the walls and the floor as well as the cooker itself. The force of the explosion was immense smashing a huge hole in the cookerʼs overhead filter system. The whole house was full of smoke and the kitchen was moments from catching alight (for some reason the three smoke alarms we have in our house didnʼt work).

It took me about an hour and a half to clear up the mess and three days or so to get rid of the smoke smell. It was a really, really stupid thing to do and the consequences could have been much worse. When you do something stupid like this itʼs really easy to ask yourself “What the f*** did I do that for?” (and indeed that question did cross my mind). However, I immediately put it out of my mind and replaced it with the question: “What did I learn from that?”

Why?

Well question one is limiting and stuck in the past. It apportions blame which in turn can diminish your self-respect. Interestingly, it also makes you want to defend your actions (as if there is any defence for leaving a pot to boil dry).

The second question, however, is open-minded and future-oriented. It makes the assumption that there is something to learn and trusts that you are capable of learning it. And finally you donʼt need to defend yourself, it gives you license to do something different next time.

So what did I learn from the exploding toffee incident. Well, I learned that you shouldnʼt leave a pot to boil and then get caught up doing something else. I learned that our smoke alarms need replacing. And I also learned that good pots and pans are well worth the money (unbelievably it survived good as new).

The other (marginally less stupid) thing I did this week was run the Windsor half marathon with very little training. This is clearly against the advice of anyone sane. What did I learn from this? You can do anything if you put your mind to it! Because while my physical fitness may not have been the best, my mental fitness was good: I relaxed, found my rhythm, listened to the new Hypnogogo and just kept telling myself I could do it.

Next year I might even do some training!

Iʼve been thinking a lot about abundance in the past week as Iʼve been working on the mediations and visualisations for Kateʼs and my Harvest Abundance workshop on the 9th October.

My start point for creating abundance is ʻwhat do you already have (or do) that makes you happy?ʼ Because surely you only want in abundance that which makes you feel really good. So in the name of research I made a list of all the things that have made me smile (or even laugh) in the last week. Interestingly they fell into four main categories:

• Doing something that gave me a sense of pride in my achievement
• Things that made me feel loved or loving
• Things that gave me a warm, fuzzy feeling - that is: those things that are outside of my control but make me feel good anyway
• Slapstick, well actually schadenfraude if Iʼm totally honest!

This led me to the conclusion that either I have an extraordinarily limited range of emotions or that perhaps we donʼt need anywhere near as much as we think we do to make us happy.

So my challenge to you this week is to make a list of all the things that make you smile, be grateful for everything on that list and let me know if you can add some more categories of human emotion to my rather stunted list.

Anyway here are the 21 things that made me smile, in no particular order:

• Seeing old friends (love)
• Recording a first draft of the new Hypnogogo (achievement)
• My husband falling asleep in the pub (slapstick)
• A compliment I received when wearing a new dress (achievement)
• Taking the first positive steps to get a new idea up and running (achievement)
• Meeting a new baby whose Mum I helped with Hypnofertility (love)
• Running nearly 12k on my first run in 8 weeks (achievement)
• The passion and inspiration of the team who put together international PARKing day at Waterloo on Friday (warm & fuzzy)
• South Pacific on Friday night ... show tunes and a catch up with a fabulous friend (love)
• Watching my son kick ass at his first ever Tae Kwon Do lesson (love)
• The Inbetweeners (slapstick)
• Yoga with Cath (achievement)
• Picking vegetables and then cooking them for lunch (achievement)
• Being reminded of how much in love with my husband I am (love)
• September Sunshine (warm & fuzzy)
• Knowing itʼs less than 100 days to go til Christmas (warm & fuzzy)
• Snoozing with my children on the sofa (love)
• Booking a holiday (love)
• Too much coffee and two successful meetings on Wednesday (achievement)
• Knowing too much detail about people I hardly know on Facebook (slapstick)
• Sitting on the Southbank feeling very lucky to live in a city as magical as London (warm & fuzzy) with the amazing RSD (love)

Thank you for my rich, beautiful, loving and very funny life!

I packed my kids off to school yesterday for the first day of their new school year. They were excited to be back, really looking forward to seeing their friends and really looking forward to simply getting on with their job of learning.

Because while holidays are simply fantastic (and you donʼt need me to explain why), there is something about the purpose of work that I think we all need in life.

Work isnʼt always about money, as often it doesnʼt matter if you get paid for it - but itʼs certainly about reward. So how might we define reward? Well:

1. Itʼs about that feeling of personal satisfaction you get when youʼve done something well

2. Itʼs about learning something new and different each and every day, challenging and stretching our minds

3. Itʼs about interaction with others, an exchange of goods and/or ideas which means that the work you do has value to others, and thus you feel valued

4. Itʼs about that wonderful feeling that psychologists call ʻflowʼ where we lose track of time because we are so engrossed in the task at hand

5. Itʼs about having a structure to your day and life, which interestingly allows us to appreciate our holidays more

As well as seeing the kids off to their work, I am back to work too. And Iʼm really excited about it! Of course, as it always does when Iʼm at work, my mind turns to reducing weight (well I see many of my clients for this!). Now, itʼs absolutely critical that when you are trying to lose weight that you get a sense of reward from the process as well as the end result.

This is particularly important for a couple of reasons:

• If you are overweight you will probably have been rewarded, by your mother and by yourself, with fattening food throughout your life. Breaking this pattern of ʻfood as a rewardʼ is critical to success

• The end reward of being slimmer comes slowly and virtually unnoticeably; itʼs most likely youʼll only ever be a pound slimmer than you were last week. So often in itself itʼs not reward enough to keep you motivated week in and week out.

So, taking the analogy of work above, how might we apply these five aspects of reward and integrate them into any weight reduction programme you are on.

1. Harness the feelings of personal satisfaction you get from sticking with your individual weight reduction programme. At the end of each day take a few moments to reflect on how well you did and how much you enjoyed eating good quality food thatʼs conducive to your weight reduction, in the right quantities. Notice how good you felt after any exercise you did. Go ahead feel a little smug! (And if youʼre that kind of person a sticker chart can work wonders to cement this sense of reward).

2. Challenge and stretch your mind by trying out new recipes with a variety of flavours. One of the most common reasons people give for not sticking to their weight reduction programme is boredom. We live in a food-obsessed society - use it to your advantage by making your diet as varied and tasty as possible. When the food is really delicious and we thoroughly enjoy it we need less of it to satisfy us.

3. Interaction with others is always critical to us as human beings, we are truly social creatures. So find other people (a friend perhaps or even an online support group) to help and support you - share recipes, exercise tips and ideas to stay motivated.

4. Allow yourself to become engrossed in your new way of eating, feeling that wonderful sense of calm because you know each and every food choice is easy to make in a way that supports your ultimate goal.

5. And finally, in the same way that work helps us appreciate our holidays, eating less will mean you enjoy your food more. Yes really! Because if we eat when we are actually hungry (as opposed to just eating all the time) we can totally tune in to the wonderful flavours and textures of our food.

Reward is all about how we feel and using rewards strategically will help us achieve our long term purpose by helping us maintain our motivation and interest in the short term. As it is with work, so it is with weight reduction and many other things besides.

While away on holiday this year I visited the Lost Gardens of Heligan. These beautiful gardens are the result of the passion and commitment of the team involved. Reading the literature, one becomes acutely aware of how much dedication it took to revive and restore Heligan - not just in terms of the gardens themselves but in the relentless amount of fundraising, marketing and administration that were also required to complete and run the project.

It struck me that much of our lives are like that. Certainly in my business as a hypnotherapist, about half the work I do is marketing. I love the hypnotherapy and I really love the profound results it brings for my clients; the marketing I find it significantly harder to be passionate about.

Raising children is the same. We love our children of course and there are many many times when they are huge fun, charming, clever and bring great joy to our lives. But there are plenty of times in life when motherhood feels like an endless and exhausting round of washing, cooking and nagging to get the most simple tasks done (really, how many times do I have to remind them to do their teeth and why do they act as if itʼs a total surprise that they have to do them every day).

I think Iʼd struggle to find anyone who manages to find joy in everything they do. And yet I think itʼs important to at least try to find it.

Since my trip to Heligan Iʼve spent quite a lot of time thinking about the teamʼs ability to stay on track and get done all the jobs they didnʼt enjoy as well as the ones they did. I think one of the key things was their vision - luckily, this is something thatʼs actually quite easy for us to bring into our own lives.

Talking about your ʻvisionʼ can sound hilariously pretentious - of course, in reality it is simply a clear picture of what we really want. Knowing what we want from our lives gives us a context for all the menial and the mundane things we have to do; and it makes them easier to enjoy in a weird way.

Itʼs easier to stay on a diet if you have a vision of yourself in a wedding dress to look forward to, for example. Itʼs easier to do the parts of your job you donʼt like so much when you put them in the context of earning money, having a holiday, treating yourself. Itʼs even easier for me to scale the washing mountain knowing that clean children is part of my vision of motherhood!

So, what is it you really want? What is your vision? Itʼs worthwhile tuning in to yourself every now and again and listening to the answers. Holidays can give us the space, the time and the environment to do that.

When I was studying to be a hypnotherapist one of my teachers described the key to good mental health as ʻflexibilityʼ. And over time Iʼve come to see quite how true this statement is.

On one hand itʼs important to keep an eye on our goals, our dreams and fulfilling our lifeʼs purpose yet we also have to live in the moment and deal with things as they come up. Itʼs certainly true that many of these ʻcurve ballsʼ will challenge and/or delay the fulfillment of our goals, dreams and desires.

For me this week was a classic example. I had a to-do list almost as large as the Greek debt crisis and a unmoveable deadline - school holidays start 3.30 on Friday. The curve ball: my son was ill with croup, so a sleepless night on Monday was followed by having a very, very poorly little boy at home for the next couple of days. All of my clients had to be rescheduled and my to-do list is still to do.

It occurred to me that this sort of thing happens all the time. Life really does have a tendency to get in the way of our plans and while itʼs annoying, it is just life and has to be dealt with. In this context my teacher was absolutely right about being flexible, because if you arenʼt flexible when life throws these curve balls at you it leads to much disappointment and unhappiness.

And flexibility isnʼt just important when dealing with curve balls. Itʼs also pretty critical when you get an opportunity. If you are rigidly following a plan you wonʼt be able to take chances when they turn up in your life. Now thatʼs not to say a plan isnʼt useful, itʼs just that sometimes more exciting things come up and itʼs good to take full advantage of them. And these kind of exciting opportunities can happen in both a work and personal context; therefore itʼs interesting to consider that part of any plan could include a way to deal with opportunities when they arise.

Of course itʼs all about priorities. You donʼt want to take so many detours on lifeʼs highway that you never get to your destination; unless perhaps your life story is about just enjoying the scenery. What are your priorities? Only you can tell. All Iʼd say is that itʼs good to check in with yourself every now and again to confirm your priorities and remind yourself of whatʼs really important to you. You might regularly ask yourself ʻhow truly important is this to me?ʼ so that you donʼt get sucked in to spending time and energy doing things youʼd rather not. And then again sometimes we need a curve ball to remind us of what our true priorities are.

For me this week it was all about the needs of a four year old boy: cuddles, stories, TV, homemade biscuits. The to-do list is going to have to wait until September.

Itʼs oh so easy to start things and itʼs so much harder to finish them off*.

Imagine how life might be if it wasnʼt like that. Weʼd all have fantastic pension pots, weʼd never need to start another diet, we wouldnʼt stay in damaging relationships or jobs that are well past their use by date. Wow! Life would be great, wouldnʼt it?

But why is it so hard to stick to things even when we know they are what we really want, or at least in our best interests? I think part of it is because we get bored waiting. Our society is so geared up for instant results and immediate gratification that weʼve lost the art of waiting for something. Sadly some things just arenʼt that instantaneous no matter how much we are led to believe that they are.

Losing weight is a classic example of this. As a hypnotherapist itʼs one of the things I see clients about most frequently. Itʼs also one of the things that, no matter what the media tell us, doesnʼt happen overnight. Itʼs a slow process because when you do it healthily you wonʼt lose more than a pound a week and sometimes itʼs even slower than that.

Now a pound a week is simply imperceptible at the time; it will only be when you look back after three or four months that youʼll notice any difference at all. And when youʼre living it three months can seem like an eternity. Without doubt hypnotherapy helps and itʼs most effective when the client puts the effort in too.

Of course one of the hardest things is sticking to something when you donʼt see any reward; a bit like putting money into your pension when the value of your fund is plummeting. So here are five suggestions from my clients that have helped them stay motivated (normally at around week six of their treatment when their weight reduction stalls) and happy to play the waiting game on the way to achieving their weight loss goals.

1. Reward yourself for effort as well as achievement - deep down you know that the effort you are putting in will pay off. So give yourself little treats for when you put the effort in, even if you donʼt shift any pounds that week. Make sure any treats are not even remotely food related but totally linked to feeling good about yourself - magazines, long baths, walk in the park, cinema, fish pedicure.
2. Use distraction to side step temptation - EFT will help with cravings, so does drinking herbal tea as a substitute for sweets (try Pukka detox or vanilla chai as theyʼre lush), you might also try the old classic of going for a walk and use the time to refocus on your goal or listen to your favourite CD and have a dance instead.
3. Keep a photo of a slim ʻyouʼ on the fridge - cut out a photo of your ideal body from a magazine and add a picture of your face to it. Use the image to remind you of your ʻideal weight goalʼ whenever you think about food (donʼt just call her names every time you open the fridge door as itʼs much less effective!).
4. Reward yourself for mini-achievements along the way - try something like putting £20 away for every single pound you get rid of, watch the pile of money growing in a highly visible place, you could even use coins to exaggerate the visual impact. Then when you do reach your goal spend it on clothes in your new size or just a pair of outlandishly expensive jeans. This idea also works if someone else gives you the money!
5. Have something real and tangible to look forward to thatʼs tied to a specific and realistic date - one client wants a size 12 dress for her wedding anniversary and has booked the date in her diary to go shopping for it. Success for her is not optional.

Now, Iʼd love to know what you do help yourself play the waiting game, not just for weight loss but for anything you have to wait for. How do you keep on track to finish those things you start? Please do email me any suggestions!

(*Well, everything except for a delicious chilled rioja rose that is.)

I have a very dear friend who has mastered the art of complaining beautifully. She knows the outcome she wants to achieve from her complaints before she starts and explains her case articulately and succinctly. And in the last year alone has been compensated with at least two weekends away, dinner for two and numerous bottles of champagne!

Ideally she would prefer never to be put in a situation where she has to complain. However she has a tremendous sense of self-worth and feels that she deserves the best from her life.

This feeling is incredibly precious, because when we believe we deserve the best we equally feel a responsibility to be our best self.

So, what is our best self and how can we live it every day? Well, everyone has their own way to define and describe their best self and their own unique and special way to live their best life. At least they would if they thought about it; yet we donʼt very often take the time to reflect on what that really means.

While this is not a blue print for improving your self-worth, here are three thoughts that might inspire you to think about what makes you your best self:

1. Be true to yourself - live with integrity and honesty, understand your own beliefs and values.
2. Have high expectations of your life and what you can achieve - not just materialistically but in your own personal self-development journey and in what you are able to give back to your community.
3. Enjoy your life, have fun, laugh, notice the small things that make every day magical - just try not take yourself too seriously!

Madame Complainer would probably add in here something about knowing what you really want and asking for it, and how could I argue with that?

Image: Julie Begon

I havenʼt written this blog for a couple of weeks, what with half term and then being unbelievably busy for the two weeks after, because of half term. I just havenʼt had time.

Well, I could have made time, but only at the expense of something else. And those other things were simply a priority.

Now, Iʼm certainly not an expert in time management (Iʼll leave that to the amazing Allison Mitchell, check out her book 'Time Management for Manic Mums' if you need any help on that front), though I do spend quite a lot of my time with clients talking about priorities.

Itʼs really important when you want to change your behaviour that you make it a top priority.

For example, thereʼs little point in trying to lose weight if youʼre really busy at work or if you know that youʼve got a really busy social life planned. You just wonʼt have the time and mental energy to dedicate to yourself to allow your new way of eating (your new behaviour) to properly cement itself in your life. And the same applies to any behavioural change we want to make - smoking, eating, exercising, spending more time with the family - you have to really want to make the change or you wonʼt make it.

Think of it like a running marathon, now if youʼve got any sense you wouldnʼt anticipate running a marathon without doing any training. Well, making changes to your behaviour requires a similar amount of ʻtrainingʼ and you have to make your goal a top priority because if you donʼt itʼs all too easy to get side-tracked. If running the marathon is a top priority, youʼll get up and run rain or shine; if itʼs not youʼll find the duvetʼs charms impossible to resist.

Only you can decide whether your goal is a top priority or not and whether itʼs the right time in your life to make the changes you need to make to achieve it. And when you have and it is, here are some ways to help you get enough time for your ʻtrainingʼ so youʼve got the best chance of success:

• Work out how much time you think you need on a weekly and daily basis for your ʻtrainingʼ. (For example when losing weight you might need time to plan your meals once a week, to listen to a hypnosis CD every day and keep your food diary after every meal).

• Put this time in your diary and allow a little bit extra (things always take longer than we think they will).

• Consider this time with yourself as precious as ... tea with the Queen, a date with Brad Pitt or a night out with your best friend. Itʼs something youʼd never consider cancelling (yes, you are that important). Look forward to it with as much excitement (yes, you really are that special).

• This time for you is a number one priority; much more important than doing the washing up.

• Something else may need to be sacrificed to make the time, after all there is a finite number of hours in the week. So think about what you could happily and easily sacrifice to make the time you need for yourself. It should be easy to find things that are less of a priority than achieving your goal (Eastenders, facebook, ironing the tea towels)?

And, itʼs amazing how easy it is to make changes to our lives and our behaviour when we make ourselves and our goals a top priority and then give ourselves the time we need to do what we need to do to achieve them.

I saw a car today with a number plate saying B FAB and I think it might be the best number plate Iʼve ever seen. (To be honest Iʼve never really found the whole number plate thing very interesting and often struggle to see the hidden words even when my husband POINTS - THEM - OUT - VERY - CLEARLY).

In this case though, I love the idea that youʼd get into your car every day and be reminded to BE FAB. These little reminders of positivity are really useful to help build our confidence and remind us that we can be fab or clever or happy or loved or important or whatever we want to be whenever we want to be.

I often encourage my clients to use affirmations in their healing work. They literally write out positive statements and pin them up around their homes, to remind them of the things they are truly great at. This is particularly important if you donʼt have supportive significant others to remind you that youʼre great. You can also use affirmations like this when youʼre walking or commuting, like a waking mantra of good will towards yourself. And those who do use affirmations frequently and regularly report back that it makes them feel very good indeed.

Another really useful tool is intention setting. If youʼve never done this before itʼs easy to do and can have quite profound effects. At that time just between sleeping and waking when you start to become aware of the sounds of morning simply state your intent for that day, out loud if you can. Perhaps something like, “my intention for the day is...

• creativity, or
• love, or
• harmony, or
• financial success, or
• pleasure, or
• willpower, or perhaps
• to have confidence in all that I do”

Iʼm not sure how it works, but more often than not youʼll find that when you look back at your day after youʼve set an intention youʼll notice that things have happened to help you have the kind of day you set out to have. Strange but true. Please do try it and let me know how you get on.

In the meantime I canʼt wait for tomorrow so I can set the intention to BE FAB! Oh how I wish that car was mine.

It’s that time of year. The sun is shining (well, almost), the holiday season is fast approaching and everyone seems focused on losing weight before they have to bare the bikini body. Certainly this seems to be the case with my clients.

None of them have much weight to lose, but for some reason that last 10 pounds seems to be almost impossible to shift. Not just my clients either I’m guessing; there are more than 10 books listed on Amazon entitled ‘How to lose that last 10lb’ or words to that effect.

Part of the reason this last 10 pounds is so hard to shift is that we start to lose our willpower at this point. On one hand the end is in sight, but on the other it’s easy to slip back into over-eating. As the willpower dwindles our inner voice gets louder and asks those questions we wish it wouldn’t: “Will 10 pounds actually make that much difference?” “Will it be worth the work?” “Surely one little bite of chocolate/cake/crisps/name your weakness won’t make any difference?”

Now, while I can’t answer the first of those two questions on behalf of my clients, the answer to the third is yes!

A recipe for weight loss

So how do you find the willpower to keep going with your diet so that it’s easy to do? One way to think about it is to breakdown the idea of willpower into its constituent parts. Think of willpower as being a delicious cake, and what you want to find is your own unique recipe to make the cake.

Each willpower cake contains at very least the following ingredients:

• Motivation: the desire to achieve your goal
• Determination: the drive and resolution to succeed
• Confidence: the belief in yourself that it’s possible
• Tenacity: the ability to get up again when you meet an obstacle
• Focus: keeping your goal a number one priority
• Mental Toughness: staying true to yourself

At different times during the weight loss journey you might want a different cake so you’ll need more or less of these ingredients. For example at the just-10-pounds-to-go stage I suspect you need more than a sprinkle of ‘tenacity’, a large spoonful of ‘focus’, and quite possibly a garnish of ‘confidence’.

Now we’ve all experienced times in our lives when we’ve had all these things (perhaps not connected with weight loss, perhaps not at the same time), but we know it’s possible for us to experience them. The great thing is you can use the positivity of those past experiences to help you whenever you feel your willpower going wobbly:

1. Just think about which ingredients would be most useful to you now
2. Tune into a time when you had them in the past, (you may need to think about them one experience at a time)
3. Model your own behaviour from then; that is, what did you do or feel then that would be useful for you now, and then copy it. Easy!

Won't power vs willpower

As for won’t power, well that’s all the stuff that stops us doing what we want to do and being who we want to be. Won’t power is all those pernicious and persistent negative thoughts that try to stop us staying on track and reaching our goals. And while we might believe these negative thoughts about ourselves, they aren’t actually true and are hugely damaging. Some I’ve heard this week are:

• I’m a pig (what, literally?)
• I’ll never achieve my goal (are you sure?)
• I can’t resist ... chocolate, my children’s left overs, cold fish fingers, sweets, cheese, bread, salami, actually any kind of anti pasta, dessert, crisps, nuts, popcorn, biscuits (you can’t resist ever?)
• I’m sure I’ll be dieting forever (do you want to be?)
• I can’t do it (can’t or choose not to?)
• I’m not normal (er, yes you are!)

Keep a note of these thoughts and read them back to yourself in a sane moment and ask yourself if it’s really true. It’s also really useful to counter these negative thoughts with positive affirmations and if you do EFT simply tap them away.

Or of course see a hypnotherapist for help!