I have been visited today but a very nice woman who contacted me about my efforts to lose weight - actually, I have to reveal that I have been contacted by loads of people offering to help. One man who is, apparently famous but I haven’t heard of him, sent me reels of information about losing weight through hypnotherapy. ‘Lily Allen has used hypnotherapy to become a svelte size 8′ he wrote. ‘As has Sophie Dahl and Gerri Halliwell.’ Oh my god! I wanted to write back and tell him that, as far as I was concerned, Lily Allen now looks horribly thin and that, at the age of 40  and having had four kids, I did not expect or wish to be a size 8. What planet ae people living on?

But the woman who came to help me lose weight told me she would help me totally re-program my mind. She pointed out, quite rightly, that it is not necessarily losing weight that is the problem but keeping it off. She sat here in my front room and had a cup of tea and we talked for hours about why I like cheese (because it is SO DELICIOUS! I said) and risotto (DITTO) and wine (do I have to continue?) and then she told me that I am essentially addicted to food.

I told her that I knew this already. I am the person at the dinner party who has to have seconds and thirds because the food is so delicious. If I see a cake I want to eat it and, hey, I don’t even like cake that much. The lady told me I needed to recognise my addiction and think about it and then ‘own my choices.’ So, here’s the theory. Let’s say I am in the kitchen and I have cooked some cabbage-y vegetable-ysoup and let’s say I eat a big bowl of it. That big bowl is, without a shadow of a doubt, enough for me. I am full. I have taken in as much as I need, nutrition-wise, so anything else I consume is actually excessive.

But I don’t care. I have made some delicious soup and I want to eat more of it and so I usually just ladle myself out another bowl and spoon it down. What I apparently should do is stop after the first bowl and then consider why I want the second one. I should ask myself questions; Am I still hungry? Why do I want a second bowl of soup? How will eating that second bowl make me feel? (Guilty, lethargic, over-full, angry with myself etc etc). Once I have done this - thought about it and considered my options - I should make my choice. If I decide to go ahead and eat the second bowl then so be it. I should make that decision and live with the consequences of how I feel afterwards. This is apparently called ‘owning’ your decisions.

Now, two things happened to me while I was listening to all this. One was that I did log it in my befuddled brain and understand the sense behind it, but the second was that I thought FOR GOD’S SAKE. IT’S ONLY SOUP! I mean, how can you get fat on soup? So this is how my brain works. It says, ‘oh go on. Have another bowl if not three or why not have four because IT IS SOUP and if you can’t slurp down vast quantities of cabbage broth then what the hell can you do?’

So, we abandoned the soup analogy, and moved on to a situation whereby I might be lured in to temptation by a chocolate eclair. Let’s say I am walking through my local town to the bank or whatever and I just happen the bakery. In the window is a yummy eclair. I look in the window and think, ‘ooh, look at that yummy eclair. I think I’ll go in and buy it and eat it.’ This reaction is apparently due to that ugly food addiction again. Have I gone in to town to buy an eclair? No. If I had walked down a different street would I have made a detour and deliberately walked past the bakery just to go and buy the eclair? No. So, why am I now about to buy it and eat it? Instead I should, according to the lady, stop and think about that. What nutritional value does the eclair have? None. It is not honouring myself, my health or my body or my self esteem to go and eat this eclair. I need to recognise this. However, once I have recognised this and yet still buy the eclair then I have made my decision and that is that.

Yes, I said. But if I ate the eclair, even if I had decided to eat the eclair, I would then go away and feel guilty and beat myself up about it. The lady said that I would then, hopefully, change my decision the next time I walk past the bakery.

In the end, I told the lady I thought I had grasped the idea. In fact, I truly thought I had. I walked her out through the kitchen where a big half-eaten Black Forest gateau was waving at us. The lady stopped and looked in horror. ‘It was my son’s birthday, ‘I explained to her. ‘It’s his favourite cake.’ The lady looked at me reproachfully. ‘I haven’t eaten any of it,’ I said hurriedly.

She then left and I promised her I would think long and hard about what she had said. Then I went in to the kitchen and stared at the gateau.

‘I don’t need to eat you,’ I said to it. ‘I recognise that I want to eat you but I also know I don’t need to because, if I do eat you, I will hate myself all afternoon and I don’t want to hate myself. I want to feel good about myself so I choose..I choose..’

I cut myself a huge slice. I then sat down and ate it with a cup of tea. It was delicious. The best decision I’d made all day in fact…

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