Visit the Food Philosophy website

I haven't changed the premise of the original course or deviated at all from my beliefs, but I have updated the programme to include the very latest research - and as you'll know if you've ever had any contact with me, I'm still 10 steps ahead of the 'experts' in eating disorders, disordered eating and weight loss.

So the latest research means all the medical and scientific research available boiled up together and processed in my funny head to end up with a complete picture and that IS most definitely THE latest research - as I am proving to be the most advanced thinker there is on the subject.

That's enough of blowing my own trumpet. I'm not bragging, though, just pointing out that I CAN help you if you struggle with controlling food and worry about your weight. I do really appreciate the gift that I have. I'm going to invite some of my clients and FP fans write blog posts and then they can tell you exactly what I mean by my 'advanced thinking' and my gift and how it's helped them.

Popular author Keris Stainton and Food Philosophy supporter will be first to add her opinions to this blog and I was touched by her offer. You probably know her already but if you don't, she's a great writer and prolific blogger with a very entertaining turn of phrase. You can find her website here

So keep your eyes peeled and look out for Keris' post.

Comments

The death of newspapers, however, certainly doesn't mean the death of news! What's happening is a Godsend for all of us because the Internet means that the public is now taking control and choosing what it wants to read, listen to, talk about. This is fantastic because giant corporations that used to control the media will no longer have the power that they had and this will give us all a chance to free ourselves from being directed and coerced into thinking the way they want us to think.

What will this mean for overeaters? It will mean more chance of being free, simply because the advice and information available through the traditional media is faulty and designed to create a consumer and not to cure you of your problem. The Internet will allow people who have become enlightened to what is happening to them to talk together and to share their own stories and this will create a change in the way the whole problem is viewed.

The monopoly of the giant diet and fitness corporations (the most successful failed businesses in the world!) is going to come to an end.

This might be a long way off yet - as the TV is still monopolised by the diet message and as long as this is happening people will continue to be duped into thinking that dieting or healthy eating in order to lose weight (trying to cure a physical side effect of a psychological problem) is the only answer - when it's really the cause. Also, GPs, nutritionists, 'health experts' and the Government are still perpetuating the problem through their ignorance (and sometimes through their greed).

People will continue to go round and round in circles, attempting food restriction and overeating, attempting food restriction and overeating.

So it will take time before the truth, where overeating is concerned, will become the normal way of thinking.

But the structure that holds the diet message up there is weakening. This is the beginning of the end for the diet industry and the start of a whole new way of thinking.

That's something to celebrate. Surely?

Comments

Never shy of controversy (she once threatened to sue cuddly, reassuring WeightWatchers because "its philosophy is based on a lie"), Orbach goes on to debunk the so-called obesity epidemic, pointing out that a 1995 World Health Organisation revision of BMI (Body Mass Index) guidelines designated Brad Pitt as overweight and George Clooney as obese.

The usual suspects, in other words. But when bodies are the location of so much distress, dissatisfaction and illness, doesn't it make sense to locate the problem in the physical world, with eating patterns that disturb our natural appetites and visual imagery that reminds us of our own inadequacy streaming into the cerebral cortex? Not least because, instead of blaming ourselves (our messed-up childhoods, our lack of discipline), we can place responsibility where it belongs: with industries whose profit margins depend on our unhappiness.

Read the full article here

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

Comments

NOF

The NOF describes itself as 'an independent charity, working to improve the prevention and management of obesity'. But if you look through the pages of their website you'll see that they're not really an independent charity at all because they're sponsored by the branches of the diet industry, including Canderel, and drug companies that produce weight loss drugs, such as Abbot Laboratories who produced questionable diet drug Reductil.

Their website states their aims and objectives as:

To create recognition of obesity as a serious medical problem
To provide education and training on obesity management
To produce guidelines for obesity management within primary care
To provide a network for health professionals and an obesity management support and information resource
To convince Government and healthcare works to give obesity a high priority nationally and locally.
To raise the profile of obesity via medical and lay media channels
To highlight the health inequalities of obesity
To promote quality clinical care via an annual "Best Practice Awards"

In a nutshell their aims and objectives are all designed to keep the status quo and have overeaters trying to lose weight for the sake of their health using advice, products and services that have and always will have a 95 to 98 per cent failure rate. Advice, products and services that CAUSE the problem in the first place.

Nothing they report has any absolute scientific or medical back up. All of the information and advice that they make public and state as medical and scientific fact has a great deal of evidential material in the form of clinical trials and studies that show that their point of view is UNTRUE and based in propaganda, myth and misinformation.

They are, in my opinion, a marketing device for the slimming industry (the most successful failed business in the world) and not a charity devoted to helping the obese.

Anne Diamond

Anne is a TV presenter/UK celebrity and compulsive overeater who has had what she sees as weight problems for many years. After failing at dieting (surprise, surprise) she had bariatric surgery (which failed originally and which she admits has a great many unpleasant physical and psychological side effects). This surgery didn't, of course, help her with her compulsive overeating. She has allowed herself to be persuaded and used by the diet industry because her problems meant she was open and in receiver setting and in desperate need of a solution. She has absorbed 'knowledge' directed at her from questionable sources and is now a passionate diet industry/diet surgery industry/diet drugs industry spokeswoman. I believe she has accepted the position of patron of the National Obesity Forum thinking that it is a charity that helps people. I think she cares very much about helping people because she knows what they feel!

She is misinformed and innocent.

I would like to offer her the other side of the story.

I've written to her:

Dear Anne Diamond,

I'm hoping that you will take just a minute to read what I have to say. I have seen that you are the Patron for the National Obesity Forum. I can see from your appearances on TV and from what you say in the press that you fully believe that the message you passionately preach is the truth. I have been researching the subject intensively for a great many years and I can see that there are a lot of gaps in your knowledge of the subject of compulsive overeating and weight loss. Gaps that I can help you to fill, with a very short exchange of emails.

I ask nothing of you other than that you be willing to learn more than you know and I offer you knowledge that comes from sound scientific research and will provide links to this research so that you can see for yourself that the message you are making public is harming rather than helping the people I know you care so very much about.

The National Obesity Forum is sponsored by companies that make money out of obesity and they benefit from keeping people in the trap and from the repeat custom from drugs and products and services that not only don't work, but which directly cause the problem in the first place. My motivation for writing to you is ONLY to help you to see the truth and when your eyes have been opened, I do hope you won't allow yourself to remain associated with such a harmful company that disguises itself as a charity.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

I'll let you know if she replies. Watch this space.

Sx

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

Comments

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

This morning's health news is interesting for Food Philosophers. There are reports of a study that shows that women respond to hunger differently than men and that they are less able to suppress it. Another study mentioned in the report says that obese women have a "much stronger reaction than normal-weight women in brain regions related to reward".

You can find the report here

Anyone who has studied a Food Philosophy course will understand the reasons why this study has come up with this conclusion and most of us could have predicted this outcome.

The report says:

"Faced with their favorite foods, women are less able than men to suppress their hunger, a discovery that may help explain the higher obesity rate for females, a new study suggests.

Researchers trying to understand the brain's mechanisms for controlling food intake were surprised at the difference between the sexes in brain response."

That researchers are surprised at this difference just shows you how far ahead we are in our knowledge of the psychology of compulsive overeating and I am proud to be part of a growing community that actually has a deeper understanding of the problem than the scientists and medical experts studying it!

"There is something going on in the female," Wang said in a telephone interview, "the signal is so much different."

There most certainly is! And it most certainly is NOT because of...

"different nutritional needs for men and women"

...and neither is it because it's...

"linked to gender differences in estrogen and related hormones,"

These suggestions for causes, as Nora Volkov (co-author of the study and my absolute all- time heroine) is quick to point out, are speculative - which means that they don't know the reasons and the interviewing journalist has pressured her into guessing at an explanation, which has then been published, leading nicely to the suggestion of a typical media health report style possible solution to obesity in women:

"...training in reducing food desires or in reacting to food cues could be effective treatments to combat obesity."

I should be used to it by now but I still find myself shaking my head in wonder at the utter obviousness of it all and how the truth is not just so blatantly ignored by the media but how the public is so clearly steered as far away from the truth as you can get!

What is the most obvious difference between men and women where food, overeating and obesity are concerned? Would you say it is hormonal? Would you say it is because men and women have different nutritional needs? Would you say it's because our society has more food available and that we are the only species that is hard wired to eat ourselves to death in the face of food abundance?

OR would you say it is more likely because women are unrelentingly exposed to extreme pressure to change their body shape by dieting and restricting food and men aren't?

Over-exposure to pressure to feel dissatisfied with our body shape and resultant food restriction is the very first track that scientists should be going down because it is the most obvious. But they won't go down this track. They rarely do.

I wonder why?

Duh.

The Food Philosophy has gone down this track and that's why we understand more than the 'experts'.

Sx

Comments

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

I used to find Claire Sweeney likeable. Not so after watching My Big Fat Diet tonight at 9pm on ITV. I could only watch some of it as I found myself getting very upset. Not only was the programme really obvious propaganda for the diet industry and a disgusting display of hatred against anyone who is anything but the 'ideal' shape and size but the part I saw was choc full of misinformation and hearsay told as if it is scientific and medical fact.

Anyone with a body shape above a size zero would have been coerced by this programme into feeling at best dissatisfied with their shape and at worst totally inadequate, unattractive, unhealthy and, most cruelly, ashamed of themselves.

This, of course, was the object of the programme because what do most people do when they feel these feelings? They go on a diet and pay out money to the diet industry in an attempt to feel better about themselves by following the 'advice' on the programme.

Because of the 98 per cent failure rate of dieting, the next stage after that is a broken diet and a binge.

This is a story that repeats itself time and time again and every woman who has ever felt the kind of dissatisfaction and shame about her body that is pressed on to her by this programme will have experienced it over and over. I can promise each and everyone of you affected by this programme that this time will be no different.

You're being led by the nose into a trap that gets more and more difficult to escape from - and this time it's Claire Sweeney who has hold of the rope and she's pulling you as hard as she can. Maybe she's not aware what she's doing and just wants some company in the trap. Maybe she is very aware.

Who knows.

Who cares - I do.

Comments

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

Apologies to all FP members and regular readers for the lack of Christmas wishes. I've been ill with a flu infection and absent from all computer duties. I've just about managed to get up and about for Christmas but, apart from a short car journey to a friend's house on Christmas Eve, I have yet to venture out of the house. One thing is for sure, I'll never EVER say I've got flu again when all I've got is a mere cold! Aside from the painfully aching bones, the high temperature and shivering (and being so weak that our hamster could have beaten me at arm wrestling) I couldn't breathe while I was sitting up and I couldn't breath while I was lying down and I think it's going to be months before my lungs recover!

The biggest apology is to those who needed help over Christmas as I've been unable to assist. I did get to some of you on Christmas Eve but I don't think I was working at full efficiency so if you've been feeling neglected, I am sorry and I'll try to make up for it during the first working weeks of the New Year.

Thanks to everyone who sent me get well wishes.

I do hope you all had a very merry Christmas and I sincerely wish you all the best for the New Year - let's hope this is a great one for all of us.

Cheers.

Sue

Comments

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

The Food Philosophy members only forum is about to come alive again after a bit of a sleep. There have been some regular posters but I have to admit that I've let it slide a bit while working hard on version 3 of the course, which is all done by email.

The good news is that many of the old friendly and supportive people who once made the FP forum the friendliest place on the net are still around and they can't wait for things to get back to normal.

For anyone considering joining The Food Philosophy - you'll be joining a real community.

Sx

Comments

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

The conversation about VLCD s continues as I answer another message posted by a reader. WannabeTVChef has his own fabulous foodie blog which I read regularly and highly recommend - find it here

Dear Sue,
I applaud your well reasoned arguments.
As you say a very high rate of diets don’t work on their own.
Only a combination of exercise and perhaps a more thoughtful plan of what you are going to eat will make a difference.

Hi WannabeTVChef
Thanks very much for your contribution to this blog. I try to argue as reasonably as I can! You appear to have a half enlightened view, which is very good for the times we live in! I'm not being patronising but so few people understand the problem that it's thoroughly amazing that you hold the opinion that you do.

You say that a very high rate of diets don't work on their own.

The truth is that ALL diets fail for 98 per cent of users - whether they're used on their own or with any other assistance, including exercise.

And also a more thoughtful plan of what you are going to eat sounds like a sensible and rational alternative to a diet, but when you examine this concept carefully and consider the reason that diets fail (the psychological reaction to food restriction) you can begin to see that any plan - even a more thoughtful one - will mean that you will react in the same way as you would with a diet.

Sensible eating, healthy eating, a change in lifestyle, or 'a more thoughtful plan of what you are going to eat' are all just other ways of saying 'diet'.

Any of the millions of people out there who have 'given up' dieting because of the bad press it has got over recent years and turned to sensible or healthy eating can tell you, I'm sure, that they have reacted in the same way to their new way of eating as they did when dieting and many have now become the modern alternative to the yo-yo dieter and joined the rising tide of yo-yo healthy eaters.

That's millions and millions of people who believe the healthy eating message who, armed with enough 'knowledge' from consumer magazines and TV propaganda to gain a degree in nutrition, pledge themselves to the path of fruit, veg and wholegrain only to find themselves unable to stop themselves from stuffing down chips, chocolate and family bags of crisps or any of the other foods they're told are bad. Feeling bad about themselves for their lack of willpower, their eating (and their happiness) frantically spiralling downwards into disordered eating.

Even those who have tried what seems the most intelligent solution ever - don't ban any food but eat 'unhealthy' food in moderation - find themselves headfirst in the fridge in the middle of the night stuffing down the very foods they've been trying to moderate.

This is a natural and normal reaction to food restriction and it is exactly why more and more people are becoming overeaters.

Dieting, healthy eating, sensible eating and even eating in moderation are obviously not the answer - and VLCDs most definitely aren't! - if any of these were viable solutions then the problem would be solved right now.

Wouldn't it?

Comments

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

I've had a message from a lady called Fiona in response to my post in June about very low calorie diets. It was titled: VLCDs - Don't do it! While I respect all subjective views, I feel very strongly about these diets and would like to post my reply so that others can read it and decide for themselves - or even be prompted to do their own research, which would be the most sensible approach to becoming informed on any subject.

Fiona's message

As someone who has lost almost 6 stones on a VLCD and maintained that weight loss with optimum nutrition and a healthy low GL diet, I find your response both ill informed and inappropriate. VLCD diets offer a solution to many obese people who would otherwise die prematurely from illnesses related to their excessicve weight. I have gone on to change my career and now 'sell' this product to the community, although I see it as a service that is needed and not 'a sale'. I am entitled to be paid for it as I have to live, but it will never make me a millionaire and I certainly do not deliver the Program to people irresponsibly or without medical supervision. Infact, I see the Program as being preferable to being obese, having major surgery or taking drugs with horrendous side effects which only aggrivate the problems of the obese (and also line the pockets of the drug companies / private surgreons engaged in the delivery thereof). I have to ask what your motive is and where your allegiances lie - because ill informed criticism of a medically approved obesity treatment that works where others have failed is not a clever pursuit for anyone.

My response

Hi Fiona,

While I'm very happy for you and your perceived success, and I wish you every happiness, I have an understanding of compulsive overeating that is a gift and I spend my life helping people to recover. My motives are always to help make people's lives better and to end the great suffering that comes with eating disorders - including what is called by our society 'obesity' but which would be more correctly labelled compulsive overeating and binge eating disorder. Obesity is just one physical side effect of an eating disorder but because it is physical we call it THE PROBLEM and try to treat it using diets, which have a proven 95 to 98 per cent failure rate - and VLCDs have an even higher failure rate than this and are as close to 100 per cent as you can get! This is official and proven and unless you can give me some real statistics that prove otherwise, I will have to stick to my subjective view of these diets.

You can't successfully treat a psychological disorder by attempting to control one of the physical side effects of that disorder, which is what you have done by using a VLCD to lose weight.

Anyone can lose weight (or manage one physical side effect of their problem) temporarily on a diet (including a VLCD) but long-term or permanent weight loss is a very different matter. It all boils down to how the pay off (weight loss and approval from others) balances out with the daily struggle and suffering against the overwhelming compulsion to overeat. For most mentally healthy people this very difficult and constant exhausting daily battle is not an option.

You say:
As someone who has lost almost 6 stones on a VLCD and maintained that weight loss with optimum nutrition and a healthy low GL diet, I find your response both ill informed and inappropriate.

My response is:
As someone who went on her first diet at the age of 10 and spent a great majority of her years as a compulsive overeater/bulimic and who no longer worries about food and body image and as someone who has now spent around 18 years obsessively researching the subject of dieting and eating disorders and the last three years helping people to overcome the problem as a full-time professional, I uphold my opinion and dispute with authority your claim that my opinion is ill informed and inappropriate.

My opinion about VLCDs is both very well informed and wholly appropriate.

You said:
VLCD diets offer a solution to many obese people who would otherwise die prematurely from illnesses related to their excessicve weight.

My response is:
Diets are PROVEN (outside the media and only in medical and scientific circles not connected to the diet industry) to be more harmful to health than obesity ever can be and researchers are now close to working out that yoyo dieting might be the cause of many of the illnesses now associated with obesity. You only have to do a google search for medical papers and trial results on the subject to find this out for yourself.

You said:
I have gone on to change my career and now 'sell' this product to the community, although I see it as a service that is needed and not 'a sale'.

My response is:
Your career choice is your business and I can understand that if you were to do some real research and find out the full and dangerous truth about VLCDs this might mean major upheaval and change for you as well as some remorse and back pedalling, so I can understand why your immediate reaction might be to rebel against any new and enlightening information that isn't heavily biased against what you currently and comfortably believe to be true.

If I were to find out that my career choice was causing people great suffering, I too would react with resistance at first.

I would then have to go on and look at the truth and face it though.

You said:
I am entitled to be paid for it as I have to live, but it will never make me a millionaire and I certainly do not deliver the Program to people irresponsibly or without medical supervision.

My response is:
No, I know - you get your clients to go to a doctor to have a form signed saying they're healthy enough to use your diet. You then sell them the meal replacements along with 'counselling' - which you've learned from weekend seminars provided by the company that sells YOU the meal replacements.

You might also keep an eye out for the usual malnutrition side effects and make sure your customers go to the doctor when their hair begins to fall out or they get skin rashes or pains in their arms or depression.

You said:
In fact, I see the Program as being preferable to being obese, having major surgery or taking drugs with horrendous side effects which only aggrivate the problems of the obese (and also line the pockets of the drug companies / private surgreons engaged in the delivery thereof).

My repsonse is:
Being on a VLCD has as many horrendous side effects for the great majority of users as any weight loss drug or surgery and it lines the pockets of the diet industry worth billions of pounds each year - with a failure rate so high that it makes it the most successful failed business in the world. It also only treats one physical side effect of what everyone will have to agree is a psychological problem - uncontrolled compulsive overeating or binge eating disorder.

VLCDs are not a healthy or viable answer for anyone's eating disorder.

You said:
I have to ask what your motive is and where your allegiances lie - because ill informed criticism of a medically approved obesity treatment that works where others have failed is not a clever pursuit for anyone.

My response is:
VLCDs are medically approved, yes, but so are the dangerous drugs and surgery that you mention. And as ALL three of these methods have such dire side effects and very high long-term failure rates, as they fail to address the real problem, medical approval is really no indication of efficiency.

I've already said that my motives are to help people with eating disorders and I do it on a daily basis and very successfully at that. I feel very humble and grateful for the gift that I have in my ability to assist people in changing their lives for the better. On this last count, my conscience is very definitely as clear as crystal!

Comments

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

A few months ago I started up a more affordable version of The Food Philosophy in the hope that I could help more people to overcome compulsive overeating. It was a great success for most of those who tried it and I'm getting lots of lovely emails and have met some very nice people in the Vital! forums.

There's one problem, though, I seem to be doing less and less coaching and more and more admin. My work day has just turned around from the exhilarating task of helping people to make massive positive changes to their lives to recruitment, emailing backwards and forwards about course documents and showing people how to use the forum.

I need to directly help people and watch them change because it's what I do best and it is my purpose in life. So FP Vital! is going to have to be phased out shortly, I'm afraid.

Big apologies to everyone. This won't affect the service for the current FP Vital! members.

The wonderful full-coaching version of the course is most definitely still available.

Sx

Comments

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

Here's a post from the Food Philosophy forum (our virtual classroom). One of the course members who is well on her way out of the overeating trap decided that she needed to let off some steam.

I read week 3 part with interest his week. I also laughed out loud in several places - and thought that this (about the diet industry) really hits the nail on the head. There will always be someone to make money out of other people's misery and fear and we let them - in fact we actively encourage it!!

Sorry rant over but needed/wanted to get this down so I can look at it when I want and remind myself of why I'm taking the path I'm taking.

The Food Philosophy does provoke all sorts of feelings, including shock, surprise, euphoria and as you can see from the above post, anger and rebellion.

Every day I feel privileged to have so many fantastic and intelligent women to talk to on such an interesting subject. I invite anyone to chat on here or if you email me. I can help you out of the overeating trap. I really can!

Sx

Comments

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

This week's blog entry is in the style of a classic magazine angony aunt Q&A.

Dear Sue

I’ve just started my first week on a VLCD (very low calorie diet). I’ve already lost five pounds in just four days and I’m so excited. I am starting to feel a bit dizzy and sick, though, but my counsellor tells me that this will wear off. I can put up with that and the terrible cravings for food because the payoff is so good, but the thing I’m most worried about is that one of the side effects is hair loss. My counsellor reassures me that this is temporary as well. My hair is my best asset and I don’t want to lose it – even temporarily. I’m terrified that I’ll end up thin but bald! Is there anything I can do to stop my hair falling out?

Debbie, 23, Manchester

The problem with VLCDs is that people believe the advertising and sales talk of the companies that sell them, as you have. Obviously this is going to be heavily biased towards playing up their ‘advantages’ and playing down (sometimes even hiding) their disadvantages. Embarking on a VLCD is a very serious medical decision to that requires much thought and a full understanding of what you are actually doing – most people don’t find out enough to make a truly informed decision. Would you say you’re fully informed?

So my advice would be make sure you are very aware of the consequences and fully educated about what you’re doing. Basically, if you’re looking for one or two periods of fast very temporary weight loss, ultimate very fast more permanent weight gain, coupled with unpleasant side effects and the chance of long-term physical and psychological damage as well as a few years off your life, then go for it, VLCDs are perfect.

Comments

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

I watched The Great British Body last night. I didn’t want to watch it really as I knew what it would be like – another dumbed down piece of nonsense aimed at the ‘uneducated’ British public (the TV people’s seeming opinion, not mine). And I was right.

It was mostly just meaningless hot air. Apart from the bit about the fat gene which was astoundingly ignorant and bizarre.

Hundreds of people took part in the programme and everyone gave a saliva sample which was taken to a lab and tested for the fat gene. Then all of the women were herded into three groups: those with no copies of the fat gene, those with one copy and those with two.

They were all showing nervous anticipation about finding out whether they had this gene or not. The whole outcome was based on the premise that if you've got the fat gene it isn’t your fault if you're fat, but if you haven't got the fat gene, it is your fault. So all the ‘overweight’ women were hoping they had it so that they could explain the reason for their weight and all of the thin people were terrified that they would get fat later in life because of this gene.

Bear in mind that scientists don’t yet know anything about this fat gene or how it contributes to body shape. The presumptions in the programme were based on guesswork and hearsay but, as usual, they were fed to the public as fact.

Trinny and Susannah both took part in the test and it turned out that Susannah doesn’t carry the fat gene, but Trinny does. Susannah called Trinny ‘my fat friend’ and said she felt elated about the result. She looked like she was going to wet herself in her gloating self-satisfaction.

All this loosely based presumption and mis-education of the public was bad enough but the worst and most offensive part of this programme by far was when Susannah turned to her fat-gene free group, some of which were overweight, and aggressively and accusingly shouted at them: “That just shows you that we get fat because we’re basically greedy and lazy.”

They looked humiliated and the group fell silent and serious and their eyes turned on Susannah for a moment that lasted just a bit too long. The utter raw and painful shame on the face of one woman made me want to cry.

And this from a programme that is supposed to get the British public to ‘Love your body shape’. The ITV website says: “Trinny and Susannah explain why they want YOU to feel better about your body and rejoice in your differences.”

No, that's just the programme's politically correct angle - what they really think is very obvious indeed.

If you know nothing about The Food Philosophy you might not see the point of my rant, but believe me when I tell you that the result of their programme and their shaming of these women and coercion into more guilt, more self hatred, more blame, will only mean more overeating and Trinny and Susannah’s ignorance has dug them further into the overeating trap than they ever would have been. AND it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the thin women who have never cared much about their weight will now gain weight in their attempt not to! And none of this harm that has been done to these women will be anything at all to do with the fat gene!

Comments

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

Most overeaters come to The Food Philosophy believing they know all there is to know about overeating and weight loss. After many years of reading and absorbing information (in some cases in amounts that excel PhD levels of education on the subject!), you could be forgiven for thinking there’s nothing more you can learn. Each time you read something in a magazine or see some advice and information on TV or explore a ‘new’ weight-loss plan that says it’s different – including the fashionable alternative to a diet – it fits in with what you know, seems reasonable and obvious and you want to try it, but there’s an underlying feeling that it won’t work because something about it feels really familiar.

No matter how fancy the new method or technique is wrapped up, everything just feels like the same old same old.

This sensation is something you will have experienced over and over again if you’re like any overeater worth their salt who will hunger for a new method and try anything to get out of the trap. This is a sensation that you will be expecting to feel once more with The Food Philosophy.

This is a feeling that will hinder you as it will mean you are reading the information with a closed mind. The Food Philosophy is going to blow wide open everything you think you know and you have to be prepared for it by suspending your cynicism and stopping yourself from ‘expecting’ to learn nothing new. We all filter information in the same way and the danger here is that you will have your filter switched to a setting that will absorb all that backs up what you already believe and discard the important stuff that will change your life and catapult you right out of the trap you’re in.

Another type of closed mindedness that might hold you back is fear. If you’ve spent your whole life trying and failing to gain control of your eating, you’ll be feeling desperate and panicky that this will be another method that doesn’t work. You’re afraid that this might be a last resort and when your expectations are fulfilled and it becomes just another one of those things you’ve tried and failed that you’ll have nowhere else to turn. You might also be feeling exhausted by the repeated failure and approaching FP with a flat feeling of ‘OK, here we go again.’

If you do read the course material with these filters switched on and don’t let any of it register internally, you’ll then approach the steps and exercises with the wrong mindset and you’ll be doing them with reference to old information that comes from the diet industry and not from FP and this won’t work.

In order to ‘get’ FP, you might have to wave goodbye to some of the opinions you hold and these might be very strong opinions with what seems like good evidential background. I’m not asking you for blind trust (that would make me the same as the diet industry!), I’m asking you to have the most open mind you can achieve and pretend that not only are you reading this new information for the first time, but that all the information you think you know is being read for the first time.
Then I want you to weigh up these two sets of information and use your own thinking skills to compare them both to your internal experience and come up with a conclusion that is entirely your own, with outside influence being only a tool. Basically I’m asking you to switch off your ‘passive receive’ setting and switch on your ‘thinking for yourself’ setting!

As you move through the course, this advice won’t be needed as much as it is now because you’ll see the difference between FP and other methods and your filter will change to accommodate your new learning. But to give yourself the best chance right from the beginning please open your mind and suspend your cynicism and be prepared to learn a completely new way to stop overeating.

FP is really very exciting and it gives you a high that is indescribable when you realise you have control.

Sx

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I'm a bit too busy to write anything profound this week so I'm going to post a couple of messages and emails I've had this week from people who are on the course. They're all genuine and you can talk to the people who sent them if you join the course because they're all there in the forum.

I'm really really chuffed with the response I'm getting from people on The Food Philosophy.

_________________________________________________

I can't quite believe how much difference FP has made to my life in just one week, I feel so different already - its amazing!

Thank-you
Celia

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Week 2 part 2 reading material is a complete revelation (I know it all is – but this makes so much sense to me, and I can see absolutely how I got into the state I was in over food).

Jessica

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Today is the second day. This morning I was in tears at the realisation that all these years I have been beating myself up and made myself feel worthless because I cannot "diet" and all along it wasn't my fault at all.

Marion

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That's not all of them, and it's only Tuesday. But it will do for now. Don't want the post to be too long!

The Food Philosophy is the best! I spend my life watching people make their lives better. I can't think of a better job.

Sx

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I just recieved this email from a lady who recently started the new £30 FP Vital! course and I thought you might like to read it for yourselves. It contains a link to an article the Guardian that gives a rare sympathetic take on overeating:

Dear Sue
I am a changed woman. I have just been away for a long weekend and had a wonderful time. I went to a party with lots of gorgeous foods. I looked at all the food and I tried quite a few of the things, but actually, I found that I was not too bothered about it and felt really in control. This is a first for me and its thanks to the exercises in Week One of the course. I believe it has really worked. I am also feeling very satisfied with whatever I choose to eat.

and I was almost moved to write a letter - we know what the answer is to all of these eating disorders - it is your Food Philosophy!

It still makes my day after all this time, when I hear about the positive changes that FP has helped people to make in their lives.

Sx

The Food Philosophy is now available for £30 (without coaching), you get all of the online course material as well as limited membership to The FP forum where you can chat to other people who are doing the course, support each other, go through the steps and exercises together and also talk to those who have already been through the course and who are already out of the overeating trap. You'll also get to read regular comments of mine and articles posted in the forum that are full of valuable help and information.

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Eating disorders are on the rise and it’s well-known that dieting has a lot to do with this rise. There’s oodles of evidence for it - which you’ll have to research yourself if you’re interested, but it’s easy if you just type ‘dieting and eating disorders’ into a search engine. Evidence includes the parallel rise of enforced body dissatisfaction and the advice to diet with rising instances of anorexia and bulimia and binge eating disorder. Also, countries that haven’t been exposed to Western culture and dieting have extremely low to non existent levels of eating disorders. There’s more, though, much, much more.

Anyway, while looking up the statistics for eating disorders in the UK for something I was writing, I noticed – not for the first time – that the way eating disorders are classified excludes obesity and overweight. It’s very strange. It always stands out to me but it seems to be accepted as normal that even a scientific or medical trial paper can separate the two. It’s the perfect example of a sleight of hand that Derren Brown would be proud of, except that it pulls the wool over everyone’s eyes and blinds everyone to the obvious truth in favour of a belief that helps the diet industry to earn millions, but which destroys the quality of life for millions of ordinary people.

Bulimia, anorexia, binge eating disorder, compulsive overeating are all classified as eating disorders with various theories about their cause, including the pathological need for control, the anaesthetising of past trauma and abuse etc, but the main driver for these disorders is well-known to be high levels of body dissatisfaction and chronic addiction to dieting.

The physical effects of eating disorders such as anorexia’s extreme weight loss are taken as a side-effect of a psychological disorder and although shocking, as the physical side effects are, anorexics are never blamed for being severely underweight and they are treated as if they suffer from a mental illness.

Where eating disorders are shown in a sympathetic light and sufferers are largely described as victims, those who are obese and overweight are linked with greed, weakness and lack of self discipline. Obesity is given a class all of its own and overweight people are given a diet sheet and told to control their overeating by self discipline and shown that they are thought of as weak and greedy and lacking in self respect. The message is: if you don’t respect yourself enough to stop overeating, then how do you expect anyone else to respect you?

Overeaters take this on board and struggle their whole lives trying to follow this advice when in fact their problem is as much of an eating disorder as any anorexic or bulimic. In fact, just like weight loss is the physical symptom of anorexia, so weight gain is the physical symptom of compulsive overeating and binge eating disorder – AND the direct cause, as has been established, is body dissatisfaction and the drive towards chronic dieting!

The compulsion to overeat, driven by dieting, is in fact the basic foundation of all eating disorders. Anorexics are compulsive overeaters whose different neuroses and needs drive them to starve themselves and the overweight and obese are compulsive overeaters whose needs drive them to overeat! It’s exactly the same disease. But because of the current prejudice against obesity one is given treatment that, although largely ineffective, is at least sympathetic, and the other is treated by blame, humiliation and given directions to follow a solution that is actually the known direct cause of the problem itself.

THIS is the reason why obesity seems to be on the rise and why everyone is running about like headless chickens worrying about the cost to the NHS and where we’ll be in 2010 when so many more people are predicted to be overweight. This is why our kids no longer grow out of their puppy fat.

It's also the reason why you are sitting there thinking 'I don't suffer from an eating disorder, I just need to be able to stick to a diet,' and then going on to lose control of what you put in your mouth, day in, day out, obsessing and worrying about it and letting it destroy your quality of life.

Many things are truly bizarre about our culture, but this has got to be one of the most unbelievable of all.

If you want to step away from the madness and help yourself in a real way The Food Philosophy will show you how to get out of the overeating trap without giving you any advice that is really designed to keep you yo-yoing for the rest of your life. It’s straightforward, practical and frankly amazing. But I would say that wouldn’t I?

The Food Philosophy is now available for £30 (without coaching), you get all of the online course material as well as limited membership to The FP forum where you can chat to other people who are doing the course, support each other, go through the steps and exercises together and also talk to those who have already been through the course and who are already out of the overeating trap. You'll also get to read regular comments of mine and articles posted in the forum that are full of valuable help and information.

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I feel that it's time The Food Philosophy was made more widely available so I have decided to offer a non-coaching version of the six-week online weight-loss course for just £30. Not everyone can afford the course at the moment and it is important that as many overeaters are reached as possible and given the tools to get themselves out of the overeating trap, lose weight, increase confidence and raise their self esteem.

Would a £30, non-coaching version of The Food Philosophy be of interest to you? If so, just email me at sue@foodphilosophy.co.uk, marking your email "FP Vital!".

I've included a forum post from last week from a current course member below this message to help you to see how it has benefited others.

For £30, you get all of the online course material as well as limited membership to The FP forum where you can chat to other people who are doing the course, support each other, go through the steps and exercises together and also talk to those who have already been through the course and who are already out of the overeating trap. You'll also get to read regular comments of mine and articles posted in the forum that are full of valuable help and information.

Let me know if this is something that would interest you. Also, I'd be most grateful if you could take the time to let me know if it wouldn't. All feedback is very valuable and much appreciated.

Warm wishes,

Sue x

"I think that it's so important to KNOW in your heart that you're not willing to waste another second of precious life wasting time on dieting. I too wasted YEARS dieting (23) and when I found The Food Philosophy I was so ready to never diet again. It helped me to think....'you know what? All dieting has brought me is feelings of deprivation, feelings of 'not being good enough', feelings of not being able to do it without bingeing...so feelings of failure. I was 40 at this point. I just realised that if I kept on dieting I'd keep on going round and round the diet treadmill. I wasted 23 years of my life doing it and so frankly I'm NEVER doing it again!

"I won't lie and say I haven't overeaten at all since I started FP, I have, but each time it happens I realise that there is no pleasure in it – it is too uncomfortable. I have lost weight and easily maintain now what was my target weight for all those years which I couldn't quite get to.

"Now that I know Ican trust myself though, I don't worry about weight like I used to ( I obsessed and judged myself solely on my appearance for years ) It's very sad, but I'm so glad to be out of it now. Embarking on FP is the best thing you can ever do for yourself. It might be a bit of a struggle sometimes when you're trying to grasp it, but just reming yourself that if you do what you've always done....you'll get what you always got! FP really works because it's about you learning to trust your internal cues, and learning to trust yourself.

Sorry if this is a bit of a rant, it's meant in the best possible way.
L X"_________________

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If you can't control what you eat and no matter how much energy you put into dieting or cuting down, you always end up on a binge - eating the very things you're trying to avoid - are you just weak, greedy and lacking in willpower or do you have a clinical eating disorder?

The general opinion seems to be that you're weak and greedy and lacking in willpower. That you don't care about what you look like or you're rebelling against the current pressure to be thin by sticking two fingers up at the establishment and stuffing yourself with fried chicken and donuts.

That's why you're bombarded with diet advice, told what and how much to eat and provided with ceaseless examples of pure and good ways of feeding your body and shown exactly what type of body you should aspire to look like.

The truth, though, is that compulsive overeating is as much an eating disorder as bulimia nervosa and anorexia nervosa and, although it is not recognised as such by the popular media, compulsive overeating kills more people than bulimia and anorexia put together.

Despite this, while anorexics and bulimics are given the benefit of the doubt and their illnesses taken seriously overeaters are led to believe that their eating disorder is their fault and that they only need to learn how to stick to a diet and they will be cured.

You know personally how much energy you've put into trying to stop yourself from overeating and you know the shadow it casts over your life. No amount of willpower or dieting to lose weight is going to stop the psychological compulsion to overeat.

You have to stop listening to the weight-loss advice you're being bombarded with and learn to deal with the actual problem itself - compulsive overeating.

The Food Philosophy is the very first programme that will show you a way to literally switch off the drive to overeat - and all you have to do is change your thinking.

www.foodphilosophy.co.uk

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I've said something from The Food Philosophy to quite a few journalists in the last couple of weeks and being the possessive person that I am about my work, I want to make a public claim to my copyright of this quote:

"The diet industry is the most successful failed business in the world."

Hee hee. It's going to be latched onto because of it's startling truth.

Get off it - it's mine!

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Obesity is the 'big' subject at the moment. There's a definite backlash that has already started and the media has latched onto (or, more correctly, created) a war between fat and thin.

It began recently in the US and it's now been taken up over here. My friend has recently been approached by magazines and TV companies to be the 'UK face of fat activism' after very eloquently defending herself in yesterday's Mirror against a bitter and very telling attack on bigger people by a woman who seems to spend her whole life and energy on maintaining her thinness.

My friend turned them down. I don't blame her.

I don't actually agree with fat activism in the sense that it should be promoted as an ideal way to live - simply because fat is nothing but a side effect of a psychological problem! What's the point in promoting it. I equally don't think 'thin' should be promoted as an ideal way to live either - simply because it's usually the result of chronic approval addiction and fear of rejection and neurosis. And thin under these circumstances is DEFINITELY NOT healthier than fat! Which might explain why moderately fatter people live longer than those who struggle to remain underweight.

Unfortunately thin is 'in' because forcing people to desire it makes some people a lot of money.

Most of the women who are measured against the current ideal and now considered fat (and therefore ugly) are absolute stunners when you look at them from any real and human point of view. Yes, so are as many of the thin ones.

Stop the brainwashing. Stop being told what to think. Start living in reality and deal with the problem itself (and that is the problem of compulsive overeating - which is believe it or not applicable to as many thin people as it is fat!) and not the physical side effect.

Stopping compulsive overeating and all of it's painful side effects (and there are many more than just fat!) is surely more important than all of this bitching and fighting and pointing the finger?

Ooh, it makes me so angry.

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I've just watched The Wright Stuff on Channel Five. One of the topics was Can You Be Fat And Happy? They had two women, Vicki and Donna. Vicki had lost a lot of weight and was slim and Donna was a big girl.

There was then a debate about who was happier between the two. Now I'm not psychic but I'm not blind either and if you put the two women together you could clearly see who was happier. Donna, the big girl, is not only stunningly beautiful but she glows from the inside like there is an unstoppable fire in her. She oozes sex appeal, her skin is luminous, her eyes shine with a flirtatiousness that matches her cheeky smile. She giggled and laughed and told how she believed she is not only happy but gorgeous - and I believed her! So did Matthew Wright, who obviously fancied her.

Vicki, meanwhile, bless her, was neurotic and so tortured by her own self image that she told how she'd lost weight by taking slimming pills and still needed to lose a stone and a half.

The difference between the two women was easy to see and it's nothing at all to do with their weight - it's to do with their need for approval. Donna KNOWS with all her being that she is worth as much as anyone else on the planet. Vicki loathes herself.

THIS is what makes Donna not only the happiest, but the more beautiful one out of the two.

The debate

The short debate went on around these two women and the same arguments came up that always come up and basically people tried to say that you can't be happy and fat - because they themselves can't be. You could see the blinkers and the confusion. And all the time there in front of everyone was this big sexy woman glowing away.

Anne Diamond, a panelist, once more revealed her own desperate need for approval. She's gained a little weight back after her gastric bypass and it's toruring her. She's definitely not happy. The big mistake she's making is thinking that what she experienced when she was thin was happiness. It wasn't. It was her looking to other people and desperately asking them the question:

"Am I worthy yet?"

And when she got a positive answer about her weight loss, she got a little high because she managed to squash the little voice inside her that continually whispers:

"You are worthless."

She's full of relieved glee because weight loss means she can say to her inner self loathing:

"See, you're wrong. Other people think I'm ok."

The thing is that as long as she keeps on looking to other people for her self worth, she's never going to find it. Self worth has to come from the inside. You have to believe it yourself and not just keep on trying to collect evidence from what other people think of you.

The programme didn't actually say much. It was the same old same old. The only difference between this programme and all the other weight-loss debate programmes was that this time instead of a larger case history who apologised for herself (a fat version of Vicki and Anne Diamond) they had Donna. A total goddess by anyone's standards.

So can you be fat and happy?

You can be fat and happier than the thin people around you!

You can also lose weight and be happy (unlike Anne Diamond and Vicki and countless other 'successful' slimmers who yo-yo diet and live in fear!). The Food Philosophy will teach you how.

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FP in the Press
There's a feature about The Food Philosophy in the March issue of Slim At Home magazine. It's all about how 'Fattism' can ruin your efforts at weight loss and it includes a case history from our own FP success Tess. It's well worth a read. The writer is journalist Sarah Clark, who has her own blog Queen Simply Be (which is dedicated to those who feel they don't fit into the current media ideal), and who also did The Food Philosophy online course. She was so impressed that she's asked me to be agony aunt and diet guru on her popular magazine site www.relentlessly-positive.com. I'm thrilled and I'm looking forward to helping Relentlessly Positive's readers to solve their weight loss and body image problems.

Actress needed
I wrote a short film script a couple of years ago (about body image of course) and it's very good, if I say so myself. Fecund productions, independent film-makers thought so too and they're making it into a movie. They have everything in place and are ready to shoot - except for one thing: they don't have an actress to play the lead role. The downside is that there won't be a payment (short films never make money) and there is some very brief nudity (back shot). The upside is that Fecund are hoping to show the film at Cannes. So if you're a plus size beautiful experienced actress looking for a part leave your contact details in the comments box below and I'll get back to you.

The 'pay-afterwards' offer is still running at FP and you can do the course and pay afterwards IF you're happy. It won't last for ever though so visit our site at www.foodphilosophy.co.uk and sign up!

Slim At Home is available in larger newsagents and supermarkets.

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From the response I've got on one of my comments on Queen Simply Be I realise that my rantings and posts might not always make it clear what my opinion is on overeating and obesity or how The Food Philosophy works (and it does work). This might be partly my fault because I'm not expressing myself well, but I think at least 50 per cent of the fault lies in the fact that the general opinion about this stuff is derived from media-led hearsay which is taken to be medical and scientific fact.

People have a very strong opinion on obesity. Even those who have no connection with it have an evangelical passion about its causes, who is to blame and how it should be dealt with.

Isn't that really weird?

What's even weirder is that the passionate zeal for an opinion on obesity is usually whipped up within the individual from the same source as the information about who is to blame and what causes obesity AS WELL AS the advice on how to 'cure' it!

Putting the obvious diet industry influence over the media to one side, if this were any other subject, wouldn't a person be required to at least refer to a few independent sources or collect some official medical and scientific evidence to back up their strong theories and opinions? Not so with obesity. You can buy a magazine or a tabloid newspaper and that's all the information you need to hold a strong opinion about what causes obesity and whose fault it is. Oh, yes. And you won't be swayed or argued with because you're RIGHT! The evidence is there in black and white.

All of these evangelists obviously believe everything else they read in the papers too. No? Oh.

Anyway, that's besides the point, what I was originally saying was that my own opinions and how The Food Philosophy works might be hard to grasp or easily misunderstood BECAUSE of this media-led 'education' of the population on the subject of obesity. But if you forget everything you think you know, look at where you've got your 'facts' from, question the source and question the facts, and then read on with that thing that is as rare in our current society as a chestful of pirates' treasure: An Open Mind, you might be able to see the little spark of truth twinkling there within the confusion and you might decide to look into it by going to sources other than the media to help yourself to form an opinion on this subject that you feel so strongly about.

So what is my opinion?

That obesity is not the cause of anything. Obesity is a symptom of compulsive overeating. Compulsive overeating is not a life choice, it is an unconscious survival response to the conscious restriction of food.

Dieting is the direct cause of the 'obesity epidemic'.

How does The Food Philosophy work?

By showing women that the more they try to 'cut down' using outside advice about what and how much to eat, the more their survival drive to overeat will kick in and the more they will be driven to overeat. I tell them exactly how and why this happens (including how the human brain works). I tell them what psychological factors set them up to fail at taking control over food. They then use the tools and exercises, along with this new information, and they change their thinking. I teach them how to take responsibility for their own choices. The end result is that they have a control over food that they didn't have before.

The Food Philosophy IS contraversial and its very different to anything else out there, but isn't that a good thing?

Sue

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I got a text last night from a friend saying: “You must watch Channel 4 now! Jamie Oliver is about to cut up a dead body to see why unhealthy eating kills!”

As it happens, I’d just switched channels from C4 after watching Jamie pour some cooking oil over a woman in a wet suit lying in a bath – a useless and pointless illustration of how much fat she eats in five years. I was getting annoyed and I felt I’d rather get depressed by watching the news than have to look at both publicity hungry celebrity chef Jamie and a corpse on my screen at the same time.

Jamie Oliver has done some good things. His School Dinners programme was excellent, as he did introduce some variation to school kids who had been brought up thinking that the only food that exists is chips. His programme about chickens last week was admirable and he is definitely the most talented celeb chef on our screens at the moment – his cooking is outstanding.

But all he has achieved by last night’s clumsy programme, Jamie Oliver: Eat To Save Your Life, is to drive more people towards consuming the food he was advising against.

I can imagine how the programme was conceived: “Yeah and we could get the fat woman to wear a wet suit and we could smear her in lard.”

“Great idea!”

“Thanks. What about you? Any ideas?”

“Yeah, we need something shocking - how about we exhume a corpse?”

All this gets passed on to Jamie via his publicity agent – Jamie who knows less about the psychology of compulsive overeating than the average magazine-educated shop assistant (this is not a derogatory statement as readers of popular women's magazines are given so much diet advice that most of them have the equivalent of a degree in nutrition!). The programme gets made and the public sucks it all in. The trick behind the programme is that its sensationalist content magically blinds the viewers into not noticing that they’re being served up the same old recycled, rehashed healthy-eating advice that they’ve been forcibly fed for the last 20 years!

Recycled, rehashed information that has been proved over and over again as inefective! There's a reason why the obesity figures rise in parallel with the amount of diet and healthy eating advice that's pumped into the media. The more this type of information is downloaded into your brain the more difficulty you will have in controlling your compulsion to overeat.

If you’re not a compulsive eater, then fair enough, but more and more of us are losing control BECAUSE of this type of advice.

I challenge you to try to stick to Jamie’s advice and I also challenge you to tell me how and why it’s any different to the way you’ve been trying to eat for the whole of your adult life – a way of eating that has led you to living on a hamster wheel of yo-yo dieting and loss of control over food, years of weight loss and inevitable weight gain and led you further and further into the overeating trap.

Go on, go away and start your healthy eating regime. Then when you’re up in the middle of the night with your head in the fridge, face first into a Black Forest gateaux that you don’t even like, then think about how you wouldn’t be doing that if you hadn’t tried to follow what is essentially just another diet.

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The Food Philosophy website has a sign-up box and it’s made clear that I offer a personal weight loss assessment completely free of charge.

I call it a weight loss assessment but what happens is that I analyse your answers to a set of carefully chosen questions and reveal to you some of the reasons why you have no control over your overeating – reasons you might not have even thought of.

I’ve realised lately that some people think the assessments are going to be computer generated or some sort of automated response to the questionnaire so they don’t take much care when answering the questions. This is definitely a misunderstanding that I want to clear up immediately. Each assessment is carefully analysed by me and it can take up to two hours. I put all of my energy into them and, if I say so myself, I’m very good at reading between the lines and seeing exactly what’s going on in your mind! You might actually be shocked to read what I can glean from a set of seemingly innocent questions. Some people have burst into tears of relief when reading their results.

Having said that, it is important that you write your answers down honestly and briefly because if you think too much and go into too much detail the truth might get caught up somewhere in the unravelling of your answers.

I do these assessments free of charge for the obvious reason that I want you to see what a good and personal service you get at The Food Philosophy so that you might be tempted to join the course. And with the additional offer of you being able to do the course and pay afterwards only IF you’re happy with the whole thing, then it’s quite a startlingly good opportunity because you can only win!

Think about it, you get a completely free comprehensive assessment, a course that frees you from a lifetime of slavery to food and misery with a guarantee that if you don’t like it you can cancel without any obligation at all as long as you cancel before the sixth week!

People might think it’s too good to be true – but it is true.

I have so much confidence in The Food Philosophy that I am able to make this offer with no catches or tricks. It’s worked very well so far and I have a lot of happy people who have changed their lives with my help.

I have the best job in the world!

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I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year. I'm ready to give the Food Philosophy and the lovely people on the course everything I've got in 2008. I feel raring to go.

I haven't really made any New Year resolutions but I've just become quietly determined to give my all to changing the face of our diet culture and helping people to escape the yo-yo dieting trap and give them the tools to stop overeating for good.

This time of year is usually quiet as everyone feels they have to undo the bingeing they did at Christmas and go on a diet - but when the diets begin to fail in a few weeks then the forum gets full again and people start joining up. Those on the course already, of course, haven't binged at Christmas because they have the tools to stop the obsessive drive to overeat during the festive season.

I've had such good feedback so far and I know I've found the answer (as amazing as that might seem) because it's worked for me and is working for so many others who have done or are doing the online course.

We've got our first course member in the US as well, and it'll be interesting to see what a difference that makes - as pressure to diet is much more serious over there than it is in the UK (which is why obesity has risen so dramatically in the US).

Anyway, here's to a successful 2008 for everyone of the FP readers. And anyone who isn't sure if FP is for them, you're always welcome to come and try the course for free. It really is brilliant - even though I say so myself.

Sue x

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I've been really busy for the last couple of weeks and haven't had time to post as much as usual. This morning one of FP's new course members introduced herself in our virtual classroom (The Food Philosophy forum) and as I read through the posts where others on the course have welcomed her, I realised how special and different the Food Philosophy really is.

This is not the first time I've realised this, of course. It's just that I've been so busy I haven't had time to think about it lately and today's welcome thread really brought it home and made me feel like it's all so worthwhile. Making a difference to pople's lives is an incredible feeling.

Here are some of the highlights:

Hi everyone, I'm Tina and about to start the course today. I'm looking forward to a fresh approach to dealing with my food isues.

Hi Tina, welcome to the FP. Prepare yourself for a very interesting time. I joined a few weeks ago and I cannot believe the difference it has made to how I feel about myself and food.

I love it.

Welcome to FP. It really is a fresh approach and I believe, the only permanent solution to eating issues. This forum is also incredibly friendly and supportive. Enjoy your journey!

Welcome to the forums. You'll get a new approach to dealing with all sorts of things, not just food issues and it's fascinating.

It's when I read things like this that I know that The Food Philosophy is slowly changing things one person at a time. That's what matters most to me.

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Blaming emotions and 'comfort eating' is a very widespread prediction of the cause of overeating. Most psychological ways of treating overeaters are based in this theory that overeaters use food as a 'comfort'. The idea is that eating cushions or anaesthetises negative emotions, such as sadness, loneliness, grief, fear, the residual effect of past life traumas and general stress and unhappiness.

You might (and probably do) accept this as true but it is a received notion and if you examine it, you'll feel that something about it is not quite right - there's just something, when you compare it to your own internal experience of overeating that you can't strongly identify with eating due to emotion.

I struggled with this for years until I saw the truth. I couldn't put my finger on it - I did eat when I felt miserable, yes, but I also ate at parties when I was happy or socialising and I ate when I felt no strong emotion at all - I ate when watching TV. I also am quite good at handling my emotions and am very good at coping with past life traumas and not letting them affect my life in the present. I don't bury things and I'm as mentally stable as the next person.

I'd say I'm pretty much a strong and capable person and so are most of the women I talk to. I find it offensive when experts make out that overeaters are weak and unable to cope with normal emotions and need to ruin their lives by overeating as long as they just don't have to feel anything. I also find it annoying that overeaters are encouraged to believe this about themselves. When you're told: "You can't handle your emotions," when set in 'receive' mode, then that's going to seriously lower your self esteem if you believe it.

It's not true.

This is something that is an understandable conclusion to come to if you're a psychologist with no understanding of overeating - it's called clutching at straws! It's made an awful lot of money for psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors and the diet industry (did you know that Lighterlife and Cambridge diet counselling is based on this theory?)

There is no real evidence for comfort eating at all - not one bit - and the treatments for this 'emotional eating' (working through your emotions, dealing with past traumas with a counsellor etc) might help you in some ways (or it might make it worse!) but it has absolutely zero effect on overeating.

Food philosophy course members are always surprised when they read Week Two of the course and learn the reality behind what they think of as comfort eating. They immediately feel the difference in how they identify with the 'emtional eating' explanation and the Food Philosophy explanation - the stronger association is always with FP and that's because it's the truth! They never just take my word for it, though. The Food Philosophy isn't about 'receiving information' and not thinking - they work it out for themselves.

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