Six months ago I decided it was high time to look deep within myself and to discover, for the first time, just why I have the urge to eat so much. On the pretext that all emotional issue lead back to the fear of exclusion I started to go through my childhood with a fine tooth comb.

From the age of nine onwards I started to become particularly thin which caused some ridicule at the hands of my school friends. I greatly feared that in being “skinny” I would become excluded from the group in which I had to survive on a daily basis. It was for this reason that I gained an eating obsession. However, no noticeable increase in body mass occurred during that period so it became something that I had to live with For me, this meant that over eating became a habitual addiction.

On sorting that out I then looked at my later life. As a young adult I was very much involved in sport. I was a horseman, I SCUBA dived, I played Rugby and I ran and swam every day. Since getting an umbilical hernia I became less confident to participate in such an active sports curriculum. To counteract this I have been walking three hours per day, six days per week. I find that I look forward to walking and I walk at a pace with which I feel comfortable. This may change from day to day. Some days my pace is very brisk and on other days it may be somewhat easier.

Wit regards to diet. In my diet I have changed only a few things. I stopped eating white bread (which also means that I cut out butter), I stopped eating ice cream (I ate at least a kilo per week). I stopped eating chocolate bars ( I ate one 100 gram bar per day on average) and I stopped eating cake, (I ate about 2 whole cakes per week).

In addition I added the following to my diet: one meal per day of oatmeal porridge cooked with water and sweetened with a teaspoon of honey and cooled with just a little milk around the edges. I added two apples per day, one desert spoon of ground flax seed and one desert spoon of ground sesame seed. In addition I added one desert spoon of crushed pumpkin seed and ground wall nuts which I blended together.

Along side that I drink 10 glasses of water per day and most important of all I take one over 50′s multi vitamin per day. I say most importantly because when we change our diet we may alter the way the body is used to receiving it’s vitamin and mineral quota. To compensate for this it is most strongly advisable to take a multi vitamin supplement.

I also eat a pro biotic goat’s milk yogurt each day, just to keep on top of the bacterial balance within the digestive system and I try to include as much vegetable salad a possible. I also do my best to divide my meals into five or six smaller meals so that I use the energy that I intake more efficiently and at the same time prevent those hunger pangs to which I had become so accustomed.

To date, I have lost 22 kilograms or about three and a half stones in the period of six months.

I’m a qualified chef, life coach and psychotherapist. In the following article I would like to share with you a whole new approach to loosing weight safely. This is a system that I have formulated after years of working with clients who have problems maintaining a diet regimen.

This system does not require you to count calories, drink weird powder blends or feel hungry. Instead, what I advise my clients to do requires a change in their whole approach to food and drink but at the same time still keeps eating a pleasurable experience without causing any inbalences in the diet.

There are actually more than ten points in the system. What I require you to do is to choose at least ten points that you know that you can adopt into your daily routine. However the first point in the list is the only obligatory point in the system and it acts as the basis for all the others.

Read the list carefully and take time to understand the implications of all the different points. You can change points if you like. Your first choice may not be the ideal choice for you. Have fun with the system and look at it as a form of rehabilitation rather than a way of punishing yourself for how you look and feel.

Here is the list of points.

1) (obligatory). Drink one cup of water first thing in the morning and thereafter one cup of water before each meal, one cup of water during the meal and one cup of water after the meal. In addition drink one cup of water two hours before going to bed.

2) Always eat at a set table. Never eat standing up or laying down. Never eat in front of the TV, the movie screen or the theatre.

3) Cook your own food. Do not buy pre cooked dinners because they contain substances that are put there to make you feel hungrier.

4) Eat three pieces of fruit from the following list every day: apples, pears, oranges, grapefruits.

5) Eat four or five pieces of raw vegetables from the following list: carrots, radishes, tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, onion, bell peppers.

6) Eat at least three portions of cooked vegetables per day.

7) Eat three portions of grilled chicken or turkey breast per week.

Eat three portions of fish per week. (Instead of meat)

9) Eat in restaurants only once per week.

10) Eat Bread only with one meal of the day and eat no more than three slices. Eat whole grain bread. Whit bread is addictive because it gives the body no nutrients other than empty calories therefore causing the body to ask to be fed again. Whole grain bread constituted eighty percent of a healthy diet before the technology of making white flour was invented.

11) Do not eat anything that has a filling, especially cheese fillings. These are usually processed cheese and not good for you.

12) Do Not eat anything that is salted. (This relates to salted snacks)

13) Eat no more than one portion of desert per day, prefer fruit to desert.

14) Eat ice cream only once per week.

15) Do not eat fried food unless it has been fried with hot air. Poached eggs are healthier.

16) Prefer to eat food without heavy sauces.

17) Proportion you carbohydrate intake so that it makes up no more than one third of your total food intake.

18) Do Not drink any sweet sodas, no cola.

19) limit yourself to one alcoholic drink per day.

20) Cut out chocolate and sweets.

If there are any of the above points that are already incorporated in to your lifestyle then don’t choose these points to be among the ten, pick another choice instead.

See if you can adhere to ten points for ten weeks. If you manage this you are then ready for the advanced stage which includes adding the other ten points, For life.

Good Luck.