I first started using Paul McKenna's weight loss program ‘I Can Make You Thin’ nearly two years ago. Over the next ten months, I lost nearly 40 pounds. Unfortunately complacency crept in and the pounds started creeping back. Although I restarted several times I was unable to reclaim the mindset needed to do the technique successfully. In retrospect, that was because I’d gone back to the old ‘dieting’ mindset of expecting fast results, forgetting that the self hypnosis way takes time to work. I forgot that in the beginning you might even put on weight, instead of taking it off, while your stomach shrinks and you relearn to listen to your body.

Then I spent several months calorie counting and tracking. This was a disaster! I have now regained half those hard lost pounds.

So when a recommendation popped up on Amazon, saying that Paul McKenna had published a new weight loss book, about a hypnotic gastric band, I was very interested, hoping that it might give me the impetus to start again. The book arrived two days later, and I started to read. There is a book, CD and DVD.

The first instruction is to read the book thoroughly before doing anything else, easy peasy, I’m a fast reader. The book takes you through a process, as if you were having weight loss surgery, so you don’t plunge straight in. He always says that you don’t have to believe in what he's telling you, just DO as he tells you, and the first instruction is to spend a while, (I decided on 10 days), following the same pre-op instructions that would be given to you if you were having surgery, walking and having a non processed diet, and following his four golden rules, also learning a system of tapping called ‘Havening’, which was new to me. You also listen to the pre-op instructions from the CD, to reinforce the idea that its a real operation that your having.

That was Monday, this is Friday. In rereading the four golden rules, then practicing them properly, I realize why they haven’t been working for me. I have been doing 3/4, but the eating slowly, chewing each mouthful 20 times, and turning the TV OFF, while you were eating, had gone by the board, and my portions had crept up and up! I’m doing it properly now. I can already see my portion sizes dropping, and food is being left on the plate.

The Havening tapping technique is meant to release ‘happy’ hormones into the brain to replace those associated with overeating, and to remove cravings. Thirty years plus ago, I gave up smoking, and I was a heavy smoker. Since then, I have suffered from nicotine cravings that I have substituted at various times for codeine, alcohol and food. This contributed to me almost doubling my bodyweight in that time. I was very skeptical about the tapping! But then I was very skeptical about the whole hypnotherapy thing two years ago, and it really worked for me, so I learned it and started practicing a couple of times a day.

It was a revelation! I did it three times the first day. I was amazed. About half an hour after finishing, I was suddenly filled with what I can only describe as euphoria, and I was happy and positive for the rest of the day! I suffer from the winter blues, and it was a dank, grey, miserable London day. (London has a special sort of grey and miserable) The following day, I felt great! The eating was no problem, I was cooking myself nice meals, eating them slowly and consciously, and stopping as soon as I was slightly full, I felt so good that I kept waiting for the crash! Yesterday was the same. I tackled lots of small jobs that have needed doing for a while, did lots of exercise and slept the best I’ve slept in months! I am religiously doing my Havening whenever it crosses my mind!

This morning I’m jumping out of my skin! The washing up is done, the laundry is on, I’m about to start Lamb Shanks that I’ll be eating tomorrow, and I felt that I just had to share! Oh, and the patches of excema that have been round my mouth for weeks, have completely gone!

So, 8 days till I have my hypnotic gastric band fitted.