A PYSCHOLOGIST who says you can retrain your appetite is publishing her first ‘anti-diet’ book just in time to fight the festive bulge.

Dr Helen McCarthy from Chepstow is ‘The Appetite Doctor’ and has written How to Retrain your Appetite in a bid to encourage a gentler approach to weight loss by reversing years of negative learned behaviours around food.

The 58-year-old clinical psychologist teaches clients how to change unhelpful food habits at her clinics in Cardiff, Bristol and on London’s Harley Street.

She says her approach sees patients work with the body’s natural hunger and fullness signals, identifying the saboteurs that stop them from eating a healthier diet – from a lack of self-belief to pressure from friends, colleagues and family.

Helen, who has been working on the book since 2011, said: “I think people are fed up with extreme dietary advice and, as we know, diets don’t work over the long term. Much of the diet industry’s success is based on that fact.

“Mindful eating, which includes maximising the pleasure we get from food and even planning meals better, is really important, but what needs to come with that is more kindness around eating – how we do it, how we think about it and how we talk about it.”

With 22 years’ experience in the psychology of eating, she set out to apply all she knew about psychology to help people lose weight without dieting, launching The Appetite Doctor in 2017.

The book’s philosophy taps into the current ‘kindfulness’ trend (a kinder mindfulness) which is seeing a movement towards more compassion in everything from the way we eat to the way we talk about our bodies.

“The healthiest, kindest way to lose weight and keep it off is with a psychological approach that looks at why we personally eat in the way that we do,” she says.

“Instead of making big changes in January, and overhauling how you eat overnight, which is doomed to fail for most of us, make gentle changes.

“Start where you are now, work out which particular unhelpful eating habits are keeping you at a weight you don’t want to be, and change them one at a time.

“I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions, but one thing I’m telling my clients to try next year is increase the amount of meals they eat in company. One of Brazil’s national dietary guidelines is ‘eat in company, wherever possible.’

“We could all improve on that – whether it’s better communal spaces in offices or inviting in a neighbour for dinner.

“In the UK we have a culture where too many people are eating alone. We know there are huge mental and physical health benefits to eating together. I’d love to see more picnic tables in town centres, bigger and better spaces for communal eating in general.”

The book explores questions like “Why do I rebel against weight loss if I know it’s right for me, physically and mentally?” (Helen says “Because you’re ambivalent about it, which means that part of you will sabotage even your best efforts.”)

It also explains why some of us graze on junk food at work, because the food is in our line of sight, triggering our body’s appetite system.

“The key is to work with, not against, our bodily systems which have evolved to govern appetite and eating,” said Helen.

“Appetite retraining is as hard as conventional dieting in that it requires effort and focus. But it focuses on habit change, and once you’ve changed your eating habits and they are easy to stick to, you have no diet to fall off, so the change is permanent.”

How to Retrain Your Appetite is out tomorrow (January 3) from Pavilion Books, and Helen will be launching her book at Chepstow Books and Gifts on Wednesday, January 7.

Visit www.chepstowbooks.co.uk to book a free ticket and, for more information, see www.theappetitedoctor.co.uk