I have tried every kind of diet that I have come across - I gave everything a chance...

Slim Fast
Cabbage Soup Diet
Banana Diet
Kellog's Diet
Rosemary Conley's Diet
The Atkin's Diet
Yeast-free Diet
Fat-Burning Foods Diet
"Starving-myself-thin-Diet"
"Becoming-bulimic-diet"
The Instant Abs Eating Plan (Diet!)

You name it!

By the time the GI Diet came I already gave up, in fact, designed my own diet, based on my own perceptions about food.

I also had...may I add, once had, a very addictive way of living around chocolate. Chocolate was like, Paul McKenna says on his show to another chocoholic woman "your crack cocane" to me too.

It all started when I was watching SkyOne and noticed his advertisment for his upcoming show which came on in January 2006.

I was intrigued and I wondered how on earth it is possible to not diet and lose weight. How can the way you think, change how your metabolism works and make you lose weight?

So it was all a big mystery, so like you reading this review, I searched out for one myself.

I found one review which was brutally honest, but in the end, declared that it had worked.

I wasn't convinced fully but I wanted to try it - I didn't have anything to lose really, and I couldn't stick to my own diet anyway because I had grown very bored of it.

Throughout my life I had balooned up and down and my weight never stayed constant, and I never stayed determined enough to stick to a diet plan by my willpower alone.

I like most kinds of food, eggs, fish, meat, poultry, veggies, nuts, fruits, junk food, healthy food, weetabix, muesli, honey, jam, bread, whatever - I can eat all foods and not complain, I enjoy everything.

So it has always been difficult for me to stop one particular kind of food, whether it be bread and carbs (atkins) or fats and mayo (rosemary conley)

So what is it exactly that Paul wants to tell us, which will make such a big difference that you may eat anything you like and still lose weight!?

Basically, Paul McKenna used to be a DJ and he was very good with people, although he had a very open and frank sense of humour. One day he came across hypnotherapy, got interested and that's when he came to his true calling.

He has been designing this "system" as he calls it, because it certainly is NOT a diet, for many years, roughly 13 years if I recall correctly.

He has been studying the behaviour, eating habits and exercising habits of "naturally thin people" for years and monitoring how they work.

Alongside, he has also developed many mind-altering techniques which help you gain control, feel good about yourself and be confident in what you do with losing weight.

He has drawn techniques from highly acclaimed doctors, professors and medical professionals and pioneers to help:

Bust cravings instantly (takes about 1-5 min)
Beat Binge eating
Create a better self-image

and so on in his book and tv show.

Most of the things that came on the tv show are present in the book.

May I add, that the CD that comes with the book, is an essential tool without which it will get very hard to concentrate on what your doing.

That is where the hypnotism comes into play and it isn't dangerous at all. Unlike stereotypes dictate...

I was afraid of using it at first, thinking I will go into a coma or something silly like that, but in fact it's very soothing, calming, relaxing and it sharpens your mind and makes you focus on what you want - to be thin/slim.

It feeds messages into your unconscious, you may or may not remember some of the things he says on the CD - it's not a visual thing, it's something to listen to with your eyes closed, in a relaxed environment away from noise and distractions...

So what's the secret?

There's 4 golden rules you follow which are the core of the system, and all the other things such as mind programming, craving busters, binge busters and positive mind techniques are just little things to help you on your way.

On the tv show they show a great deal of things which I will mention here to help you, because I am unsure if they are released or available to buy or not, although I am sure they are easily available from people who recorded them (i.e. Me).

There's only 4 episodes with a 4 hour track time. But they are helpful - not essential.

Paul McKenna wants his audience to know that they can do it all without his help - that's what he said at the end of the 4th show when people started to think it's all over, but in fact it had just begun.

I lost 4kg on this programme and I am proud to be part of the biggest weight loss experiment on the planet - millions of people watched it, many many people were in the audience in January, and Paul arranged an online webchat for people to join and ask him questions ---

May I add, the first night went all wrong, Paul was to join us at skyone's webchat at 10pm when his show ends on tv and the room flooded with over 1000 guests and no one could read or write anything as all you could see were people entering the room for 1 whole hour!

The next few webchats were arranged so people could only post their questions and Paul answered them one by one, in great detail and personal feeling.

In the tv programme the audience is part of the weight loss plan so before letting them enter, they weighed each and every person before letting them into the studio, and the audience weight was around 3000 stone!

By the end of it the audience was 80 stones lighter!

Just by following:

Golden rule number one: Eat when you're HUNGRY

Golden rule number two: Eat what you WANT

Golden rule number three: Eat CONSCIOUSLY

Golden rule number four: When you're full STOP

Paul McKenna explains all these rules in great detail in his books, gives examples of people who have made life-altering weight losses and offers a lot of emotional support.

I read the book in 1 day, it's not long, but the messages are powerful.

He also gives quotes from different inspirational people who connect with what he has to say.

He isn't just trying to make us lose weight - he is also trying to build our confidence, and make us happier people - as cheesy as that may sound, its true.

I personally find it so easy that I sometimes forget in my excitement of seeing how much my clothes are looser and how much weight I lose to follow the rules properly.

I become high on the feeling of being so light, so much slimmer that I tend to slip back into bad habits, but when i realize I am quick to forgive my mistakes (as Paul advises his audience to do if they make a mistake)

And he gives the example...

"You see a baby try to walk and he falls, but you wouldn't say - "Oh, I guess he's not a walker!"

He said this to the audience, only to elicit an uproar of laughter, as he was right - it takes time to overrun bad habits, and for this system to become second nature.

I tend to see that I can't over-eat anymore, but I can eat whatever I so wish, which makes me think less about "Oh what am I going to eat, hmmm oh I can't find any low-fat alternative!"

I'm relaxed, I don't obsess over food, food is the last thing on my mind, whereas it used to be the first thing on my mind in the mornings.

I know I can eat whatever I want and still lose weight, so I can wait if I want something, I don't rush to eat it, I don't rush to get it, I don't care anymore. I just enjoy my food, and I can literally eat anything I like.

There are NO forbidden foods.

But...I noticed this out of my own experience, and Paul's excellent advice, that if we do start to lose control around something, then it's better to do the craving techniques OR completely eliminate the desire for that particular food.

What I did...was that I became happy about being able to freely eat chocolate as I wished.

The only thing was...

I ate it when I was hungry - which is good, I ate what I wanted - also good and I also ate it consciously - which is excellent

My downfall was --- to stop when i'm full --- that's when I didn't want to stop because I was enjoying it so much and I tried to tell myself that I wasn't doing anything wrong.

But I was.

The whole reason why this works is because when we eat slowly, and consciously, we give time for our stomaches to register to our brains that we are full in due time - whereas if we eat quickly we override that signal and we overeat without realizing it. So, we thereby eat less food, intake less calories, without realizing it, and without feeling deprived or hungry.

Paul gives all this information in full detail in his book, which I highly recommend to any disheartened dieters, food-lovers and anyone who wants the liberty to eat whatever they wish and maintain a nice, appealing body weight.

Back on the subject of chocolate and how I forever eliminated my personal cravings for it... was Paul's technique.

I can't explain it as well as he does so do read the instructions in his book carefully but this is just a downscaled example of what he's basically saying:

He tells you to visualize, imagine and taste the food you most love and crave and get uneasy and out of control around. (in my case chocolate)

Then he tells you to, at the same time as visualizing this, press your index finger and your thumb together - so you always feel this feeling when you press those together - its a response thing.

Then he tells you to imagine the worst food ( in my case there wasn't anything I didn't like eating so I took maggots instead of food to imagine eating)

and press the index and thumb of the other hand together or something along those lines.

And then finally to imagine them both mixed together, in your mouth, and pressing some other interaction of fingers together which I don't remember now.

If you keep practicing this, and you soon assosiate your favourite food with your least favourite food, or in my case, chocolates with maggots.

On the tv show, he showed us a big screen picture of a luxurious chocolate cake, rich and alluring - and then the same cake infested with maggots - that's how I got my idea, and it really, seriously works.

I am revolted by chocolate of any kind and I can't imagine putting it into my mouth - I just think of maggots and it makes my skin crawl.

So a good technique to say goodbye to a food you just can't control yourself around.

I stopped eating chocolate on January 30th of 2006 and I still haven't touched even a choc chip of chocolate, because even the smell reminds me of maggots - and I don't even know what maggots smell like - it's like paranoia, but I sure like the results this paranoia is creating on my waist line!

I also looked up articles where cases of maggots were found in chocolate, and that just made it more real for me.

I have to warn you, that if you don't conduct yourself according to the rules, you may just gain weight before you lose it.

But the good thing is...that in this system gaining and failure aren't your own fault, its the way your brain is programmed.

The best thing is, never throw in the towel, keep going - it's not hard, you don't have to buy certian foods, follow strict exercise rituals or count any calories.

You find out for yourselves what is good for you and how appropriate a plateful of food is for your hunger.

One rule to keep in mind: Always leave something on your plate - and eject yourself from the "Clean plate club" because it sends a signal to your unconscious that changes are happening.

Paul has designed a hunger scale from which you can tell if you've eaten enough or eaten too much and that's also in his book.

Thanks to Paul McKenna, I know I will never have to diet again, and if I make mistakes, I can always go back to using this plan properly and keep going steady with my weight loss.

I hope this review was helpful for those in doubt, or sceptical about Paul's work. Give it a go, it's not pricey - the book, with all this information in depth, techniques, explanations, personal people's experiences and much much more for only £9.99

And many bookstores and retailers also do discounts and money off on this title - mine had £2 off from WHSmith's.

My husband was very sceptical about this, now he admits defeat and says he was wrong about this and I was right.

By the way - give yourself some time to come to grips with this, it depends a lot on your own bodily feelings, beating emotional eating and knowing when you're truly hungry and when you're truly full - just like a woman has to listen to her bodily cravings during pregnancy - trust your body, it knows what it needs.

That's all from me, don't hesistate to contact me if you need any further advice, help, information or just want to discuss this topic with me, because I am a really ardent fan of this system and I know I will follow it for the rest of my life and try and help other people find true freedom from food cravings and food obsession and find easy weight loss.

Thanks for reading my review.