Can a hypnotherapist find the off switch ...

... for Hannah’s corned beef and crisp sandwich cravings?

I was desperate, desperate, yes desperate, to be upbeat here this week. I even thought of practising “nice” in the mirror.

But that would involve looking at myself and I simply couldn’t face it. Oops, there I go again. See, can’t help the slump or my nature.

But can you? I read something the other day which gave me hope.

I considered it while sucking on a Mini Milk.

“I’ve always been curious about what it is that allows some people to change the course of their lives, despite long odds,” writes Tom Shroder in the Washington Post.

“As far as weight loss goes, I was one of the lucky ones. Thirty to 40 pounds overweight in my early teens, I was regularly taunted by schoolyard bullies.

“Something humiliating must have occurred on the day I came home too depressed to do anything but lie on the couch and brood. I sank down deep into the cushions and felt sorry for myself. Then I began to get angry.

“I hated being the fat boy in school. I hated the way I looked in the mirror. And, more than anything else, I hated the feel of the swollen belly I carried everywhere I went.

“And then I decided: I didn’t want to be fat anymore. I refused to be fat anymore.

“From that moment, I simply did what it took to lose the belly. I changed the way I ate, changed the way I thought about food. It wasn’t particularly difficult. There was never any doubt in my mind that the pain of changing was insignificant compared with the pain of remaining the way I was.

“Losing weight is one thing. All I had to do was talk myself out of eating too many French fries.”

So, it’s that simple, is it? Deciding one day to stop eating chips? Thinking – no, believing – that you can be more than you are by weighing less than you do today? Refusing – his word, not mine – to be dissatisfied?

But how do you change the way you feel about yourself?

The other day I decided to get hypnotised to see if I could think myself thinner.

I met this wonderful man, Simon Richards DCHyp, MBCSHA, GQHP (and quite sexy really) at his Corpus Clinical Hypnotherapy offices in Bridgend.

I went after feeling that I’d exhausted every diet known to mankind, save the skimmed milk and Bovril one (yup, I’ve been reading up on gastric bands).

I also knew of a few people who’ve gone to see him who are still reaping the rewards.

I went with an open mind, and huge hope that he’d find something in my subconscious noodle that would flip a switch, make my self-esteem fatter and my need to self-medicate with carbs slimmer.

He told me that a small number of people don’t succumb to hypnotherapy, but they are usually those who don’t really want it and who fail to relax or let their mind become open to positive suggestions.

My mother had suspicions that I wouldn’t “go under” as she put it.

“The constitution of an ox, you’ve got my love,” she said to me. I stopped short of asking her if she was confusing constitution with bottom size.

I thought about this while nibbling on six chicken nuggets and a strawberry milkshake as I waited to go in, convincing myself that it would be my last meal of rubbish (idiot, idiot, bloody idiot!). I tried to relax, honest I did, but all I could think about while he was trying to suggest wonderful new ways of thinking to me was whether or not he was looking at my fat belly.

There I was, sat in this fancy rocking chair, and all I could concentrate on was my belly, my boobs, my short-sleeved top, my chin, why I had those nuggets, my flat hair, that obnoxious, charmless man, stage hypnotist Kenny Craig from Little Britain saying to me: “Look at your thighs, at your thighs, the thighs, the thighs, not around the thighs, the thighs, don’t look around the thighs… click… you’re under.”

Under. Rhymes with thunder. Yeah, you’ve got it, thunder thighs.

Hypnotherapy, and diets, work on other people. I’ve seen the evidence in my own office.

So why am I so resistant to thinking I can change, even though it’s the one things I want most in the world (apart from McDonald’s extending their breakfast menu past 10.30am)?

Stop doing things I like in order to do things I’d don’t, maybe.

One, two, three… and I’m back in the room. I’m just thankful it’s not in the all-you-can-eat buffet of my mind today.