A 6-Week Small-Group Course for Changing the Habits and Behaviours Around Food
Weight management is rarely just about knowing what you should eat.
For many people, eating is influenced by habit, emotion, stress, reward, cravings, routine and automatic behaviour. You may know what you would like to change, yet still find yourself repeating the same patterns.
This practical six-week programme is designed to help you understand those patterns and develop healthier, more sustainable ways of responding to food.
The emphasis is not on crash dieting or rigid rules. It is on understanding and changing the habits, thoughts and behaviours that can contribute to weight gain or make weight management more difficult.
The course is designed to help you:
understand your personal eating patterns and triggers
recognise emotional eating and comfort eating
identify automatic or habitual eating
understand the role of cravings and reward
develop greater awareness around hunger, appetite and choice
challenge all-or-nothing thinking around food
reduce unhelpful self-talk and self-criticism
develop healthier and more sustainable habits
strengthen motivation and self-belief
develop strategies for dealing with setbacks
create a more positive and manageable relationship with food and weight
The course may be suitable if you:
eat when stressed, bored, upset or tired
regularly experience cravings
find yourself eating automatically without much conscious thought
struggle with all-or-nothing approaches to eating
repeatedly lose motivation after starting well
find that one setback turns into abandoning your plans completely
understand what you would like to change but struggle to put it into practice
want to develop more sustainable habits rather than follow another short-term diet
You do not need to be following a particular diet or weight-loss programme to attend.
The course can also be useful for people who are already using other appropriate approaches to weight management but want to work on the psychological and behavioural patterns around food.
This course explores the psychological processes that contribute to doubt and low confidence, while providing practical tools to help shift these patterns.
Understanding Your Eating Patterns
We will look at what influences eating beyond physical hunger, including habit, environment, emotion, stress, reward and learned associations.
Emotional and Comfort Eating
You will learn to identify situations in which food is being used to change how you feel and begin developing alternative ways of responding.
Cravings and Automatic Behaviour
We will explore why some eating responses can feel almost automatic and develop practical strategies for creating more choice between an urge and an action.
Hunger, Appetite and Awareness
You will practise becoming more aware of physical hunger, appetite, fullness and the situations in which these signals can become difficult to notice.
Thinking Patterns Around Food
All-or-nothing thinking can turn a small setback into complete abandonment of a plan.
We will explore more flexible and realistic ways of thinking about progress.
Motivation and Habit Change
Motivation naturally varies.
The aim is therefore not to depend entirely on motivation, but to develop habits and structures that make healthier choices easier to maintain.
Managing Setbacks
Progress is rarely perfectly linear.
You will learn ways of responding to setbacks without treating them as evidence of failure.
Building a Sustainable Approach
The ultimate aim is to create changes that can continue beyond the six weeks rather than relying on short-term restriction.
The programme combines:
structured psychological education
guided group discussion
practical exercises
course materials and worksheets
between-session activities
behaviour-change strategies
relaxation and therapeutic techniques
hypnotherapeutic techniques where appropriate
resources to help you continue practising between sessions
Participation in individual exercises is always optional.
This is a small-group educational and therapeutic programme rather than individual psychotherapy delivered in a group.
The course does not prescribe a particular diet or promise rapid weight loss.
Its focus is on the psychological and behavioural factors that can influence eating and weight management.
Everyone responds differently.
No particular amount or rate of weight loss can be promised, and individual results will vary.
Changes in body weight depend upon many factors, including diet, physical activity, medical circumstances, medication, sleep, stress, hormonal and metabolic factors and the extent to which changes are implemented outside the sessions.
The purpose of the programme is to help you understand and change habits and behaviours that may contribute to weight gain or make weight management more difficult.
This course is not medical weight-loss treatment, dietetic treatment or an eating-disorder treatment programme.
Before attending, participants will be asked to complete a brief health and suitability declaration.
You will be asked to confirm that, to the best of your knowledge, you are not aware of an untreated, unstable or inadequately assessed medical condition that could significantly affect your weight or make intentional weight loss inappropriate without medical supervision.
untreated or unstable thyroid conditions
uncontrolled diabetes
significant endocrine or metabolic disorders
Cushing's syndrome
certain cardiovascular conditions
pregnancy
other conditions where weight change should be medically supervised
You should also disclose relevant medication or treatment that may significantly affect appetite, weight or your ability to participate safely.
If you are unsure whether the course is suitable for you, please seek appropriate medical advice before booking.
The course is not suitable for anyone with an active eating disorder or anyone requiring specialist eating-disorder treatment.
For safety and scope-of-practice reasons, this particular group programme is also not suitable for people with certain conditions or presentations, including psychotic illness or current psychotic symptoms, bipolar disorder, personality disorder, epilepsy, significant heart conditions, or clinically significant low blood pressure where participation may be medically inappropriate.
A brief pre-course suitability screening may be required.
These suitability criteria relate specifically to the format and scope of this group course and should not be interpreted as meaning that psychological therapy or hypnotherapy is universally unsuitable for everyone with one of these conditions.
Some sessions may include relaxation or hypnotherapeutic techniques where appropriate.
Hypnosis is not sleep and does not involve losing control. You remain aware and able to choose whether to participate throughout.
Hypnotherapy is used as one element within the wider behaviour-change programme rather than as a promise of weight loss.
As with all of the approaches used during the course, people respond differently and no specific result can be guaranteed.
The training will include structured teaching, practical exercises, and course materials designed to help participants understand and challenge patterns of doubt.
This course will be delivered in person at Craven Clinic, Skipton.
Terms and Conditions & Privacy Information can be found HERE
The course will include structured teaching, practical exercises and course materials designed to help you apply the ideas in your daily life.
John Taylor is the founder of Thinkingg Free and Thinking Success and has worked full-time as a private therapist for over 12 years. His work focuses on helping people develop practical psychological skills that create real change in everyday life.
His teaching combines therapeutic insight, clear explanation and a practical, down-to-earth approach that helps people understand themselves and build systems that genuinely work.
Book Your Place Here Join Mailing List Contact UsNo.
The course does not prescribe a specific diet.
It focuses on the habits, behaviours, emotions and thinking patterns that can influence eating and weight management.
Possibly, but this cannot be guaranteed.
The purpose of the course is to help you develop healthier and more sustainable patterns around food and weight management.
Everyone responds differently and no particular amount or rate of weight loss is promised.
No.
You can attend whether or not you are currently following a particular eating plan.
Potentially, yes, provided that the medication has been appropriately prescribed and there is no medical reason why participation would be unsuitable.
The course does not replace medical monitoring or advice from your prescriber.
You should disclose relevant medication during the pre-course suitability process.
Some sessions may include relaxation or hypnotherapeutic techniques where appropriate.
Participation is optional and hypnotherapy forms only one part of the wider programme.
No.
This is not an eating-disorder treatment programme.
Anyone with an active eating disorder or requiring specialist eating-disorder care should seek appropriately qualified specialist support.
You will be asked to complete a brief health declaration before attending.
If you have an untreated, unstable or unexplained medical condition that may significantly affect your weight, you may need appropriate medical assessment or clearance before participating.
Because this is a six-person group programme, your place remains reserved for the full course.
Missed individual sessions are therefore not normally refundable.
Where appropriate, course materials may be provided to help you keep up with the programme.
A maximum of six.
This is deliberately a small-group course so there is time for discussion, questions and practical work.
The aim is for you to leave with an individual set of strategies and habits that you can continue using afterwards.
The programme focuses on sustainable behaviour change rather than creating dependence on continued attendance.
If, at the end of the course, you wish to continue your journey with private 1-to-1 therapy, you will be able to do so at a discounted rate.
