I seem to have finally grasped it! I am not bingeing at all, I have occasionally made the decision to satisfy the desire for a desert but it has not caused cravings to continue eating, as it has been part of a meal. I can put this success down to your approach, and feel that you are responsible for setting me free of my binge/regret habit.  I know you will say that it was me that was responsible, which is true, as I had to take on board the steps, but without your support I would not have achieved this with relative ease.
TF

I know it's important not to go on about it but I feel like understanding your approach means carrying around a big secret. I want to tell people all the time, whenever I hear about a friend going to slimming classes or dieting I just want to scream NOOOOOOO!
There have been so many benefits for me from your book and seminar: understanding my addiction, recognising the difference between hunger and addictive desire, disconnecting issues of self esteem and appearance/weight, allowing myself to be healthy but not "thin", enjoying food without guilt and shame, and many more!
SE

I no longer feel that I have no control of the way I eat, I feel I have the choice to make positive changes to my health through the way I eat. That my addictive desire is not something that rules me, it is something I can work through. Overall the book and course have left me feeling that I do not have to be a victim in all this, something I have felt in my seventeen years of dieting, but that I am in control of my life. With some work and patience, this method really works and leaves you feeling a lot more positive about yourself.
SR

I am liberated from a lifetime of feeling I 'can't, mustn't or shouldn't' eat something, and instead make a REAL choice, my choice, about what I do and don't eat. I am therefore empowered, and my relationship with food is calmer and easier than I have ever known, and also my relationship with myself.
CJ

I went to France this summer, and whilst I certainly indulged somewhat, I was controlled and measured and whilst not effortless it was not an ordeal, and I never once went into rebellion mode. I gained no weight, everyone commenting on slimness, I plug your book and seminar whenever possible.
I have lost best part of a stone since we last spoke.
RE

May I just say what a great help your book, 'Eating less. Say goodbye to overeating' has been to me. What really worked for me was buying the cd and keeping it in the car. The short trips - school runs, food shopping, meeting friends for lunch - were just long enough to play a section, and help me remember why I was doing it. Thank you so much for helping me find something that made so much sense and that wasn't a diet!
JP

The fact is though that you have helped me tremendously. I am now in a better position with food than I had ever been since my childhood (I just turned 40) and for the first time ever I think I can be in control of food, rather than the other way round. There is no doubt in my mind that there is no better approach to food addiction than yours, and that nothing else works.
MK

After 30 years of overeating and trying most reducing diets and slimming clubs, yours is the first approach that works for me in a lasting way. At last, someone understands the difficulties that I have in controlling my eating. At last, someone understands the compulsive thoughts that lead me to overeating, and the misery of this behaviour.
You have given me the tools to work out how I can eat normally as other people do, instead of being addicted to food and structuring every day around obtaining food or avoiding it. I no longer feel afraid of food of that food controls me. I no longer feel scared of feeling hungry and in fact I now look forward to feeling hungry as I can use it as a barometer.
HK

I have suffered from bulimia and anorexia for over ten years and I have had many types of therapy, books, everything and everything is always temporary. I always went back to overeating, which in turn went back to the bulimia because of the fear of weight gain - which happened anyway! I am so happy to have found your way, it sounds so simple but it is so true and I finally accept that it may be a long road but IS the right one. Thank you so much you have totally changed my life. From the bottom of my heart I take all the love I can summon from my body and give it out to you.
NC

THANK YOU for your book. How did you discover and realise all these things around food? If there is a secret about all of this it looks like you have unearthed it! I only got the book a few days ago and am on page 101 and already it feels like there is a glimmer of hope and that this dark veil of worry, guilt, obsession around food, weight and appearance is disappearing. There is much gratitude here, so thank you again!
I was a fat child and so was my mother and although she is now 68 she is still obsessed with her weight and says stuff most days about 'well, I have been on a diet all my life and you'll have to be the same...' or 'you're not going to eat that are you, it'll make you fat.' I am sick of all this pressure! I feel like she's put all her stuff around food on me all my life and I want it to stop. I want to be passing on a good, healthy relationship with food to my daughter!
I am starting to see the situation for what it is. Low, low, low self esteem, denial and a trough load of other stuff. I finally feel that there is light at the end of the tunnel. And it's not about the scales is it? I was the heaviest person at school and was bullied, I was bulimic in my late teens, have had three major depressions in my life - my post natal depression left me suicidal at times and I look back and I see that these were caused largely by issues of low self-esteem and self-loathing.
It's just absolutely amazing to be reading your book. Thank you so, so much again.
CS

Since the seminar, I NEVER EVER think about food in terms of calories any more, which has been a huge shift in my thinking about food. MB
I attended your seminar last year and I have to say that it really changed my life. Gone is the obsession about food and feeling guilty, low self-esteem following over-eating and losing control. And I can't thank you enough for that. It's all about choice and not using words like 'never', which have a very negative connotation in general and make you feel deprived straight away.
Gillian, you really changed my life and I'm forever grateful for that. Miracles
do happen.
RT

Your method is innovative and the way forward for me and for many people who overeat. One of the most significant things I got was that if you eat addictively you don't have to continue you with it all day long.
LP

I have read your book and it has made an immense impression on me. For years I have been trying to lose weight, whereas the answer is to eat less to live longer and subsequently lose weight. My job involves me spending a lot of time queuing in petrol stations with their attractive displays of chocolate bars, yet I now feel no desperate need to eat any of them and it is all thanks to Gillian. So far I have lost over a stone in weight, but feel that I may have extended my life by a couple of years at least. Thank you.
MB

I think I'm euphoric about this new way of looking at things. Even though I read your book and had started reading it again I still hadn't really understood the true concept of choice until I did the seminar.  Still making informed (and I think good) choices!
I'm reading your Willpower book at the moment and feel that I neatly fit into the category of person who's been in the state of 'learned helplessness'. So many years of failing to lose weight and get to grips with overeating (Weightwatchers, Overeaters Anonymous, Slimming World - all of them many, many times), that for the last year or two I'd come to the conclusion that there was something very wrong with me as I could not stick to any eating plan, no matter how reasonable and healthy. This led to my third period of depression and medical treatment, eventually going on to a period of CBT.  This was helpful in making me understand that I didn't have to be perfect, and to work on raising my levels of self-esteem, but it didn't teach me how to stop acting on my addictive desire to eat.
Anyway, your seminar helped me find the Eureka moment. All I have to do is to remember that I always have a choice and to put that choice into practice, each time I have the addictive desire to eat, or each time I'm actually hungry. BB

I had been a member of most slimming groups at sometime in my dieting history. I have attended Overeaters Anonymous; I have been on medically sponsored diets, using amphetamines and appetite suppressants; I had hypnotherapy; did a two year counseling course at my local university; read virtually every theory written as to why I was fat. How my life has changed since doing the Eating Less seminar!
It has been eight months since I did the seminar and whilst on the odd occasion I may have overeaten I haven’t binged once! I feel so much better. It is now 8 months since I’ve had a migraine! I had been having migraines for 34 years; I never traveled anywhere without my precious reserves of migraleve. I still had migraines when I lost weight by dieting in the past; since doing the course, my health is my priority so the quality of what I eat is vastly different.
It is so liberating not to have to count calories, fat units, whatever. I now live in the real world of real food and make food choices based on what is good for my health and my body. Yes I’ve lost 4 stones, but more excitingly, my body fat percentage has reduced by almost 25%!
The beauty of your approach, beside it working of course, is that it is simple. I studied psychology at university, did a two year counseling course. All this time I believed that there were some deep, dark secret in my psyche which when I found out what it was would free me from my compulsive eating forever. There is nothing wrong with me and there never was! This illustrates yet another gem from the course, which has stayed with me “you eat addictively now because you did in the past”. I learnt that we could make new connections in our brains to replace the old ones, and these become our new reality. It’s simple, it’s true and it works!
A friend asked me what I was going to do (she meant about my ‘diet’) when I reached my goal weight. I replied, I won’t do anything. I can’t come off anything because I’m not ‘on’ anything. I love the way I live now. I cannot thank you enough for showing me how to live with my addiction. I can honestly say that doing the Eating Less course has been the single most life transforming experience I have ever had.
GO

I found your seminar really interesting and enjoyable. I had been looking for something that made sense to me – after trying other “diets” (such as weight watchers) I just did not feel they were healthy or sustainable long term.
I have to say I am still a lot more relaxed about the issue of food now. One marked changed is that I very rarely (in fact I can’t remember the last time) binge eat. Before, if I was bored or upset or my husband was away I and I was alone, would stuff myself with “treats” to distract myself. My treats now tend to be nice fruit and veg rather than chocolate and cream cakes. If I do choose to say have a biscuit I can stop at one or two and not feel guilty. I’ve been on my own this week and spent Sunday preparing healthy food for the week instead of feeling blue and eating. Thank you for that!
CS

I just read your book 'Eating Less' and am regularly writing notes about my responses to eating and food. I'm 38, have been an addictive eater since my early teens and have been to various counselors, diet clubs and even a hospital Eating Disorders Unit. I have made progress and my binge eating has definitely reduced over the years, but your book gave me ideas that nothing else ever has.
Changing my thinking as opposed to simply focusing on my behaviour has helped in a dramatic way. Yesterday my family and I were returning from visiting my in-laws in Cornwall; this usually triggers a massive car binge on the way home. I call it my release valve, my escape from the in-laws, my stress response and indulgence. I have always thought it inevitable and impossible to stop. With that in mind, I decided not to try and stop myself, as it's never worked before. Standing in the service station deciding what crisps and sweets to purchase, I recalled your book and wondered what you would say. I then told myself that whatever I did, it would be my own choice, it would 'count', it would be ok for me to make the choice but it wouldn't be inevitable, rebellious or a 'release' - it would simply be a choice to relax by eating artificial sugary crap.
For the first time EVER, I didn't binge on the way home from Cornwall. The desire didn't disappear but it became a manageable beast rather than a wild one. I feel so calm and at peace with myself today, as opposed to a hotchpotch of emotions and resentments that I looked you up on the Internet and am writing to say thank you. Your book makes more sense than anything else I've read, and I am beginning to have faith that I have the power in myself to change this. That is a beautiful gift.
RS

So much in your seminar to get my teeth into.  How wonderful to have all these tools that finally make sense. How liberating to finally put dieting behind me. I think this seminar is the kindest thing I have ever done for myself.
DD

The seminar was completely inspiring and for the first time I've found something that makes perfect sense, and more importantly something that I really feel will help me break the vicious overeating cycles. I'm already having breakthroughs. I'm off next weekend for a short break, and I feel amazingly calm about it. Usually when I go away for a few days, I have an inner argument with myself about whether I 'should stick to my diet or go wild for a few days and worry about it later', but this time I'm thinking ‘I have the choice at all times, so going away will be no different'. It's amazingly freeing. 
MC

I’ve felt a huge release from the addictive fictions that I had established that meant I had to eat in case there was no food later, or I had to please the chef, or I might never get another chance to eat a donut like this one, or it is polite to eat everything, or that being hungry (whatever that was) was a dangerous place to be and had to be satiated at the first sign. I have stopped feeling greedy and ashamed as I can say no without feeling deprived, in fact quite the contrary, I feel quite proud not to be putting something unhealthy into my system. The benefit has also been losing approximately 11 pounds without any big effort, simply by prioritising better foods and timing my meals or snacks. The benefit is also feeling in control and not being controlled by my desire for food but playing a greater part in consciously controlling the desire by allocating time and choice of food.
CV

I have a greater sense of self-acceptance, which leads to a greater sense of inner peace and ability to enjoy the here and now. I no longer have any guilt around food and now find that I really enjoy what I do eat. I am making more conscious choices - a real sense of choosing what I want to eat and how much - which feels empowering.
NT

I read your book several years ago and was not ready to accept the messages it gave. I did try it half-heartedly and didn't want to or was not ready to face up to my addiction. There was a reason for my addiction but I always knew it was me that had to do something about it. I instinctively picked up your book again recently and it has changed everything. Everything I read made sense this time - all my excuses were exposed for what they were and I feel empowered. This is the only area of my life where I did not feel in control and now I feel I have control. It is not easy and I do not expect it to be so but it is the first time in over 30 years I feel in control of something that I had little of - my self esteem. Thank you for being so honest and sharing this insight into addictive eating.
IW

I thought I would write to you and tell you how your book has helped me. I read it and cancelled my weightwatchers subscription the same day. I had been following the points system until I realised I'd accidentally gone over my allowance. It was this sense of "oh I've blown it now" that made me think it was ok to eat 2 chocolate brioches! I realised when I woke up this morning that the diet was doing me more harm than good. If I had some points left I would be more likely to 'spend' them on treats rather than eating a piece of fruit for example. I am now feeling liberated at the thought of not being tied to a diet and optimistic about the future. I do have some weight I'd like to lose, but there are so many other things in my life that could do with more attention, and by taking my obsession away from dieting things have improved all round. So, thank you for writing the book and sharing your ideas.
LP

I think your book is by far the single best and most pertinent thing I have come across in 30 odd years of struggling to maintain a healthy weight. What strikes me is that I bought it last November, and the penny has only just dropped about the outline, free choice etc. The addiction stuff is so mired in and wired in and disguised. It's a curious thing and I'm very grateful to you for the book and the way you shine a spotlight onto the addiction eating issue.
RE

I want to thank you for writing such an important book about learning to control food addiction. I am a 25 yr old woman and I have been fighting bulimia and binge eating for many years. I found the technique you offer really works for me because it has allowed me to see that I'm not really addicted to losing weight, but to food itself. Even though it is very challenging for me at times, facing the problem and seeing it for what it really is allows me the opportunity to work through it. So thank you for that!
KS

For many years I have been struggling to get away from the weight loss and slimming approach and have a very voluble dislike of the slimming industry per se, in any form, not wishing to swell their already massive coffers! However, I still had a problem, which I had no real idea was the result of an addiction (I had a very simplistic idea of what an addiction was ... eek). My problem is "simply" overeating, and your book has helped me to recognise what that is about. I can't thank you enough.
PS