Actress Pauline Quirke is in the news again – apparently she has regained some of the weight she lost two years ago.  This is what I would like to say to her… Dear Pauline Quirke, I hope you will excuse me writing to you personally like this, but, the fact is, as you are a familiar and well-loved face on the TV and in the celebrity magazines, it almost feels like I know you.

You are probably fed up of people who think they know your business telling you what you should or shouldn’t do with your body, but even so I felt compelled to reach out to you and offer you some support.

When we first got to know you on the television , you were the girl portrayed as the slightly chunky one – the fat and less fashionable one, placed next to slimmer and more glamorous co-stars for comic effect.

Everybody loves to point the finger and wag tongues at heavier celebrities – it makes us feel happier in our own inadequacies. Somehow we feel that those in the public eye are fair game and ripe for criticism.

Then we found out that you had taken steps to improve your health and lose a substantial amount of weight, and most people felt really happy for you, and congratulated you. You looked amazing and so proud of yourself, although I’m sure that even then you had to deal with your fair share of cynics saying it couldn’t last.

And now it seems that the gossip magazines are taking pictures of you again, because you have put some weight back on. They are dissecting the contents of your shopping bag in public, and whispering behind your back.

Your friends are worried about you apparently, and you are quoted as saying that you have had enough of diets and just want to eat normally again for a while. You probably just want us all to go away and leave you alone.

I feel so sad to hear that – I feel so sorry for you that you are having to display in public the disappointment that so many lapsed dieters go through in private – the feeling of failure when the starvation phase of a diet finishes and at the first sign of stress you can’t wait to go back to eating what you consider normal.

And now people are saying “I told you so” and making an example of you in the press, like so many celebrities before you who have lost weight and put it on again.

Your confidence and self-esteem has probably taken a knock, and I’m prepared to bet that you are not feeling too great either about the prospect of tackling the calorie deprivation regime again. It’s enough to drive anyone to the biscuit tin.

I feel so sorry for you and for all the other failed dieters out there with you, because this is the big secret that the diet companies don’t tell you. Yes, anyone can lose weight and start to feel great by sticking to any calorie limiting regime, but when you come off it, you need to realise that “normal” has changed.

The sad fact is, it takes a lot less energy to move a small body around than it does to move a larger one and so in order to stay slim you have to eat less and exercise more than you did before – permanently.

The thing is that most diet regimes don’t really equip you to deal with the reality of being slim. Throughout the weight loss stage, you do not eat “normally”. You are generally forbidden to eat some of the foods you enjoy, and as a result you end up craving them.

As soon as you are allowed to eat again it is all too easy to gravitate to your favourite comfort foods in your favourite quantities. I know that a lot of the readers here will be nodding in sympathy with you at this stage because so many of us have done the same.

So what is the answer? Another bout of deprivation and starvation, with the knowledge in the back of your mind that ultimately it didn’t work last time and you failed? Would that make you feel better in the long run?

What if there was an alternative? What if it were possible to retrain your brain, so that you actually enjoyed eating delicious wholesome foods in sensible quantities. What if it were possible to discover joy in moving your body so that keeping yourself healthy no longer felt like a chore?

If you were able to do that, then surely you would lose weight and feel better about yourself naturally and healthily without depriving yourself in any way. And if you could do that then you wouldn’t need to ever diet again.

If I ever met you Pauline Quirke, I would show you that there is a way to lose weight that does exactly that. I would introduce you to some members of my fabulous Slimpod community, who have lost substantial amounts of weight, beaten chronic diseases like diabetes, and are now living a kind of life they couldn’t imagine before they tried the Slimpod system.

These people do not diet, they eat what they love and they enjoy exercising, right from Day 1 of their weight loss journey until they reach their goal and beyond. They have regained control over their eating, their health and their lives.

At Thinking Slimmer we have been working with the Department of Health and been running independent clinical trials on our weight loss downloads, and the results are looking very positive.

We developed the Slimpod after years of success in Harley Street. It’s a 10min voice recording and the language changes the way you think about food and exercise. It also helps to build up your self-esteem.

I wish you all the best Pauline, I really hope that you can find a way of eating and a body image that feels right and sustainable for you. It is not for me or for anybody to tell you what size you should be, but what I do wish for you is happiness and acceptance of the body that you choose for yourself.

With love,

Sandra x

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[NOTE: Download Sandra’s free ebook 7 Ways Your Brain Can Help You Lose Weight for more information and simple, proven ways you can fight back.]