Quite a lot of “experts” seem to say that the only true path to long term weight loss is to change your life style, not to follow a restrictive diet.

Unfortunately, most of the information out there is based around dieting, and the lifestyle advice they give is “simply follow the diet for the rest of your life, and you won’t put the weight back on”. Somewhere, I have an Atkins for life book – no hope!

Of course, being restrictive diets (which most of them are; calorie restrictive, fat restrictive, carbohydrate restrictive) they require a very substantial commitment to become a new lifestyle.

The main difference that Paul McKenna brings to our dining table is that he isn’t giving us a diet to follow, and then suggesting we make that diet our new lifestyle. He is saying “I have observed thin people, and they have a different relationship with their food. I can teach you how to have the same relationship with food”.

In addition, he has noticed that overweight people that have become “serial dieters” create even worse habits – such as allowing themselves to get extremely hungry before eating, and then eating until bloated.

His “four golden rules” are simple techniques which enable us overweight people to emulate thin people in their eating habits – and with a bit of “mind programming” from his CD, it becomes less conscious and more automatic.

I stopped trying to follow his CD 7 months ago, after losing something like 22 lbs in 5 months, I have put back on about 5 lbs. This isn’t great, but nowhere near as bad as the “bounce back” after trying other diets – hey, you can put 5lbs back on in a week when you stop doing Atkins.

So, if you want to lose weight in the long term, change your lifestyle – and you don’t need to become an overnight fitness freak, or persuade yourself that all your favorite foods are evil. You can just start following four simple rules.