Stop dieting for ever!

More than half of all Britons are now officially obese and half of us are on a diet at any one time. Could it be that the diets are actually making us fatter? A revolutionary new theory says they are. But you can learn to stop worrying about food and lose weight.

The latest diet sensation in the UK is a course complete with notepad, pens and homework. Beyond Chocolate is the brainchild of Sophie Boss, a slender 36-year- old translator who lives in North London with her husband, Ben Gold, 36 and their children, Evie, four, and Jasper, eight.

'I have started too many diets to count,' she says. 'Including the grape diet, excluding wheat, dairy and sugar, replacing meals with shakes, and Weight Watchers.'

After years of strict adherence to such regimes, Sophie decided the root of her excess weight lay in her emotions about food. After 18 months reading about nutrition and the psychology of eating, Sophie thinks she's ready to teach the world to stop worrying and start enjoying food and, in the process, lose weight.

I was dispatched to join her and what I found, as I raced hungry and late into Mickleton Hall in Gloucestershire, were six women seated serenely round a candle in the 'worship room'.

I gazed at the others, sad witnesses to the fact that 90 per cent of dieters regain every ounce they ever lost, plus a few more. As we discussed how and why we eat, it emerged that we don't eat because we are hungry, but out of boredom, being upset, or just to fill a gaping emotional hole in our lives.

One bulimic who had thrown up three times a day for years, said: 'My mother told me I was too podgy as a teenager and put me on an impossible diet so I would be able to wear my bikini on the beach.'

Maybe the answer is guilt-free eating, as Sophie says: 'Now I eat when I am actually hungry, and am aware of those foods which provide transient pleasure when I eat them but which I find difficult to digest.'

Beyond Chocolate is a residential course over three days but you can also do it in weekly session for two months. The first evening was informal, but the next day we got down to the serious business of our relationship with food.

Similarities were striking such as a horror of emptying leftovers in the bin. But, as Sophie explained, forcing yourself to clear the plate makes you a human dustbin.

The first lunch was almost impossible to finish, as we sat alone with chopsticks instead of knives and forks. We swallowed each mouthful of fish pie, green beans and mini corn slowly and realised we were full before the plate was empty. The noise of chewing was deafening.

Another exercise was to take food, feel it in our hands and then hold it in our mouths before chewing very slowly. As my neighbour said, it was like discovering flavours for the first time. A grape was deliciously refreshing and seemed like a feast.

Crisps proved revolting and I realised that unless they're wolfed down in handfuls, the oil slick they create in your mouth is overwhelming. The Lindor chocolate, though, was delicious. Chocolate is not forbidden on the course. Indeed, there was a little box of chocolates on our pillows.

As Sophie says: 'Don't think about foods to avoid.' Instead, eat what you feel like: sugar, pizza, butter, pancakes are all fine. If we stop depriving ourselves then we won't want to indulge excessively. That is the theory. Food isn't good or bad, it's just food.

When I was young I used food as a weapon, gorging on buttered toast to spite my mother. Then, in my 20s, I'd go for days without eating at all to shed pounds. Of course, I didn't admit that I had an eating disorder, still don't. All I did was eat well or not much.

My weight was 8st. When it crept up, a few days of cutting down and I was sorted. Three pregnancies later I was 10st 4lb and stuck at that until I shed 2st over six months. I put most of that back in half the time and I'm in crisis as a confirmed yo-yo dieter.

A member of the Beyond Chocolate group, I was average. The women ranged in age from 20s to nearly 60, some would be considered slim, others were a good few stone overweight.

They were all apparently confident professionals. But discussing 'why we eat' was depressing and enlightening.

Nevertheless, the Beyond Chocolate philosophy was appealing. Now, when I go to restaurants, I shall imitate Sophie and order creme brulee for starters and then a savoury dish if that is what I fancy. The same applies to dinner parties - don't eat if you don't feel like it, and if you want a tiny portion, ask for it.

It's been a week since I left the course full of enthusiasm and greed, buying smoked salmon, Belgian chocolates and bacon for butties.

At this point I remembered that I am supposed to be writing down everything I eat to get a measure of my eating pattern, but I am afraid I won't slow down. And I can't bear to throw my scales away.

Only time will tell if this new-found understanding of 'food and self' will work. I hope so, but the enthusiasm I got from the weekend is fading fast. I'd better e-mail one of my course buddies.

A Beyond Chocolate weekend costs £350. Call: 07904 125 997 or visit www.beyondchocolate.co.uk.