Lose weight by changing your relationship to food
I’m Dr Helen McCarthy and as a Psychologist I help people lose weight permanently with my unique approach to Appetite Retraining.
To learn how my approach can help you to transform your eating and achieve your personal weight loss goals, please click this link
Typical story: Beauty Therapist Claire lost 28 pounds
Welcome to my website, full of information and resources to help you change how you eat, using my unique approach to retraining your appetite.
I developed Appetite Retraining as an alternative to dieting, because for most people, restrictive diets are psychologically too stressful, which makes them impossible to keep up. Which in turn leads to weight re-gain. The focus with Appetite Retraining is making stepwise changes to those eating habits
I want you to benefit from everything I have learned about the psychology of eating and appetite. I’m learning all the time, and I want to share this knowledge with you to help you achieve a happier relationship with food. Join my mailing list to get my new blog articles as soon as they are written. Sign up here.
Most people I work with want to lose weight. In our modern food environment, losing weight is a particular challenge. And for some of us that challenge is greater still because of biological changes to our appetite signals. Whether weight loss is your goal or not, the principles of Appetite Retraining can help you make sustainable changes to how you eat.
To find out if, and how, I can help you, please click the button to apply for a free Eating Pattern Analysis call with me.
Workshops and training events
The Psychology of Weight Loss: Help your clients change their eating habits
Masterclass on Food Cravings
Masterclass: How to help clients reduce Emotional Eating
“Helen gave me a new way of looking at weight loss and habit change that’s made the biggest difference to the way I help my clients”
“Thank you for a wonderful workshop full of brilliance – I will use the ideas straight away in my work”
I’m Dr Helen McCarthy, the Appetite Doctor.
As a Clinical Psychologist, I’ve been helping people change for 30 years. When I began to work on the psychology of weight loss in 2011, I used myself as my first guinea pig. I lost one and a half stone over 6 months and have kept it off very easily.
Since then, I’ve successfully used my Appetite Retraining methodology with my private clients, and am now teaching other healthcare professionals how to use Appetite Retraining to help their clients lose weight. If you’d like to learn how to lose weight, I’d love to help you too.
..The psychology of weight loss:
How to help your clients change their unhelpful eating habits
Join us on this course to help you deepen your understanding of the psychological factors which influence your clients’ attempts to lose weight. The course will explain why so many people’s weight loss efforts flounder, and will provide you with simple techniques for helping people to overcome these blocks and succeed.
You’ll learn how to incorporate up-to-date research from experimental, clinical and health psychology into your work with clients who want to lose weight or simply change their unhelpful eating habits.
You’ll learn about the psychology of habit change and what Working Memory is, and you’ll be able to explain these to clients in a way that enables them to understand why they’ve struggled in the past. Using this understanding, you’ll learn how to enable your clients to change those eating habits that keep their weight higher than they want.
The course will show you how you can assist your clients with two of the biggest issues in weight loss: willpower and motivation.
The emphasis is on practical, achievable and sustainable techniques and strategies, helping you to support your clients to change their eating habits for good.
The course will include a mix of presentation, discussion, reflection on your experience with clients, and exercises to enable you to develop additional skills.
Professional Accreditation
Approved by the British Psychological Society for the purposes of Continuing Professional Development (CPD).
Approved for CPD by the British Association for Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine (BANT), and the UK Health Coaches Association (UKHCA).
What you will learn
- Three main reasons conventional diets fail
- Simple aspects of the biology of eating and appetite that will enable your clients to learn to eat in tune with their body
- The Appetite Pendulum and how to use it with your clients
- The psychology of eating and appetite
- Behaviour change and how to achieve permanent habit change
- Working memory and why it’s important in habit change
- How to help enhance your clients’ motivation
- How to help your clients strengthen their willpower
- How to help your clients stop eating when they’ve eaten just enough
- How to help your clients stop eating when they’re not hungry
Approved for the purposes of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) by:
- British Psychological Society (BPS)
- British Association for Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine (BANT)
- UK & International Health Coaches Association (UKIHCA).
- Naturopathic Nutrition Association (NNA)
Fee
The fee is £330 for lifetime access with all the supporting materials. This can be paid in three instalments via PayPal.
Masterclass: How to help clients reduce Emotional Eating
Emotional Eating Masterclass Waiting list
Please add your name and email to be added to the waiting list.
This Masterclass on the psychology of emotional eating is for professionals of all disciplines whose work involves helping people change how they eat.
Clients attempting to lose weight may give up because of difficulties with regulating unpleasant feelings and find that they turn to highly palatable calorific foods. Emotional eating is associated with decreased quality of life, increased calorie intake and drop-out from weight loss programmes.
In this Masterclass, we focus on evidence-based techniques for helping your clients discover ways of reducing their reliance on food to deal with difficult feelings. I present research on the development of emotional eating and likely risk factors. You will learn practical, simple strategies which you will be able to put into practice immediately to help your clients reduce emotional eating, to enhance the quality of the work you’re able to do with your clients.
Please note that this Masterclass does not cover how to work with eating disorders.
Approved for the purposes of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) by:
- British Psychological Society (BPS)
- British Association for Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine (BANT)
- UK & International Health Coaches Association (UKIHCA).
Cravings Masterclass Waiting list
Please add your name and email to be added to the waiting list.
How to help your clients overcome food cravings
This Masterclass on the psychology of cravings is for professionals of all disciplines whose work involves helping people change how they eat.
Clients attempting to lose weight may give up because of managing strong cravings that arise from ready access to highly palatable calorific foods. Food cravings are associated with decreased quality of life, increased calorie intake and drop-out from weight loss programmes.
Suppressing cravings does not work.
In this Masterclass we will focus on evidence-based ways of helping your clients overcome cravings.
These practical, simple strategies which have good outcome results will be covered in this Masterclass and you will be able to put them into practice immediately and enhance the quality of the work you’re able to do with your clients.
Please note that we won’t be covering cravings for alcohol or other substances in this Masterclass.
If your work involves helping people who want to stop eating in response to cravings, this Masterclass is for you.
Whether you work in a dedicated weight loss service, or your main role is in mental or physical health, this Masterclass will teach you practical and sustainable techniques for overcoming cravings.
You are likely to be working as a dietitian, nutritionist, nurse, health care assistant, doctor, health coach, psychologist, food educator, counsellor, psychotherapist or other health-related profession.
The Masterclass is available pre-recorded so you can work through it as and when it is convenient for you.
What you will learn
- the psychological processes involved in the development of a craving for a particular food
- specific, evidence based techniques to reduce or eliminate cravings
Course requirements
There are no specific qualifications needed to attend this Masterclass.
Approved for the purposes of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) by:
- British Psychological Society (BPS)
- British Association for Nutrition and Lifestyle Medicine (BANT)
- UK & International Health Coaches Association (UKIHCA).
- Naturopathic Nutrition Association (NNA)
Fee
The fee is £165, which includes the recordings with lifetime access, and all the supporting materials.
If you would like us to invoice your employer please email us with details at info@theappetitedoctor.co.uk
Buy the book
Lose weight permanently eating all your favourite foods.
“This is amazing. It took one sitting to read and has totally re wired my thoughts around food. I am already seeing the pounds fall off!”
5 star
Number 1 Amazon Bestseller
The Appetite Pendulum
The Appetite Pendulum is at the centre of Appetite Retraining. It provides a way of judging your level of hunger or fullness that makes losing weight simple and natural.
Freedom around food
Changing how you eat can make you anxious initially. This free guide to Managing Food Related Anxiety will help you reduce feelings of anxiety and agitation and give you freedom around food.
Success stories
Reversing pre-diabetes. How Claire lost 2 stones (12kg) over 15 months and enjoys food more than ever.
Join the club
Join The Appetite Doctor’s Club for monthly tips on weight loss and psychology.
I had been trying for years to lose the extra pounds that kept creeping on and never managed to shift them. With Appetite Retraining something just clicked. With just a couple of easy changes to my daily eating pattern, I hit my target on schedule, having lost a pound a week for several months. And even over Christmas, I didn’t put anything back on. I feel in control of my eating and my weight, which feels wonderful. I feel fitter and ten years younger. Now dressing up is fun again and I have a new wardrobe.