Ditch the diet and think yourself thin? Who is she kidding?

No one; Alison Tynan is adamant that too much dieting actually makes you fatter. And, she insists, 90 per cent of our problematic relationship with food is mental rather than physical.

Once you stop dieting, and deal with what's in your head rather than on your hips, you can get slim - and stay slim, she says.

Millions who have been spoon-fed the weightloss plans, the meal replacements and the super-skinny yoghurts will think she's off her rocker. But Alison is as calm as your low-calorie cucumber.

"I help people to change from within," she says.

"You don't need to count calories or deprive yourself of the foods you love. You just have to change your beliefs about yourself and your attitudes to food," she says.

A hypnotherapist and master neuro linguistic programmer, Alison vows she can get you thinner without putting you on a diet, or the scales.

"Dieting is a massive industry and a major preoccupation. Just look at the amount of advertising on TV because the New Year is supposed to be a time for creating a slim new you. But the truth is, diets don't work," she says. "Not in the long-term. You can slim down over six months to fit into a wedding dress, but once you stop you will put the weight back on. And the more you do it, the bigger you will get.

"Diets slow down your metabolic rate. They put your body into famine mode so that it can function on smaller amounts of food. You will need to eat less and less to counterbalance it. And when you get fed up, come off your diet and go back to your old way of eating, it takes a while for your metabolism to adjust - and you gain weight as a result," she explains.

Over the last three years, Alison has coached scores of South Yorkshire men and women to slimness in one-to-one sessions and 18 months ago launched her Kick The Diet workshops for up to 30 people at a time. Many are yo-yo dieters who have battled with their weight for most of their lives and are at their wits' end. Stage one involves getting them to admit the truth to themselves about the amount they eat and the exercise they do

"Many have a lot of misconceptions; they fool themselves," she says. "I get them to keep a food diary but I think most of them are not honest in filling it in. I'd say 20 per cent drop out - I've had some leave straight after I've told them what their body fat percentage is."

Stage Two is even harder; she persuades them that they need to eat the food they have always considered bad, including the word that will stop a perpetual dieter's heart faster than you can say egg and chips... FAT.

"It's a fact that 30 per cent of your dietary intake needs to come from fat," she says, explaining that if your body doesn't get enough fat, it will store calories and make it. But 60 per cent of people in my classes are what I call Fat Phobics. They go pale when I tell them.