Your normal 
appetite awaits!

Yes you can. Just join as a free member and book your free session. Then you can decide later if you would like to upgrade to a paid membership.

The Appetite Club for people who need support because they are desperate for a solution to their eating and therefore are trying so hard to change it, or have been forced to be resigned to it for the sake of their sanity. It’s for people who are mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted from being on the appetite-cycling treadmill – at times feeling positive and excited by the hope it will work this time and, then, ultimately, being disappointed when the old appetite pops up again. It’s for people who are putting all the effort possible into controlling their eating and, even so, they functioning really quite well, so deep-down know it is the same old advice they are getting to “just use your self-control” that is the problem and not with themselves. Our club is for you if you need help learning why overeating is not your fault and how to sort this problem out once and for all, leaving you with a normal appetite that doesn’t need any maintenance.

The Appetite Club is a safe and empathic place for anyone who wrongly believes overeating is a sign of weakness or that something is “wrong” with them. As a member you will learn what reduces the appetite, and what doesn’t but you will also learn why you are strong and not weak and why you should be so proud of yourself for surviving having a large appetite. We want you to feel better, so you can redirect the effort of fighting your appetite into doing things we know reduces your appetite, and also other things that make you happy! As members learn together, they have support for Alison and other members who all have the same lived experience as you. You will find compassion, empathy and solid science to get you where you want to be. Members’ aims range from just talking with like-minded people about how things are for them, to learning more about the process to decide if a complete U-turn in their approach to health is something they are ready for, or to diving head-first into this journey of a lifetime.

We have three levels of memberships to suit your appetite. Our free AND paid memberships come with an initial FREE consultation. Our paid memberships offer weekly and monthly intuitive eating counselling sessions.

Many clients get really quite angry at a parent/carer who was strict with food, but unless there was actual malice in their actions, as opposed to genuine concern for your well-being, that anger is misplaced. I encourage client to get angry at the diet-culture world we live in which teaches parents/carers to have this approach. Wherever the blame is, The Appetite Club can help you work through uncomfortable emotions because, after all these are also driving your appetite, and need to go.

Overeating happened to you. You did not cause overeating by doing or not doing something or having some kind of weakness, or fault and there is certainly not anything wrong with you. If, before the age of about 25, you were involved in restricting your eating, or food was scarce for any reason, you will have developed a larger than normal appetite. The stronger-willed you were as a youngster, the more appetite increase would have occurred as a response to these rules or restriction. Therefore, the reason you overeat is due to restriction which you didn’t cause and strength not weakness. You can re-channel the amazing strength you have into a the appetite normalisation process rather than the futile appetite fight.

We all know what “full-on” dieting looks like, where you change your eating extremely. However, when you have acquired a large appetite, even normal, sensible eating is still very much restrained eating in terms of how much less it is than what your enlarged appetite really needs. You can be actually overeating, in terms of eating more than your body needs, but still be restricting i.e. dieting. Why don’t I feel hungry in the morning? The morning is when dieters feel their willpower works the best and they want to take advantage of this. The reason this seems this way is only because they have been sleeping and not building up tension because they haven’t been using willpower recently because they have been sleeping. The other reason is that some people feel anxious in the morning on this can’t take blood away from the stomach which makes people feel quite nauseous and not feel like eating. The diet will want to take advantage of this.

People who have a history of dieting, find it very difficult to know how much food they actually need. The diets tell them to eat very little and the binges make them eat a lot. You’ve guessed it, the right amount to eat is somewhere in the middle. However, you can’t just make a plan and decide to eat that amount of food you have to teach your body to tell you when what and how much to eat. Yes, this is a slow and arduous process, but it is a permanent process where your body will tell you every day when what and how much to eat forever more.

People who have a history of dieting, cannot feel their physical hunger in their body because they have been ignoring it so much that it has stopped communicating with them. Also, they are feeling so uncomfortable, usually emotionally, or they are constantly distracting themselves from hunger, that they can’t feel it anyway.

This will be the journey that you will be on for the rest of your life. It took me 10 years, but I didn’t have proper guidance and support and I really didn’t know what I was doing at the start. It can years to return your appetite back to normal, because normal appetite is where you don’t even have to think about eating your body just tells you when to eat and what and how much and you just follow and enjoy it. This is so far removed from the way you are eating at the moment and the last time you had a normal appetite could’ve been when you were very young child. A lot has happened since then, but this process can reverse this. There are numerous and amazing rewards along the way and your appetite will be reducing all the time. That is an initial period where your appetite seems to increase but all that is happening here is you are relinquishing control and intentionally freeing your appetite for the first time. Once you have freed your appetite, you can then set about the work to reduce it.

Binging is just a way of the body getting rid of discomfort and any hunger that it has felt over the past, perhaps, a few days. Before you feel so uncomfortable and actually probably physically hungry, that it becomes an overwhelming feeling and eating for an extended period of time, and high-energy foods, is required to make you feel ok again.

When you have a history of dieting, you delay eating until you actually are extremely hungry and when you start eating your body is so ravenous that it makes you eat more than you would normally have done had you started eating sooner. Plus, you are driven to eat high-energy foods because this is how your body can get energy for its ravenous state quicker. If this wasn’t enough, there is also a psychological element that is driving you to eat. When you don’t have a natural protection against overheating, you start eating because of a feeling of discomfort rather than a feeling of hunger when you start to eat you feel a sense of deep relief mistake taste. This relief of discomfort is so intense that your body and mind just need it to continue.

There are two reasons usually they work together. The first is that you actually are physically hungry even though you don’t feel that your body is in energy deficit which means it’s not got enough energy inside it to complete the functions you are trying to do currently. When your body is physically hungry, it will do everything in its power to make you eat. the second reason is that you’re eating is connected to any discomfort you are feeling and you might be feeling some sort of discomfort at that time, whether it be emotional, physical or mental.

When you have developed a large appetite, you have undergone a process of the loss of your natural protection against overeating. This means that you’re eating becomes connected to discomfort and whenever you feel discomfort you are driven to eat, so eating feels very comforting to you. This is not how it should be and there is a way to change this. It won’t make you lose your best friend because at the moment you’re also hate your best friend. It will make you have a completely new relationship with your best friend who you will just love.

Any kind of diet or “healthy eating” plan is just you trying to suppress the appetite that you have acquired. The body and mind have made your appetite as it is for very good reasons, and those reasons are what keep you feeling okay. So, when you start to restrict again when you start your plan again, your body and mind start to not feel okay. You can stand this for a while, and even at the beginning it seems like it feels good (the hope for the future is tempting you), but eventually you start to feel really bad, forcing you to return to overeating again to compensate and make yourself feel ok.

If you have a large appetite and you are trying to fight it and your children are hearing you say things like “I shouldn’t eat that” or “I’m trying not to eat this” then, yes, you are passing a bad habits onto your children. The common assumption is that teaching your child to be careful with food is a positive thing, but it is the thing that causes appetite to enlarge and therefore overeating. The Appetite Club will teach you a whole new way of talking about food which you can pass on to your children so their eating will be natural and they will grow up with a normal appetite.

The size of your appetite depends on how many factors “drive” your eating. Normal eating has only one “driver”, which is physical hunger but a large appetite has many eating “drivers” such as uncomfortable emotions, uncomfortable states like boredom or doing a difficult task. Appetite normalisation involves disconnection the link between these additional drivers and reintroducing physical hunger as the only eating driver. This is not a simple process of trying to distract yourself from the things triggers or, indeed, by motivating yourself not to get triggered, but it is a real transition from mind control to bodily control of the eating. The great news is, the amount of effort you are putting into trying to control your appetite now can be redirected into activating your body to control your eating for you.

Having a normal appetite means you don’t make any effort to stay “on track” with your eating. Your eating is naturally on track so you don’t have to do anything. When you don’t have to make any effort with your eating, you can use all this extra head-space and use it for something else. In my early days of full overeating recovery, I was just thankful every day to not have an attraction to food that often made me think I was going mad. These days, I am eternally grateful, but I feel rested enough to get stuck into exercise which I always was too exhausted to do. As you can see I am also turning some of my extra energy to helping others do the same as I was lucky enough to be able to do a few years ago.

It is a process of “habituation” to food, which means going from being “triggered” into eating by many different things to only being “triggered” into eating by physical hunger. This creates a normal appetite because when you naturally only want to eat when you are physically hungry you will never overeat. This process requires a change in what is controlling your eating. Overeaters are trying to use their mind to control their eating, whereas, normal eaters passively use their body’s own hunger to “drive” their eating. Normal eaters are not swayed to eat at any other time. In case you were wondering, the appetite normalisation process also makes your preference for food normal too, so instead of needing to eat high sugar and fat foods you will only need to eat normal foods which give you the nutrients you need. Your cravings will stop, you will no longer be “triggered” to eat, you will stop comfort eating – in fact, you will stop all overeating. Normal eating is how nature meant eating to be so essentially you are only nurturing what is already naturally present. The only reason you can’t access it is because of the mind’s involvement in the control of your eating. The great thing about the appetite normalisation process, as opposed to appetite suppression injections, is that the effects are permanent.

This is your body’s reaction to going through periods where you were losing weight. When you eat even slightly less than you need, your body makes you not just prefer, but need to eat sugary foods, above all other foods. It’s a simple matter of your body ensuring you survive. When your body notices it’s not getting enough energy (even if it’s only now and then) the need for sugar overrides the need for more nutritious foods.

Here are some indications of having a large appetite: •you have a tendency to eat more, or different foods, than you want to •you get “triggered” to eat foods you see or smell •you think about eating food a lot of the time •you think about how you are going to stop yourself from eating a lot of the time •you have to have periods of “overeating” to make up for “being good” •sometimes you can control your eating and sometimes you can’t. For example, eating control in the morning is easier and the evening are often a food-fest •you think of justification to have a “treat” because you can feel your body is crying out for something “tasty” •your eating has caused you to gain weight (as opposed to due to hormones, medication or genetics) •you need to binge to make yourself feel ok •you use weight control or health as motivation to eat right •once you start eating you find it difficult to stop •you feel like you are addicted to food •if you’re honest, your favourite foods contain sugar and fat •you don’t know how much you should eat, you always try and eat as little as possible (but your efforts back-fire in the end) •you consciously plan to eat healthy food in controlled portions

A normal appetite is where the body makes a person only need to eat what their body needs. In other words, they naturally only want to eat the amount and foods the body needs. A normal appetite is by no means a “perfect diet” because the body sometimes doesn’t make you eat all the food it needs as you go about your day it and makes you eat something high-energy (e.g. chocolate) to top the energy up to the required intake at the end of the day.

Think about your appetite as being how much you need to eat before you actually want to stop naturally. Your appetite is the amount and types of food you need to eat to satisfy you enough to make you want to stop eating.

For someone with a larger appetite, a craving is an unbearable sensation in the mind that needs to be eliminated and because eating restrictions have caused this, only overeating can make it go away. Someone with a normal appetite would not get cravings like this. Their version of a “craving” is a strong desire to eat a certain kind of food because their body needs this type of food for its nutrients. They might also get their craving for something, say sugary, but only because they didn’t eat quite enough that day.

Having a target like weight loss, or indeed, just to “eat healthily” means you are trying to fight the appetite you have. However, “moderately” you change your eating, you are not eating freely and therefore you are restricting and therefore your appetite will increase over time.

Your body doesn’t naturally make you only want to eat what it needs. In other words, your body isn’t “attuned” for eating. This loss of attunement occurred because, before the age of 25, you either started trying to control your eating consciously or you were subjected to food scarcity for another reason.

Intentional weight loss is when you change your eating to eat less (or differently) to you usual so that you lose weight. Unintentional weight loss is when you make the necessary changes to change your appetite for good because you normalised it and you lose weight that is completely imperceptible to you, your body or anyone else. Unintentional weight loss isn’t like when you are ill and the weight drops off you and you think “great I’ve lost weight.” When you lose weight like this your old appetite will come back just like had you been on a diet. Real unintentional weight loss is when you are completely focussed on the skills required for the appetite normalisation process and eventually you realise you have a very different relationship with food, your cravings have gone, your self-doubt has gone, you don’t get ‘triggered’ into eat, you feel energetic because your body has energy not because you have lost weight or are excited about losing weight. This is how your eating is forever more and your body does what is does in response to this.

When you eat normally for ever more, your weight settles out at your “natural” weight. This is the weight your body always should have been had you never meddled with your eating. I am more than happy with my natural weight, not I’m not super-skinny (although nor would I want to be) but I have been able to become the fittest I have ever been because of the extra energy and head-space now I don’t waste it on the appetite fight. Medications, medical conditions and genetics also effect weight regardless of your eating, so you do have to take that into account and be prepare for your natural body to be exposed. The great thing about your natural body is there is nothing to “maintain.”

This common misconception that being at your “ideal weight” will make it easy to keep it going couldn’t be further from the truth. The amount of appetite increase you have undergone during weight loss, eventually, actually makes it impossible to do anything but overeat even more.

The so-called “weight loss” injections are artificial appetite suppressants as opposed to appetite normalisation which is natural. Weight loss injections are appetite suppressants which work while you are taking them. While you are taking the injection, you can focus on “healthy eating” and exercise because you don’t have to fight your appetite. Appetite suppression makes you feel like a normal eater - satisfied - so you don’t overeat. People remark that the injections “take the food chatter away”, which is true because if you are genuinely satisfied you won’t even think about eating, less alone want to do it. The big problems with injections is during this time, you actually feel physically bad because weight loss is actually a very stressful state for the body to be in but the emotional hope of the outcome clouds your physical senses. Another really bad point is you have to come off them at some point, with usually a maximum of 2 years on them. The time you can stay on a weight loss injection is usually due to side-effects which can be quite serious. When you come off your appetite will “rebound” to a much high level than before you went on the injection. This is both scary and depressing. Some people experience very sudden, life-threatening reactions to them, but you won’t know if this will happen to you until you take it. A common misconception that makes people believe weight loss injections are worthwhile is that the “new weight” and “positive outlook” will inspire then to carry on with the “healthy eating” and “exercise”. However, the period of absence of food chatter and its unwelcome return means you will have to make even more effort to fight your appetite than you did before the weight loss. The disappointment of the appetite regain and subsequent weight regain is so uncomfortable that overeating, once again, serves as comfort. I urge you to explore natural appetite suppression (appetite normalisation) with the Appetite Club so you can reduce your appetite permanently with no maintenance forever.

Intuitive eating is a non-diet approach rooted in the science of self-regulation and body awareness. It encourages individuals to trust their internal hunger and fullness cues, rather than relying on external diet rules. Research shows that restrictive dieting often disrupts natural hunger signals and can lead to overeating or disordered eating. Intuitive eating reconnects individuals with these signals, promoting better relationship with food and improved mental health. The approach aligns with principles of interoceptive awareness, the brain’s ability to sense internal bodily signals, fostering mindful eating. Studies have also linked intuitive eating to improved metabolic health and sustained weight stability. Here are the studies: Studies on Intuitive Eating Selected Studies on Interoceptive Awareness Food Restriction / Dieting / Binge Eating Inefficacy and Harm from Weight Loss Interventions Weight Cycling Studies Related to Intuitive Eating A compilation of these studies (citations only) may be downloaded below: https://www.intuitiveeating.org/wp-content/uploads/Intuitive-Eating-and-Selected-Studies-rev-6-2024.pdf

People with large appetites are usually desperate to lose weight, however focus in any way on weight loss does the opposite to your appetite of what you want. Focus on weight loss, makes you try and curb your appetite, and curbing your appetite increases it. Focussing your mind on weight loss, which is like focussing on a symptom of the problem and not on the problem itself. If you had a broken leg, you wouldn’t just take pain-killers to numb the symptom of pain, you’d get the bones re-aligned so eventually the pain would go away by itself. Appetite normalisation’s focus is on tapping into your body’s wisdom to make you only eat what you need. This is difficult and scary at first, because your current need for food is high. We help you with this scary part and over time, as the appetite reduces, your needs for food reduces to only needing to eat a normal amount.

Any traditional weight loss method is where you ‘intentionally’ change how you eat for a period of time to lose weight. There are a few different categories of the traditional weight loss method: “Full-on dieting” is where you drastically change the eating leading to weight loss. This is an intentional weight loss method so it will increase your appetite. “Moderate dieting” is where you is where you moderately change the eating leading to weight loss. This is an intentional weight loss method so it will increase your appetite. “Being careful with food” is where you slightly change the eating leading to weight loss. This is an intentional weight loss method so it will increase your appetite. “Healthy eating” is where you aim to eat healthier than your current appetite, leading to weight loss. This is an intentional weight loss method so it will increase your appetite. Appetite normalisation is where you change your body’s need for food, leading to a reduction of your appetite down to a normal level. This is an untentional weight loss method so it will reduce your appetite. Yes but, I know people who have intentionally lost weight… The definition of “success” is permanent change to the appetite so there is no “maintenance” to keep eating this way. The theory behind weight loss working is that it’s just a matter of self-control and that you can learn how to be self-controlled. Part of this is the belief that people will be inspired to keep at it once they reach their goals. This is not how eating works, any restriction will have and appetite increasing effect. People who appear to be “successful” with weight loss are either working so hard trying to maintain it that something will have to give at some point (mental or physical health) - or they haven’t been at their new weight long enough to experience the full force of their appetite “kick-back”.

“Intentional" weight loss works by changing your eating (or exercise) so your body uses the stored energy (fat) because you are eating less than your body needs. The problem with this is, your body always realises what you are doing and it (your body) makes you eat more and need to eat “high-energy” foods (e.g. fat and sugar). In other words, losing weight by changing your eating increases your appetite. If you have lost weight previously, you may have felt this happening – you might think it’s your willpower is waning but it’s really your appetite increasing. The good news is, appetite normalisation makes the appetite normal again, and if you have had the tenacity to keep trying with the “intentional” method for so long, you can easily succeed when you know how.

Before your appetite began to grow, you had a normal appetite. The last time you had a normal appetite could have been as long ago as your childhood. The earlier your eating was interrupted by your mind, the larger your appetite will be now. Since you started meddling with your eating, especially the very first time you intentionally lost weight, your appetite has been increasing. After each subsequent round of weight loss/regain, your appetite increased even more. The more rounds of weight loss/regain you have had, the larger your appetite will be now.

Many clients who come to me are desperate to lose weight, but after a discussion they realise they are desperate to control their eating because they know if they can do this, they will actually feel great. Being desperate to lose weight is the driving force behind fighting the appetite which increases the appetite. The saying “the more you try, the worse it gets” is so true with eating. The only real solution is learning how to reduce the appetite. Understanding why overeating isn’t your fault is a great place to start because it can take just enough of the edge off the self-blame to get going on this new path.

People stuck with a large appetite find it very difficult to reach out for help. They feel so uncomfortable and even helpless and hopeless and they blame themselves. They also don’t believe anyone else is in the same position as them. This is all so confusing and causes anxiety, they feel stuck and lonely. They are stuck in the cycle of blinding hope for the future that this time things will work and the despair, when it all comes crashing down again. The despondency of the latest “failure” sends them into a period of denial where they try and find a way that they can be happy with how they are and they’re eating, until hope tempts them again. Whatever state you are at, The Appetite Club can help you. We understand exactly how eating works and can demystify it so that you have total clarity about your situation. Then you can make an informed choice about what you want to do. Whether you just want to read, listen and learn and be listened to, that’s fine. Or whether you want to take our online learning course or dive head first into one-to-one counselling, or anywhere in between, it’s all ok. This is your journey, your body and your life.