Like so many diet and weightloss books, this one wastes too much space whetting your appetite for the "big idea" by slating all the other diets and weightloss theories, before getting into the substance of the book's main (fairly slim!) premise. Which is that most of us have an innate sense of how to eat healthily and in proportion to our body's needs, but this sense becomes distorted by bad training and/or traumatic events. The aim of the book is to tell us how hypnosis can undo these kind of unhelpful relationships to food and re-establish a natural healthy moderate appetite. As the author admits very early on - this is not a diet at all, but a re-education. The book itself contains very little substance apart from this one big idea, and likewise the CD. The first time I heard it I had to laugh as Susan Hepburn has a very flat voice and once she gets into the hypnosis section she takes on a strange droning quality reminiscent of 1950s caricature hypnotists in comedy shows. But if you can get beyond that, the suggestions she plants are (so far) helpful. Does it work? Well, to my surprise, yes! I haven't lost masses of weight ..yet.. BUT in the first week of using the CD (and NOT trying to "diet" as such) I have shifted the extra few pounds I put on over Christmas, without feeling any deprivation. The only changes have been that I am tending not to want to reach for second helpings; I'm eating more slowly and mindfully, eating fewer snacks and giving a higher priority to daily exercise. Nothing world shattering, but I can see that if these kind of small changes in habits become ingrained then I could sustain a quite significant weight loss over a longish period. So it's not a quick-fix "must lose half-a-stone to fit into the little black dress for the party" kind of method, but it could easily be a "for life" switch to a healthier way of eating without any noticeable pain. We all know the theory - eat less, exercise more: we also know the major food groups and which foods will pile on the pounds etc, so why don't we just get on and do it? This book and CD does try to answer that question, so provided you can relate to the central idea, it's probably worth giving it a go!