Did you see the premiere of “I Can Make You Thin” on TLC at 9 pm last night (Sunday)?

I really liked it.

Paul McKenna presented his 4 Golden Rules for eating.

1. When you’re hungry, eat.

2. Eat what you want.

3. Eat consciously.

4. When you’re full, stop eating.

These rules reminded me a lot of a book I read in the early ’90s called Thin Within: How to Eat and Live Like a Thin Person.

One of the things Paul McKenna talks about is how much of our eating is determined by how much food is on the plate in front of us. He showed an experiment where he sent a group of people out for breakfast 2 mornings in a row. The difference between the 2 breakfasts was that people were blindfolded the second morning. Everyone cleaned their plate the first morning and left food behind on their plate the second. This experiment shows that when you take away the visual cue of seeing food on the plate, many of us eat a lot less.

I tried this experiment this morning and ate breakfast with my eyes closed. I ate less than half of what I had prepared! I brought the second half of my breakfast to work in case I got hungry early but didn’t eat it until 1 pm.

Another thing that intrigues me about this show is a technique that I saw McKenna using on one of the commercials probably for next week’s show. This is a technique of tapping on pressure points on the face and body called EFT or Emotional Freedom Techniques.

I learned about EFT only a few months ago and have been using it to relieve pain, anxiety and emotional upset and to generate positive attitudes.

I’ll be interested to see what other modalities of treatment McKenna incorporates into his program. And, of course, I can’t wait to see what sort of progress his audience members make over the course of the 5 weeks of the series.