It's not just what you eat but how, why and where that can be vital when it comes to weight control. Read on to discover the different eating habits that could be sabotaging your diet efforts.

Ask anyone who's ever struggled with their weight and they'll tell you food itself is just part of a much more complicated problem. In a survey of more than 5,000 people, US researchers Dr Larry Scherwitz and Deborah Kesten identified key eating behaviours that were strongly linked both to overeating and to overweight and obesity.

‘It's become normal in our culture to eat alone, to cram food in between work appointments and to snack in front of the TV, but our research linked these and other eating styles with weight gain,' says Deborah Kesten. Interestingly, the research showed that those who were overweight ate more but enjoyed it less and that overeating was most often prompted by negative feelings. The message is simple - if you can identify damaging patterns in your eating behaviour you can begin to make changes which could transform the way you feel about food and make all the difference to your weight.

For you food is infinitely more than just fuel. It's an emotional prop, a solace when you're bored or lonely and a release when you feel angry or stressed. Studies have linked anxiety, depression and anger with overeating for many people, and researchers at Leeds University found that when people feel very stressed they tend to eat high fat, high sugar snacks rather than healthier main meals and vegetables.

Change your style Of course a chocolate bar or doughnut will make you feel better - for about 15 minutes, but it won't do anything to address the feelings that prompted you to eat it in the first place. ‘Moving to appetite-based eating is difficult because appetite control has a profound interaction with the pleasure pathways in the brain, so food and the desire to eat are closely related to our emotions,' says Dr David Ashton of the Healthier Weight Centre. Record your feelings, write down what you ate and how you felt before and afterwards to help you start to distinguish between real and emotional hunger.

Real physical hunger feels like a gnawing in the pit of your stomach - if you've eaten in the past couple of hours and you get the urge to eat, you're unlikely to be hungry. If it's not genuine physical hunger find other ways to distract yourself or address the need - let off steam to somebody, call a friend for a chat, go for a walk - basically, find a way of comforting yourself that doesn't involve food.

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Every day is a battle, a succession of anxious calorie counts, internal calculations and bargaining about how much you've eaten and what you can allow yourself. ‘If food has become an obsession, if you're constantly counting calories and weighing yourself, food is in control of you rather than the other way round,' says Dr David Ashton.

Change your style Take back control. Eating for health isn't about willpower; it's about good planning and motivation. Forget calorie counting and work out a sensible low fat eating regime, with good portion control, and redirect the time and energy you spend counting calories and fretting towards getting regular exercise into your day. Planning will help you stay in control, so shop online or make a list and stick to it. Plan ahead for your week's meal and snack menu and don't buy foods that you're going to agonise about eating - if they're not in the cupboard, then there's no dilemma.

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You know you should eat fresh, cook from scratch and check food labels but poor planning and lack of time mean you often miss breakfast and then grab a pastry at 11, or find yourself stocking up on ready meals at the end of the day. You rely far more than you should on processed food, high in calories, sugar and salt.

Change your style Make a commitment that for at least a week you'll eat fresh whole food as often as possible. Give yourself a little more time to plan, shop for and enjoy cooking. You'll feel more connected with your food, enjoy it more and that'll give you the impetus to skip ready-made food and get back to basics.

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You come home from work, go straight to the kitchen and open the fridge. Or turn on the television, grab a packet of biscuits and by the time the programme is over they're all gone. The odds are you don't remember eating them - and you're not alone. ‘Even studies of people like nutritionists who are ‘food aware' find they consistently underestimate what they eat when they're watching television because they're not actively thinking about it,' says Dr Ashton. ‘A couple of extra biscuits a day can add up to a 5-10lb weight gain over a year.'

Change your style Your food diary can help make you aware of how many calories you're consuming without really noticing. Now you need to transform that unconscious behaviour into full awareness so you start to make positive choices about whether to eat in the first place, what you will eat and how much. Give yourself distractions - have a shower as soon as you get in, or take the dog out for a walk - to break the eating habit. If you want to eat something, get out one biscuit or put a portion of crisps into a small bowl and put the rest away.

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‘When I ask people to tell me about a memorable meal, it's never the sandwich in their car in a traffic queue, or sitting at work, and it always involves other people,' says Deborah Kesten.

If you persistently eat on the run, bolting the food down wherever you are, hardly noticing what you eat and rarely sharing a meal with others, you may never really feel satisfied and eat more to compensate.

Change your style Give food and your eating environment your full attention. Get up 10 minutes earlier and sit at the breakfast table with the family, rather than grabbing a slice of toast on the way out of the door, leave the office to eat lunch rather than snacking at your desk, and enjoy long, lazy meals with family and friends at the weekends. Learn to linger over your food, put your fork down between bites and savour the different flavours and textures of food to maximise your enjoyment. Remember, too, that just seeing and smelling food stimulates your digestive juices to start flowing before you even start eating. Take your time, to enable your body to get the message to your brain that you have eaten enough.

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For you, food is never just food. It's always ‘good' or ‘bad', acceptable or banned, so you're constantly struggling to beat your cravings for the forbidden stuff and stay on the straight and narrow. You feel deprived if you deny yourself the ‘bad' stuff, but consumed with guilt if you eat it. Food manufacturers understand and plug right into this vulnerability with their ‘naughty but nice' and ‘treat yourself' messages.

Change your style ‘It's basic psychology that as soon as food is forbidden you'll want it more, which is why we never ban foods. There are no ‘good' or ‘bad' foods, just some that are more conducive to weight gain,' says Dr Ashton. So stop denying yourself the foods you really enjoy, and start being careful about how often and how much you eat of them. Good planning helps here - if chocolate is a must-have, buy a very small bar of really delicious chocolate, so you won't be tempted to binge, and savour every mouthful. If wine with dinner is a must, make it a really good one, have a glass, then cork the bottle and put it back in the fridge. Researchers working on the Lean Habits Study in Germany found that people who had a flexible approach to what they ate, but were aware of portion size, were far more successful in keeping weight off than those with an all-or-nothing approach to food.

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