Hi Stephen, I've found your discussion with nj particularly interesting because I've removed over 16kg over the last 5 or so months by making what I've found to be a few simple pattern changes. I'm certainly not suggesting that I have any "answers" for you...just some notes from my experiences...and based on that some of the language I noticed in your discussion really intrigued me... Before I made these new pattern changes I spent alot of time trying to manipulate my self-image and related representations and I personally found this to be an ecological minefield. I'd have a month or two of success...but it was all very easily and frequently undone. Then my unconscious mind suggested that I forget about how much I weigh, what I look like and what I want those things to be.  Instead I focused on a few little things. 1. I picked a range of behaviours that I thought were helping me maintain my flab and bound a small but intense set of physical activities to them. e.g. everytime I had a smoke I'd do as many pushups or similar as I could...or if I wanted a coffee (and often a snack) from my favourite cafe nearby I'd walk past it down to the end of the beach and back again (about 2km) before I'd get it. I already obviously had some really effective anchors for generating these activities...many times a day...so I just bundled short bursts of intense physical activity onto the front end...and this delivered a whole new level of information to me about these activities...as well as a much higher level of physical activity. 2. I also noticed that I had developed a view that physical activity was a pain in the arse (and yes...I had broken my coccyx a few years ago...twice!)...the short bursts of activity I added above helped refresh my taste for exercise...and now I view things like hills and stairs as a free and abundant supply of endorphine highs...and eat them up like a junkie 8) 3. With all this new information from my altered experiences I felt comfortable reframing the way I represented food to myself.  I now see it as useful energy tied to my activity...if I don't eat enough I won't have the energy to execise...if I eat too much I'll have to spend all day exercising.  This has alot of ecological issues for me...and I've added an unconscious review of this ecology to the very process of selecting food... 4. And then once I felt fitter and had more energy I joined a local martial arts club.  I found this really useful because they have regular training times that I could easily concrete into my weekly timeline...and it also let me focus on learning new skills as opposed to the process of exercising itself...making it both mentally and physically stimulating. And now I have achieved the weight/body fat/muscle tone objectives that I wanted at the outset...but they had virtually nothing to do with how I got there...and now I couldn't really give a toss about them... I just love the experience of exercising and being in my body...I don't smoke and I eat alot less and much healthier...but I didn't go on a diet or ever felt like I restricted what I ate...in fact I still have to eat some of the sugary junk food I used to just to give me the energy I need to exercise... Anyway...that's just my 16kg worth 8) Have fun at the New Code conference... roBman