Audrey - I went on my first diet when I was 13. My mother stood me in front of the mirror in my underwear and asked me if I really wanted to go to the beach looking like that. I spent the next three months on the Mayo Clinic diet, mostly eating poached fish, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes and apples. I lost weight, a lot of weight and, delighted by the results, started to cut down on the already meagre portions allowed by the programme. By the time the summer came round I was looking, to my eyes, pleasantly skinny - and fainting regularly from lack of food. September rolled round, and it was back to boarding school. Buttered toast at breakfast, and tea and sweets from the village shop became my only form of sustenance as I refused to eat the revolting school meals on offer, and I rapidly regained all the weight I had lost - plus a little more. This was the beginning of a 20 year cycle in which I yo-yoed between losing weight and then putting it all back on again. I tried everything: diet books, doctors who prescribed hunger suppressants, WeightWatchers, home-made eating plans based on calorie counting, and countless other miracles that promised me a thin body. I even used vomiting as a way of controlling my weight. It became harder and harder to stick to the diets, I 'slipped up' more and more frequently with longer and more intensive 'pig out' periods. And I always seemed to put on more weight than I had lost. By the time I was in my mid twenties I was starting a new diet, or vowing to 'be good and watch what I ate' every Monday morning. These attempts lasted anything from until lunchtime to a few days, before I gave up and went off the rails, until the Monday after. The more weight I put on, the more miserable I became, and the more miserable I was, the more I ate. I hated my body with a passion; hated my flabby stomach, which bulged out over the waist of the too-tight jeans I had squeezed myself into; hated the rolls of fat on my back and the flaps under my arms, which I covered up with baggy T-shirts; hated my triple chin, which I couldn't hide. Against all logic I believed that my weight was at the root of all my problems and that if only I were thin, I would be happy. My ongoing battle with obsessive dieting, bulimia and a destructive body image was very private. I never talked about it to anyone. Not to my girlfriends, who were all thinner than me, not to my boyfriend, who I knew would tell me to 'just get a grip and eat less', not to my sister, who was forever embarking on a new weight-loss crusade herself, and not to my mother, who had been consistently depriving herself for the past 40 years in a systematic cycle of starving during the week and bingeing on weekends. Anyone looking at me from the outside would have seen an outgoing, friendly woman who was good at her job and had a lively social life. I never talked about the self-loathing, about the late-night binges, or about the vomiting. After all, it was entirely my fault, I was weak and pathetic, and simply lacked the willpower to go on a diet, lose weight and sort myself out once and for all. So I kept quiet and kept going round and round in circles. I moved to Rome and set up a new life in Italy... and ate. I threw myself into my work, building up a successful freelance career in PR and event management... and ate. I travelled and I discovered new worlds... and ate. I went out and had fun... and ate. The years went by and I continued to pile on the pounds. By the time I was 30 I was overweight, desperately unhappy with my body, running out of options and ready for change. This book is about how that change began. It came about first and foremost by accepting that the way I was approaching weight loss was not only completely ineffective but it was also harmful to my health, but even more importantly to my self-esteem and ultimately to my happiness. It came about by being willing to put lifelong beliefs into question, by being open to new, and sometimes daunting ideas, by experimenting and learning from my experiences. It came about, above all, thanks to my sister Sophie. She was the person I turned to when I finally decided to open up and talk about my struggle with food. That was when I discovered that we had been going through the same things for years, without ever talking about it. It is thanks to her support and vision that I found the courage to make changes. Since then, we have come a long way. My life as an unhappy, overweight, serial dieter has been transformed. All the energy, time and effort I used to put into trying unsuccessfully to lose weight in the past has been freed up and goes into more joyful, rewarding and enriching activities. Today, I have a life Beyond Chocolate.

Sophie - Just like my sister, I spent most of my adult life from the age of about 13 to 34 either on a diet or eating for Britain. I remember the first time so well; it was at boarding school, with my best friend. We decided that we would have a bowl of All Bran with skimmed milk for breakfast followed by two Ryvitas with Marmite for lunch and the same for dinner! I lasted about two days. Over the years I went on every diet in the book and made up many more of my own. I believed with all my heart that if I could just lose weight and be thin then everything would fall into place. When was thin, men would find me attractive. When was thin, I would be worthy of my mother's love and acceptance. When was thin, then I could start dressing and behaving like a real woman. But until then, I would continue to feel like a fat middle-aged blob. I went to nutritionists and naturopaths; I tried detoxes and meal replacements and I even earned myself the WeightWatchersÕ Gold Card. I was so desperate to lose weight that I would go hungry for days on end, trying to starve myself into thinness following some outrageous new fad. Sometimes I lost weight, but mostly I didnÕt, I always put it back on. And every time this happened I felt like a total failure. And yet, I never gave up: I read diet books like novels, avidly absorbing every word, hoping with all my heart that they would work. And they rarely did. The only times I ever lost weight and kept it off for any length of time were when I fell in love or started an exciting new job. And as soon as the novelty wore off, I was back where I started, cramming in the packs of salami and cakes, wishing I wasn't so out of control. By the time I was 34 I was living in my dream house in London, home educating the children, doing an MA in Education and even managing my husband's company accounts; I had good friends and was a confident and capable woman in so many areas of my life, but somehow I didn't really appreciate any of it. I hated my body: my breasts were too big, my bum too wide, my thighs too flabby. I felt huge and miserable, I thought about dieting and losing weight all the time. And I ate constantly. One day sitting at Audrey's kitchen table in Rome it all came tumbling out. When Audrey told me how for years she had been struggling, just like I had, I couldn't believe it. We had grown up together and neither of us had ever said a word. That's when I decided to take action. I made it a priority; I knew that I did not want to spend the rest of my life on diets, feeling like a failure. Transforming my relationship with food, changing old beliefs, patterns and behaviours was a daunting prospect, but I decided to stop dieting and went on a mission. I read every book I could lay my hands on. I kept a journal where I wrote about all the ideas, tools and methods I was exploring and experimenting with, those that I had ditched and those that had worked for me. My commitment wavered at times and I learned to be patient and to be kind to myself in the process. As I gradually started making changes I realised the one thing I needed more than anything else was support, but there was none around. That's when I decided to use my own experiences, knowledge and skills as a starting point to create a programme that I could offer women to support them (and myself in the process) to stop yo-yo dieting, to stop food controlling my life. I knew that my body would reach it's natural healthy weight if I focused on having a healthy relationship with food. I spent the next 18 months researching, talking to women and writing, creating Beyond Chocolate and working on my own relationship with food and my body. The more I worked at it the easier it became, and I lost weight without it ever being my focus. Eating had finally become a pleasurable life-sustaining activity - no more, no less - and when I looked in the mirror and saw a slimmer body, that's all it was, a slimmer body. Still me. I wasn't the perfectly happy, sorted woman I'd dreamed of. I spent hours on the phone to Audrey talking about it all and we bounced ideas off each other. I turned to her for advice on marketing and PR, and her encouragement and enthusiasm spurred me on. I encountered resistance when I offered Beyond Chocolate to health clubs and other organisations, due to my lack of 'qualifications'. So I began training as a humanistic psychotherapist. My training informs the work I do in many positive ways and gives me valuable tools, which I incorporate into the structure of the workshops. What began as professional development has become as much about learning to become a person as it has about developing my professional skills. When I was finally ready to run the first weekend workshop, I knew that Audrey had to be there.

That's when 'we' became 'Beyond Chocolate':

We ran our first workshop as a pilot and were thrilled by the experience. We knew that Beyond Chocolate had worked for us, that it was a precious gem, but we had no idea just how mind-blowing the participants would find it. As we sat in the drawing room of a gorgeous country home with women from every walk of life, of every age, and from the four corners of the UK, we were bowled over by the stories that came tumbling out. We had always known that we couldn't possibly be the only ones to have such destructive, obsessive relationships with food and, yet, hearing it first hand from complete strangers was a revelation to every woman in the room. There was a sense of solidarity and understanding - every woman there knew that she was no longer alone in her struggle. As the weekend unfolded we saw all the participants go through a process of wonder and understanding. There were many lightbulb moments as we outlined the basic Beyond Chocolate principles and gave the participants the tools to put them into practice. The women left on the Sunday, empowered and motivated with a radically new mindset. Reading their feedback forms brought tears to our eyes; it was moving to realise the impact that Beyond Chocolate would make to their lives. The icing on the cake was to discover that we loved working together; we complemented each other perfectly and made a fantastic team. So we ran more and more workshops and, as we evolved, so did the workshops. What started as a weekend workshop based on the ideas that we had brought together from different sources turned into a philosophy which is uniquely our own. The more we learned, the more it became Beyond Chocolate. We owe this learning to our personal experiences, to our continued commitment to growing and learning and to the hundreds of women who have taken part in our workshops. By drawing on our personal experiences and infusing it with our qualities we have turned Beyond Chocolate into a series of workshops that are completely different from anything else. Our principles are not rocket science; everyone knows that if you eat just what your body needs and you move you will lose weight. We won't be telling you to just go away and do it, we will show you exactly how. We know that if we gave you a detailed plan to follow you wouldn't stick to it for any longer than the last diet or lifestyle change you went on. Beyond Chocolate is unique because we give you the tools to find the right approach that works for you - one that you will do every day because you thought of it, you decided and it fits into your life.