A few wise words have stopped me eating like a barnyard animal | Adrian Chiles

After decades of just shovelling in food, I have finally learned to pace myself

I read and listen to an awful lot of words. How many? Let's see. I must get through at least four hours of speech radio, podcasts and audiobooks a day. At roughly three words a second that's more than 10,000 an hour, so let's call it 40,000 a day. And I must be in conversation for about the same amount of time, so allowing for silences and subtracting the words I use, that's maybe another 15,000 a day. And I must read about the same number. I reckon, all up, 70,000 a day; 25m a year. Some of those words have more merit than others. A few, vanishingly few, are sheer gold. One short sentence can reframe everything.

An example: I've banged on extensively about my propensity to overeat, at every meal, and between meals, all day, every day. After more than half a century of this, the shame of it hadn't abated any more than the habit. I'd all but given up trying to change. Then a month ago, I picked up Paul McKenna's book I Can Make You Thin. This turned out to be something of a gamechanger. I have not overeaten since and I'm 6kg lighter. The whole book is interesting, and I have even quite enjoyed the weight-loss mind-programming audio".