The weight loss‘ book club’ 199 person and, hey presto, they have group of six. If it grows beyond eight it might become a little unwieldy, so divide into two groups with at least one experienced‘ culture bearer’ in each if you have more than eight. Meet once a fortnight, but no less than once a month, and pick a time that works for most people for the longer term. Friday nights are bad; Tuesday evenings are usually good. I suggest that you meet over dinner to practice making food choices while eating out and savoring, as group exercises. Rotate amongst local cheap restaurants or members’ houses. The discussion when you meet as a group should be around each member’ s thoughts and experiences guided by the ideas in this book. A regular exercise should be to review each others’ Eating Awareness Diaries and look at where the problem foods have snuck in. In particular explore the processes of sabotage that may have been acting on the person at the time. Try to see the process of sabotage as something fascinating to be studied and learned from, rather than as a sign of weakness to be critical of, or to feel defensive about. When new members join, encourage them to ask lots of questions of the more experienced members. Teaching others is the most powerful way of consolidating lessons learned from your own experience and for clarifying thoughts in your own mind. Most importantly, newcomers bring fresh new thoughts, unadulterated by the‘ experience’ of longerterm group members. If I can still learn almost daily from my patients, you can learn from fresh-minded new members. I suggest you work through this book one to two chapters per meeting( the chapters are roughly grouped in pairs e. g. 7 & 8, 11 & 12, 13 & 14). When you finish start again. In group psychotherapy, we continually revisit themes and ideas – but each time we revisit them we speak about them from slightly different angles. As your group matures, members will talk less about the ideas in the book and more about their own experiences around these ideas. Most importantly, the ideas in this book are there to be challenged. It is through challenging the ideas of others that we clarify our own thoughts and our own beliefs.