Suzannah Jackson lost her appetite while melting scraps of candles.

It was to be the spark of an innovative idea fusing weight loss with the aroma of a candle.

The 32-year-old’s work as an EFT (emotional freedom technique) practitioner had brought her into contact with clients battling binge eating and weight problems and, ironically, Suzannah stumbled on her unusual appetite suppressant candle while seeking things to do with her three-year-old daughter, Maisy-Rose on a rainy day in February.

Melting the wax, Suzannah, who also has an 18-month-old son, Angus, realised she hadn’t felt hungry all day. “After I’d been making these candles, I realised I didn’t want to eat anything. I thought ‘is there an appetite suppressant candle?’ I researched it and thought I’d make one!” she explains.

Experimenting with various essential oils led Suzannah to a secret concoction she believes can put clients on the road to slimming success.

Since creating her website and launching GlimmerSlim in June, she has distributed her candles across the globe and has customer requests from across the Atlantic. And she says some of the candles she has produced in the kitchen of her East Morton home have been bound for Hollywood!

“The response from America has been amazing,” says Suzannah. “People are wanting to improve themselves or lose weight and most women love candles – I thought all that would be a great combination.”

Suzannah mainly sells through her website, although she has some of her products in a few local shops. She is also in talks with a major retailer. “It’s fantastic. The response has been amazing from all over the world.”

The former car saleswoman has also applied to BBC 2 programme Dragon’s Den, where entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a panel of top businessmen and women, hoping to secure some financial backing.

In the meantime she’s forging ahead with her promotion of the slimming product.

Suzannah explains that through research into the psychology of smells, she looked at the effects certain smells had on people.

“Essential oils are very powerful and each oil is a different appetite suppressant,” says Suzannah.

“It has always been known that appetite and aroma are linked because the sense of smell is closely linked to your taste – if you smell a bacon sandwich, your mouth starts watering, but this candle has the opposite effect,” she claims.”

Suzannah says 83 per cent of people who tested her candles said their appetite was significantly reduced. Many also found the crackling sound from the wooden wicks she uses, which make the candles burn longer, helped them to relax. Natural soy wax, used in their production, is also cleaner burning and is beneficial to the environment.

Suzannah says the main reasons why people fail to lose weight is lack of willpower, not enough time and lack of support.

Snacking can contribute to piling on the pounds and a popular time for this is sitting down in front of the TV in the evenings, but this is when metabolism is slower.

Suzannah says lighting a GlimmerSlim candle in the evening can take away the craving for a chocolate bar or biscuit. “It is drug-free and it doesn’t require any willpower,” she says.

But you can’t always burn a candle when you feel the urge for a biscuit. “I am developing some more products, expanding the range for situations where you can’t light a candle,” says Suzannah, referring to the bottles of essential oils she’s producing which she says people can put on a hanky or have on their desk.

Mavis Driver succumbed to snacking while running a marketing company with her husband. The 64-year-old from Bingley believes working in a stressful profession led to ‘emotional eating’.

“I started a diet on a Monday and it finished at lunchtime,” says Mavis.

She bought her first candle recently after reading about it in the Telegraph & Argus. “I am interested in alternative therapies and it appealed to me because I wouldn’t use a drug to lose weight.”

Mavis lights her candle for half an hour to suppress her snack cravings and she has lost about 5lbs.

“I’m not vastly overweight. I would like to be as I used to be and I have definitely lost some weight. I can honestly say that’s because I am not eating chocolate, biscuits and crisps. It does work.”

World karate champion, Paul Newby and his partner Siobhan Hayes say the candle has helped them retain their competitive weights.

Paul often struggles losing the last few kilos to reach his fighting weight and has even trained in sweat suits. “The fighting part is easy, the weight loss is the hard part. I’ve always been looking around for different things. The beauty about the candle is it’s drug-free,” he says.

He says lighting the candle in the evenings when the couple get in from training takes away their temptation to snack.

Says Suzannah: “Why burn calories when you can burn a GlimmerSlim?”

For more information, visit glimmerslim.co.uk.