A combination of factors determines our weight, and that’s why it’s difficult to set an exact ideal weight that applies to everyone. It’s important to remember there’s a range of healthy body weights. Aiming to keep within this means an end to aspiring to one magic weight you think you should be. This weight may change depending on your circumstances and age.

Many people have a distorted perception of what constitutes a healthy body weight. We’re surrounded by images of celebrities, many of whom are underweight. Comparing yourself with these images isn’t helpful. But comparing yourself to friends and family isn’t that useful either, because as obesity becomes more common our perception of ‘average’ weight may in fact be too heavy. It’s important to make an objective assessment of your size. Looking at yourself in the mirror might not be the best way to assess whether you’re a healthy weight.

There are a number of ways you can work out if you’re within a healthy weight range. You need to get an accurate idea because it’s easy to underestimate or overestimate your own weight.

Body mass index-Proceed with Caution!

You can check your body size using the body mass index (BMI), which assesses your weight in relation to your height.Although this method is much touted by the media and medical professions, BMI is in the eyes of many trainers (including us) a flawed and often misleading system. Although it can be a useful guide if you are an average height, size and build, the BMI makes no allowance for individual variations in body frame, shape, muscle mass and  bone density. As a good example I will take myself-I am 5′9, very fit, functionally strong (lots of resistance training) and weigh 93kg (14st 8lbs). The last time I weighed (on a boots scale for accuracy) my BMI was stated at 31, or clinically obese!! My waist is 32 inches, and body fat is 16%.So no way obese!

This misleading result is mainly because the BMI makes no allowance for my rugby players legs, Yorkshire ankles and hobbit feet. Not to mention my beefy arms..so please, where the BMI is concerned, proceed with caution.

Waist circumference-Highly recommended

Another method of assessing whether you’re a healthy weight is to measure your waist. As a personal trainer this is the single most important measurement, especially considering that recent studies show a direct link with fat stored around the middle with internal fat which increases your risk of heart disease and diabetes.Waist measurements, along with the tightness (or otherwise) of your favorite frock/jeans and two of the best guides to your health and size. 

Body fat-OK if measured correctly

Lean tissue, such as muscle, and blood contain water and act as conductors of the electrical signal, while fat resists it. The greater the resistance, the more body fat you have.You can measure the amount of fat in your body using scales designed for this purpose, often called body fat analysers. These pass a small, safe electrical signal through your body. Although these are reasonably accurate, depending on where the electrical current goes they may not give the full picture. If you use the handheld model, it will only give you a reading for your upper torso, as the current only goes from one hand to the other. Likewise, if standing on the scales or a plate, the signal will go up one leg and down the other, so only measuring the lower body. Overall though these are a reasonably guide-if i doubt, as I tell my Ascot personal training clients, measure, try those favorite jeans..!

Body fat is only one aspect of health.

Your GP can advise whether additional measurements such as blood pressure, resting heart rate, blood cholesterol, and fat and glucose tests are necessary.

If your BMI and waist circumference indicate you’re overweight, changes to your lifestyle could help to control your weight. Think about how you can make changes to your diet and physical activity over the long term. Get a Diets Don’t Work personal trainer!

Are you a healthy weight but unhappy?

If your weight lies within the healthy range but you’re unhappy with your shape, you’ll probably derive more benefits from a supervised exercise programme than by restricting your diet. This will improve your fitness, help to tone specific muscle groups and enhance your overall health and well being. At diets Don’t Work all our Personal Trainers in London and the Thames valley focus both on input (what you eat) and output (exercise) and by addressing both sides of the weight equation get the best results.

In order to be fully insured and qualified your personal trainer should have a relevant first aid certificate. All our DDW trainers in London and the Thames Valley have a relevant first aid certificate.Hundreds of thousands of people in the UK have to attend accident and emergency each year through injury. You don’t have to be superman to help, but some simple first aid could mean the difference between life and death.It’s something that it’s better to have and never need as opposed to something you need but don’t have!! Here are some common misconceptions about first aid-

Top ten first aid misconceptions:

1. You should put butter or cream on a burn. The only thing you should put on a burn is cold water – keep the butter for cooking.
2. If you can’t move a limb, it must be broken/If you can move a limb, it can’t be broken. The only accurate way to diagnose a broken limb is to x-ray it.
3. The best way to treat bleeding is to put the wound under a tap. If you put a bleeding wound under a tap you wash away the body’s clotting agents and make it bleed more.
4. Nosebleeds are best treated by putting the head back. If you put the head back during a nosebleed, all the blood goes down the back of the airway.
5. A tourniquet is the best way to treat serious bleeding. It’s harmful to stop the blood flow to a limb for more than 10-15 minutes.
6. If someone has swallowed a poison you should make them sick. If you make someone sick by putting your fingers in their mouth, the vomit may block their airway.
7. If you perform CPR on someone who has a pulse you can damage their heart. The evidence is that it isn’t dangerous to do chest compressions on a casualty with a pulse.
8. You need lots of training to do first aid. You don’t – what you mostly need is common sense. You can learn enough first aid in ten minutes to save someone’s life.
9. You need lots of expensive equipment to do first aid. You don’t need any equipment to do first aid, there are lots of ways to improvise anything you need.

Remember: anyone can save a life

Breakfast really could be the most important meal of the day when it comes to losing weight, claims a researcher.Here is the latest report to hit the nation’s headlines. As personal trainers the majority of this information here has been known to us to be healthy and effective for some time-stick to this rule of thumb (small meals often, principles of the wholefood diet, a proper blend of all food groups in each meal), combine it with an integrated exercise programme (you could get one from a Diets Don’t Work trainer!!) and you will be fit and healthy. Here’s the latest news…

  Over several months, obese women who ate half their daily calories first thing fared better than those eating a much smaller amount. US researcher Dr Daniela Jakubowicz told a San Francisco conference having a small breakfast could actually boost food cravings.

A UK expert said a big breakfast diet might simply be less boring. Dr Jakubowicz, from Virginia Commonwealth University, has been recommending a hearty breakfast to her patients for 15 years. She tested it against a low carbohydrate diet in a study of 96 obese and physically inactive women. This diet involved 1,085 calories a day – the majority of these coming from protein and fat. Breakfast here was the smallest meal of the day – just 290 calories, with just seven grams of carbohydrates. Her “big breakfast” diet involved more calories – 1,240 – with a lower proportion of fat and more carbohydrates and protein. Breakfast here was 610 calories, with 58 grams of carbohydrates, while lunch and dinner were 395 and 235 calories respectively. Four months on, the low-carb dieters appeared to be doing better, losing an average of 28 pounds to the 23 shed on the “big breakfast” diet. However, after eight months, the situation had reversed, with the low-carb dieters putting an average of 18 of those pounds back on, while the big breakfasters continued to lose weight, on average 16.5 pounds each. They lost a fifth of their total body weight on average, compared with less than 5% for the low-carb dieters.

Slower metabolism Dr Jakubowicz reported that the big breakfasters said they felt less hungry, particularly in the mornings. She said: “Most weight loss studies have determined that a very low carbohydrate diet is not a good method to reduce weight. “It exacerbates the craving for carbohydrates and slows metabolism – as a result, after a short period of weight loss, there is a quick return to obesity.” She said that the bigger breakfast helped by making people feel fuller during the day, and was healthier, because it allowed more fibre and fruit to be included.

Dr Alex Johnstone, from the Rowett Research Institute in Aberdeen, said that other studies had shown that while low-carb diets were a “good tool” to reduce weight quickly, they were not a “diet for life”. She said that the regaining of lost weight by these dieters could be more a sign of the relative monotony of the two diets, rather than their ability to necessarily reduce cravings. “It could be that it is simply easier for people on a higher-carbohydrate diet to comply with it over a longer period.” A spokesman for the British Nutrition Foundation said there was evidence that a good-sized breakfast could help dieters. She said: “Research shows that eating breakfast can actually help people control their weight. “This is probably because when we don’t have breakfast we’re more likely to get hungry before lunch and snack on foods that are high in fat and sugar, such as biscuits, doughnuts or pastries.”

Causes of Asthma

Our poor personal training clients are suffering with the proliferation af lawn mowers and flowers out here in Berkshire. Here is the second part of our asthma special

Asthma has many different causes. Scientists still don’t know exactly what these are. You may have oversensitive airways, a family history of asthma or be allergic to one or more asthma triggers.

Some doctors believe the airways become oversensitive because cells in the lungs are damaged by viruses. Others believe the initial damage is caused by an allergic reaction causing the lungs to over-react to viral infections.

One of the most common predisposing factors for asthma are allergies to house dust mites, mould spores, pollen and pets, and sometimes food allergies. Most people find there are several things that can trigger their asthma.

Asthma tends to run in families that are prone to allergies. So, belonging to a family where some members have asthma and others have other allergies, such as eczema, hayfever or allergic rhinitis, makes a person more allergy-prone.

However, because there are so many factors involved, it can be difficult to predict exactly who in a family will develop asthma.

Although asthmatic and allergic tendencies are inherited, there is no single gene involved. Rather, there are a number of different ones that react with factors in your environment to trigger the onset of asthma.

Scientists are searching for the genes involved in asthma and this may eventually lead to a cure.

Environmental factors that increase the risk of developing asthma include:

• exposure to allergens during pregnancy (eg from foods in the mother’s diet) that sensitise the unborn baby’s immune system
• Infections such as colds during early life
• Being brought up in a house where there is a pet (especially a cat)
• Being introduced to certain foods such as cow’s milk and eggs at a young age
• Being born at a time of year when the pollen count is high
• Being exposed to cigarette smoke in the uterus or early life – babies whose mothers smoke are twice as likely to develop asthma
• Air pollution

As summer approaches many of our personal training clients, particularly in the more rural areas around Windsor, Maidenhead and Ascot, are starting to suffer their yearly bout of asthma misery. This week our in house Guru (as he likes to call himself) Adam will be looking at some of the symptoms, causes and cures for this condition.

What is Asthma?

Asthma affects the small airways (bronchioles) that carry air in and out of the lungs. If you have asthma your airways can become inflamed, swollen and constricted (or narrowed) and excess mucus is produced.

More than 5.2 million people in the UK are being treated for asthma and about 1.1 million of these are children. Asthma affects approximately one in 12 adults and one in eight children in the UK. What this means is that there is a person with asthma in one in five households in the UK. It can affect almost anyone, at any age, anywhere. An asthma ‘attack’ describes the symptoms of tightness in the chest, a wheezing or whistling noise in the chest, coughing and difficulty breathing that occur when the airways become narrowed, inflamed and blocked by plugs of mucus.

An attack can occur suddenly. However, many people with asthma learn to recognise the warning symptoms – such as an itchy nose or itchy skin, dizziness or light-headedness, or an irritating cough – that herald an attack.Learning the warning signs can often alert someone with asthma in time to take preventive action.

Asthma is a chronic condition, which means attacks occur over a long period of time. Although there are times when acute episodes strike asthmatics, most people can say there are long periods during which they have few, if any, symptoms. These symptoms can include:

• Coughing
• Wheezing
• Shortness of breath
• Tight feeling in the chest

It’s becoming increasingly common in the developed world and is now the most common chronic condition in the west. Aspects of our modern environment, such as air pollution, processed foods and centrally heated, double-glazed houses (ideal breeding grounds for house dust mites) are thought to be contributing factors.

Some of us (the more motivated) can get way with being self motivated enough. However when we look at the failure rate for gym use-i.e. that 60% of people who join a gym don’t actually go at all after the first 2 weeks, and the failure rate for diets-90% of people on diets fail to lose weight and keep it off, we can see any personal training has become so popular in the Thames Valley and Berkshire. With a trainer you are making a commitment to turning up at a specific time, where you will be encouraged to do far more than you would do on your own without a personal trainer. What you do will also be carefully planned to maximise your results.DDW! provides personal trainers in London, Windsor and Maidenhead, they come to you so there’s no need for a gym membership, give it a go. All those celebrities can’t be wrong, it really does work