A new BBC feature debuts tomorrow (August 01) called “make my body younger”. In this show a young trainee doctor gives her advice on how to stop smoking. From the outset it’s obvious that this lady has never smoked, her methods of stopping include cutting down, keeping a diary of how much you are smoking,joining a stopping group and using nicotine substitutes.

As a personal trainer you may find this hard to believe but i used to smoke lots and never thought I could possibly do without it. I used to wake up and reach for a cigarette which I would then suck down in the shower. First things first, you are either a smoker or a non-smoker. There is no in between. Suggestions of cutting down just make the few cigarettes you can now allow yourself increase in value and importance. Using nicotine replacement therapy does statistically help, but do you think it would be wise to give an alcoholic an alcohol drip to help his cravings? It is my belief that those who stop using this method stop DESPITE the replacement therapy.

If you are serious about stopping there is only one proper way-stop putting them in your mouth. The best way to do this is to go immediately to an Allen Carr clinic, read his “Easy Way to Stop Smoking” book or get the CD. His method breaks the mental addiction and so frees you from the physical one. When you stop it’s not with a sense of doom and gloom but with the feeling that you are free, and can finally see through the juggler’s trick.

Have a look at www.allencarrseasyway.com

It could save your life!!

 A 2% dehydration leads to a 20% loss of performance. Increase you fluid intake, especially during and after exercise. We are made largely of water, so any lack of the stuff of life has a dramatic effect on you. Tiredness, lethargy, loss of concentration and poor performance can all be attributed to a lack of water. The press have had a field day with this topic over the last few years, how much should we have, is too much bad, what if I have to go to the bathroom 50 times per day and so on. Try to drink at least 5 glasses a day, remembering to take small sips often-you can actually only assimilate a small amount of water into the body at once. Also remember that most of the figures bandied about fail to make allowance for the fact that many of the foods we eat actually contain quite a bit of water which also counts towards your allowance (especially if you have taken your personal trainer’s advice and are following the wholefood nutrition plan!). The key is to have a little often provided your work place/lifestyle allows for it, and most importantly of all try not to get thirsty-by this time you are already dehydrated! Moderate alcohol, caffine and soft drinks. All of these beverages have diuretic properties and make you dehydrated-after having any of them you will be thirstier than before as you will wee out most of the H2o! Alcoholic drinks also have lots of calories and often contribute to weight problems. If you have more than 4-5 cups of coffee/tea a day try to substitute some of them for caffeine free alternatives, water is really tasty! If your wine is a compulsory de-stresser try to alternate it with a glass of water per glass of wine; alternating drinking days with abstinence days is also a good way of moderating yourself.Living in the real word I often find myself advising my personal trainer clients in the Berkshire area to drink clear spirits (less impurities and less calories) and to mix them with soda water or slimline tonic. If you must get lashed and go dancing then do it on a good vodka and slim line tonic, or my personal favourite (not that I drink, of course) would be vodka, soda and lime.

Do remember though, that alchohol does come from distilling which involves sugar so each drink you are having is like a small kit-kat. Would you really go out on a Saturday and have 10 kit-kat’s in a row? Good luck and take it easy, moderation rules!!

Although the recent press coverage and celebrity endorsements have highlighted the advantages of a low GI diet, it has been known for some time that a diet high in complex, low sugar carbohydrate makes you healthy and energetic. The glycemic index is a grading of foods according to the time it takes them to release their glucose into the blood, from 1-100 (100 being the quickest). A high GI value means the food causes a fast and large rise in blood sugar levels, while a low GI value means the food has only a slow, low effect on blood sugar. Foods that have low GI values release sugar into the blood slowly, over a long period, providing constant energy through the day, meaning that hunger pangs are less likely to strike. High GI value foods, in contrast, flood the body with sugar fast, but the effect wears off just as quickly meaning you get hungry again. This is why a candy bar often seems such a good idea when we are starving, yet rarely satisfies. Low GI foods also use more energy to break down, so provide metabolic bursts where you are using calories. When foods with a high GI release their sugars quickly your body reacts by producing lots of insulin, a chemical messenger which tells the body where to take them. Over time your pancreas (this makes all the insulin needed to deal with all that glycogen) gets worn out, you become insulin deficient and will have a high chance of getting diabetes.You should be aiming to eat foods from 0-55 wherever possible. Although some processed foods have a low GI index and some natural foods have a high one, you should still try to stay natural. A useful way of looking at the advantages of the GI nutrition plan is to compare how much you can have of one thing and the equivalent amount of a high GI food-for a few slivers of chocolate (GI=very high!!) you could have heaps of broccoli, a fair bit of lean protein or lashings of salad! Also lower GI foods will fill you up for longer as your body has to work harder for longer to convert these low GI foods into fuel it can use. So if you are trying to improve your nutrition or you have a personal trainer who is suggesting following the low GI diet, our opinion is…go for it!

 If you think that good nutrition means starving yourself then think again-the most important message is to try, wherever possible and practical, to substitute processed fatty foods for natural ones. If it grows on the ground, grows from a tree, swims in the ocean, and has not been tampered with by us, and then most likely it is a nutritious healthy food. Try wholemeal/granary/multi-grain breads, shredded wheat, oats, wholegrain, rice and pasta.

If none of this sounds tantalising, don’t worry. You can train your taste buds easily to like new foods even though at first you may not be too keen. Think about this-as a child you probably found the taste of beer or wine disgusting. But a bit of peer pressure, some interesting side effects, and at the age of 20 you can’t get enough of the stuff! Just the same way if you try to maintain the principles of the whole food diet you will soon find that burgers and cream (not together) are not as tasty as you remembered. None of us are perfect, and even us personal trainers slip up from time to time, but even one small change in your diet (switching from white to whole grain bread for instance) can make you feel and look better. Lots of small changes will have even more pronounced results. If you have a personal trainer and he/she has put you on the Atkins diet then perhaps you should think twice.In the long term the only way to be in reasonably good shape is to eat well with moderation and exercise, preferably doing something you enjoy! 

It’s no accident that the leading country in nutritional research is also the most overweight-you guessed it,the U.S.A. This is closely linked to the high amount of processed, fatty, salty, high-energy foods that make up the diet of many Americans. Your body cannot use many elements of these processed foods and some of them are very damaging in the long term. They are also missing many vital nutrients your body needs. Processed foods are very high in calories, and also contain processed fats-these fats are very stable at the molecular level and so are very hard for the body to use. The only place for them to go is into fat storage. The high calorie content of these foods also leads to the common situation of excess or surplus energy-you are eating more than you are spending. This excess energy is stored by your body as fat, just in case a famine is around the corner-only recently in evolutionary terms did we get organised enough to have supermarkets. You will probably have guessed by now that the best fuel for a healthy body is the opposite of these man-made foods- a variety of natural foods that have NOT been tampered with by man,and which we have evolved to eat. Eating in this way is called the wholefood diet (or nutrition plan if you like, as we know now diets don’t work!). Over the course of the next few blogs I will be looking at this and how as personal trainers we encourage this wholefood eating along with structured exercise to make clients smaller and happier (as well as healthier!). At diets don’t work all block bookings of 6 or more personal training sessions include help with eating. One of our most successful clients in Ascot/Sunninhill has done idibly well by just training hard and eating wholefoods wherever possible-you can do it too!!!  

You may think that by simply skipping the odd meal you are doing yourself a favor, and that by reducing the amount of calories you take in you will start to lose weight and size. This may well be the case, but in the long run, and for your own mental well-being, it might not be the best policy.

Depending on the overall amount of calories you are missing out on, you may once again trigger starvation response (see previous article) and be turning yourself into a super efficient fat storage machine. You will also possible start to catabolise (use for fuel) muscle, depressing your metabolic rate and lowering the amount of calories you need per day.

Skipping meals also has an additional slowing down effect on this all important metabolic rate-every time you eat your body needs to expend energy in order to convert the raw food stuffs you have just eaten into usable fuel in the blood known as glycogen (or blood sugar). This breaking down of raw foods causes a little boost in your metabolic rate, so each time you eat, although you are not taking on calories you are also missing these little boosts. Many personal trainers and professional body builders talk about the metabolism as being a fire-you need to keep it stoked!!

By eating balanced small meals often you get lots of little bursts in your Met Rate, plus you ensure that you are not eating excess food in one sitting which is likely to be stored as fat. As a huge brucey bonus you also get to enjoy the feeling on eating often (only a little mind you) ans also having even blood sugar levels throughout the day.

So try not to skip meals, and remember that Diets Don’t Work not only provide personal trainers who are also nutritional therapists, but that once you buy a block booking of 6 personal training sessions (in all areas, London to Maidenhead) you get nutritional help and assessment included in the price. Be good!

So, last week we looked at the Atkins diet, today I’m going to look at Lighter Life. Classed as a VLCD (very low calorie diet) this plan takes food out of the equation all together by providing you with a supply of shakes (in powder form) soups and bars that replace all your meals. Coming in at under 1000 calories a day there is of course weight loss, but will it stay off, is it safe and will it be fun?

High in protein, the Lighter Life programme (like the Atkins) takes you into ketoses, where excess protein is turned into ammonia, which has to processed by the kidneys. This excess workload can again be damaging in the long term for these vital organs.

In addition, as the calorie intake is so low, the triggering of starvation response is very likely-there are so few calories going in that your body thinks there is a famine and puts all sorts of clever famine defence systems into operation.This prompts a hormonal reaction in the body and makes you super efficient at storing fat. These hormones also stay in the system for up to 3 months even after your diet had stopped  so that when you return to eating as normal you will now be much more likely to store any excess calories as fat.

There wll also be some loss of lean muscle (without a personal trainer to make you do some resistance training) as your body will go into emergency mode and start to break down muscle for fuel. This catabolic  (the opposite of Anabolic, breaking down as opposed to building up) reaction means that at the end of your diet you have indeed lost weight but your metabolic rate, which is a big influence as to how many calories you need a day, has now dropped lower. So again, once the diet had ended, you now need less calories a day so normal eating will now actually put you in an excess position and the pounds will pile on faster than before!

Having everything you need in a shake sounds all futuristic and that, but a shake CANNOT provide all the vitamins, fibre, micro nutrients, and complex carbohydrate that you need to live a long and healthy life!

IN short-DANGER, BEWARE! I do personally have a personal trainer client in Maidenhead who has been on and off this plan for a while-she has a real food addiction problem, and is a sweet carb addict-as her personal trainer I strongly advised against it, and although she has lost weight the diet is so horrid   that  she  inevitably  falls off the wagon and ends up the same weight as before!! So not even recommended as a last resort!! The overall lack of calories and proper fuel for exercise makes her grumpy and tired, and limits performance in our personal training sessions.

Focussing on avoidance of carbohydrate the Atkins diet is surely the best known of all the fad diets. At the height of it’s fame some 3 million Britons were estimated to have atempted to shed unwanted pounds with it. Although the thought of eating lots of bacon, eggs, cheese, cream and beef might sound appealing there are some serious issues with the Atkins Diet.

 To start with, burning fat results in the production of substances called ketones as your body enters a state called ketosis. This can result in bad breath, tiredness, weakness, dizziness, insomnia and nausea. Constipation may also occur as a consequence of avoiding typically high-fibre foods such as fruit, veg, beans, wholewheat pasta, brown rice, wholegrain breakfast cereals and jacket potatoes.

 When it comes to long-term side effects, many health professionals are concerned that the Atkins diet may have serious dangers. While the high intake of fat, particularly saturates, may increase the risk of heart disease, there are also concerns that the unbalanced nature of the Atkins diet may lead to nutritional deficiencies, which cause health problems in later life. For example, poor intakes of bone-building calcium (found in dairy products) may increase the risk of osteoporosis, while poor intakes of antioxidant nutrients (found in fruit and veg) have been linked with a host of health problems ranging from heart disease and cancer to premature ageing and cataracts. 

Most importantly, the fate of excess protein in the body is the most serious concern. As the body can only digest and use about 20 grammes of protein in one go (or every 2 hours or so) the excess protein has to be dealt with. This excess is turned into amino acid; the acid remnants are used as fuel and supresses fat burning. The aminos are sent off to the kidneys to be processed as waste, but too much of this puts a strain on these vital organs and can ultimately cause kidney damage.

At Diets Don’t Work we believe in moderation in all things. Enough protein is important, but we have evolved to thrive on a variety of foods, and especially need good natural complex carbohydrate to perform well in physical training and exercise. Any good personal trainer should encourage you to eat a healthy and varied diet with small meals often and a good balance. Plus, this is much more sustainable and enjoyable in the real world.

Because so many foods are off limits, the diet can get very boring with the result that many people give up after a short while. It’s also almost impossible to follow the Atkin’s plan if you’re a vegetarian as nuts, seeds, beans and many vegetables are banned in the early stages. Most experts also believe the Atkins plan fails to teach people about the basic principles of a balanced, healthy diet, which science irrefutably proves can help keep us healthy and free from disease.

Like weight watchers, Rosemary Conely target weight loss with realistic weekly targets (remember the upper safe limit for permanent weight loss is around 2ibs per week) and also with a two sided approach-i.e you’re not just focused on eating well/less, but on eating well while exercising more. It also provides a group environment and is more exercise orientated that weight watchers, which of course we approve of!

There are weekly half hour classes which are both a weigh in, gee up chat and also a 1/2 hour exercise class which is voluntary. Price-wise it’s good value at £10 for membership and around a fiver per class. The portion pots are also a good way of making sure you are eating not only the right things but also in the right quantities.So overall we approve.

Don’t forget though that your very best chance of success is with a tailor made set of sessions with a one-on-one personal trainer from….you guessed..Diets Don’t Work! Having a personal trainer means that you are committed to a few hours a week of properly constructive exercise designed specifiacally for you.

Remember we are not just based in Berkshire but also cover London and the Thames valley, from the city through Windsor, the M4 corridor, Maidenhead and Reading. Next this week some eating plans we are NOT too keen on…and why! 

When you buy a block booking with Diets Don’t Work  you automatically get a food diary assessment and then some guidelines and tips as to the most effective way forward without starving yourself-once you are approaching your weight by looking at both sides of the equation (input AND output) chances are that you will be able to eat reasonably well and lose weight.

Sometimes though clients need an extra bit of help, and there ARE some food plans put there that work well.

Recommendation 1-Weight Watchers: one of our personal training clients in Iver can sometimes fall off the wagon a bit and go for the wine slightly too much.We have found that by joining weight watchers while having 2-3 sessions a week with her personal trainer on the heath in Iver that progress is steady and consistent. Weight watchers is good because it combines weekly accountability (you have to go to a meeting to weigh in each week), a team environment and a clever points system that soon teaches you what foods are more calorie dense than others, and also promotes the principles of the whole food diet. Once you are sticking to your points allowance you soon learn that chocolate or wine has lots of points in a small amount whereas vegetables have much less-you can have more!  You also get lots of help in planning the weekly shop and in addition have access to various recipes that fit in with the plan.

All in all a good sensible way of losing weight while learning how to eat well. It is of course doubly effective when done in conjunction with some structured exercise! In fact you get extra points and can therefore eat more! As we go through the week I will go through some more food plans and give my (humble) opinion on how well they work in the long term.