Being fit and healthy is a 2 sided approach. You can run 50 miles a day but if you are taking onboard more calories than you are expending then it must be stored as fat. So as well as exercise you must undercut your daily calorific needs a bit and then you will slowly and surely get smaller and fitter, revealing the toned you underneath. So exercise AND eat well, avoiding processed foods wherever possible and keeping it as naturalas possible. For more detailed nutritional information have a look at out nutrition fact sheet on the knowledge page, where you will find lots of nutritional tips used by personal trainers to get certain results.

Tip 5- Take care with alcohol. Different foods (liquids included) have different calorific values, that is to say 1 gram of something might have a lot more calories in it than 1 gram ofsomething else. 1 gram of carbohydrate has 4 calories in it. Protein has the same amount and fat has a whopping 9 calories per gram. Alcohol (like those glasses of wine you have in the evening) has 7 calories in it per gram, nearly as much as fat! This explains why a glass of wine has so many calories in it, around 120 per glass, and even more for beer at 200+ per glass. So if you are having 2 pints of beer a night, this adds up to 2800 calories a week, which equals 1.5 days worth of calories on top of what you are having in a week; this equates roughly to a weight gain of 2llb a week. For wine the equation is similar, 2 glasses a night will be the equivalent of putting on 1llb a week in fat. And this is if you are eating well and the right amounts in the first place!!

So try to cut down. Habits are easy to break-you are in the habit of driving on the left, but when you go to the continent you adjust to driving on the right almost instantly. So try to drink a sugar free squash or water instead, and save wine for a special occasion. We are always advising clients to try to use the 80-20 ratio. So be good for 80% of the time, and then let go for 20% of the time. Within reason. If you must drink then try to go for a clear spirit with a low calorie mixer like soda , slimline tonic and diet coke. If you can do this, AND exercise in a constructive way 4 or 4 times a week then you will have a great chance of reaching the target of a slimmer and trimmer you.

Tip 4-Work Hard. If you are strolling along, chatting with a friend,pootling around in the pool, going along gently on your bicycle, then, although these activities are good for you, they are not enough to make you fitter or thinner. When exercising you MUST be working at a level that challenges your body, and only by working at this level will you take your body into overload and cause it to change and adapt. That is to say, GET BETTER!!

So you need to be pushing reasonably hard, and getting breathless and sweaty. A good test is your breathing. At 60% of you maximum heart rate, you will be forced to breathe through your mouth, and talking will be possible but not a pleasure. If you can’t talk at all then you are going a bit fast, so slow down a tip. You also need to be doing this for 20 minutes, 3 times a week. If you really can’t motivate yourself then we can always get you a personal trainer to bully (sorry, encourage) you into doing it the correct way!

OK, so I know I keep going on about it, but if you are trying to get fitter in the new year and be slim, then you MUST do some resistance or strength training. Not only will this make you functionally stronger and less likely to suffer from injuries (including bad backs!) but your new lean muscle mass (from all the resistance training of course) will push your metabolic rate up and mean that you will burn more energy all the time. This is really effective if you are also eating well and undercutting calories a little. For more on the resistance training see our fact sheets on the knowledge page. Tune in tomorrow for more insider personal trainer information..

Tip 2-Be patient. Think about how long it took you to get fat and unfit. It’s likely that this was a very gradual process that slowly built up over the course of months if not years. It would seem therefore a bit optimistic or possibly even naive to expect to be able to reverse a biological event in a few weeks or days that took much longer to happen in the first place. Any good personal trainer could make you lose 4 lbs in an hour or two. I could ban all water intake, run you hard, do a vicious circuit, put you in a sauna and then wrap you in clingfilm (well, not the last one). Any quick weight loss will be from loss of water and will inevitably go back on over the course of the next few hours or days as you rehydrate. Any good personal trainer or weight loss specialist will also tell you that the safe upper limit for weight loss it 2-2.5lbs a week; any more than this and you are either losing water or losing lean muscle mass or both, and will put the weight back on after the diet, as well as having depressed your metabolic rate, making weight gain even more likely (see the knowledge fact sheets).

So the key is to take your time and look at weight loss as a silver lining of getting fitter and healthier, and don’t believe the media, you can NOT lose 10lbs in ten days and keep it off.

Ok so it’s the supposed worst day of the year with divorce rates at their highest than any other day of the year. So it’s likely that you are not loving the idea of actually following through with that resolution to lose two stones and look like a god (dess). Over the next ten days I will be going through some insider personal trainer tips to get you going, get you there and keep you there. The most important thing to remember is that t is eminently possible for you to get that buff figure, lots of our personal trainer clients have done it (have a look at the testimonials on the Success Stories page). So you can do it too. Don’t let past failures put you off, it wasn’t you, it was just that you were going about it the wrong way. Here’s the right one.

TIP 1: Set the Target. At first ou might be thinking of running the marathon, but this will seem like a daunting task, one that you might never achieve. So it’s really important that the goals you set are achievable and sensible. A good way of doing thins is to divide your goals up into short, medium and long term ones. Start with the short term ones first, while keeping the other two in the back of your mind. So if you want to do the marathon, and lose 2 stone, start with a 10k run, do the correct resistance training (a personal trainer will help here) and correct running and you will get through. Then move on to the next goal, and so on. Weight wise, look at losing 5 lbs first, hit that target and you will get there in the end. So don’t be unrealistic. Sure if you are already doing 10k runs, then dive in to marathon training, but if you’ve been watching Grey’s and eating bug macs then just being able to go for 1 mile might be a good first target.

There are lots of online resources, including us, so if you are really serious and need a personal trainer in London, Windsor, Maidenhead or Bracknell then we can help.