If you want to get fit, boost energy levels and improve your mood don’t go to the gym says the Daily Mail. A walk in the great outdoors is better for the body and the mind than pounding away on the treadmill says a new study. Those who burn calories in the park or hiking also feel happier than their gym counterparts. The outdoors exercisers also have more energy and can concentrate at work better. It is thought that being surrounded by nature encourages the mind to relax, while the feeling of escaping from everyday life may help to beat the blues. You might also feel happier about saving money on your gym memnership.

The findings come from a review of 25 studies comparing exercise in natural environments (parks, university grounds, forests) with synthetic ones like the gym and leisure centres. Exercising outdoors is better at reducing anger, fatigue and sadness, says the journal BMC Public Health. Those who chose an open air workout also felt more energetic and often found it easier to concentrate. However there was no evidence to show that this outdoors action had any extra benefits over the gym in terms of immune system strength or blood pressure.

The University of Bangor researchers said “this systematic review contributes a rigorous and objective synthesis of the evidence for added benefits to health from activities in a natural environment”.

Part of the services provided by a personal trainer from Diets Don’t Work is the option to train not just at home or in your garden but also in some of the very pretty spaces and parks in London and Berkshire. Training outdoors also burns more calories as the body has to work harder to maintain core temperature in colder weather.

Nick, our famously chic and fit personal trainer client in Wentworth has just had his annual BUPA health check. This is the full monty, including a finger up the bottom, ECG, anaerobic threshold, VO2 max and lots of other fun things. Three years into his personal training and even at his age everything is still getting better. Measurements are smaller, resting heart rate lower (41, the same as me, noooooo!) arms more beefy. The interesting thing is that even his hearing is better. That can only be from being shouted at by his Personal Trainer. So despite the law of diminishing returns-this states that the fitter you are the harder the improvements are to come by-he is still getting better. Well done Nick, you’ve done it again. 5 gold stars and permission to be smug with all work mates for 2 weeks granted.

Read about Nick on our Success Stories page.

Many of our dedicated and keen personal trainer clients in  London and Berkshire are off on holiday over the course of the next few weeks daahling. It would seem that summer really is here. Now an unfortunate rule of fitness and weight is this: to lose weight and keep it off you need to be really quite good and lose just 1-2 lbs a week. This ensures that you will not lose any lean muscle mass, thus depressing your metabolic rate, decreasing the number of calories you use each day in the long term and so making weight gain after your efforts likely. Now the unfair part:to put on weight all you have to do is stop exercising, eat lots of scones, and hey presto you are not so much a mountain goat as a weighty water buffalo.

Now of course we want you to have fun on your hollies, but if you can just try to be pre-emptive and exercise a bit then all will be well. So if you are staying at an all-inclusive, and it’s whole Hawaiian pig roast night with mojitos thrown in, a light breakfast, steady lunch and little jog on the beach in the morning will mean that you can have fun with a reasonably clear conscience. Some sets of squats would also help as they use so many muscles and so keep the calorie-burning lean muscle going.

So have fun, and remember your sun block.

I have the pleasure of training one of my yummy mummies in Windsor once or twice a week. She lives very centrally, so on fine days we go to the long walk by Windsor castle and do our session outside. Wilson (the Diets Don’t Work Labrador) and Mani (the large French sheepdog) come too, and I also bring my kit bag with my boxing, bands, skipping rope etc as well as the kettlebells. A most unlikeley bunch of terrorists one would think. While attaching my rubber tubing resistance bands to the steel fence that borders the Walk, the rather over zealous security chap from the lodge turned up to say that we could not use the fence (security risk!) and in fact should not be exercising in the park. This seemed odd as we were surrounded by joggers, walkers and various other athletic types. Even a cyclist was running the gauntlet (no cycling!). I politely removed my obviously lethal rubber tubing, and despite asking why we could not use the fence for resistance band work got no answer.

So, off we went for a warm up jog. As we came back to base camp the royal protection detail Range Rover zoomed by, out jumped a copper who proceeded to have a poke through my bag. “Human rights!” I hear you cry.  He then warned us not to leave a bag unattended (does this include picnic hampers?) as the Queen might be taking a stroll (never) and get hurt by a flying labrador weilding ninja al-qaeda skipping rope.

We grovelled (as one does to grumpy armed officers) and off he went, leaving us feeling harassed.

So beware the long walk and especially bored security types who should possibly be given some gardening to do or some other manual task to keep them occupied. We will continue to fly the flag for personal training outdoors despite the protestations of the fascist state of Berkshire. One would hope that the Queen or at least Charles might read this blog and a) Get a personal trainer b) encourage their subjects to exercise, stay healthy, reduce the burden on the NHS and thus free up more resources for the construction of a cycle path down the long walk in Windsor for both personal trainer types and general exercisers too.

A wider knowledge of simple first aid techniques could save thousands of lives each year, the St John Ambulance charity has said. It is focusing a new campaign on five health emergencies which account for 150,000 deaths each year in England and Wales. These include heart attacks, choking and severe bleeding. Research shows that many people first onto the scene of an accident did not know what to do, and would wait for help to arrive before helping themselves. The first 5 minutes after an accident are often the difference between life and death. The charity is offering a free pocket booklet which it feels will boost the survival chances of many more patients. It believes that if confident first aiders were present on more occasions, many lives would be saved.

Although we rarely have to use it all personal trainers at Diets Don’t Work are highly qualified and hold a relevant first aid certificate. A qualified first aider must know how to recognise and deal with life threatening problems, to administer  artificial ventilation and cardiopulmonary resuscitation, to control bleeding, to protect injuries from infection and other complications and to arrange for professional medical attention and transportation in the shortest possible time. The first aider must take control of the situation, organise bystanders and most of all keep calm while working under pressure.

Some points to remember if you are faced with an emergency:

1. See if there is any further danger to you or the casualty
2. Check the response of the patient-question, command or gently shake them.
3. SHOUT for help if there’s no response

Then do your ABC’s:

1. Airway-check
2. breathing-check
3. circulation-check

Airway-place hand on casualty’s forehead to open the airway and check for obstructions. Place two fingers under the casualty’s chin and lift the jaw to bring the tongue away from blocking the trachea. Breathing-place your cheek close to the casualty’s mouth and at the same time look at the chest for movement, look listen and feel for breathing for at least 10 seconds. If breathing place in the recovery position, but DO NOT move of you suspect back or spine damage, leave in the position as you found them. Circulation-check this every 10 seconds, look, feel and listen for signs of life, check the neck or wrist for a pulse.

So hopefully that will help, remember that we will not push you to the point of first aid in any of our personal training sessions!! It’s just important that if you are thinking about having some sessions with a personal trainer be sure that they are properly qualified, as the industry is fairly unregulated and many claim to be a trainer without the requisite knowledge. Every personal trainer in London, Windsor, Maidenhead and the Thames Valley that we have is qualified to REPS level 3, including first aid.

Many misconceptions surround eating and exercise. Some people avoid food before a workout because they worry they’ll get nauseated or have cramps. Others don’t eat in the morning because they think they’ll burn more fat if they move on an empty stomach. Some athletes assume that hunger pangs before practice are a good thing, because they think that their body is diverting all its energy to the workout instead of digestion.

None of these beliefs are true.

The bottom line is this: When you expend energy by exercising, you need to consume extra energy to fuel the activity. How much you should eat and at what time of day depends on the type and duration of your workout, as well as when you last ate and what was on the menu.

Ideally, how much energy your body uses (how many calories you burn) and how much energy your body takes in (how many calories you eat) should be in balance all day. Keep in mind that your body burns around 100 calories an hour at rest and during sleep, so you don’t just need energy for exercise, you need food throughout the day to fuel being alive. If you are highly active, if you eat big meals, or if you go for long periods without eating, you can upset this balance and cause extreme energy highs (surpluses) or lows (deficits.)

When you first wake up, you are likely to be low on energy. It works like this: If, the night before, you ate dinner at 7 p.m. and then nothing else until breakfast at 7 a.m., you would have gone 12 hours without added fuel. Your body may have burned around 1,100 calories during this period. Most of the fuel used would have come from your stored fat and glycogen (carbs).

But you have a limited supply of carbs because they are stored only in small amounts in your liver and muscles. Even though the body has plenty of fat stored, for fat to be “burned”, or metabolized, carbs need to be present. Often, the liver’s carb stores are nearly depleted by the morning, so many people may wake up in the morning in a state of energy deficit, where there are not enough carbs to provide energy and to help utilize fat.. So they need breakfast to infuse more energy into their body.

If you skip breakfast and do a tough workout, you launch a depleted body into even greater depletion. Say you burn 500 calories during the workout. By the time you eat later that morning, you may have dipped into an energy deficit of 1,600 calories (that is, 1,100 calories burned while you sleep, plus 500 from the workout). Now your body is famished for fuel. However, you may not feel hungry in this state (known as “ketosis”) because your body has shifted to starvation mode to preserve its resources. Diminished hunger is one of the side effects. But a lack of stomach rumblings  doesn’t mean your body doesn’t need fuel—it does. In fact, at some point it will demand more fuel—you’ll likely binge and go into a huge energy surplus to compensate. This ends up being a roller-coaster calorie ride for your body.

In another scenario, if you overeat and are inactive, you can find yourself in a state of energy surplus. So let’s say you eat a big lunch at 1 p.m. (cheeseburger, fries, shake) and take in around 1,200 calories. Then you sit at your desk and burn about 500 calories until it’s time for dinner at 6. In this case, you may enter the meal in a energy surplus of 700 calories (1,200 calories from lunch, minus the 500 you burned sitting at your desk). If for dinner, you ate another big meal of 1,000 calories (fettuccini alfredo, a soda and dessert ), you could end up with a larger surplus of around 1,700 calories. If you remain sedentary for the rest of the evening, not much of that will be burned off. Then the next morning if you wake up to a big breakfast, your body stays in positive energy balance. This is a recipe for weight gain.

Dramatic calorie highs and lows aren’t good for you. Researchers at the University of Georgia studied the eating patterns of athletes and found that that men and women had higher levels of body fat when their eating patterns fluctuated wildly throughout the day, even if they were in energy balance by the end of the day. In addition, they had worse muscle mass, lower energy levels and poor mental focus compared to athletes who ate consistently over the course of the day. Those athletes who ate regular, small meals, and more before, during and after intense workout sessions, showed the best performance in their sports and were the leanest.

The moral? For optimum performance, match your energy intake to your hourly energy needs. Of course, short of living in a laboratory, there’s no sure-fire way to know your precise energy-balance status. Still, you can avoid drastic energy fluctuations by eating small-to-moderate sized meals every three or four hours. And if you are going to do intense or long exercise sessions, eat more before and during to compensate.

Many misconceptions surround eating and exercise. Some people avoid food before a workout because they worry they’ll get nauseated or have cramps. Others don’t eat in the morning because they think they’ll burn more fat if they move on an empty stomach. Some athletes assume that hunger pangs before practice are a good thing, because they think that their body is diverting all its energy to the workout instead of digestion.

None of these beliefs are true.

The bottom line is this: When you expend energy by exercising, you need to consume extra energy to fuel the activity. How much you should eat and at what time of day depends on the type and duration of your workout, as well as when you last ate and what was on the menu.

Ideally, how much energy your body uses (how many calories you burn) and how much energy your body takes in (how many calories you eat) should be in balance all day. Keep in mind that your body burns around 100 calories an hour at rest and during sleep, so you don’t just need energy for exercise, you need food throughout the day to fuel being alive. If you are highly active, if you eat big meals, or if you go for long periods without eating, you can upset this balance and cause extreme energy highs (surpluses) or lows (deficits.)

When you first wake up, you are likely to be low on energy. It works like this: If, the night before, you ate dinner at 7 p.m. and then nothing else until breakfast at 7 a.m., you would have gone 12 hours without added fuel. Your body may have burned around 1,100 calories during this period. Most of the fuel used would have come from your stored fat and glycogen (carbs).

But you have a limited supply of carbs because they are stored only in small amounts in your liver and muscles. Even though the body has plenty of fat stored, for fat to be “burned”, or metabolized, carbs need to be present. Often, the liver’s carb stores are nearly depleted by the morning, so many people may wake up in the morning in a state of energy deficit, where there are not enough carbs to provide energy and to help utilize fat.. So they need breakfast to infuse more energy into their body.

If you skip breakfast and do a tough workout, you launch a depleted body into even greater depletion. Say you burn 500 calories during the workout. By the time you eat later that morning, you may have dipped into an energy deficit of 1,600 calories (that is, 1,100 calories burned while you sleep, plus 500 from the workout). Now your body is famished for fuel. However, you may not feel hungry in this state (known as “ketosis”) because your body has shifted to starvation mode to preserve its resources. Diminished hunger is one of the side effects. But a lack of stomach rumblings  doesn’t mean your body doesn’t need fuel—it does. In fact, at some point it will demand more fuel—you’ll likely binge and go into a huge energy surplus to compensate. This ends up being a roller-coaster calorie ride for your body.

In another scenario, if you overeat and are inactive, you can find yourself in a state of energy surplus. So let’s say you eat a big lunch at 1 p.m. (cheeseburger, fries, shake) and take in around 1,200 calories. Then you sit at your desk and burn about 500 calories until it’s time for dinner at 6. In this case, you may enter the meal in a energy surplus of 700 calories (1,200 calories from lunch, minus the 500 you burned sitting at your desk). If for dinner, you ate another big meal of 1,000 calories (fettuccini alfredo, a soda and dessert ), you could end up with a larger surplus of around 1,700 calories. If you remain sedentary for the rest of the evening, not much of that will be burned off. Then the next morning if you wake up to a big breakfast, your body stays in positive energy balance. This is a recipe for weight gain.

Dramatic calorie highs and lows aren’t good for you. Researchers at the University of Georgia studied the eating patterns of athletes and found that that men and women had higher levels of body fat when their eating patterns fluctuated wildly throughout the day, even if they were in energy balance by the end of the day. In addition, they had worse muscle mass, lower energy levels and poor mental focus compared to athletes who ate consistently over the course of the day. Those athletes who ate regular, small meals, and more before, during and after intense workout sessions, showed the best performance in their sports and were the leanest.

The moral? For optimum performance, match your energy intake to your hourly energy needs. Of course, short of living in a laboratory, there’s no sure-fire way to know your precise energy-balance status. Still, you can avoid drastic energy fluctuations by eating small-to-moderate sized meals every three or four hours. And if you are going to do intense or long exercise sessions, eat more before and during to compensate.

The new health secretary has opened up the debate again on food and in particular the question: can you tell someone what to to? Does nagging have the opposite effect?

Andrew Lansley told the British Medical Association conference in Brighton there must be an evidence-based approach to dealing with public health. Mr Lansley said people needed to take responsibility for their own health. He warned lecturing people often ended up being counter-productive. “If we are constantly lecturing people and trying to tell them what to do, we will actually find that we undermine and are counterproductive in the results that we achieve,” said the health secretary, who has pledged to rename the Department of Health the Department of Public Health (I wonder how many taxpayers pounds for that?). He said the TV chef’s approach to school food had not had the desired effect – the number of children eating school meals had gone down instead of up. “Jamie Oliver, quite rightly, was talking about trying to improve the diet of children in schools and improving school meals, but the net effect was the number of children eating school meals in many of these places didn’t go up, it went down. “So then the schools said

 ’It’s OK to bring packed lunches but we’ve got to determine what’s in the packed lunches, we’ve got to decide what’s in the packed lunches.’

“To which the parents’ response was that they gave children money and children are actually spending more money outside school, buying snacks in local shops, instead of on school lunches.” He said that people proposed shopd near schools be banned, adding: “Actually, where do we end up with this?”

Protecting health Mr Lansley said the consumption of salty foods could be reduced but none of this would work unless people’s behaviour changed. He is expected to outline in detail how he plans to do this later this year in a public health strategy paper. He has also pledged to ring-fence public health budgets, saying in the past that they have been raided during times when money is scarce. Professor Alan Maryon-Davis, president of the UK Faculty of Public Health, suggested the health secretary’s comments about the TV chef’s campaign were unfair. “I find it deeply distressing. I think what Jamie Oliver did was excellent. The whole thing managed to improve school meals and pushed the government into investing more money into them. “Of course, we could probably do a little less nagging, but you still need to nudge people. It is about creating the right environment so healthy choices are easier to take as well as encouraging them to change their behaviour.”

Tam Fry of the National Obesity Forum added: “The teething problems that school meals may still be going through have nothing to do with Jamie Oliver but the schools themselves. Oliver was unique in introducing the idea of giving our children healthy meals at school and the proof is that his system is working. “From breakfast onwards research is showing that Oliver-style food is showing real benefits in terms of attention to learning and reduction of bad classroom behaviour. On top of which the children get fed properly. It would be lunacy to abandon that breakthough for a few schools that may not have got their act together yet.

So there are both sides of the argument. What seems to be true is that if we do nothing then the nation will be in serious trouble weight wise. Most young people in shools take more notice of music and sporting celebrities, so perhaps a campaign fronted by Cheryl Cole and David Beckham, letting young people know that they did not get their stunning bodies from burgers and chips might also help.

Many of us think that attempts by the government to make our lives safer (health and safety) is nannying and meddling. But when it comes to smoking it seems that nanny really does know best. New research has revealed that one year after the ban on smoking was introduced (2007) the number of people admitted into UK hospitals with heart attacks fell by 1,200 or 2.4%. Other studies have found that in the year after the ban was imposed two billion fewer cigarettes were smoked, and more than 4000,000 people stopped smoking. Researchers estimated that over 10 years this would prevent 40,000 deaths from lung cancer, heart disease and other smoking related conditions.

Exercise also plays a vital role in prevention of these diseases, and even if you are a smoker exercise can help prevent the onset of disease. It can also highlight how unfit smoking has made you, which is a great encouragement to stop. I would also strongly recommend the Allen Carr “Easy Way to Stop Smoking” book or lectures. Several of our personal trainer clients in London and Berkshire have successfully stopped using this method.

Anthony Gaskell finished this year’s London Marathon in the fastest time ever recorded by anyone over 65, but it has since been revealed that he took a 10-mile short cut. Gaskell, a 69-year-old from the Wirral in Merseyside, completed the marathon in a mere three hours and five minutes to find himself in the record books. The OAP was due to receive a plaque marking his achievement but, six weeks after the event, it was uncovered that he took 10 miles off the course. Observers questioned how a previously unknown veteran could have performed with such distinction, and an enquiry revealed he completed the second half in under an hour – a time which would have obliterated that of the world record holder, Haile Gebrselassie. Gaskell was shown to have cut the course just after Tower Bridge, where he subsequently claimed he was injured after falling over a runner ahead of him who had tripped on a safety barrier. He has insisted he never claimed to have run the last part of the course and that he did not try to pass off the winning time as his own.

“I simply walked through a short cut to the end of the course where my belongings were waiting for me. I had no idea that anyone thought I’d won,” Gaskell told the Daily Mail. “I didn’t bother to check the website for the final standings because I knew I had dropped out.”

According to his electronic timing chip, worn by all runners, he completed the first 20km in just over two hours. There was then a gap in the chip readings before he crossed the 40km mark around 41 minutes later. Gaskell’s disqualification is good news for 66-year-old Colin Rathbone, who finished 38 seconds behind after completing the full 26 miles and 385 yards and will now receive the fastest pensioner’s plaque. Mr Rathbone, from Northwich in Cheshire, said: “I trained for the race for months, starting proper marathon training in January. I had to stop for a while with a bad chest infection in the winter but I got through it. 

“Last year I came third in the over-65 race and I wanted to win this time. I finished in just over three hours, five minutes and thought I must have won. “It was the best time in 10 years. When I was told I had been beaten I thought, ‘What the heck do you have to do to win this thing? I’m elated that I did actually win. I do wonder what Mr Gaskell’s motivation was.”

While Mr Gaskell insists he is still a serious runner with the Wirral Athletics Club, it says he has no connection to it. General secretary Leo Carroll said: “Tony Gaskell has not been a paid-up member for at least 12 years.”

If you are thinking of competing in a marathon then by all means go for it. As Mr Rathbone has shown us anyone with determination and a reasonable lead in time whose body works reasonably well can do it. The key as with all these types of race is preparation preparation preparation. A proper marathon running schedule should take at least 3 months, 4 is better and 18 weeks is even better than that. It is essential not just to build up the fitness for an event like this but also the endurance and toughness needed to finish. It’s always a good idea to enlist professional help, even if it’s just for a few sessions to asses where you are and then get a programme designed specifically for you. At Diets Don’t Work we have lots of experience in getting even the most unlikely candidate over the line (have a look at Frances on our success stories  page), so you might want to think of having a consultation with one of our personal traners in London and Berkshire.