How to Take Regular Exercise (And Love It)

One of the keys to health is taking regular exercise (and if you doubt that, just check out this story of a 100 year old British woman taking keep fit classes!) But many of us find it difficult to stick with an exercise routine. Perhaps we’re too busy or too tired, or maybe we just don’t enjoy exercise that much.

Being active doesn’t have to feel like a chore or a punishment – it’s a great way to boost your mood, to keep your heart and bones healthy, and to burn calories and build muscle. Here’s how you can fit regular exercise into your life – and enjoy it!  READ MORE >>

What Do You Need to Cut Out of Your Life?

Five Great Reasons to Exercise

Yes, you know you should be exercising. But, like flossing every day, or cleaning the oven, exercise can end up being of those “should do” things which we put off almost indefinitely.

Perhaps it feels like a chore. Maybe you’ve had bad experiences with exercise in the past. You might struggle to see the point – surely what’s important when you’re on a diet is that you eat less?

Sometimes, it’s worth having a reminder of the reasons why we want to do something – not just why we feel we should. Here are X great reasons to exercise:  READ MORE >>

Keeping Dieting Simple

We often turn our diets into a huge, complicated mission.

We try, in vain, to absorb all the (conflicting) nutritional advice out there.

We obsess over details, and get caught up in trying to achieve perfection – berating ourselves when we don’t quite manage it.

It’s very easy to get paralysed by indecision when we’re trying to lose weight. Perhaps we can’t decide what diet we should follow. Maybe we have limited time and attention, and don’t know whether it’s better to exercise or to prepare elaborate raw-food meals.  READ MORE >>

How to Avoid Boredom Eating

One of the most common reasons for snacking is boredom.

If you’re hanging around without much to do – perhaps a slow day at work, or looking after kids – then it’s very easy to turn to food as a quick moment of interest.

You may convince yourself that you’re “peckish” or “hungry” every few hours, so that you have an excuse to eat. You may be going through a situation where, in some ways, food is the most interesting thing in your life – where your thoughts are constantly turning to the next snack or meal.  READ MORE >>

How to Get Motivated to Diet When You Have Lots of Weight to Lose

If you’ve got a lot of weight to lose, you’ll have been overweight for a while – perhaps almost all your life.

It can be incredibly daunting to think about changing your habits and losing a significant amount of weight – but you can do it.

Are you feeling anxious about the journey ahead and wondering if it’s worthwhile or whether you’ll have the willpower to stick to your diet?

Here’s how to get motivated.

Aim to Lose 10% of Your Starting Weight

First, don’t set a target goal which takes you right down to a BMI of 20-25. Instead, aim to lose 10% of your starting weight.  READ MORE >>

How to Establish an Exercise Routine You Can Stick To

How often have you started a new exercise plan, and given up after a week or two? Perhaps you planned to go to the gym three times a week after work, or you were going to do an hour of walking every day. You lasted for a few days – but then you were too busy, and too tired, to carry on.

To get real benefits from exercise, you want to find ways to stay consistently active – rather than exercising for brief, intense periods. (You’re also more likely to injure yourself if you exercise irregularly.) Here’s how to establish a routine which you can stick to.  READ MORE >>

The 75 Percent Diet

A few years ago, I came across a very simple dieting concept. No calorie counting, no weird diet foods, no skipping meals. It was simply this:

Eat 75% of whatever you normally eat.

So, if you’re currently eating a 40g bowl of cereal with milk for your breakfast, switch to a 30g bowl. If your usual lunch is a 300g baked potato, switch to a 225g one. And so on.

Why It Works

The theory behind this diet is that if your current food intake is keeping you overweight, reducing your intake by 25% will be enough for you to lose weight – probably 1-2lbs per week.  READ MORE >>

Four Ways to Deal With “Trigger” Foods

Have you ever scoffed down a cupcake or a bar of chocolate … only to ditch your diet for the rest of the day? Many of us have “trigger” foods. We label them as bad, and if we eat them, we invariably over-indulge. This leads to feeling that we’ve failed, and that we might as well give up.

Often, that giving up means that our diet isn’t just derailed for the day – we take the whole week off, or even quit dieting for months.

So, how can you deal with those “trigger” foods … and those diet-breaking moments? Here are a few different techniques to try.  READ MORE >>

Why Very Low Calorie Diets are a Very Bad Idea

Have you ever looked at a diet plan which promised an astonishing rate of weight loss – perhaps 10lbs in 2 weeks? Chances are, it relied on you drinking specially formulated drinks, or eating from a very restricted range of foods. “Very low calorie” diets are defined as diets which involve fewer than 800 calories per day, and are often liquid-only.

In the 21^st century, we’ve become accustomed to very quick results. We have mobile phones, fast broadband, overnight shipping, instant downloads and so on. When it comes to dieting, though, technology hasn’t made a difference. Our bodies still work in just the same way that they worked thousands of years ago.  READ MORE >>

How to Beat Your Cravings – Every Time

Maybe your diet was going along swimmingly for days or even weeks. You were sticking to your meal plans, avoiding certain foods, and turning down chocolate, cake and chips.

And then you had a craving for something. Perhaps you just had to have a chocolate bar. Maybe you couldn’t stop thinking about ice-cream.

Whatever it was, you cracked, and you ended up eating rather a lot of all the wrong sorts of things.

So how can you beat your cravings next time? Here are a few “do”s and “don’t”s to try…  READ MORE >>

How to Eat More Mindfully (And Diet More Effectively)

Do you often end up eating on the run, grabbing lunch at your desk, or scoffing down dinner in front of the television?

Many of us do – and it’s one of the key reasons why we end up overeating. If we’re distracted during a meal, we’re likely to miss our body’s cues that we’re getting full. We also won’t get so much enjoyment from the food.

Eating mindfully means that you concentrate on the meal or snack which you’re enjoying, rather than shoveling food into your mouth while your thoughts are on something else entirely. I’ve come across the idea several times, but I particularly like this explanation from Willie Hewes:  READ MORE >>

Five Ways That Carrying a Notebook Can Help You Diet

When you’re on a diet, it’s the little things which make the difference between success and failure. Ditching a daily soda and a donut is enough to let you lose a pound every week … but similarly, an extra snack or a sneaky nibble here and there will stop you making progress (or even see you piling the weight back on).

When it comes to exercise, most of us neither want nor need to be marathon runners. A half-hour daily walk, and ten minute of stretches during the commercial breaks on TV, is enough to start getting fitter and healthier.  READ MORE >>

Why You Shouldn’t Strive to be Super-Skinny

Do you ever feel like your diet is taking over your life? Perhaps you started off aiming to lose a few pounds and to have a bit more energy … but now you find yourself more and more driven towards getting the perfect figure and eating the perfect diet.

Maybe you’re looking at celebrities who work out for hours every day. Perhaps you’re feeling intimidated by a guru extolling the virtues of raw food eating. You might just feel that you’re on a journey with no end, where your body will never look just how you want.  READ MORE >>

How Wholegrains Help You Succeed With Your Diet

You probably know that you should be eating more wholegrains: it’s been official nutrition advice for a while. But what exactly are wholegrains? And why are they particularly important for dieters?

The clue to wholegrains is in the name! They contain the “whole grain” – whereas refined grains (like white flour) only use the endosperm, the energy-dense inside part of the grain. Wholegrain foods keep the germ (which provides important nutrients) and the bran layer of the grain (which provides dietary fiber).

Common wholegrains include:  READ MORE >>

• Wheat
• Oats
• Maize
• Barley (not pearl barley

Getting Your Diet Off to a Great Start

You’ve been carrying some extra weight for years. Perhaps you’ve always been a little dissatisfied with your size, or your fitness levels. You may have been on diets in the past, only to give up quickly. But you’ve decided that now, it’s time to do something about your extra weight – for good.

When we start off a journey towards a new goal (such as losing 50lbs), we might feel like nothing can stop us. We feel motivated and energized to do whatever it takes to get to our target weight. Harness that motivation at the start of your diet, and make sure you start getting good habits and routines in place, so that you’re helped along when your willpower fades.  READ MORE >>

Ten Little Tricks for Enjoying Exercise More

Many dieters view exercise as a chore. If you associate jogging with tedium, or the gym with being bored, then you’ll be forcing yourself forwards by sheer willpower – which means that there’ll almost certainly come a point where you simply give up (and feel a mix of relief and guilt).

But you don’t need to dread your exercise sessions. There are lots of easy tricks to make exercise more enjoyable.

1. Put on Your Favorite Music  READ MORE >>

Five Ways to Improve Your Body Image

Many dieters struggle with body image. If you’re trying to lose weight, there’s a fair probability that part of your motivation is that you want your body to look different. Perhaps you’d like to have a smaller waist, slimmer thighs, or more toned arms.

Even while you’re making healthy progress, though, it’s important to work on your body image. It’s not healthy to hate yourself, or to think that you’re ugly – because you’re not.

If your feelings towards your body are less than kind, here are five simple ways to start improving your body image.  READ MORE >>

Picking Yourself Up After a Weight Gain

It happens to almost every dieter at some point. You lose some weight – perhaps 10lbs or 20lbs or even more. And then, well, life just gets in the way. Perhaps it’s a pregnancy, a vacation, a busy spell at work, Christmas … whatever the reason, you end up eating more than usual, and stacking that weight right back on.

If you’ve ever had that dismaying experience of staring down at the scales, realising that you’ve put on most or all of the weight you’d lost, you’ll know how dispiriting it can be. You might think about giving up. But here’s how to make the most of what you’ve already achieved – and get yourself back on the path to success.  READ MORE >>

Six Dieting and Exercise Tips for Rainy Days

I live in the UK, where, even by our standards, it’s been a long, cold and rainy winter! So I know how hard it is to stay motivated with dieting and exercise when the weather’s awful. Not only does it make going outside for exercise a hassle, it drags your mood down too – not a combination which any dieter wants.

However, a rainy day (or a rainy week) doesn’t need to be an excuse to quit your diet. Here are six ways to make the most of those rainy days:  READ MORE >>

Are Snacks Ruining Your Diet?

When I was a student, I was always on and off diets. Usually, my meals were very virtuous: lots of salads and vegetables, and small portions of carbohydrates and lean meats. Unfortunately, I often found that the calorie count crept up on the inbetweens … chips, chocolate, alcohol and other snacky foods.

Of course, we all know that healthy snacks– perhaps a piece of fruit or a small sandwich – can be a great way to fill the gap between meals and keep our energy levels. However, all too often our snacking involves the wrong sorts of foods. Just look at recent reports in the UK of movie theaters serving buckets of popcorn containing 1,800 calories – that’s enough for some small women for an entire day!  READ MORE >>

How to Beat Chocolate Cravings

What dieter hasn’t wished that calorie-free chocolate existed? Despite innovative research – like the Vulcano chocolate bar under development in Switzerland, and the chocolate bar which replaces fat with water that’s been created in the UK – we have yet to find our shelves and our cupboards full of guilt-free chocolate.

So what’s a dieter to do when cravings strike?

Don’t Ban Chocolate

First, don’t ban chocolate from your diet – there’s no faster way to make something seem irresistible! A healthy weight loss diet can include chocolate, so long as you don’t eat too much too often.  READ MORE >>

How to Make a Food Diary into a Habit

I firmly believe that a lot of success in dieting isn’t down to willpower or self-control: you don’t need to have iron self-discipline in order to lose weight. In order to succeed, you need to establish good habits which work for you.

There are plenty of habits you could try: perhaps eating a piece of fruit before each meal, or drinking a glass of water whenever you feel hungry. One of the best habits, though – shown to double your rate of weight loss – is to keep a food diary.  READ MORE >>

What Does Dieting Success Mean to You?

Most of us would agree that dieting involves losing weight. However, getting down to a set weight on the scale does not have to be the way we judge success.
Why are you on a diet? It’s probably not really to do with the number on your scales. Your reason for dieting might be:  READ MORE >>

• You want to fit back into those jeans
• You’d love to have the energy to run around with your kids or grandchildren
• You want to set yourself up for good health for years to come

Distinguishing Real Hunger from Emotional Hunger

When you have a sudden craving for a candy bar or a big bowl of fries smothered in ketchup, are you really hungry … or is it just emotional hunger?

It can be surprisingly hard sometimes to figure out exactly what we’re feeling! If you’re on a diet after quite a long period of being overweight, you may have to get back in touch with your body’s hunger signals – many of us fall into the trap of nibbling constantly, and not really having much appetite when it comes to meal-time.  READ MORE >>