Lose Weight

Want to lose weight? That flat stomach and toned arms can be yours. Make sure you combine all the key elements of good nutrition, regular exercise and healthy lifestyle. Want regular weight loss tips sent straight to your email? Click here to contact me. And see my new Weight Loss Blog.

If you want a London personal trainer click here.

Find a Fitness Buddy

One great way to lose weight is to have a fitness buddy to train with. They'll motivate you, keep you on track, encourage you, and make your whole fitness journey more fun. You'll also find that when you encourage someone else to get fit, it boosts your own motivation to get fit too.

Why limit yourself to just one fitness buddy? Get several fitness buddies and before you know it you'll have a new circle of like-minded friends you can rely on to achieve your fitness goals. If you rely on just one fitness buddy, you'll have nobody to go to the gym with or play tennis with if they fall ill, go on holiday, or just can't make it that day. Keep adding to your circle of fitness buddies.

One of the biggest barriers to losing weight is often your existing friends, who unwittingly hold you back from leading a healthy and active lifestyle. Going to watch a movie, eating out at a restaurant, spending the afternoon at the pub with friends, all these are fun to do, but not so good if that's all you're doing. If your friends are fitness buddies too, you can socialise and get fit at the same time.

And if you eat out with fitness buddies, you can encourage each other to choose healthy menu options. By socialising with your fitness buddies, you can turn peer pressure into a positive force, rather than the usual negative force it so often is.

Reviews

For reviews of the latest TV documentaries on weight-loss, nutrition, and healthy living, click on TV Review .

Recipes

This Week's Recipe has a new tasty low fat recipe every week, each with full breakdown of calories, protein, carbohydrates, fibre and fat, so you know exactly what you're getting.

Weight Loss Tips

Here are a few basic principles to get you started on the road to your ideal weight:

  1. Weigh yourself. Write down your weight. Then set yourself a target of losing 2lbs per week until you've reached your ideal weight. Work out how long it will take to reach your target. And write down your goal date for attaining your ideal weight.additional image

  2. Tell your friends and family about your goal, and tell them how important it is to you. Ask them to support and encourage you all the way. And plan a celebration with them for your goal date. This is a powerful psychological tool. It puts everyone around you on notice that they should encourage you towards your goal. It also gives you the prospect of a reward upon reaching your goal, the celebration. Imagine how proud your friends and family will be when you've reached your target weight. Imagine how proud of yourself you'll be.

  3. Cut out as much saturated fat  and refined foods from your diet as possible. That means cheese, roast potatoes, sweets, cakes, biscuits, chocolate, junk food, takeaways, cream, fatty desserts. More importantly, eat more of the healthy foods, and choose ones you like. There is an abundance of gorgeous fruits, vegetables, lean steak, lean chicken, fish of dozens of varieties, and healthy sources of carbohydrate like cous-cous, bulgar wheat, wholewheat spaghetti, sweet potatoes, porridge. And between meals, snack on nuts and seeds.

  4. Exercise more. Get active! Walk, choose a sport and play with friends, go to the gym. Take every opportunity to get more active every day. And don't forget to visit Fitness4London.com every day. Remember - the best form of exercise for losing excess body fat is resistance training with weights. This builds muscle. And muscle raises your metabolism, so you're burning more body fat 24 hours a day. Contrast this with cardio training where you only burn (some) fat while you're actually training and perhaps for a couple of hours afterwards (if you've trained intensively enough, which most people don't). If you're not training with weights, your chances of burning fat are severely compromised.