Losing weight can be difficult and challenging and getting as much support as you can is crucial to the success of the any diet or weight loss programme.

Getting a personal trainer helps ensure you training programme is structured and effective to ensure you achieve your goals safely and in the quickest possible time. A personal trainer will ensure you remain motivated and will not allow you to give up and yes you will want to!

However, starting an exercise programme is only half the battle, changing your diet can be very difficult and even stressful and getting it right will determine the  uccess and maintenance of any weight loss  goal.

Eating healthier can be difficult and requires time for planning, organisation and preparation, you will need to count calories, weigh your portions, plan your meals,  shop for food  and of course prepare the meals all of which require time you may simply not have.

Esteem Fitness provides you real meals delivered to your door based on your current BMR and AMR to ensure to lose and keep the weight OFF.The service is not available independent of a training programme as we believe that it is essential include exercise in every weightloss programme as this will help maintain a healthy metabolism.

We offer-

    Nutritional Assessment
    Meal Plan
    Real food  and snacks delivered to your door
    Regular review of calorie intake
    Help and support to keep you on track

Call now to book your assessment.
www.esteemfitness.com

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Visualise then actualise- Body Magic sensation

Power of positive visualisation, the ability to visualise an end result can be a powerful tool in the process of achieving any goal, not least the very common weight loss struggle. Seeing yourself slimmer can give you the motivation to push through and keep up with a fitness regime and nutritional balance that will eventually actualise the goal.
Body magic helps you to drop 2-3 dress sizes in minutes, boosting your confidence and self esteem instantly. Designed with medical and engineering principles, Body Magic offers the unique combination of a useful and necessary shape wear garment with physical health benefits. Produced to the highest quality standards, Body magic is the leading and most effective reshaping garment available in the market today.

The Body Magic reshaping garment offers an extremely comfortable fit with no pinch points, rolling and bunching, it is superbly engineered for comfort and durability – distributing any fat evenly so it feels like a second skin all day long.

Body Magic benefits include:

Lifts shoulders and helps correct posture

Relieves lower and upper back pain

Lifts the buttocksInstant breast lifts                                                                                           

Helps reduce fat in the pelvic area

Corrects posture and sharpens overall figure

Smooths out lumps and bumps 

Helps prevent additional fat deposits

www.magicbodyuk.com

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I usually write about the benefits of healthy eating, of specific foods and diets. When I speak with friends and clients about healthy eating and weight loss I often find that most of them have a very good knowledge about healthy foods and lifestyle choices. They might not always know about the latest scientific research on a specific nutrient but without exception all of them understand that eating highly processed, sugary, fatty foods and low levels of physical activity can be detrimental to their health. Therefore I am sometimes troubled that these well informed people struggle to maintain their weight, to exercise regularly and to choose healthy foods and drinks more often than unhealthy ones. While some of them may recognize the wide gap between what they know about illness prevention and their behaviour others strongly believe they eat healthy and are active enough to prevent becoming unwell in future. However if I discuss their diets and lifestyle choices with them in detail often real health threats start to appear and yes these threats or unhealthy behaviours have usually not been recognized before.
The eating behaviour of many people has changed so much that many people are eating small snacks throughout the day than having three main meals. People decide to skip meals because they are under time pressures or they hope to reduce their total energy intake. While it is a good idea to eat more regularly and have 3 main meals and about 2 healthy snacks throughout the day it makes it harder to keep track of your food intake, so we often simply forget that bite of our friends cake we only wanted to taste. Surely these small bites can’t have a major impact. Well you can be quite surprised how many of these bites you might have on a regular day. To gain awareness of these and other traps a food diary is a brilliant tool. With a food diary you will be able to pinpoint such unrecognized threats to your health because it is a bit like checking our bank statements. It helps to take stock of income and outgoings on your health. Also include all elements of fitness training you have embarked on whether it a long walk to work or a session with your personal trainer or even how many steps you have climbed throughout the day. You may not think that this would make a huge difference to our behaviour and as such to our future health but how would you change lifestyle habits if you have not recognized that you actually do them on a regular basis.
Food diaries can be done entirely by yourself, in your own time and even in your own format. In addition to that many people may not need the professional eye of a nutritionist to spot what are negative aspects of their typical diets, because as I outlined above most people know already quite well what a healthy diet should look like. Depending on how much information you wish to include in a food diary, it will show you black on white what and when you eat, your exercise levels, personal training sessions and your overall wellbeing of the day. Gaining an awareness of your food choices and exercise output will allow you to spot what are the pitfalls of your diet and if you put food choices into the context of your daily hassles you may even be able to find situations or moments in your life which trigger bad or good food choices.
For some people even the simple fact that they would need to write down every food they consume helps them to alter their diet by reducing the frequency of snacking or reducing their overall food intake. In case you chose to produce a food diary for longer periods e.g. several weeks you should even be able to track your own progress towards healthier choices or weight loss. Some people include their physical activity day by day and/or their sleeping hours, which can be an additional source of information for a health professional to understand whether your lifestyle choices need some upgrading.
Not convinced yet? Keeping record of your daily food intake is very easy often it only requires a pen and a note pad. Yet if you would like to get some instant calculations for your individual needs you may wish to try one of the many free online food diaries. Finally studies have highlighted that keeping a food diary can be beneficial for people with diabetes to maintain a tighter blood sugar control and aid their decisions of when and what to eat and the more consistently someone records food intake the greater the potential weight loss.

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Polly  Personal training Islington

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Deborah  Personal training Kennington

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Fruit and vegetables are generally lower in energy per gram while offering usually high amounts of minerals, vitamins and antioxidants. Both are vital requirements for weight loss diets, because when you aim to lose weight you need achieve a balance between reducing your energy intake and consuming enough vital nutrients. If you would only reduce your energy intakes without considering how you can achieve enough vitamins, minerals and antioxidants in your diet you may actually cause harm to your health by dieting and leading to nutrient deficiencies.

Fruit and vegetables furthermore are rich sources of fibre which helps to feel full for longer and has many other health promoting effects in your body. Vegetables in particular should be eaten at high frequencies and in a broad variety, because they are low in simple sugars. Fruits on the other hand contains large amount of natural sugar, which make them taste nice and sweet however there is some evidence that even natural sugars in fruits may lead to quick raises in blood sugar levels.

Regular, quick and high raises in blood sugar levels have been indicated to increase the risk of diabetes. Moreover if sugar or carbohydrates are absorbed more slowly as it applies for most vegetables, it fuels your body more consistently and this is believed to avoid hunger pangs and mood swings.

You may also know that fruit and vegetable are the heroes in the storage cupboards if one aims to prevent many common chronic diseases and to help your body to fight infections, however commonly people struggle to consume the recommended amount of fruit and vegetables and more importantly most people struggle in particular with vegetables. Vegetable juice could offer an easy and tasty solution to this problem. Whereas many people regularly consume 100% fruit juices significantly less people opt for vegetable juice although they offer the same convenience and may have even more health benefits.

Studies in the USA suggest that recommending drinking regularly vegetable juice is a much more successful approach to increase the total amount of fruit and vegetables in the diet than nutrition education or one-to-one nutrition advice promoting fruit and vegetable consumption. This highlights that most people are aware about the health benefits of fruit and vegetable but find it often difficult to implement more fruit and vegetables into their daily eating routine.

Two further studies in particular highlight why vegetable juice could be an especially useful addition to everyone’s diet. One study assessed changes in blood pressure over a 12 week period in overweight people (40-65 years) who consumed 2 glasses of vegetable juice per day and found that blood pressure was significantly reduced after the 12 week intervention in all participants who complied with the 2 juice a day regime. Moreover the participants who complied with the 2 juices per day schedule also met the 5 a day recommendation. There is however one word of warning some commercial vegetable juices contain quite high amounts of salt and may therefore not be suitable for healthy diets, hence it might be worth comparing brands and labels and opt for those with lower salt levels.

The second study was even more encouraging. Again participants were asked to consume one to two vegetable juice per day over a 12 week period in this case however all participants were overweight with metabolic syndrome and were additionally enrolled on a weight loss programme. Participants who drank 1-2 portions of vegetable juice per day appeared to be more successful in their weight loss with an average weight loss of 4 pounds compared to 1 pound for the non-juice dieters. Although there might some other factors interacting with weight loss than the vegetable juice and these might moreover vary for overweight people without the metabolic syndrome it appears drinking regularly vegetable juice could be beneficial if someone tries to lose weight.

Andrea Zick – Esteem Fitness Nutritionist
Esteem Fitness – Personal training London and South East UK

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Today I will however tell you a little bit more about reducing your television hours. Statistics show that about two thirds of adults spend between 2-5h per day watching television and this although most adults spend about 5h per day seated in the UK.

People watching less television have generally a lower risk to become overweight and most adults increase their television viewing with increasing age. More interestingly some studies found that the risk of hypertension in obese children increases with the number of hours of TV viewing and TV viewing has also been associated with poorer diets.Apparently there is barely any other daily activity which decreases our metabolic rates more than watching television, surely the amount of energy spend while watching television may also depend on the content of the television program but watching television needs less energy than reading a book or surfing the internet in most cases and for someone aiming to lose weight this minute energy differences could be of importance as a recent study highlights.The study was carried out in California.

Researchers observed the effects of reducing television viewing by 50% over a 3 week period on 20 overweight men and compared this with a group of 16 overweight men who not being restricted in the Television viewing time. Both group underwent an observation period were ‘normal’ energy expenditure was measured. The results of this study indicate clearly that reducing your television time by 50% can increase your energy needs. The 20 men were found to expend 119kcal more per day during the intervention period than during the observation period.

Respectively the men following their normal television routine expended 95 fewer calories during the intervention period. Moreover the group of the 20 men reduced energy intake per day by 244kcal indicating they also consumed less food or drinks, while the other group increased their energy intake by 57kcal per day.

Although these energy imbalance achieved through reduced television viewing may not appear much considering that is takes about 500kcal energy reduction per day to reduce you weight by about 1kg over 2 weeks this amount of negative energy balance could help to prevent weight gain over prolonged periods and might be more sustainable than many other weight loss measures. Hence considering switching off the TV more often and switching it on later on the day might really help some people achieving healthy body weight, even without making many of the other commonly recommended weight loss measures.

Does it matter what type of exercise you do when you aim to lose weight?

Most people will generally agree that exercise will aid a great deal if you are set to shed pounds. Yet only about 39% of men and 29% of women achieve the recommended exercise levels according to self reports in the UK. Hence in some way it might not matter as much what type of exercise is done to prevent people becoming overweight as long as people generally become more active. The numbers appear even more shocking if real exercise levels are observed with pedometers, then only 6% men and 4% women achieve the amount of exercise needed to protect us from chronic diseases. So really for most people starting to do any sort of exercise will help to maintain and lose weight.

Scientist estimate adults need to exercise for about 150 min per week to prevent weight gain. However this is not really the magic number as it also depends on other physical activity during your daily routine. Someone working on building sites or being a cycle courier clearly will need less extra physical activity than someone working on a checkout counter at Sainsbury’s or in a City office.

On the other hand for many people aiming to lose weight it appears to be quite important to know which type of exercise is the most efficient exercise in terms of weight loss. To answer this question it really depends on how precisely this question is phrased. There is reasonable amount of evidence out there indicating that building muscle mass will increase your metabolism. This is of particular importance because losing weight will decrease your metabolism and as such your energy needs progressively. Building muscle while you are losing weight has been shown to counter balance at least some of this.

That also implicates that muscle building is highly important for people aiming to lose a dress size.Yet if you ask which type of exercise reduces your appetite most significantly the answer will be very different as has been suggested by a study published in 2008. The researchers of this UK based study observed the effects of 60 min jogging or 90 min weight lifting on 11 male students and found that the activation of two different hormones which regulate appetite varied in both conditions. Jogging on the treadmill altered both hormones whereas lifting weights only influenced one hormone. The researchers suggested accordingly that aerobic exercise might be more effective in suppressing appetite.

However to complicate this matter there appears to be a gender difference in the effects of exercise on appetite. Regular exercise has for example been shown to lead to greater fat losses in men than in women, so more recent studies aimed to investigate whether there could be differences in the activation of appetite stimulating hormones.  One study found that exercise stimulates energy regulating hormones and appetite differently in women and men. Women were found to have higher acylated ghrelin levels (indicating more stimuli to eat) and lower insulin levels after exercise, this may suggest that women have a more robust hormonal response to stimulate appetite and possibly energy intake. This may explain why men tend to lose body fat quicker than women.

However ladies there is no need to give up on your weight loss goals other Canadian studies showed that women who trained intensively lost more weight and body fat over a six month period than women training less intensively. So although different types of exercise might influence your appetite differently you will still benefit of working out more frequently and for longer times.

Andrea Zick – Esteem Fitness Nutritionist
Esteem Fitness – Personal training London and South East UK

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Can foods really help with your sex life? Over centuries people have believed that certain foods can have an effect on different aspects of your sex life, some foods are thought to increase libido whereas others are thought to help with fertility in men and women. Often the origin of the claim can be centuries old and most often only relates to the specific shape of the food (e.g. asparagus, oysters, eggs etc.). However modern media has also advocated foods such as pumpkin seeds as the ‘Viagra for women’ based on their specific nutrient density. So is there any real evidence that certain foods could influence any aspect of our sex life?

Firstly, it’s important to point out that there are many conditions which may interfere with a healthy and satisfied sex life such as depression, anaemia, stress, recurrent bladder infections etc. It appears obvious that being healthy will support a healthy sex life and in this respect a healthy balanced diet can surely support fertility and sex drive. As an example anaemia which can be caused by iron deficiency can make you lethargic and unwilling to have sexual intercourse. Considering that one in five women in the UK are iron deficient it seems to be important to advocate: eating a variety of foods containing iron and vitamin C to help with iron absorption. This could improve overall health and well-being and female sex life.

Also there appears to be some evidence for reduced or delayed conception in women consuming large amounts of caffeine, hence the Food Standards Agency recommends reducing your caffeine intake to around 200mg per day (2 mugs of instant coffee), yet a more recent review of the existing evidence concluded that current scientific evidence is insufficient to recommend caffeine avoidance to conceive.

Over and underweight can furthermore interfere with you sex life as both have been shown to reduce fertility in women and lead to complications during pregnancy. Body fat content appears here to be the strongest predictor for fertility. Some evidence even puts forward that as much as one quarter of female infertility could be attributable to current high levels of obesity and overweight. Interestingly high body fat percentage can have long-term effects: obese girls have been shown to have a higher risk of irregularities in the menstrual cycle and infertility in adulthood.

One of the reasons Trans fats in processed foods such as commercially baked and fried foods should only be eaten rarely is that they have been shown to increase ovulatory infertility in women, so avoidance of processed foods appears a wise choice if women aim to conceive.

Erectile dysfunction affects half of all men aged 40-70 years at least once and there is growing evidence that obesity could increase the occurrence of erectile dysfunction. Hence being at healthy weight will reduce the risk of erectile dysfunction. Some nutritional supplements have had promising results to treat erectile dysfunction in larger studies. The strongest evidence currently exists for red ginseng, yet the placebo effect for this type of ailment has been shown to be as high as 25% so it is not clear in how far red ginseng really helps to improve erectile function.

Fertility in men has been shown to be influenced by the following: zinc and selenium concentrations in the blood, high intakes of soy foods and isoflavones, vitamin C, E and beta-carotene intakes, L-carnitine (an amino acid) and vitamin B12 intake. Low levels of zinc and selenium in the blood have been shown to influences the semen quality, while vitamin B12 deficiency has been linked to abnormal semen analysis. High intakes of soy foods and isoflavones were suggested to decrease sperm counts in men.

On the other hand higher antioxidant intakes such as vitamin C, E and beta-carotene appear to increase the numbers of sperm and its mobility. Finally supplementation with L-carnitine in infertile men has been suggested to increase pregnancy rate and sperm quality. However, it must be emphasised that research in this area is still young and many other environmental and lifestyle factors can be involved in fertility so current advice is to consume a healthy balanced diet rather than taking any of the above as supplements without specific recommendation from a specialist.

Andrea Zick – Esteem Fitness Nutritionist
Esteem Fitness – Personal training London and South East UK

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The study investigated the effects of two different diets on 32 obese participants over a six week period. Both groups achieved an average weight loss of 6kg but the group which consumed only 20g carbohydrate or less a day was found to have significantly increased LDL cholesterol levels. The group consuming a high carbohydrate diet with about 55% calories coming from carbohydrates on the other hand decreased their LDL cholesterol levels significantly and most importantly had cholesterol levels within the healthy range after the intervention.

The low carbohydrate group had furthermore increased levels of free fatty acids in their blood (by products of body fat breakdown) and high circulating levels of free fatty acids permit effective glucose uptake in the liver and lead to increased sugar levels in the blood. This is a very important aspect of the research results as high blood sugar levels define diabetes risk.

Low carbohydrate diets have become increasingly popular because they are promoted to consumers as the easy way to lose weight and some promoters even claim they would lower the risk of diabetes and lower cholesterol, hence this new research is vital to shed more light on these claims. It must be said that this current research is only of small scale but it seriously questions the claims that low carbohydrate diets are an easy and healthy way to lose weight.

A larger study published earlier this year compared a low carbohydrate Atkins type diet with a low fat diet with added weight loss pills and found also higher cholesterol levels in the participants following the low carbohydrate diet whereas the participants consuming the low fat diet and orlistat decreased their cholesterol levels during the trial.

This study had 146 participants involved and again one of their selection criteria was a BMI above 30, hence all participants were classed obese.  It might be therefore in question if similar physical responses occur in overweight people trying to lose weight as their metabolic function is usually better and the low carbohydrate diet may therefore not have the same impact. Moreover overweight people who did not struggle with raised cholesterol level may not worry about such outcomes as losing weight is supposed to increase their overall health and well-being.

In spite of that the results increase critique on Atkins type diets and with many people aiming to lose weight quickly and easily it is important to clarify whether these diets may pose health risks such as raising cholesterol levels. Rarely long-term outcomes of the Atkins diets have been tested and even promoters of Atkins diets know that prolonged compliance could lead to vitamin and mineral deficiencies, hence it is questionable whether such an approach to weight loss is suitable in respect that keeping the weight off needs prolonged lifestyle changes.

Andrea Zick – Esteem Fitness Nutritionist
Esteem Fitness – Personal training London and South East UK

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