lose fat...

The benefits
When you lose excess body fat, your physical appearance will improve, you'll feel great about yourself, you'll move around more freely, you'll have more energy, and you'll cut the risk of getting the following diseases:

• Coronary heart disease
• High blood pressure
• Adult onset diabetes
• Osteoarthritis
• Stroke
• Some types of cancer

If you are overweight, you owe it to yourself to act now- and I'm ready to help you every step of the way. If you are obese, your body fat has reached a point where it seriously endangers your health- and you should make it your number one priority to lose that excess body fat - all the more reason to hire me!

Every personal trainer in London will say they can help you lose fat, but some are more effective than others. I will monitor your progress, and keep in touch with you between sessions to make sure you're eating healthily and doing your exercise homework.

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Good fat and bad fat
Everybody needs some body fat, and everyone needs some fat in their diet. If your body fat is too low your health will suffer. Among other benefits, body fat cushions vital organs and stores vitamins A, D, E and K. Never make a 'zero fat' body your goal. And never try to eliminate all fat from your diet. There are good fats ( which contain omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids) and bad fats (saturated fat). I will advise you which foods to eat plenty of, and which foods to cut back on.

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What are calories?
A calorie is simply a unit of energy. You become overweight when your habitual daily calorie input (food and drink) exceeds your calorie output (your body burning energy). The unused energy from food and drink is mostly stored as body fat. Calories from dietary fat are more easily stored as body fat than calories from dietary carbohydrates or protein.

Beware of deceptive food labelling. Food manufacturers cunningly advertise fat percentages as a percentage of the product's weight, not as a percentage of its total calories. This is misleading - one gram of fat is a huge 9 calories, whereas one gram of protein or carbohydrates are just 4 calories each. All these so called '95% fat free' foods contain more than double the fat than food labels trick us into believing. On top of this, the weight of most food products is mainly water, so when you take away the water, the fat percentage of the remaining nutrients is even higher! Advertising the fat in a food product as a percentage of its total weight (rather than as a percentage of its total calories) is very misleading. There should be a law against it! I will advise you on how many fat calories various foods contain, and how many calories you can burn doing different exercises.

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Aim to lose fat slowly and keep it off
Losing fat too fast is dangerous and ineffective. The faster the weight loss, the greater proportion of lean tissue (muscle) is lost, and your metabolism will suffer. Aim to lose 2lbs (approx 1kg) a week.

When you say you want to lose weight, what you really want to lose is fat. It's tragic that so many people are still being conned by crash diets. Why don't crash diets work? Because you're not losing much fat, you're losing lean muscle, stored carbohydrates and water, and damaging your health in the process. Any fat you have lost is only temporary. Crash diets deprive you of vital nutrients and vital energy - your body goes into starvation mode to conserve body fat - and your basal metabolic rate (the amount of energy you use up just to maintain bodily functions) slows right down. So when your body can't take any more punishment and you go back to eating how you used to, more fat piles on than when you started dieting, because your metabolic rate has become so slow that your body is no longer burning fat properly.

You will only lose fat when your energy output (basal metabolic rate + physical activity) exceeds your energy input (food & drink) - because your stored fat cells are burned to supply the extra energy. If your energy input (food) exceeds your energy output you will gain fat. Don't be afraid to eat carbohydrates, you need them for energy when you become more active. The best way to lose fat is:

plenty of physical activity AND eat a balanced range of healthy food (see page on nutrition)

Regular exercise will increase your basal metabolic rate, so you will burn fat while you exercise and for hours afterwards.

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What kind of exercise burns fat best?
You need a combination of aerobic exercise (which means the same as cardiovascular exercise) such as jogging, walking, swimming, cycling, which uses plenty of oxygen and raises your heart rate and burns fat (and carbohydrates) as energy, and anaerobic exercise (such as weight training) which builds lean muscle. The new muscle fibres act as a furnace to burn stored body fat, because muscle is metabolically active even when you are at rest. Women needn't worry about becoming too muscular, as they are not genetically programmed to gain muscle to the same extent as men.

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Body composition is more relevant than weight
How much you weigh is less important than whether your weight is mainly fat or muscle. Because muscle is denser, muscle weighs more than fat. So one person can weigh more than another and be healthier, because he has more muscle and less fat than the lighter person. You need to find out your body fat percentage. Standing on the scales won't tell you this. A personal trainer with a body fat monitor will! I will advise you on your ideal body fat percentage and how to achieve it safely and enjoyably.

For online training, see www.Fitness4London.com