For many people exercise is a rude word but we all know it plays a huge part in any healthy lifestyle and certainly when it comes to managing our weight. The dilemma for many people looking to lose weight is that when you are unhappy with your shape/size the last place you want to be is in Lycra in a gym which we imagine to be full of ‘beautiful thin people’!

That was certainly me when I was pushing a size 20, Lycra was meant to be worn as several layers of undergarment NOT in a gym!! The reality is that the real way to burn fat is with the following: consistent cardio and strength training. That often goes down like a lead balloon because anything that includes the word 'consistent' also often includes things like 'boredom' and 'monotony' and 'slow to achieve noticeable results.'

Consistent exercise is the real key to fat loss but it is only 20% of the equation - with your nutrition being the other 80%. This is where many people who do bravely make a stab at including exercise in their life, falter. They take up exercise but don’t have a smart nutrition plan and the results are slow or nonexistent and in frustration they give up as quickly as they have started.

I want to offer a light for anyone who has ever struggled to find a way to end the struggle to lose weight or maintain it without hunger or deprivation.

Most of us are time challenged; my solution was to look for a smart, simple flexible solution for both my nutrition and exercise. When I found it, not only did I lose 75lbs but I dropped 6 dress sizes and turned my body into a fat burning machine that burns twice as many calories every day - and all without counting calories and just 50 minutes of exercise 3 times a week. This is what I now love sharing with my clients and other coaches who I train, as it is life changing and I love what I do because I get to be part of that.

I want to share part of that with you here - let me introduce you to the concept of fat burning. It's true that there are no 'magic' fat burning exercises - but there is something you can do to enhance your body's fat burning potential and that is this: work really hard.

Intensity is the real game-changer when it comes to burning fat because, when you work hard (as in going to a place where you can't breathe, can't think, can't stand it for more than few seconds at a time), your body responds by becoming something of a fat burning machine. As one study I researched suggested, "...vigorous exercise favours negative energy and lipid balance to a greater extent than exercise of low to moderate intensity." Which is a fancy way of saying you can burn more fat.

I set about researching the very best High Intensity workout in the shortest time and this is what I will share with you in my next blog. Watch this space……

Fruits and vegetables offer up natural plant compounds that help keep the body healthy, and variety is key.

If you’re not a big fan of vegetables, you might think that you can make up for it by eating lots of fruit. It’s easy to see why – we almost always mention them in the same breath (“eat plenty of fruits and veggies!”) and, since they’re healthy plant foods, it’s natural to assume that they’re more or less interchangeable in terms of providing the nutrients the body needs.

And to some extent that’s true. You can get your vitamin C just as easily from berries as from broccoli; potassium lurks in both beetroot and bananas. But fruits and veggies also offer up a dizzying (and varied) array of phytonutrients – natural plant compounds that can promote good health. So getting the broadest range of phytonutrients is a lot more likely if you’re eating both fruits and vegetables.

Phytonutrients are responsible for the flavours and colours in fruits and vegetables. And when you think about fruits and vegetables more from the standpoint the huge range of flavours and hues they provide – and not so much as simply sources of vitamins and minerals – you can begin to appreciate how dissimilar they really are.

Berries and broccoli, for example, may look similar when it comes to their vitamin C content, but their phytonutrient profiles couldn’t be more different. Berries get their red-purple colour from compounds called anthocyanins – which are a lot more widespread in fruits than in vegetables. On the other hand, isothiocyanates are the phytonutrients responsible for the strong odours found in broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower – but you won’t find these smelly compounds in fruits. Another natural pigment, lycopene, gives a rich red colour to fruits like tomato (yes, it’s a fruit), pink grapefruit and guava, but you’d be hard-pressed to find much in most vegetables.

I meet plenty of people who assume that eating fruits OR vegetables are just as good as eating fruits AND vegetables – so I use often use these examples to encourage them to get more variety in the diet. If this sounds like you, think of the hurdles in your way and how you might get over them.

Fewer people like fruits rather than veggies, and it’s often an issue of texture. If you don’t like the soft texture of ripe fruit, try whirling fresh or frozen fruit in the blender and add to smoothies or use as a topping on cottage cheese or yogurt. If some fruits are too tart for you, try the sweetest varieties – tangerines, for example, are often sweeter than most oranges.

If you don’t like the texture of cooked veggies, try them raw. If strong flavours keep you from eating veggies, play around with seasonings – like herbs, garlic or citrus. You can also ‘sneak’ them into soups, pasta sauces and casseroles. Or, cook them until tender and crisp, then chill and toss into a salad – that way you won’t pick up their strong odours in the steam.

One final warning from my own mistakes! Beware that fruit is a source of sugar, all be it natural sugar. It needs to be consumed mindfully to not compromise your weight or digestive health, especially bloating.

Watch out for my next blog where I will give you the low down on fruit in detail, and what to eat and when for weight management and digestive health.

Like many people, I have been a slave to yo-yo dieting for many years (23 in fact). I have tried every diet under the sun, could always lose weight well but was always just that bit better at gaining it back. It destroyed me, physically and mentally.

Whether this is your experience or your fear for your future, I want to share with you when the light bulb finally clicked. I then realised the only way to lose my weight for good was to stop dieting and start living a healthy active, balanced (but not saintly!) lifestyle.

Picture the scene: you’ve been following your weight loss plan for a month now and you’ve been doing really well, losing 1 or 2 pounds every week. You’re feeling trimmer, more energetic and full of confidence in reaching your weight loss goal. But then, a little voice in your head decides to have its say - you deserve a treat. Ah, go on, have a doughnut. You’ve earned that chocolate biscuit…just having the one? What are two chocolate digestives between friends? Have another, and another…

There, you’ve blown it. You’ve failed on your diet and you may as well eat the whole packet of biscuits now. Right? Wrong!

So what do you do now? Decide to start your plan again on Monday and eat your way through the weekend? How about deciding that dieting just isn’t for you and sure, aren’t curves back in vogue? If this sounds familiar, it’s just one of the many ways your attitude to weight loss can be your route to success or not.

To lose weight successfully - and keep it off - we need to change the way we think as well as the way we eat! It’s those little voices inside our heads that not only lead to failure, but also keep us in the vicious circle of dieting and overeating. We need to focus on how we view food, our eating pattern and our weight as a whole package. Food is not the enemy but giving food the power to influence how we feel about ourselves is the real problem.

Have a look at these common ways of thinking that I used to practice all too well – how many apply to you?

1. Having an ‘on a diet/off a diet’ mentality

Rather than simply eating healthily – being ‘on a diet’ has so many negative connotations that we feel restricted, unhappy and as if we’re being punished. ‘Eating healthily’ shows that you’re taking a positive step to health and well being. I now eat a great variety of tasty foods and not stingy quantities. I love everything from my amazing Herbalife products, to my meals and other snacks and can help you find great, tasty, healthy alternatives to every food that may have done you wrong in the past!

2. Losing weight to look good for someone else

To be truly successful with your weight loss you have to want to lose weight for YOU, not to please a partner, friend or relation, or to bow down to peer pressure.

3. One biscuit makes you a failure

One biscuit makes you human! If you have slipped up, don’t linger on it and feel guilty. Put the past behind you and get right back on track! Your eyes are in the front of your head for a reason, we are meant to look forward not back.

4. Believing that losing weight will make you a better/different/happier person

Life is too short to put things off until you’re a size 10! Start now working on your self esteem, worthiness and quality of life. This new focus on you will make the weight loss not only easier, but just part of a bigger change. We all tend to put ourselves way too low on our list of priorities. This will make it hard to change your lifestyle if you always use the things you list above yourself as excuses.

5. Binge eating before going on a diet

This will just make the task ahead that bit more difficult and make those habits harder to break. I can’t count the number of times I ate the kitchen dry on a weekend before starting a diet on Monday only to then have so much salt, fat and sugar rolling around my system I simply went shopping for more by Monday lunchtime!

6. Thinking of any food as ‘bad’ or ‘forbidden’

This just makes them all the more tempting! Moderation is the key to enjoying a little of everything. That and finding healthy, tasty alternatives to replace unhealthy options.

7. Thinking of weight loss as something you HAVE to do, rather than something you WANT to do

Isn’t it so much easier to choose to do something rather than feel obliged to do it? You’re more likely to stay with your new habits if you have chosen them!

8. Focusing on foods to avoid, rather than foods to include

Eating well is not about restriction. Think of all those fabulous foods you can eat and enjoy and of the health benefits they bring. Clients always ask what can I and can’t I have. I tell them they can have anything I just help them know better choices. I always start with a new client by advising them all we are going to do at first is add in the good stuff. This will start on a positive, non depravation mode. As we progress, focus on your weekly diary, all the good habits and choices you adopted and made NOT the things you felt didn’t go well. Don’t aim for perfection. Aim for a 90%/10% balance in favour of the healthier habits and choices.

9. Considering losing weight as an end in itself, rather than a means to an end

Losing weight will help you become healthier and fitter and keeping to your new healthy eating patterns will keep you healthier and fitter, year in, year out!

10. Relying on quick fix solutions

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is! Steady weight loss of 1-2lbs per week is important for safe weight loss you can maintain in the long term. I also help you focus on all your measures, body fat, cm’s etc. etc. Remember weight is the least accurate and consistent measure of positive body changes but the most likely to trigger dangerous emotional response.

Once you commit to the positive power of developing a new healthy lifestyle and habits, you won’t even hear that little voice any more…!

Following on from yesterday’s introduction, here are a few of my top weight loss tips:

1. Play by the numbers

No matter where it comes from, a calorie is a calorie, and it takes 3,500 calories to gain or lose a pound. Want to shed a perfectly respectable 1 pound per week? Carve 500 calories off your day by thinking through your healthy food choices and upping your exercise.

But make sure you're not cutting too many calories. Drastically reducing food intake could slow your metabolism and sabotage your efforts to build muscle, which is needed to burn maximum calories and be toned. To make calories count, choose nutrient-rich healthy foods with a mix of protein, carbs and fats at every meal for an overall balanced healthy diet.

2. Consider nutrition first

Eat plenty of healthy foods full of the six nutrients most often lacking in women's diets. The quality and length of our lives depend on our health; our bodies thrive only when nourished with optimal amounts of the more than 40 nutrients and 12,000 photochemicals found in minimally processed foods.

And, these also aid in weight loss. If you focus more on your health and less on your waistline, you will automatically eat more low-calorie, nutrient-packed healthy foods, like vegetables, fruits, whole grains, non-fat dairy products and legumes, which help you maintain your weight.

3. Learn how to control food cravings

Cut out the specific items in whatever category—carbs, sweets, protein - gives you difficulty, without cutting out the nutrition. Give pretzels the heave-ho but don't dismiss whole-grain breads. Has ice cream become a problem? Instead, snack on single-serving portions of yogurt - you can freeze them for a real ice cream feel.

4. Set your own rules

The best way to achieve that same clarity when you're trying to lose weight is to set some rules. Find yourself snacking on cereal at night? Make an only-for-breakfast rule. If you slip, no cereal in your house for a month! Tend to dive into the bread basket as soon as the waiter brings it around? Set a one-starchy-carb-per-restaurant-meal rule. If you want the bread, tell yourself before you head out that you'll skip the potato or pasta that comes with your meal. To make the rules official, write them down.

5. Choose nutritious foods with staying power

Fill up on wholesome, fibre-rich, water-filled healthy foods like vegetables, fruits, whole grains and beans, which fill you up faster for longer on fewer calories. And how you eat is as important as what you eat. A growing body of research shows that the best way to keep your metabolism revved and body-fat levels low is to feed yourself in small amounts. Eat airline-size (rather than restaurant-size) portions of healthy foods like meat, fish, pasta, grains and desserts. And eat every three to four hours, for a total of five/six mini-meals per day.

6. Enjoy food

You're much more likely to stick with a diet if your food looks, tastes and smells delicious. Feeling deprived will only backfire. Make a plan you can live with by livening up healthy foods with herbs and spices like basil, curry and ginger, aromatic veggies like garlic and onions and condiments like mustard, hot pepper sauce or salsa. Experiment with new nutritious foods: tantalize your taste buds with two new fruits or vegetables at each meal. Don't declare high-fat favourites 'off limits' - savour them in small amounts to maintain a balanced healthy diet. Even better, know the healthier - but just as tasty - alternatives!

7. Strive for an overall balanced healthy diet

For energy, satisfaction, staying power and good health, aim to eat a healthy balance of protein, fat and carbohydrate each day. Rule of thumb: Fill one quarter of your modest sized (9”) plate with lean protein, one quarter with healthy starchy carbs, half with salad or vegetables.

Enjoyed reading this post? Stay tuned for more great tips, coming soon.

I had struggled with my weight since I realised, at age 15, that I was so much bigger than the other girls.

I struggled for 23 years. Getting fed up and starting a ‘diet’, losing weight by restricting the foods I loved, then going back to those foods and gaining it back - with friends!

I finally conquered my long term issues with weight by realising I needed a long term wellness strategy and not a quick fix diet. I discovered how to modify my balanced healthy diet for long term effective weight loss and wellbeing. I lost 75lbs and 6 dress sizes, without hunger or deprivation.

Most importantly, I have kept it off for 7 years and feel no fear of food or weight regain, just total control.

Amazingly, I now eat more than I did when I was 75lbs heavier because I have learned the secret to changing how my body works and the power of substitution over deprivation.

This is what I now share step, by step, with my clients, supporting them through each stage.

I will be blogging tips on a regular basis - keep an eye out!