The best kind of weight loss is natural weight loss – no restrictive diets, no pills or potions. Your body uses the food you eat as fuel to power you through the day, and fat is reduced in a safe, steady, wholly natural way while at the same time your muscles are strengthened and toned to be sleek and beautiful. Sounds impossible doesn’t it?

But it’s actually quite simple. Please note that I said simple, not easy. Two different things!
The missing factor is exercise. If you burn up more calories in the form of moving your body than you take in as food, then you lose fat – your body takes fat from storage to “top-up” your system. It’s fitting exercise into our modern lives that’s a problem that would baffle Einstein!

You’d think that, as a Personal Trainer, I’d get lots of exercise in the course of my work, wouldn’t you? Actually, I don’t. My work involves supervising my clients’ exercise – checking their posture constantly as they do push-ups – chatting to them as they pound along on the treadmill so I can tell how many words they can say before they have to take a breath. Which tells me how hard they are working without having to constantly check a heart-rate monitor; if they can discuss the plot of last night’s CSI Miami in gory detail, they’re not working hard enough!

Having a Personal Trainer makes it easy. Not the exercise, of course, but making yourself do it. Your PT turns up 3 times a week at the crack of dawn looking as cheerful as a hungry Rottweiler and you do the exercises for an hour because you have no choice. One of my regular clients offered me more money to go away again!!

But it’s not that straightforward for the rest of us. Believe me, I’d like a Personal Trainer too, but I can’t afford one. More than that, I’d like a Personal Chef. It would be my dream to have healthy, tasty food served up to me several times each day – calorie counted and with the proper ratios of veg – organic of course – all sorted for me. All I’d have to do is eat and enjoy it. Gordon Ramsay would do nicely. Back to reality (sigh!)

And reality is what I’m talking about here. Fitting exercise into an already crowded schedule can seem to be the hardest thing in the world. And the least important – even though it’s actually the MOST important, next to remembering to feed the kids and pick them up from the school bus.

Sadly, we Moms in particular, tend to regard exercise as “me” time – and promptly put it to the bottom of the To Do pile along with everything else that is good for our welfare or that we enjoy. We feel guilty taking time out, so we only exercise if we’ve done all our chores. Which is never! I have known my mother refuse to come to an exercise class which she enjoys because she hasn’t finished the ironing. How crazy is that? and how many of us would do the same?

She has back problems. The exercise does her good. The ironing cripples her. ‘Nuff said. And yes, I have offered to do it ( I was going to send it to the girl that does mine!). But I don’t do it right, apparently. So here are just a few ideas for fitting a little exercise into a crowded day – because a little done often is just as good as one big burst:

1. Go for a walk, even if you only have 10 minutes. Stuff the ironing!
2. Use the stairs at work instead of the lift.
3. Go see people instead of emailing
4. Walk the kids to school
5. Dust with determination and vacuum with vigour! You’ll be surprised how many calories that burns.
6. Get off the bus a stop early
7. Shop until you drop! (I love that one)
8. Dance round the kitchen to your favourite pop song. The kids’ll think you’ve gone bonkers and might even make you a cup of tea.
9. Take up something that you used to enjoy – like horseriding. An hour trotting around will burn something like 400 calories and tone your muscles. But be prepared to walk like John Wayne for 3 days after!
10. Insist the kids let you join in with games like softball. Even if your son never wants you on his side because you always run the wrong way!

It just takes a bit of a change in mindset. And once you start seeing where you can fit exercise in, it becomes a challenge – you might even get to enjoy it. You’ll certainly feel better, and before you know it those excess pounds will start to drop off.