Get active with experience days!
11/01/2010 at 02:16pm by News Ed
If you're looking to get more active this year in conjunction with your weight loss bid, www.intotheblue.co.uk is a fantastic site to book activity experience days through!
Whether you're up for water sports, climbing and abseiling, paintballing or a weekend sleeping in and training with the SAS (for the more hardcore amongst you!), there's something for every one, for great prices too!
Stroke for Stroke - lose weight whilst raising and rowing this January!
10/01/2010 at 08:36am by Rich Leigh, founder of Fat Free Fitness
If you’re one of the few who hasn’t yet ditched your New Year Resolution to lose weight, this blog may keep you on track – and you’ll be doing your bit for charity too. If you have let your New Year promise fall by the wayside, this may be a fantastic way to get you back in the saddle.
Electrics giants Siemens and The Stroke Association have launched the third annual Stroke for Stroke campaign, in a bid to raise awareness of stroke and to highlight the benefits of a healthy diet and regular exercise in its prevention, something Fat Free Fitness feel particularly passionately about.
The campaign, a joint initiative by The Stroke Association and Siemens, the High Performance Partner of the GB Rowing Team, is now in its third year and has raised over £70,000 to date by encouraging members of the public to complete a sponsored 10km row.
How to get involved:
1) Visit www.strokeforstroke.co.uk or call 020 7566 1503 to register and download your fundraising pack
2) Get training (warning: side effects may be fantastic post-Christmas overindulgence weight loss!)
3) Get your family, friends and colleague to sponsor you
4) Complete the 10km row between 25th and 31st January 2010
In addition to raising funds, the campaign aims to highlight that anybody, irrespective of age, can suffer from a stroke and that a healthy lifestyle, including a healthy diet and regular exercise such as rowing, can help to significantly reduce the risks.
The Stroke for Stroke campaign has teamed up with Nuffield Health to offer free access to their nationwide network of Fitness & Wellbeing Centres for everyone taking part in Stroke for Stroke – so you don’t have to pay a penny to get involved!
If rowing isn’t your thing, but you’d still like to help, you can still get involved by visiting the website and backing colleagues, friends and family or the GB Rowing Team, as they sweat their way towards the campaign.
Olympic gold medalist, Zac Purchase, is backing the campaign, “Regular exercise is a key factor in staying healthy and reducing the risk of stroke, and rowing is an ideal, all-round, low-impact workout. It’s great to be involved in the Stroke for Stroke campaign and we hope to help raise plenty of money and awareness.”
Andreas J. Goss, chief executive, Siemens in the UK, said: “Stroke is the UK’s third biggest killer and contrary to popular belief it can affect people of any age. Siemens is delighted to be able to use our partnership with GB Rowing to help build awareness, raise much-needed funds for The Stroke Association and to encourage people to take up regular exercise as part of an overall healthy lifestyle. I’ll be doing my bit, and encouraging our employees to do the same so please visit the website and have some fun taking part in Stroke for Stroke 2010.”
Head of Corporate Fundraising at The Stroke Association, James Beeby said: “Each year an estimated 150,000 people in the UK will suffer a stroke. Stroke for Stroke is now in its third year and a campaign like this is integral to raising awareness of how regular exercise and lifestyle choices can help prevent a stroke. This year we are anticipating an even greater number of people to get involved and support The Stroke Association’s vital research into stroke prevention and treatment.”
Team GB Olympic Gold medallist Zac Purchase is backing the campaign
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Does it matter if a Personal Trainer is fat?
09/01/2010 at 01:34pm by Rich Leigh, founder of Fat Free Fitness
Having worked and trained in quite a few different gyms, I've seen and worked with my fair share of fellow trainers.
The majority practise what they preach and love nothing more than a good gym-session, but there are a few who you never see hitting the treadmill, or have only ever been seen in the free weights areas when training clients.
As a weight loss blog, I want to pose the following questions to you:
Does it really matter if a Personal Trainer is overweight? Would you pay a trainer to train you that didn't look the part? And PTs, do you think it is important that you are in good shape?
As somebody who is an ardent exerciser but will definitely not be competing for the title of Mr Olympia any time soon, I personally think it is important that we're seen to lead healthy lifestyles, but would love to hear your thoughts.
Former model and Australian fitness trainer Paul James recently put on weight to understand his clients better, before losing it
Let us know in the comments section below!
Ultimo boss 'loses 6 stone using her own diet pills' - Celebrity diet and weight loss
09/01/2010 at 08:28am by Rich Leigh, founder of Fat Free Fitness
Even the UK’s most successful multi-millionaires get body-envy from time to time, something which has caused underwear company-head honcho Michelle Mone, 37, to allegedly drop from a size 22 to a size 12.
Mone, who received an OBE in the recent New Year Honours List with respect to her company Ultimo, told the Daily Mail,
‘I’d go to photoshoots all the time and see gorgeous models in bras and knickers and they'd have beautiful bodies. I'd feel fat and ugly standing beside them.'
So what did the Ultimo boss decide to do about her body worries? Did she set a good example to young girls who may look up to her as a role model by turning to a healthy lifestyle and exercise – or, cash in on her weight loss by launching a range of diet pills that experts have branded ‘no better than chalk’?
Well, the latter if her PR team are to be believed, after they insisted that the photos of the newly-svelte Mrs Mone could only be published accompanied by a statement saying that she owes her weight loss to said chalk diet pills. As a personal trainer, and somebody who is vehemently against the use of diet pills, for these reasons, I refuse to acknowledge this statement and simply won’t post any images of her recent weight loss.
I’d go as far as saying that they’ve told a porky or two in their promotion of her diet pill range, including telling us that Michelle was 18 stone before turning to her range in a bid to make her weight loss seem all the more impressive. A Google image search for her shows nothing like that, and given that she’s regularly spotted, especially at her launch events, you’d imagine there would be.
One nutritionist said, quite rightly: 'There is no magic diet pill. We should be maintaining our body size through exercise – diet not drugs.'
In my mind, Mone is being entirely irresponsible, simply to make a quick buck.
Ultimo underwear has been modelled by women such as Penny Lancaster, Rachel Hunter, Mel B, Peaches Geldof, Helena Christensen and Jennifer Ellison.
Ultimo boss, Michelle Mone
Obesity more dangerous than smoking - Health, Diet and Fitness Today - 07/01/10
07/01/2010 at 07:58pm by Rich Leigh, founder of Fat Free Fitness
Obesity is now a bigger overall threat to people's health than smoking, according to results of the longest ongoing health study of adults in the United States – something that is mirrored in the UK, where obesity is also a huge threat to health.
Obesity causes as much or more disease than tobacco, says the study, conducted by researchers from Columbia University and the City College of New York. It adds that while smoking rates are starting to decline, obesity now shortens as many or even more healthy lifespans than tobacco use.
"Health impacts of obesity are, in many ways, much larger, than the health impacts of smoking," said Dr. Arya Sharma, chairman for obesity research and management at the University of Alberta.
"Smoking, in the end, is limited to heart disease and cancer."
The study, conducted over 15 years, was based on interviews with more than 3.5 million people and calculations of the number of "quality-adjusted life years" (QALYs) lost to obesity and smoking.
Quality-adjusted life years are a measurement of the quality and quantity of a life lived, and assign higher scores to perfect or good health, and lower scores to illness, injury and death.
Between 1993 and 2008, smoking in American adults declined by 18.5 per cent, while the proportion of obese people increased by 85 per cent, the study says.
Overall, smoking caused more deaths but obesity has a greater impact on illness, said the researchers.
The following statement is perhaps one of the most apt of the whole report:
"It [obesity] hits people at young ages now. We're looking at an epidemic of childhood obesity," Dr Sharma said. "None of the prevention methods that are being implemented are showing any signs of working. To be effective, they would have to be pretty drastic."
Sharma said the study demonstrates that anti-smoking campaigns have been effective, but the same approach can't necessarily be taken to combating obesity.
"The factors causing obesity are so entrenched in our Western lifestyle, from everything starting from how we build our cities and our food policies," he said. "It's not just about going out and eating healthy or exercising more. It is, in fact, very difficult for people to eat healthy and exercise more given the lifestyle that most of us currently have."
"In 2004, the U.S. surgeon general already announced that obesity has overtaken tobacco as the No. 1 public health enemy, but now we have data to support it," Lau said. "I think it's very timely after the Christmas holiday, when we've all put on a few pounds, to be more alerted to the fact that obesity is not something to be dismissed."
Obesity now more dangerous than smoking, says 15 year study
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Fat Free Fitness Weight Loss
Launched in 2009, fatfreefitness.co.uk is the UK's only weight loss specific personal training agency. Fat Free Fitness helps you stop dieting and counting calories, by teaching you how to improve your nutrition, increase your activity and exercise levels and lose weight. Fatfreefitness.co.uk is a great way to lose weight and save money. fatfreefitness provides you with expert diet, fitness, exercise, gym and personal training advice and support, similar to ivillage.co.uk, weightlossforall.com, thecolumn.org, weightlossforgood.co.uk, tescodiets.co.uk and weightlossresources.co.uk. Win diet, exercise and fitness products by entering fatfreefitness.co.uk competitions. Fatfreefitness.co.uk is not a weight loss support group like Weight Watchers weightwatchers.co.uk or Slimming World slimmingworld.com. Fat Free Fitness is updated regularly with new information. Fatfreefitness.co.uk and weight loss expert, personal trainer and fatfreefitness.co.uk founder Rich Leigh disagree with and discourage fat loss tablets, diet tablets and weight loss aid tablets, fad dieting and crash diets such as the Atkins diet, the Cambridge diet, the cabbage soup diet, the Beverley Hills diet, the baby food diet and all other carbohydrate and calorie restricting diets.
