Lose weight and keep it off

I have noticed that a lot of my mates, once they have got married, have put loads of weight on – they seem to let go after the wedding day and then following an excessive honeymoon carry on eating and drinking like that. What can I do to make sure my fiancée and I don’t follow the same path?

The answer is to use your mates as an example. Talk to your fiancee about your concerns before you get married citing your mates as a case in point. Perhaps ask family and wedding guests to contribute to fitness products or gym memberships as part of your wedding presents, this also sends out a clear message of your intent to your mates. Try and find healthy things that you enjoy doing, this can be as simple as taking long walks on the weekend or running together, then make time to do them. One easy fix is an improved diet. When you are cooking for one another, make it a competition to see who can cook the tastiest healthy dish. Integral parts of the Christian wedding vow mention honouring your partner with your body, they also mention sickness and health. If you are both in healthy mind and body, you are honouring your vows.

When’s the ideal time to start your fitness drive if you’re getting married – I guess I’m wondering how long does it take to shift a beer belly!

Depends on the extent of the beer belly and when your wedding is! There are a number of other factors including your age, previous (if any) fitness regime and diet. Drinking and socialising is fun, so what you need to do is cut down on the amount that you drink – don’t try and cut it out altogether, failure on this front will just make you feel worse. Take exercise and improve your diet. The initial steps on the gut shifting path include walking more and eating less and more healthily. Steps after this would include long slow runs, of more than an hours duration, at the kind of pace that you can comfortably hold a conversation with someone at (your best man perhaps). I find the best time to do this is before breakfast, that way you get the most from the calorie burn and benefit from the endorphin release before the day starts. Beware of committing to superficial abdominal exercises such as sit ups and crunchies. In terms of timing, give yourself 3 months at 1.5 hours 3 times per week and you will notice a real difference. When you’ve mastered the long run start incorporating exercises into the work out such as burpees, plank position and press ups. Anything that will strngthen your core muscles. Many people find that dieting alone works, but you will notice a real change in your body shape – in terms of toning, if you combine this with exercise. It sounds twee, but try and find the right balance in terms of diet, exercise and booze. Be under no illusion, shifting a gut isn’t easy and will require some hard work and sufferance on your part. Focus hard on why you are doing this and remember that wedding photos last forever!

Does the fitness man do nutrition? If so can you ask what the most effective type of diet is? Is it no carbs or calorie counting, there’s too many to choose from.

The fitness man recommends a balanced diet and regular exercise. It’s simple really, if the calorific values of the food that you put in to your body exceed the amount that you burn off, then your body will convert the excess into fatty tissue. If you have no idea about the calorific value of food then have a look at weightlossresources.co.uk where there is a comprehensive list of the calories varies foods pack. Equally, if you are exercising then I personally wouldn’t recommend a diet that excludes comples carbohydrates, they are such a good and easy source of energy. Different people respond to different diet stimuli. One diet that particularly interested me recently was to do with cold hard cash. This has been widely reported, but click here to have a read. One thing I would say is that these plans are carefully loss adjusted so that the companies involved will at least break even, across the board, in terms of profit. That said, what more incentive could you want? Beat the diet company, hit your targets get rewarded for doing so and get fit and healthy into the bargain. Sounds like a great incentive to me!

Related Posts:

• Beer Isn’t Really Bad For You: Official!
• Chelsea Clinton Tells Bill To Shed Pounds Pre-Wedding
• Operation: Wedding Fitness – Bootcamp
• Operation: Wedding Fitness
• Fitness: The 10 Biggest Lies Blokes Believe About Weight Loss