Following on from my Workout Music Blog, I want to give you some of my fav songs to workout to.

You can even create your own imixes in itunes and share with others.  Click on Learn how to create a public playlist in iTunes to find out how. Be aware that Itunes will only publish songs that are available to purchase, so your list might be shortened.

One of my readers, Tanya, has also sourced another great website for downloading workout playlists called  In the Gym.

These are some of my favorite tunes to workout to or you can View one of my workout playlists in intunes. What are some of your fav songs to workout to?

Songs

• We Found love – Rihanna
• Musclecars – Milo
• Wonderful life – Gwen Stefani
• Push – Madonna
• If I ever feel better – phoenix
• Take a picture – filter
• Wonderful life (dance version) – Tina Cousins
• The best thing – Hook n sling
• Everywhere (Cabin Crew radio mix) – Moustache

Albums

• Ministry of sounds running trax Dec 2010 (itunes album)
• Ministry of sounds running trax June 2011 (itunes album)
• Running 105 all hits! (itunes album)

Do you have ‘Portion Distortion’?

Many people eat more than half of their daily calories after 4pm. I liken it to the movie ‘Gremlins.’ During the day, you’re hunger is like a cute little Mogwai, easy to tame and keep under control. But once the sun starts to set, boom – out comes your inner Gremlin and Whoosh, you’ve inhaled over half your daily calories and looking for more.

The hormone Ghrelin, is your inner Gremlin

Our hunger hormone has the name Ghrelin (Coincidence – I think not!). It’s what stimulates your appetite, giving you the rumbly tummy before a meal, and it tends to be very time based. It’s almost like an internal clock that says ‘Well you ate at this time yesterday, so it must be time to eat again!’ It’s also a greedy little bugger, and the more you feed it the more it wants. In fact if you feed it high fat, calorie dense meals, it actually craves more.

If you skip breakfast – be warned!

This is a vicious cycle to fall into, as most people who skip breakfast eat more later in the day. Late afternoon is when your metabolism starts slowing down for the day. When you wake up you’re not hungry because you’re full from the night before, so you skip breakfast and the cycle starts all over again. You’re trapped in your own horror movie renamed ‘Ghrelins!’ A good way to break the cycle is to force yourself to have breakfast, even a light fruit salad and make sure you’ve finished eating for the day by 8pm. This WILL help you break the cycle.

How to break the cycle

To get started, focus on your three main meals and eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper. You can only have two snacks during the day – one in the morning and one in the afternoon. And try to avoid staying up too late, as when the midnight munchies come around, we can’t resist as our willpower is at its weakest when we’re tired.

Here’s a good dietary schedule to stick to:

• Breakfast – 8am
• Snack – 11am
• Lunch – 1:30pm
• Snack (high protein) – 4:30pm
• Dinner – before 8pm

Use a food diary to keep track of what you eat and make sure you keep high salt and high fat foods to a minimum to help ward off cravings. Get your portions right with salads, soups and healthy snacks.

Soups

Soups are a great option for portion controlled lunches and dinners. One big cooking effort creates multiple servings, making it cost effective and perfect for when you’re busy. Soups are nutritious and delicious and it has actually been proven that they keep you fuller for longer. Most soups are low in calories so having a piece of bread is fine if you’re maintaining your current weight. However, if you’re trying to lose weight, bread is not recommended.

Stick to broth varieties like minestrone soup and lentil soup, and if you’re having pumpkin soup, make sure it hasn’t been loaded with cream.

TIP: Keep satchels of miso soup on hand for a quick and easy snack.

Salads

When putting a salad together, stick to two heavy ingredients. A heavy ingredient is meat, cheese, avocado, nuts or oil. That way, you won’t be weighing your salad down with foods that are high in calories.

Great ingredients for salads:

• Capsicums are high in vitamin C and you can roast them in the oven.
• Legumes to make you feel fuller and increase your protein count.
• Chickpeas, lentils and tuna in tins so you can always have them handy.
• Seaweed and baby spinach for their high iron count.
• Chia Seeds are high in Omega 3 and a great antioxidant.
• Quinoa for high iron, protein and fiber.

Don’t be afraid to combine ingredients like this delicious beetroot and chickpea salad recipe.

TIP: Mix ¼ lemon, 1 teaspoon of olive oil and some cracked pepper into small bowl and drizzle over your salad for extra zing.

Snacks

• Carrot sticks or capsicum dipped in hummus.
• Celery sticks filled with low fat ricotta or cottage cheese, sprinkled with Goji berries or currents.
• 1/3 cup of low-fat yogurt with fruit and nutmeg.
• Roasted chickpeas (Chic Nuts) or fava beans.
• Fresh fruit and nuts.
• Tins of tuna mixed with lemon and cracked pepper, spread on rice cakes or whole wheat crackers.
• Protein shake using 1 scoop of protein powder, ½ cup of milk (almond, soy or rice) frozen raspberries and nutmeg or cinnamon.
• 1/3 cup of low fat yogurt, half a banana, berries and a sprinkling of nutmeg.
• Strawberries or any fruit dipped in Greek style unsweetened yogurt.
• Jarra hot chocolate in water . Mmmm – filling and yummy.

TIP: When buying fresh juice, go by my motto – two root and 1 fruit! I.e. choose 2 roots (such as beetroot or carrot) and 1 fruit (fruit has more fructose).

This is a question I get asked all the time “Why aren’t I losing weight? I’ve been exercising regularly, doing all the right things but nothing is happening!”  I’d say that this is the number one reason why people fall off the exercise wagon- lack of results. So why is it that some people seem to be doing all the right things but still don’t lose weight? I’ve outlined the five main culprits in order of importance. Point number one is, in my experience, the most common reason why people don’t lose weight and keep it off.*

1. You’re not losing weight because you’re eating too much:

Many people begin an exercise program and the increase in activity can make them hungry. However eating more will just counter balance the calories burned, leading to no weight loss at all. Similarly, I have observed a mindset of “Well I just trained so now I can have that hot dog and beer.” If you are trying to lose weight, sorry that just won’t work!

The Biggest Loser TV show is a fine example. Some weeks contestants lost virtually nothing or even put weight on. These people were exercising up to four hours per day, but if their diet wasn’t right no weight loss would occur. Many might argue that muscle gain must be the reason, but we are talking about extremely overweight people who already had strong muscles (due to their size) and who were predominately doing cardiovascular, not strength activities.

My advice: Diet is the key to weight loss. Commit to one full week of counting the calories of everything you eat (calorie King is a good website). Sounds like a chore but it works and educates you. Observe how much you are eating before you start your training regime, and be sure not to increase this amount. If you get hungry, drink more water or herbal tea.

The best thing you can do is determine their basal or resting metabolism (Click here to determine yours), and then use a heart rate monitor with the calorie option to see how many calories they burnt during their workout (this is how The Biggest Loser determine their daily caloric amount). A really rough guide of daily caloric allowance is 1200-1500 calories per day for women and 2000 – 2400 calories for men.  Combine that with regular exercise and weight loss simply has to occur.

I would also like to point out that not eating enough can impact weight loss. However in my experience people who are overweight and not eating enough are often in a short term cycle, finding their optimum caloric intake. What led to them becoming overweight in the first place was not a result of not eating enough.

2. You’re not losing weight because you’re not training hard or long enough:

I love it when people tell me they went to the gym four times this week; they did 2 yoga classes, a swim, and a sauna. So why aren’t they losing weight? This is where the sergeant comes out and cracks his whip! Think back to your last week’s training. On a scale of 1-10 how hard would you rate the sessions? Another way of putting it, if the sessions were less than 45 mins, were you completely maxed out at the end, or could you have kept going?

The main principal of exercise is overload. The body needs to be overloaded in some form, to stimulate change. In fact, the body hates change. Your entire sympathetic nervous system is devoted to keeping you at homeostasis, where everything from your body temperature to metabolism stays the same. So if you want to see some change, guess what, you’ve got to overload.

My advice: Overloading your body is extremely specific for each individual. If you have been very sedentary of late, then a walk for 20mins might be a form of overload. But in less than 2 weeks, you’ve got to think of a new way to overload. The two main ways are increasing the intensity, or increasing the time (or both!). If you are a walker, try jogging for intermittent times, increasing the jogging time each workout from maybe 30sec to start until your can jog 10min straight.  If you can’t jog, find some hills, stairs, or double your distance. Notice how quickly the body responds.

Someone came to me who runs 50km per week, but has been putting on weight. I bet lots of my readers would be a shadow their former self if they ran that distance each week, but this person has been running the same distance and speed for years, and their body is used to it. She needs to find a new way of overloading.

I believe that 3 workouts per week should be at 8 out of 10 in intensity. These are often shorter sessions (20-40min) but tough ones. If the thought of pushing yourself to max puts you off, that’s fine too. Then you need to increase the length of your session. It’s your choice, shorter and harder, or longer and steady. Both will overload, which is what we need.

3. You’re not losing weight because you haven’t been consistent

Weight loss takes time. Often it can take years to really shift lifestyle patterns to make a permanent difference. The body works in mysterious ways and if you are glued to the scales, it will just send you crazy. You might lose weight one week, but gain weight the next week. Life is enough of a rollercoaster as it is.

My advice: Weight loss is a shift in one’s personal attitude, a lifestyle change. So pick some other goals within this shift to take the attention off weight loss. Events such as fun runs, Walk-a-thons, social sports, in-house gym competitions, and social groups will be much more inspiring and most importantly fun! After a few months you’ll hop on the scales and be pleasantly surprised. These activities keep you much more consistent and motivated than losing a few pounds each week.

4. You’re not losing weight because you’re not drinking enough water

I don’t need to tell you this, right! It’s so obvious I know, but time and time again I see people mistake hunger for thirst. I see workouts wasted due to dehydration. I see dark circles under eyes, clogged up systems and lethargy. It’s just a habit that needs to be created. It’s one of the easiest, yet most effective ways to lose weight.

My advice: Get out your calculator and punch this in: 30ml for every kilo you weigh (1 ounce for every 2.2lbs you weigh). Add 1 litre (33 ounces) for every hour you exercise. This is a ‘not negotiable.’ And ditch the sugary drinks!

5. You’re not losing weight but your body shape has changed

Do you know I have quite drastically changed the shape of my body three times in my life but my weight has always remained within around 3kg (6.6lbs). Muscle is heavier than fat, so if you gain a lot of muscle that can hide the fat loss on the scales, but this really only applies to leaner people. If you are carrying an extra 6kg (13lb) or more this wont be an issue for you.

My Advice: Use other measurements not just the scales. Clothes and photographs are easy. Also using a tape to measure key areas is really motivating. The important parts are your stomach (belly button line), hips (widest part when you stand front or side on in mirror), and the upper thigh (measure a distance from your knee cap to the point on your upper thigh, so that you remeasure in the same spot). Take notes for accuracy. For example “Measured over pants, Foot on chair, 30cm from knee cap.”

Exercise will change your body shape for the better (in 99% of the cases, bodybuilders are the exception!), so even if the scales don’t drop too much, so long as you look and feel better, who cares!

6. You’re not losing weight because of shifts in hormone levels

Ask any post baby or menopausal woman, and she will attest to the influences hormones have on her body and cravings. The main culprits are the hormones that increase appetite (cortisol, Estrogen, leptin just to name a few) and hormones that reduce one’s metabolism (Thyroxine produced in the thyroid). There is no doubt that a sudden shift in hormone production can have huge effects on weight loss. Sleep also has huge effects on hormone production, so make sure you are getting enough sleep!

My Advice: If you have recently put a lot of weight on for no apparent reason, or your appetite has significantly surged, it is worth speaking to your doctor and having some tests to ensure your hormone function is normal. Thyroid issues are on the rise and can be harmful if not treated properly. Hormonal issues can be overcome and are by no means a deal breaker in weight loss. Living a healthy life, getting enough sleep, eating complex carbs such as fruit and vegetables are all important in regulating hormones. Our hormones shift throughout our life and it is important that we make lifestyle adjustments as we get older.

Have you struggled losing weight? Do any of the above issues affect you? Maybe you found another reason why you didn’t lose weight. I’d love to hear it. Just remember lasting weight loss takes time. Be patient and remember it’s not just about the scales.

* Please note that this article is directed to overweight people trying to lose weight, and does not apply to lean people trying to get even leaner.

Hands up if you like tax! I didn’t think so. Hands up if you like nanny state reforms? Me neither. So it’s no surprise that people are up in arms about the possibility of a fat tax. But let’s get one thing straight, we are fast facing a ‘globesity’ epidemic. If we don’t start a culture shift soon, our kids and their kids will be the ones who will live shorter, less healthy lives.

The question remains though, is a ‘fat tax’ the right way to go about reducing our ever expanding waist lines?

Denmark lead the way in the world’s first fat tax

Recently, Denmark became the first country in the world to introduce a tax on foods that contain more than 2.3% fat. To put that into shopping speak, that’s butter, milk, cheese, pizza, meat, oil and processed foods.

The aim is to reduce people’s intake of fatty foods, but it’s not to curb obesity. Fewer than 10% of the Danish population are obese, which is quite a bit lower than the 15% European average. The outgoing conservative government in Denmark planned the fat tax as part of a goal to increase the life expectancy of the Danes. Danish research shows that excessive consumption of saturated fats causes about 4% of the nation’s premature deaths with the current average life expectancy of 79 years expected to drop by three years over the next 10 years.

How will the new fat tax affect the cost of food in Denmark?

The new tax will add 16 kroner (around $AUD3.00) per kilo of saturated fats in a product, increasing the price of a burger by around $AUD0.15 and raising the price of a small package of butter by around $AUD0.40. As a result, the Danes began stockpiling tax affected products, filling their freezers in the lead up to this new tax.

Where it all began

Health minister Jakob Axel Nielsen introduced the idea of a fat tax back in 2009, stating that, “Higher fees on sugar, fat and tobacco is an important step on the way toward a higher average life expectancy In Denmark” because “saturated fats can cause cardiovascular disease and cancer.” In March this year the tax was approved by large majority of the parliament.

Will Australia bring in a fat tax?

Chief executive Kate Carnell from the Australian Food and Grocery Council (AFGC) says a similar tax would not address our obesity levels. Australia has had a 10% Goods and Services Tax (GST) on processed foods since 2000, yet obesity levels have continued to rise. Taxing dairy products has also been ruled out as the AFGC is encouraging people to have more calcium in their diets rather than less.

In a bid to curb obesity in Australia, the AFGC is calling on involvement from industries, governments and communities to help solve the crisis. One in four Australians are overweight or obese, which is why leading industry bodies, manufacturers and governments are all putting plans in place to help overcome the issue.

Here’s what’s currently being done:

• Leading manufacturers have reduced the saturated fat content of cooked and smoked sausages and luncheon meats (excluding salami) to less than 6.5 grams of saturated fat per 100 grams.
• The Victorian government recently spent $40 million on educating the public about nutrition and the importance of exercise.
• CHOICE announced it will start naming and shaming foods making misleading health claims.
• Australia has reportedly joined with the United States and Canada to call for the United Nations to change their rules around regulating the production and marketing of unhealthy foods.
• The Cancer Council is calling for cartoons used in junk food advertising to be banned.
• The Australian Medical Association wants to ban the advertising of junk food to children.
• Hungry Jack’s recently announced that vegetable options will now accompany its burgers.

Is a Fat Tax the Answer?

No I don’t think it necessarily is going to affect our obesity levels by simply taxing high fat foods. I can only imagine that the increased costs to manufacturers would simply be passed onto consumers. I do, however think that on a cultural level, there needs to be a multi-faceted approach to treating obesity, and this could be one such angle.

In the last 50 years we have managed to halve the number of Australians smoking by taking a multifaceted approach. According to Biggest Loser Trainer Michelle Bridges, we need to be tackling our obesity epidemic in a similar way as we did the Tobacco industry. Maybe introducing a fat tax alone won’t help, but could it be the beginning of this cultural shift?

Do you think that introducing a fat tax would impact our obesity levels?

Read SMH News Review opinion here.

Do you do these things and think you can get away with them?

• Work hard
• party hard
• stay up late
• drink coffee and alcohol

Think again. When we live a fast-paced lifestyle, we rely on the adrenalin in our bodies to keep us going. It can give us an addictive rush and for a while we might actually enjoy being in a constant hectic state. But what about the damage we are doing to our body? As our body struggles to meet the high-pressure demands of a 24-hour day, we run the very real risk of adrenal fatigue.

Are you in an Adrenal Avalanch?

Just like a tiny snowball building intensity into an avalanche, your daily rituals could be the beginnings of your adrenal avalanche. The casualty? Your health!

The warning bells:

• High stress at work leaves you wired at night
• You’re not sleeping well
• You wake up completely exhausted
• You can’t live without coffee, tea, alcohol, coke (either kind!)
• Your stomach is always in a knot, your shoulders are constantly sore.

What is adrenal fatigue?

Adrenal fatigue is caused by a prolonged use of adrenalin. There’s a three-month period where your body can deal with the heightened adrenalin in your system; it helps you manage the fight or flight response. If you prolong this period, your adrenal system hits fatigue causing the body to run on cortisol.

Cortisol is a hormone that helps us cope with stressful situations. When you’re running on cortisol your muscles tense, fat cells open, sugar is released and anxiety reigns. If that’s not enough, cortisol causes your blood pressure to go up as well as your weight.

Some common indicators of adrenal exhaustion are:

• Feeling tired and unrefreshed after waking in the morning
• Finding it difficult to get going in the morning pre-coffee
• Feeling tired after exercising
• Extreme tiredness after a stressful event has occurred
• Chronic allergies, inflammation or digestive problems
• Illnesses, from low grade throat infections, all the way to chronic fatigue

Recovering from adrenal fatigue

Prolonged stress can be caused by a number of things. It could be from working long hours, being in an unhealthy relationship or even unresolved grief. When you add late nights, coffee, alcohol and partying into the mix, it’s the perfect recipe for burnout. When you reach the burnout stage, adjusting your attitude isn’t enough. You need to force yourself to slow down and cut back on time consuming commitments.

Slow yourself down with these helpful tips:

• Start the day with a relaxing ritual whether it’s meditation, yoga, gentle stretching or something else inspiring and calming.
• Stick to a healthy eating, exercising and sleeping plan because regular exercise and plenty of rest will increase your natural energy levels.
• Don’t over extend yourself. Set boundaries both professionally and personally and learn to say no.
• Take a break from technology for a set time every day and put your computer and phone on hold.
• Engage your creative side and take up a fun new hobby that will distract you from any day-to-day stresses.
• Acupuncture is an amazing way to stop the adrenal avalanche. It takes about 3-5 treatments, and rebalances all your energy systems. Find a practitioner.

Here we explore some of the crazy celeb diet fads out there. Grapefruit sniffing anyone!?!

New research shows that if you’re finding it hard to lose weight it may not just be because of the food you eat, it could also be your kitchen. In his book Mindless Eating, Brian Wansink shows us how subliminal messages are affecting the choices and quantities of the food we eat.

Here are some of my top tips to make sure your kitchen is setting you up for success, not sabotage:

1. Out of sight out of mind

If you want to have treats on hand it’s important to keep them out of site. A great way to do this is to store them in a non-transparent airtight container, and if they come in a packet, make sure you can’t access them easily by securing them with a bull clip. This creates what we call a ‘barrier to entry’ and stops you from sneaky snacking.

2. Place healthy food on display

The only thing that should be on your bench is a fruit bowl. Research shows that when foods such as chocolate are visible, they may trigger the urge to indulge. That’s why snacks like biscuits, chocolates and muesli should be stored in your cupboard to reduce temptation. Instead, make healthy snacks more accessible and keep pre-cut veggies or fruit in the fridge.

3. Pre-portion out your meals

If you find it hard to resist seconds, portion out your meals in advance. The next time you serve dinner, store your leftovers right away by placing them in plastic containers and popping them in the fridge or freezer.

4. Serve dinner on a smaller plate

Brian Wansink revealed that serving sizes increased by over 20% when meals were served on larger plates. So next time you’re dishing out a meal, choose the smaller plate and reduce the temptation to overeat.

5. Drink from a skinny glass

it might sound hard to believe, but studies show that people poured and consumed a whopping 19% more of their beverage when they drank it from a short, wide glass. Stick to a taller, more slim-lined glass and keep the calories down.

6. Avoid the jumbo packs

You don’t need an expert to tell you that once you open a bag of chips, there’s a good chance you’re going to finish them all. Which is why it’s not surprising that studies show women served with a 170g bag of chips consumed 200kj more than those contained in the average 85g bag. So resist the jumbo-sized bags and go for smaller, portion-controlled sizes.

7. Never eat directly from a packet

The sheer time it takes to serve food can be long enough to switch the conscious mind on and the unconscious mind off. We often get “hand to mouth disease” not realising that it’s OUR hand attached to OUR body shoveling the food in. So take the time to serve your food properly and you might help curb mindless snacking.

Here’s to a healthy kitchen and a healthy body!

Here we speak to three women of different sizes and fitness levels. Many don’t realise that it’s actually healthier to be fit and slightly overweight than unfit and a normal weight.

Getting motivated and staying motivated can be tough, but once you make exercise and healthy eating a regular part of your routine, you’ll wonder why you didn’t get started sooner.

If you’re looking to get back into shape and lead a healthier life, you’ve come to the right place. So stop procrastinating and follow my top tips to get you motivated and keep you motivated.

Make a commitment

Make a commitment to yourself to stick to your plan to get fit and healthy. Identify what your main roadblocks could be, e.g. too busy or too tired – then sit down and work out a logical solution to all of your excuses.

Set your goals

Set yourself a BHAG – A Big Hairy Audacious Goal – to run a marathon, climb a mountain or trek the Inca trail. Whatever your goal, make sure it’s something that gets your heart pumping. It’s important to tie physical fitness challenges into your goal, because the quest for a great body shape won’t be enough to sustain long-term motivation.

• 1-month
The details are in your 1-month goal – how you’re going to get to your future goals, as well as documenting and time-lining what you do.

• 3-month
E.g. Book in to do a marathon

• 6-month
E.g. Run a half marathon

• 12-month
E.g. Run a marathon

TIP: Goals need to be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-based.

Break old habits

Once you’ve identified any bad habits you have, it’s important to replace these destructive habits with new repairing habits.

Here’s an example of some new habits that you could pledge to make:

Nutrition
• No sugar in tea
• Wine only on the weekends
• No snacking between meals

Fitness
• Exercise four days per week
• Learn how to run
• Join a gym

Repair a negative mindset

It’s important to repair any negative thought processes you may have and replace them with new positive empowering thoughts. A good way to check your attitude towards yourself is to listen to your inner dialogue. If you wouldn’t talk to a loved one that way then you shouldn’t be talking to yourself like that.

The five-minute rule

Your exercise program is never going to be perfect – you’ll miss classes and you’re never going to feel enthused to exercise every single session. But if you adopt the five-minute rule, it will help get you out the door on those low motivation days.

Tell yourself that you’re just going to do it for five minutes. Whether it’s a walk, a quick run or a few push-ups – that five minutes will more than likely turn to 10 minutes, to 15 minutes and before you know it, you will have completed an entire workout session.

MOTTO: There are two types of pain: the pain of training or the long-term pain of not training – you choose.

Get a training buddy

Most people think of a training buddy as someone that you actually train with, but that’s not always the case. A true training buddy is anyone who is committed to your journey to the same degree (sometimes even greater) than you are. This could be a running partner but it could also be a family member, a trainer, your twitter followers or a website forum buddy.

The best training buddies:

• Need you just as much as you need them
• Are reliable
• Always encouraging
• There for support when you need it
• Tell you to harden up when you’re wimping out
• Assist you with programming and advice
• Competitive but in a healthy, sportsman-like way
• Hold you accountable for your sessions
• Make workouts much more enjoyable

Stay in control

Everything you do should be from a place of love. You exercise because you respect your body, not because you’re punishing it for that bottle of wine last night. Reward yourself daily with non-food rewards like a hot bath, a good book, a massage, time with friends – anything that makes you feel good.

Remind yourself that by taking on this repair challenge you’re regaining control of all areas of your life, so you should be proud of yourself and feel empowered by this level of control.

Reset your goals

Come back to your Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) and see if you’re on track for your 3, 6 and 12-month goals. Assess your timeline and make any adjustments if necessary, it’s important that you can see yourself making progress towards each benchmark.

Motivation is an ongoing process, just like a bank you always need to make deposits because undoubtedly life makes a whole lot of withdrawals.

Happy training!

If you’re in the market for a new set of bathroom scales and you’ve got between $60-$300 to spend, read on.

For the past six months I’ve been testing the new Tanita BC100 Body Composition Scales. Now on the surface they appear to be your normal digital bathroom scale, and that is precisely what I used them for during the first two months. Well, that was until I RTFM’d them (Read The F-ing Manual!) and set them up for what they are designed to do – to be a complete body composition analyser.

How a Body Composition Analyser works

You stand on the scales and a low electrical signal is sent through the body (called a Bio Impedance Analysis or BIA). Your different tissues create a resistance based on the water levels, e.g. muscle carries a lot of fluid in it whereas fat does not. This nifty machine is able to differentiate your tissues based on this, namely, bone, muscle, fat, and water, and thus determining your body composition.

It all takes less than one minute, doesn’t hurt and is surprisingly accurate (+/- 1% accuracy if measuring conditions remain constant).

What the scales will tell you:

Your weight: Tanita scales are seen as the leader in accuracy which we know is crucial to our sanity come our weekly weigh-ins!

Body fat: Too much or too little body fat can put your health at risk. This highly accurate monitoring technique shows you in seconds if you are in the healthy range based on your age, sex and height.

Body water: Helps you keep track of your hydration levels and understand how your body’s composition changes as your hydration levels change.

Bone weight/mass: Indicates the weight of bone mineral in the body. The
development of muscle tissue has been shown to encourage stronger, healthier bones.

Muscle Mass: Displays the amount of muscle in the body. For every extra
pound (600g) of muscle gained the body uses approximately 50 extra calories a day. Because muscle is denser than fat, monitoring muscle mass gives a more accurate understanding of your overall composition and changes in your total body weight.

Basal Metabolic Rate: Indicates the number of calories your body burns when at rest. Unlike other methods of calculating BMR, Innerscan Fitness takes the amount of muscle in your body into account, giving a more accurate picture.

Metabolic Age Rating: (my personal favourite because it says I’m 16 years old!) Your BMR starts to decrease after the age of 17 and the metabolic age rating indicates what age level your body is currently rated at.

Visceral Fat Rating: Visceral fat surrounds the internal organs in the
stomach/trunk area of your body. High levels of visceral fat increase the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease and type-2 diabetes.

Physique Rating: Describes your overall physique or body shape by examining
the balance between the amounts of body fat and muscle in your body.

Who should use body composition scales

Weight loss candidates:

It’s important to understand that while weight loss is the aim, there are other drastic changes happening in the body. For example, a weight loss client of mine recently hit a plateau for two weeks whilst on holidays. They told me they were training every day, but doing more weights. Normally I’d be very concerned about this plateau but when he returned and we analysed his results, he had actually lost 6% body fat and gained 4kg of muscle. As soon as I increased his heart rate through interval training, the weight fell off and he lost 5kg the following week (he weighed over 100kg).

Healthy BMI/less than 5kg to lose:

These people I feel benefit the best from body composition scales because they are accurately able to track the more subtle effects, thus being able to refine what they are doing based on results. An individual may lose 5% body fat and gain a few kilos of muscle with very little change on the scales, even though they look very different. It is very encouraging for this group.

Serious exercisers (more than 10hr week training and resting heart rate below 60bpm):

There is a special ‘athlete’ setting for these people to make the readings more accurate (although they do suggest that bodybuilders and professional athletes may have a less accurate reading, but it still remains consistent, showing trends). I find the scales particularly useful to monitor my hydration levels, muscle mass (and loss due to marathon running) and of course body fat (I am a vain girl after all!).

Factors affecting its accuracy

Hydration:

The more varied your hydration levels the less accurate it is. A full bladder, diuretics (e.g. alcohol), dehydration, recent eating or menstrual cycle all affect its accuracy. Around 5pm is apparently the best time of the day as you are most likely to be correctly hydrated. They don’t recommend weighing first thing in the morning or after exercising. I however, always weigh myself first thing before I train due to point two below.

Consistency:

Weigh yourself at the same time of the day, in the same manner. Hence morning is best for me. There are some more tips for accuracy here, such as having clean feet and wearing as little clothing as possible.

My Verdict

It’s a winner! It’s a bit fiddly to set up initially, but once you’ve taken the time to RTFM it’s really easy. I recommend keeping a chart or a book handy to jot your results down, and I recommend measuring 2-4 times per month. If you are committed to changing the shape of your body, and you want some accurate, raw hard facts; then the BC1000 is for you.

You can buy the scales at Amazon