My weight has been gradually creeping up on me over the last few years. Nothing too drastic, just slow and steady. The sort of thing that’s so easy to ignore, but it doesn’t go away. It was becoming more obvious because some of my trousers were becoming a bit too tight to wear, and I was buying larger sizes to replace them. Naturally I kept the old ones because I knew that I would slim down into them. The problem was deciding what to do and then taking action. Life is already very busy and full. I had all the usual excuses.

The final spur to action came when I had two weddings to attend. I had two perfect outfits to wear, the only trouble was that I couldn’t get into either of them. Now, I knew this six months before the weddings, but it was only two months before the first one that I took any action. It was then crunch time, do something or buy something new.Putting things off was no longer an option.

I eat pretty healthily but I know that enjoying a glass of wine with my wife in the evening has become a regular habit. Several morning coffees are also the wrong signals to my body for maintaining a stable blood sugar level , and perhaps I can’t get away with these in the way that I used to.

Over the last few years I have been doing less exercise.  When I was employed as a pharmacist I used to walk into work and be standing all day. When I became self employed to work on the web site I still walked into our pharmacy office, but was sitting down during more of the day. Over the last few years the walking has become less and the sitting has become more, and the last couple of rainy years have well and truly dampened my enthusiasm for walking.

Unfortunately, there are no quick fixes to losing weight. The small bad habits catch up with you over the years. It seems no effort at all to put a bit of weight on, but it takes an effort to take that weight off. Equally important is what to do after losing weight to see that it doesn’t creep back on.

Dieting doesn’t work and it makes things worse. If you significantly under-eat your body goes into starvation mode. Our metabolism still works in the same way it did for our caveman ancestors. Our body doesn’t know we have gone on a diet, it thinks there is a famine and goes into survival mode. It conserves energy by slowing our metabolism, and hanging on to our fat stores for dear life. Energy is obtained by breaking down muscle tissue. We do lose weight, but it is muscle more than fat, and we come out of this diet/starvation scenario in worse health because the proportion of fat to body tissue increases.

Each person’s weight loss plan will be different, depending on what is causing the weight problem in the first place.

So deciding what I had to do was quite straightforward. I needed an exercise routine to lose weight quickly and then incorporate more exercise into my daily routine, and to look at what I was drinking, both coffee and alcohol.(See How To Lose Weight )

I was lucky with the exercise. I just happened to spot a free week’s introduction to a local ‘Bootcamp’ and decided to give it a try. When things turn up at the right time it pays to take note of them. So I went along, a little nervously, to Simon Lovell’s New Body Bootcamp in Exeter . I was impressed with his web site, which showed videos of the sort of exercises that were done, and gave a very good impression of the way that it was organised, to be fun, and done as a group. I knew it would be hard work, but I was up for it. Well, I threw myself into the exercises and survived the first session, but it took the rest of the week for me to recover from the stiffness that hit me by the next morning.

Building muscle is what this is all about. Muscles are damaged by exercise, and grow back stronger. This is what causes the stiffness, but this is the way to strengthen and build muscle tissue which also actively burns fat, and continues to do this for a long time after the exercise. Overall this reduces the proportion of fat as well as losing weight, and these short, intense, varied exercises are the best way to do this. There is an added advantage that these short intense exercises don’t build the sort of ‘body builder’ muscle mass, just toned muscles, and are suitable for men and women.

Over the next month the morning-after stiffness  became less and in the second month I was able to do three one-hour sessions a week with no stiffness. It was hard work, but always different and enjoyable. I cut down on alcohol and diluted my coffees with water.

My suits fitted and the weddings were wonderful. I lost 10 pounds in weight.

I have altered my lifestyle to keep the weight off. I now walk to and from work, and have turned this into productive time by treating myself to an iPod to listen to old and new talks about health, happiness and success. My pedometer shows me that just walking to and from work gives me 7,000 of the 10,000 paces a day that make all the difference to health. I have bought a packable waterproof jacket and over-trousers to remove the excuse for not walking if it is raining or looks like rain.

My health statistics show that I still have some work to do. My Body Mass Index (BMI) came down from 26.6 to 25.0 which now puts me just on the borderline of being overweight (18.5 to 24.9 being normal weight). I now fit comfortably into all my 34 inch trousers. My body fat composition is 34% and this should ideally be 21 to 28%. So I need to do more of the exercise to build more muscle and lose more fat, and lose a bit of weight at the same time. I already take several health supplements, have low stress levels and sleep well. These are areas I already have covered. (See Understanding Your Weight ).

Author: Colin Winstanley

p.s.  Can you recommend a fitness book or video with exercises that can be done at home? Your comments would be appreciated.

Hay fever is with us again affecting up to a quarter of people in the UK, and up to 38% of teenagers. It is caused by an allergy to a particular pollen rather than to hay. Each pollen has it’s own season, with grass, flower and tree pollens occurring at different times.

You can do a lot to control your hay fever symptoms, and by  understanding the cause of hay fever and using some treatments there is a lot you can do to ease your symptoms.

Treating hay fever is usually done with antihistamines, and then if the lining of the nose becomes swollen and blocked anti-allergy products are more effective. Decongestants can also help if the nose running a lot.

Complementary therapies are also popular and there is a choice of homeopathic, barrier or filters to choose from.

Read our hay fever information articles to understand hay fever and how to keep in under control.

Click here to see more information on Hay Fever Relief.

Author: Colin Winstanley

If you can’t see the video, then click here to play it

Your friends influence you more than you realise, because ideas and influences have been show to cluster together in people that you know and interact with (Your social network). This influence extends to people you don’t even know, friends of friends, and even to their friends. Similarly people you work with, and other people in the same organistaion you don’t even know.

This video explores the influence of social networks on happiness, depression, obesity, smoking, drinking, divorce and emotions and shows how they can spread from person to person. So be careful who your associate with as a friend or at work because their life rubs off on you in so many subtle and different ways, and be very aware of how your social network influences your choices in life.You can’t extract yourself from the influence of your social network, which in many ways has a life and intelligence of it’s own.

How traits (from happiness to obesity) spread through our social networks – and impact your life in ways you don’t even know is a talk given to TED 2010 by Nicholas Christakis, author of the book ‘Connected’. Nicholas is a Harvard Professor of Medicine, Health Care Policy, and Sociology. He was named by Time magazine to its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, and also by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of 100 top global thinkers.

[Links : TED (Technology Entertainment & Design): Original TED talk]

Author : Colin Winstanley

Shamanism – Man’s Earliest Spirituality

Leo Rutherford recently gave a talk on shamanism, which I videoed. Leo is regarded as one the the UK’s foremost experts on shamanism, having studied shamanism all over the world.

Shamanism is regarded as man’s most ancient spiritual belief system, dating back to the late Neolithic or Bronze Age over 3,000 years ago. It predates organised religion, though many of its basic ideas have much in common with many Eastern, Native American and African religions,

Ideas from shamanism have been incorporated into New Age spirituality in the late 1960’s and 1970s. Leo’s talk looks at some of the ways that our ideas have been moulded by society and organised religions and how shamanic beliefs are still relevant in the modern world.

Click here to see the videos of Leo Rutherford’s talk on Shamanism.

Author: Colin Winstanley

Bach Rescue Remedy was voted ‘Top Complementary Remedy’ at the 2010 Top Sante Health & Beauty Awards. Top Sante is one of the UK’s leading magazines for health-savvy women, with a readership of 85,000.

Bach flower remedies are promoted to encourage the body’s own potential to look after itself by helping to restore a more positive outlook at times of emotional change. Its gentle action is claimed to assist the return to a positive mood, particularly at times of anxiety,  stress or emotional demand; before a driving test, interview, exam or flight or when you simply need a little comfort or reassurance.

Rescue Remedy is the most famous and widely used of the Bach Flower Remedies, and is a combination of five of the Bach Flower Remedies; Impatiens, Star of Bethlehem, Cherry Plum, Rock Rose and Clematis.  It is available in a range of products which are handy to carry with you.

Author: Colin Winstanley

How healthy are you? A recent survey showed that the average person is plagued by minor medical problems, suffering 6,284 in a lifetime or an average of 80 a year, or more than one a week.

Does this sound like you? Well, it doesn’t sound very healthy to me, but then I’m the sort of person who can’t remember when I last had a cold, have never had flu, and just don’t seem to get symptoms of anything else.  How do I do this? I look after the health basics and try to avoid unnecessary stress. I’m not super-healthy or super-fit. I run my own business, and I am 58 years old.

But how can you suffer less? Well, here are some of the things you can do to make the most of your own health.

• Look after your immune system. Your immune system is there to fight off infections such as colds and flu. Eat well, take a multivitamin and multimineral supplement, exercise, cut down on stress and sleep well.
• Look after your body. The commonest body symptoms reported were cramps and back pain. Exercise can minimise both of these, but that doesn’t necessarily mean going to the gym. . Try to incorporate some for of exercise into your daily routine. Walk more, cycle, play sports. Try to combine different types of exercise because a healthy body needs this. Look after your nutrition and your weight, because these have a profound effect on your body. Energy, stress and sleep are also related, so look after all these aspects for maximum energy. Smoking is bad news and alcohol should be used in moderation.
• Look after your mind. We have an average of 16 headaches a year, and these are often caused by anxiety or stress. Lowering your mental stress also reduces the physical stress on your body caused by the release of the stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol, which can also cause adrenal fatigue and low energy levels. People who are positive thinkers also live longer.

Use our Online Pharmacy, to choose the best products to treat your minor ailments.  This is fine because something to ease the symptoms is all you need. Just choose the product carefully and stick to the instructions.

This survey revealed that we spend 21 days a year on pain relief medication. This seems to be excessive, and as a pharmacist I know that many people reach for the paracetamol for the smallest problem, or continue to use it for too long. This isn’t healthy. The best way to use pain relief medication is only for as long as it is really needed.

Reference: Daily Mail Article

Author: Colin Winstanley

The Achievers Edge is a monthly audio newsletter to help you achieve personal and business success. Listen to it from CD or on your MP3 player. It contains real world, instantly usable ideas from a wide range of people who are successful themselves. Listening to people who are already successful, learning how they think and act, and then using their ideas is the best way to become successful yourself. You can then define what success means to you.

Each audio CD is over an hour long, and over the months builds into your own success library. The advantage of this format is that you can listen to it on the CD player at home, in your car, or transfer it to your MP3 player or iPod to listen to on the move. You will find each audio worth listening to several times to get the full value of the ideas. Coming back to listen again at a later time will also give you new ideas to use which may not have been appropriate at the time.

Each month’s issue typically contains sections on:

• Personal Development
• Guest Presenter
• Business Building
• Guest Interview
• Edge Of The Month
• Audio Course Excerpt

The Achievers Edge is available as a trial offer which  gives you three issues free, together with several free bonuses. You only have to pay £2.97 to cover the postage. If you are interested in creating your own success and achieving more, then you should try this, listen carefully to the three free issues and if your find them useful, subscribe to further issues.

If you chose to subscribe, the cost is £9.97 each month (Plus £2.95 postage). You can cancel your subscription at any time, and there is no minimum period to subscribe for.

Peter Thomson produces The Achievers Edge. Peter is one of the UK’s leading strategists and trainers on personal and business growth. He shares his 30+ years of business experience, and the research he has done into how to be successful. Peter is an experienced presenter and has run successful seminars as well as writing and producing audio training programs for himself and Nightingale Conant.

Author: Colin Winstanley

Flomax Relief (Tamsulosin) is now available as an over the counter medicine for the 1 in 4 men aged 45-75 years who have to keep getting up at night to pee.  This is a common problem that is often left untreated because it creeps on so gradually.  Many men just put up with it as an inconvenience due to ageing, but it is treatable.

Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) is the medical term for this condition. It is caused by enlargement of the prostate gland putting pressure on the urethra, the tube that empties urine from the bladder. The term benign means that it isn’t serious in the way that cancer is.

There is a Flomax Relief Symptom Checklist to see if you have any of the range of symptoms of BPH that Flomax Relief is suitable for, and can help to relieve.

[Click to read our full articles on Flomax Relief (Tamsulosin), Flomax Relief Symptom Checklist, Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH)]

Author:  Colin Winstanley

Achieving your childhood dreams is every child’s wish, but things get harder as you get older, and some of the dreams change. However these childhood dreams can have a profound influence on the rest of your life and shouldn’t be ignored.

Here is a one and a quarter hour video that brings tears of joy and sadness to my eyes every time I watch it. It is a recording of a lecture given by Professor Randy Pausch showing how he achieved his childhood dreams, even though some of them changed on the way. This video is worth taking the time to watch all the way through.

It was a tradition at Carnegie Mellon University for a Professor to give a ‘Last Lecture’ at the end of the final term to the students who were leaving. The point of the lecture was to share parting words of worldly wisdom.  Unfortunately this was prophetic for Randy Pausch who died of cancer the next year after giving a last lecture that everyone still remembers.

Author: Colin Winstanley

Please Comment: What were your childhood dreams? Have you achieved them? How did they change as you grew up?

Positive psychology is a new area of psychology that looks at what makes people happy, and learns from that, rather than the medical model of happiness, which looks at how to relieve the suffering of people who are medically unhappy. This approach, championed by Martin Seligman has lead to a greater understanding of happiness, which has been the realm of philosophy in the past.

[Click to read the full article on Positive Psychology]