​Being on a diet to lose body fat usually consists of some calorie deficit. By definition, this means you’re giving your body fewer calories than it needs to sustain it’s current weight so that your body uses stored body fat as a fuel source.

​Metabolism refers to all the chemical reactions that happen in your body that keep you alive and functioning. When you see the word metabolism used in this context, it means the rate at which your body burns calories. 

​With Christmas just around the corner, we’re surrounded by an abundance of highly palatable, and highly calorific snacks and treats which have the potential to throw a spanner in the works of our weight loss goals. But is it possible to get through the festive period without re-gaining the weight that we’ve worked so hard to lose this year?

​If you suffer from feeling anxious or are having a stressful patch in your life that lasts more than a couple of days, you may have experienced some secondary symptoms of stress. This varies from person to person, but could include disrupted sleep, feelings of tightness in your chest, or a shorter than average fuse! 

​Compared with men, women’s hormones fluctuate quite a bit from day to day. Although science hasn’t yet got a complete picture of how the menstrual cycle affects exercise, we do know that the hormonal fluctuations affect your physical performance and even how your body handles what you eat.

​If fitness only happened on the weeks that life was utterly predictable, nothing much would get done. You'd see very little progress over a year - because there's always something going on; birthdays, anniversaries, giving birth, changes in income - even a global pandemic. 

​When aiming to lose body fat, there are so many ways you could go about it that it can feel overwhelming. All these diets with different names, and they all seem to work for some people, but there doesn’t seem to be one “right” way. So, rather than looking for a specific diet, what if you looked at the traits that the best diets have got in common?

​When the goal is to get lean and lose weight, it's easy to become fixated on that goal. It's measurable and transparent. But weight loss is rarely linear; the scales probably won't show a loss every week, and it can be discouraging when that's your marker for success. It's essential to have a way to stay committed to weight loss when the scale isn't moving as quickly as you'd like.

​Reducing sugar consumption is a great strategy when the overall goal is to reduce body fat and get leaner. However, it may not be as simple as it sounds to achieve.