A COUPLE of months ago I wrote about the publication of the NICE (The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) guidelines which advised people that a loss in weight of just a few pounds could have significant effects on long term health and in particular certain health conditions.

Losing just three per cent of bodyweight, according to NICE, could reduce blood pressure, reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and even some cancers. But losing this small amount of weight is no use if you pile it back on, which is why we often need to change our lifestyles rather than go on a “diet”.

My clients hear it all the time and I’ll say it here for you all to read: DIETS DO NOT WORK!!

Eating good, healthy and unprocessed foods on a daily basis is what works. It’s your diet, it’s not a diet.

However, we covered that a few weeks ago. What else do we need to do apart from look at our nutrition intake to change our lifestyle?

We need to get moving along with cutting out the rubbish in our diets and increasing the good stuff..

For anyone who is doing absolutely nothing apart from getting up in the morning, going to work, coming home and going to bed, this can be a little daunting to say the least. But it doesn’t need to be.

You don’t have to be training for a marathon or for Tough Mudder or other such craziness. But let's look at the figures here.

There are 168 hours in the week, most of us work up to 40 hours. That leaves 128 hours. If we sleep eight hours a night, that’s 56 hours in a week leaving 72 hours of the week. If you can’t find three to four hours out of that to do something active then you need to!

You don’t have time not to get active. To paraphrase, if you don’t get active now you will more than likely get ill when you are older. And who wants that?

A lifestyle change is what most of my new clients need when I first see them, most personal trainers and people working in the health and fitness industry will probably tell you the same.

The beauty of it is that there are numerous ways to do it. Whether you want to go to the gym and throw some weights around or pound away on the treadmill, or join one of Keighley’s cycling clubs, or play five a side down at Marley with a group of mates, or get out in the local countryside and just get walking in the fresh air.

Crikey, Keighley even has its own Yoga studio on East Parade that offers physical activity along with the inner calm that Yoga can bring about.

The crux of it is, if you haven’t already, you need to think about changing your lifestyle through diet and activity or suffer for it when you get older.